Edwin Babbit

"Colour and I are one. I am a painter."

Paul Klee, 1914.

Under Babbit’s influence chromopaths sprang up throughout the USA and Britain and they developed extensive colour prescriptions for every conceivable ailment. By the end of the nineteenth century, red light was used to prevent the formation of smallpox scars and startling cures were later reported among tuberculosis patients exposed to sunlight and ultraviolet rays. Nevertheless, the medical profession remained sceptical of any claims made for healing with colour.

 

Babbit established the correspondence between colours and minerals, which he used as an addition to treatment with coloured light, and developed elixirs by irradiating water with sunlight filtered through coloured lenses. He claimed that this ‘potentised’ water retained the energy of the vital elements within the particular colour filter used, and that it had remarkable healing power. Solar tinctures of this kind are still made and used today in healing.