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These wintery-spring days have got me dreaming of the warmer, sunnier days that lie ahead, which got me to thinking about my childhood, and how my mother used to order
Laura Kurella
Long before we were told getting too much sun can be bad for us, people indulged in therapy known as sunbathing.
The notion that the sun could heal the body or even cure illness was suggested in 1890 by Dr. Theobald Palm, who made the eye-opening discovery that sunlight is crucial for bone development and preventing illnesses.
He found that children who spent most of their time indoors to avoid the smog and soot of the streets were developing rickets and other bone deformities.
Sunbathing reached a pinnacle in 1903, when Dr. Niels Ryberg Finsen was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for his Finsen light therapy, which was credited for curing several diseases, including lupus vulgaris and rickets. Sunbathing was seen as an easy, affordable way to improve health.