This Used To Be a Thing: the Spectro-Chrome
Let there be 12 colors of light!
Let there be light!
Specifically, twelve different colors of it.
That’s what Colonel Dinshah P. Ghadiali believed would cure anyone’s ills.
The Colonel was a devout practitioner of “chromotherapy”, which was fashionable in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Those who professed to its efficacy claimed that specific colors of light, applied either to the entire body or specific parts, could cure any injury or disease.
Ghadiali believed the human body was almost entirely composed of four elements, each associated with it’s own color — oxygen (blue), hydrogen (red), nitrogen (green), and carbon (yellow). For someone in good health, these colors were all in balance.
Illnesses were caused by these colors falling out of balance.
Fortunately, by 1920 the good “doctor” invented a contraption he called the Spectro-Chrome for the application of this healing light, sold exclusively at his Spectro-Chrome Institute.
[For the record, Ghadiali never received any formal medical training, but listed his credentials as “M.D., M.E., D.C., Ph.D., LL.D., N.D., D.Opt., F.F.S., D.H.T., D.M.T., D.S.T.” Most of these were either purchased at diploma mills or simply made up, presumably “earned” at the Institute.
He was frequently pictured in his literature in full military regalia, in actuality his uniform as a member of the New York Police Air Reserves during WWI, where he did indeed rise to the rank of Colonel.]
Looking like a slide projector on steroids, the Spectro-Chrome is simply a big aluminum box, containing nothing more than a 1000-watt lightbulb and a small cooling fan. A lens with a bracket was inserted into one side, onto which various colored filters could be fitted, individually or in combination, to project twelve specific colors.
To give the device an air of legitimacy, Ghadiali devised an entire philosophy and practice around the use of his Spectro-Chrome. He divided the human body into 22 different sections, where one or a combination of these twelve colors would be “applied” to one or multiple sections (even the entire body) to regain the proper balance, at which point the patient would be “cured.”
In order for treatment to be effective, the patient must also lie down with their head facing north, to align with the earth’s magnetic field. Colors could only be applied at specific times each day according to astrological tables.
He also offered lifestyle advice to get the most benefit from the Spectro-Chrome. A typical “prescription” for diabetics was to “stop Insulin at once and irradiate yourself with Yellow Systemic alternated with Magenta on Areas 4 or 18, and eat plenty of Raw or Brown Sugar and all the Starches!!!”
For up to a mere $750 (not chump-change 100 years ago), you, too, could have a Spectro-Chrome of your very own.
Cure your friends! Fun at parties!
“Therapists” could be “certified” at the Institute by spending hundreds of hours (not to mention dollars) purchasing and studying Ghadiali’s labyrinthine three-volume Spectro-Chrome Metry Encyclopedia.
Sales of these devices, courses, and other literature through the Institute made Ghadiali a millionaire.
It of course did not take long for the medical establishment to start looking into the Spectro-Chrome, and for Ghadiali to start running into trouble.
He was arrested for fraud in the early 1930’s, but managed an acquittal after he convinced others in the medical profession to back him up.
His legal troubles continued into the 1940’s. By this time, both the Food and Drug and American Medical associations had put together solid cases (the AMA considering the Spectro-Chrome “a cross between a stereopticon and an automobile heater”). Ghadiali was sentenced to multiple years in prison, fined $20,000, and had all his promotional materials confiscated and further production of his device banned.
Testimony from a supposedly cured epileptic patient, who had a seizure while on the stand, perhaps may have contributed to his conviction.
Be that as it may, apparently no lessons were learned. The day after Ghadiali’s release in 1953, he simply changed the name of his institute to the Visible Spectrum Research Institute and just kept going.
It wasn’t until 1958 that the government issued a permanent injunction against producing and selling the devices, which stands to this day. Dr. Ghadiali died in 1966 at age 92.
But the story doesn’t end there, my friends. The light has not yet completely dimmed on the Spectro-Chrome.
Ghadiali’s sons took over the Institute after his death, and the Dinshah Health Society continues operating to this day where it originated in Malaga, New Jersey. Although Spectro-Chromes are still technically illegal, the Society does sell a handy step-by-step guide for you to build a simplified version on your own.
And, once you’ve purchased the countless volumes on the history and practice of chromotherapy (including the Encyclopedia!), you can go certify yourself.
Let there (still) be light!
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