FIRST - Finsen Light in England - Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel Road, London, UK - First of its Kind on Waymarking.com

Queen Alexandra, the wife of King Edward VII, was Danish and, being a person interested in medical matters, was obviously aware of the work of her countryman, Niels Tyberg Finsen.

The Medical Discoveries website tells us:

The finsen light is named for its inventor, Niels Tyberg Finsen (1860-1903). It was a powerful light used to cure people of the skin disorder lupus.

 Finsen received his medical degree in 1891. Over time, he became very interested in how light affects disease. Finsen was familiar with the work of a Swedish researcher who in 1889 had discovered the effects of ultraviolet light. The researcher had found that short-wave ultraviolet (the range of radiation wavelengths just outside the color violet in the visible spectrum) light irritated biological tissue more than the longer-waved infrared light.

With this information at hand, Finsen began recording the effects of sunlight on insects and amphibians. He was convinced that light could be used to treat human disease. Finsen found that ultraviolet light from the sun or from electric lights could kill bacteria. He wrote several papers in 1893 and 1894 on the beneficial use of phototherapy.

In 1895 Finsen made an arrangement with Copenhagen Electric Light Works to treat patients two hours each day with ultraviolet light. His patients were diagnosed with lupus vulgaris. This is a skin disease caused by the tubercle bacillus (tuberculosis). Finsen designed a powerful lamp (the finsen light) for the treatment. It was a bright artificial light generated by electrical carbon arcs.

 In 1896 Finsen founded the Finsen Institute for Phototherapy in Copenhagen. The Institute was dedicated to studying effects of light and curing people of disease. At the Institute, 800 lupus patients were treated. Half were cured of the disease and nearly all the rest showed improvement in their conditions. For this achievement Finsen was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in medicine. Finsen donated half the prize money to the Finsen Institute.

During Finsen's era both X-rays and gamma rays were discovered by the German physicist Wilhelm Rontgen (1845-1923) and the French physicist Antoine-Henri Becquerel (1852-1908). With Finsen's success in light therapy leading the way, the idea of radiotherapy was born. Since Finsen's time, X-rays and gamma rays have been frequently used for the diagnoses and treatment of disease.

Even today some foods are irradiated with ultraviolet light to kill bacteria. Finsen was also ahead of his time in his concept of the effect of sunlight on disposition and health. It is only fairly recently that Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) has been recognized as a type of depression caused by a lack of sunlight in winter. People diagnosed with SAD can be treated by sitting under lights to extend their exposure to light on short days.

The Science Museum website, that has the first lamp, tells us:

This Finsen lamp was presented to the Royal London Hospital (formerly the London Hospital) by Queen Alexandra (1844-1925) when she was Princess of Wales. The lamp was named after its inventor, Neils Ryberg Finsen (1860-1904), who in 1894 pioneered the use of ultraviolet light (UV) to treat tuberculosis of the skin. The UV light is projected through each of the four telescopes so four patients can be treated at once. This type of treatment declined with the introduction of antibiotics but a lamp was kept in case the drugs did not work. The Finsen lamp was also used to treat rickets from the 1920s onwards. At the suggestion of Finsen himself, the hospital presented the lamp to the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in 1953.

A statue, at the Royal London Hospital, shows Queen Alexandra, the wife of Edward VII, wearing full coronation robes and crown holding a sceptre in her right hand. The plaque on the front of the plinth tells us:

Her Majesty
Queen Alexandra
President of the London Hospital
1904
Who always took a personal & sympathetic interest in its work
and who in 1900 introduced to England
the Finsen Light cure for Lupus
and presented the first lamp to this hospital

This statue was erected by friends of the hospital
1908

The PMSA website tells us about the statue and Queen Alexandra:

Statue of Queen Alexandra wearing full coronation robes and crown holding a sceptre in her right hand. On south face of plinth is a pictorial plaque in low relief showing the royal visit to a ward where the Finsen lamp was in use for the relief of Lupus.
    
Unveiled by Lord Crewe, Chairman of the Hospital. The statue cost £1,500 of which Wade waived half. 'Queen Alexandra is one of the shining lights of the English Royal Family. From her arrival in England onwards she was a popular figure, beautiful, natural and charming, with a genuine concern for the sick and poor. To some of these she must have seemed a fairytale character, the princess from Copenhagen to whom Hans Christian Andersen had told his bedside stories. And though her statue at the London Hospital was put up when she was over 60, there was little flattery in the portrait; she kept the same slender beauty all her life. The London Hospital, deep in the East End, was her special love and she spent hours visiting the wards. Rheumatic fever had left her permanently lame ("the Alexandra limp" became fashionable and was imitated by society ladies) . . .

She bullied the London Hospital into sending a representative to her native Copenhagen to study the cure and they engraved "Nothing but Perseverance" on their first lamp. It proved remarkably successful; they treated 100 patients a day for 25 years and the incidence of the disease was reduced for the first time'.

On the day of the unveiling the weather was unfavourable but the hospital authorities had arranged for the ceremony to take place in a huge marquee, the sides of which were sufficiently drawn to enable those patients well enough to view some of the proceedings from their ward balconies.

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