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Finsen, Niels Ryberg
(1860-1904), Danish physician and Nobel Prize winner who made important
discoveries regarding the use of light waves in the treatment of disease.
Finsen was born in Tórshavn, the capital of the Faeroe Islands,
a part of Denmark located north of the British Isles. After completing
his early schooling in Denmark and in Reykjavík, Iceland, Finsen
attended the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, receiving his medical
degree in 1891. He then taught anatomy in the university's Department
of Surgery, leaving in 1893 to devote himself full-time to studying "phototherapy,"
or the therapeutic effects of light. In 1896 he established the Light
Institute in Copenhagen. For his groundbreaking contributions to the new
field of phototherapy, Niels Finsen received the 1903 Nobel Prize in physiology
or medicine.
Even as a child, Finsen had been fascinated by the effects of sunlight
on living things. His research as an undergraduate included experiments
in which he observed how sunlight affected the tissue of insects, tadpoles,
and other animals. Later Finsen decided to turn his efforts toward the
treatment of human diseases. In 1893 he began to study the use of filtered
sunlight in the treatment of skin lesions caused by smallpox, a viral
disease. Red light—that is, light from the red end of the spectrum—with
its harmful heat rays filtered out, proved successful in promoting the
healing of smallpox lesions. After publishing key papers on phototherapy
in 1893 and 1894, Finsen began research into the treatment of lupus vulgaris,
a disfiguring skin disease caused by bacteria. Finsen had noted the findings
of previous researchers, who discovered that light could kill bacteria.
Focusing an artificial light through a prism, Finsen exposed diseased
tissue to high concentrations of ultraviolet light. The method proved
highly effective in treating lupus vulgaris. Finsen established his Light
Institute in Copenhagen, where hundreds of lupus vulgaris patients were
successfully treated over the next few years. The use of ultraviolet light
remained the central treatment for lupus vulgaris for decades.
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