Dinshah Ghadiali was born of Persian descent in Bombay, India, in the year 1873. At the age of eleven, he became assistant to the Professor of Mathematics and Science at Wilson College in Bombay. In his early career, Dinshah was Superintendent of Telephone and Telegraph for Dolphur State in India.
Related Books:
Let There Be Light by Dairus Dinshah
The year 1897 marked a permanent turning point in his medical career. The niece of a friend was suffering from mucous colitis. The attending physician was using the then accepted drugs, to no avail. Having read Edwin S. Babbitt’s work, The Principles of Light and Color, and Blue and Red Light, by Dr. Seth Pancoast, Dinshah was aware of the theory of chromopathy (healing with colored light). Dinshah treated the young woman according to Dr. Babbitt’s technique. The light from a kerosene lantern, filtered through an indigo colored glass, shone on her. Milk was placed in a bottle of the same color, exposed to the sunlight, and then given to her to drink. Dinshah writes, “The urgent straining to evacuate, which occurred perhaps a hundred times a day, abated to ten after one treatment; after three days she was able to get out of bed.” This case was the beginning of Dinshah’s intense investigation into the effects of colored light on the human organism.
In April of 1920, Dinshah introduced his system of healing with colored lights to the world in New York City. (He had taken up permanent residence in the United States in 1911.) He named his development Spectro-Chrome. In the next four years Dinshah trained over 800 professionals and lay persons. He also designed and sold color projectors and accessories.
The first indication of opposition to Spectro-Chrome emerged in the pages of the January 1924 Journal of the American Medical Association. The article ridiculed Spectro-Chrome and its originator as being preposterous, closing with the statements, “Some physicians, after reading this article, may wonder why we have devoted the amount of space to a subject that, on its face seems so preposterous as to condemn itself. When it is realized that helpless but credulous patients are being treated for such serious conditions as syphilitic conjunctivitis, ovaritis, diabetes mellitus, pulmonary tuberculosis and chronic gonorrhea with colored lights, the space devoted to this latest cult will not be deemed excessive.”
An indictment in Buffalo, New York, in 1931 charged that Dinshah feloniously defrauded a purchaser by falsely representing Spectro-Chrome as a healing system. He defended Spectro-Chrome with the testimony of three physicians: Dr. Kate Baldwin, Dr. Martha Peebles and Dr. Welcome Hanor.
All three of the medical experts gave sworn testimony before the New York Supreme Court. Dr. Kate Baldwin, M.D., F.A.C.S., was Senior Surgeon at the Women’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and had been using the Spectro-Chrome system for ten years. When she was asked by the prosecution if Spectro-Chrome would cure cancer, Dr. Baldwin stated that in many cases it would. She testified that she had used it to cure gonorrhea, syphilis, breast tumors, cataracts, gastric ulcers, and severe third-degree burns, “I may commence at the top of the head and cover practically every part of the body: ordinary inflammatory conditions of the eye, cataracts, glaucoma, hemorrhage into the retina and sclera, infection of the sinuses, bronchitis, pneumonia, pleurisy, tuberculosis, heart conditions (functional and organic), acute indigestion and ulcers of the stomach, asthma and hay fever, hiccoughs that had for ten days resisted all classical methods, cured in less than one day, all sorts of infections (local and systemic), abscesses, jaundice, kidney conditions, appendicitis…”
In fact, in an article printed in the Atlantic Medical Journal of April 1927, Dr. Baldwin stated that after thirty-seven years of active hospital and private practice in medicine and surgery, she produced quicker and more accurate results using Spectro-Chrome than with any other methods, and there was less strain on the patient.
Urging the medical profession to investigate the effect of color light on burns, she cited the following case history, “In very extensive burns in a child of eight years of age, there was almost complete suppression of urine for more than 48 hours, with a temperature of 105 to 106 degrees. Fluids were forced to no effect, and a more hopeless case is seldom seen. Scarlet was applied just over the kidneys at a distance of eighteen inches for twenty minutes, all other areas being covered. Two hours later, the child voided eight ounces of urine.”
Dr. Martha Peebles also gave sworn testimony at the trial. Dr. Peebles was a doctor of medicine for twenty-four years, including twenty years working for the Department of Health for the City of New York. She was a physician for New York Life Insurance, and was a physician to the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I. During the war, she would attend up to 61 operations daily. She stated that she had been forced to retire due to ill health, but using the Spectro-Chrome system had restored her health. She had used seventeen color machines over ten years, and had treated cancer, hypertrophic arthritis, poliomyelitis, mastoiditis, and many other medical conditions.
Dr. Welcome Hanor, M.D., a medical doctor for over thirty years, provided sworn testimony that he had treated cancer, diabetes, gonorrhea, syphilis, ulcers, hemorrhage, neuritis, spinal meningitis, heart disorders, uremic poisoning, and other medical conditions.
The jury did not find Dinshah’s healing system “preposterous.” Ninety minutes of deliberation resulted in a verdict of ‘Not Guilty.’
In 1947, Dinshah was tried in court for “mislabeling.” Dinshah was found guilty and was forced to surrender all of the books, magazine articles and papers he had written on Spectro-Chrome to be burned! The estimated worth of the material that the government destroyed was $250,000. Dinshah was placed on five years probation, ordered to disassociate himself from Spectro-Chrome, and to close his institute.
In 1958, the FDA obtained a permanent injunction against Dinshah’s institute. He worked under the limits of the injunction until his death in 1966.
A very interesting statement was made by Dr. A. J. Ochsner, M.D., F.A.C.S., who was an author on several texts on surgery during those years, “In a personal experience with septic infection, the pain was so severe that it seemed unbearable. When the use of electric light was suggested, it seemed unlikely that this could act differently from the other forms of therapy that had been employed. Upon applying the light, however, the excruciating pain disappeared almost at once, and since this experience, we have employed the light treatment in hundreds of cases of pain caused by septic infection, and quite regularly with results that were eminently satisfactory, not only in relief of pain, but also because the remedy assists materially in reducing the infection.”
Dinshah’s son, Darius, is alive and well, living in New Jersey. He has produced two books dealing with his father’s work: Let There Be Light, which was written by Darius, and a reprint of his father’s 1935 work, the Spectro-Chrome Metry Encyclopedia.
I have had personal experience with the Spectro-Chrome system over the last twenty years. My father, Stan, was told by physicians that he would not regain the use of his legs due to a spinal infection. Through the use of the Spectro-Chrome, my father did regain the full and complete use of his legs. I have personally been involved with, and witnessed results in, the application of Spectro-Chrome in over one hundred severe medical conditions. In the majority of these cases, the medical profession had nothing to offer those who chose to utilize this therapy.
There are several hundred articles published in reputable scientific and medical journals relating to the effects of light on biological functions, such as Volume 453 of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, “The Medical and Biological Effects of Light.” Here is an entire conference dedicated to the biological effects from the use of light and color.
I believe that color therapy is one of the most successful, yet non-invasive therapies in the world! It is also one of the easiest to use; it can be done by laypersons.
The medical profession has utilized color therapy for many years, such as in the example given in the beginning of this article. They may not want to call it as such, but it is.
A couple of years ago, I was asked by my brother if WRF had information concerning a therapy for his injured dog. The young dog had broken out of the yard, and been hit by and dragged under a car for approximately 90 feet. The dog was being brought to a veterinarian daily for fresh bandages. After our recommendation of color therapy, my brother began color tonations about one week after the accident. After four days of color tonations, the veterinarian remarked that he had not witnessed an animal healing so quickly from that type of injury. When my sister-in-law began to explain what they had been doing, the veterinarian said that he did not want to know. His next statement was, “Keep doing it, whatever it is.”