Түрлі-түсті терапия: тарихы мен ғылыми негіздерінің жоқтығы

Alternative medicine method also known as color therapy

Chromotherapy, sometimes called color therapy, colorology or cromatherapy, is an alternative medicine that is considered pseudoscience and quackery. Apparently influenced by this work, from 1860 Augustus Pleasonton started to conduct original experiments, and in 1876 published the book The Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight and of the Blue Color of the Sky, detailing how the color blue can improve the growth of crops and livestock and can help heal diseases in humans. This led to the birth of modern chromotherapy, influencing contemporary scientists Dr. Seth Pancoast and Edwin Dwight Babbitt to conduct experiments and publish Blue and Red Light; or, Light and Its Rays as Medicine (1877) and The Principles of Light and Color (1878) respectively. In Germany in the late 1890s, Georg von Langsdorff promoted Babbitt's ideas and mixed color therapy with psychometry and spiritualism. Other notable advocates include Anthroposophist Theo Gimbel who authored many books on the subject and founded the Hygeia Institute for Colour Therapy in 1968.

In 1933, Indian scientist Dinshah P. Ghadiali published The Spectro Chromemetry Encyclopaedia, a work on color therapy. Ghadiali claimed to have discovered why and how the different colored rays have various therapeutic effects on organisms. He believed that colors represent chemical potencies in higher octaves of vibration, and for each organism and system of the body there is a particular color that stimulates and another that inhibits the work of that organ or system. He also thought that, by knowing the action of the different colors upon the different organs and systems of the body, one can apply the correct color that will tend to balance the action of any organ or system that has become abnormal in its function or condition. The American Medical Association published refutations of Ghadiali's color therapy claims. In 1958, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) facilitated a permanent injunction against Ghadiali's Visible Spectrum Research Institute. Ghadiali's son, Darius Dinshah, continues to provide information about color therapy via his Dinshah Health Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing non pharmaceutical home color therapy, and his book Let There Be Light.

Practitioners of ayurvedic medicine believe the body has seven "chakras", which some claim are 'spiritual centers', and are thought to be located along the spine. New Age thought associates each of the chakras with a single color of the visible light spectrum, along with a function and organ or bodily system. According to this view, the chakras can become imbalanced and result in physical and mental diseases, but application of the appropriate color can allegedly correct such imbalances.

Chromotherapy is regarded by health experts and historians as pseudoscience and quackery. According to a book published by the American Cancer Society, "available scientific evidence does not support claims that alternative uses of light or color therapy are effective in treating cancer or other illnesses". Regarding Dinshah Ghadiali's work, science writer Martin Gardner had described him as "perhaps the greatest quack of them all". According to Gardner, photographs of Ghadiali at work in his laboratory are "indistinguishable from stills of a grade D movie about a mad scientist". Historian Deborah Ascher Barnstone has noted that chromotherapy is "distinct from scientifically verified light treatments such as neonatal jaundice treatment. As, unlike chromotherapy, the light used in such therapies, whether scientifically proven or not, was not always colored, their particulars are not relevant in this context." Chromotherapy has been accused of oversimplifying psychological responses to colors, making sweeping statements based on myths or beliefs that lack empirical support. Guidelines for chromotherapy lack consistency and appear to be subjective judgements that have inconclusive and nonspecific applicability in healthcare systems. While twelve colors have been reported as beneficial for health and well being, a rigorous definition of each of these colors has yet to be provided, making it impossible to know if all color therapists are using the same wavelengths for these colors.