Introduction

To tan skin is to brown it, dye it, transform its properties. Whether one refers to the process of turning raw hide to treated leather (the verb's etymological origins), or that of pigmenting human skin from pallid whiteness to a bronzed, luxurious surface, the concept of tanning remains the same. In contributing to this edited volume on skin and its medical histories, this chapter focuses on an under-explored topic in early twentieth-century medicine: bodily exposure of tubercular patients to light, or, perhaps better put, a therapeutics of tanning. From the early 1890s onwards, physicians internationally became increasingly fascinated by the natural healing powers of light. The primary, though not sole, target of both heliotherapy (natural sun therapy) and phototherapy (artificial light therapy) was to treat tuberculosis in its various manifestations. This included pulmonary tuberculosis, Pott's disease, scrofula, bone and joint (‘surgical’) tuberculosis, and lupus vulgaris (tuberculosis of the skin). Heliotherapists and phototherapists sought to rid the body of tubercle bacilli, heal the disfiguring and suppurating wounds caused by them, and prevent further recurrences by building up the patient's physiological defences.