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A Detailed History

The use of Ultraviolet (UV) light in the treatment of disease began with the work of the Danish doctor and researcher Niels Ryberg Finsen, who started to investigate the effects of light on human health as early as the 1880s. Dr. Finsen was awarded a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1903 for his work in photochemotherapy.

However, following Dr. Finsen’s death in 1904, research languished until 1923 when a Seattle doctor by the name of Emmett Knott began his efforts to develop the use of UV light to combat infections. Over the next several years, he managed to develop what has come to be known as the Knott technique of Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation (UBI). UBI was extensively tested by Dr. Knott and many others over the next two to three decades, and it demonstrated a remarkable ability to cure or relieve a wide variety of ailments including:

  • bacterial diseases including septicemias, pneumonias, peritonitis, typhoid fever, and wound infections;
  • viral infections including acute and chronic hepatitis, poliomyelitis, influenza, encephalitis, mumps, measles, mononucleosis, and herpes;
  • circulatory conditions such as thrombophlebitis, peripheral vascular arterial disease, and diabetic ulcer, and gangrene;
  • overwhelming toxemias including botulism;
  • non-healing wounds and delayed union of fractures; and,
  • rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, pelvic inflammatory disease, biliary disease, and many other infectious, inflammatory, and autoimmune disorders.

A successful track record

UBI demonstrated a cure rate of 98 to 100% in early and moderately advanced infections. In moribund patients (those given up as incurable), the cure rate was still about 50%.

The process also showed improvements in several biochemical markers, and without any reported adverse side effects except for two:

  • the first is a slight flushing of the skin for about an hour after treatment; and
  • the second, seen in a few very rare cases, is a mild Herxheimer reaction, a sort of mild nausea, accompanied by other flu-like symptoms, that sometimes accompanies the elimination of an infection from a body.

There is another very desirable side effect of UBI treatment. After clinical trails in the mid-20th century, follow-up studies often showed that the patients’ immunities increased over time, and other infections – even chronic ones – would not recur. The longest such study ran for five years with no recurrence of the original condition. This doesn’t mean that five years is an upper limit – the immunity may have lasted far longer – but there is no record since the study ended.

As well, early studies showed UBI to be an effective preventive measure. In a well-documented clinical trial in the 1950s, UBI was used prior to surgery and clearly demonstrated its ability to reduce the incidence of post-operative infections.

UBI therapy was gaining increased use into the 1940s, but fell into disuse in the 1950s.

And the reason can be summed up in one word –

Antibiotics.

UBI came on the scene at about the same time that artificial antibiotics were being developed. It was 1928 that Sir Alexander Fleming recognized the antibiotic effects of the Penicillium mould, and over the next couple of decades antibiotics became the treatment of choice, quickly sending UBI to the sidelines.

And why?  Again the reason is summed up in one word –

Convenience.

In the mid-twentieth century, both antibiotics and UBI were highly effective in treating infections. But antibiotics had the benefits of being simple (an injection or a pill), easily portable, and (eventually) quite inexpensive.

UBI, on the other hand required large, cumbersome, and expensive equipment that had to be wheeled from room to room (or more likely, sit in one place where the patient would come to it rather than the other way around).

And as a result, UBI became the forgotten miracle.

Not totally forgotten, though. Research continues in a limited way in Germany, and also in Russia, with efforts in Russia concentrating on Laser UBI, whereby a fine fibre-optic cable is inserted into a vein and the UV light is put directly into the blood stream.

In North America, UBI therapy seems to be confined to a few clinics in the US and Canada, which charge quite large fees for lengthy regimens of treatments, usually involving oxidative therapy along with UBI as well as other non-conventional treatments. The main drawback is that these regimens involve repeated treatments over some weeks, with each lasting a half-hour or longer.

But Lumen Associates is about to revolutionize this process... see how here.

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