Wurtman, a nutritionist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ”It seems clear that light is the most important environmental input, after food, in controlling bodily function,” reported Richard J. (Chromotherapy is now called photobiology or color therapy to distinguish it from the once-popular work of Victorian quacks.) Many scientists have become convinced that light has a far greater impact on health and behavior than previously thought. As a result the ancient and once discredited field of chromotherapy has been rejuvenated. And now that man is primed to build artificial habitats under the seas or in outer space, totally isolated from sunlight or totally exposed to it, the urgency of understanding the effect of artificial light can only become critical. In industrial societies whose members spend more and more time in enclosed areas under artificial lights, any effect of color and light becomes important. Already, there are enough color schemes to spark nightmares about mind control: red to increase appetite and table turnover in restaurants, ultraviolet to reduce cavities and spur children’s I.Q.’s, and blue to swell the ratio of female chinchilla babies to males. Passive pink, as it is also called, is perhaps the most dramatic example, and certainly the most controversial, of many attempts to use light and color to affect health and behavior. Nonetheless, officials at an estimated 1,500 hospitals and correctional institutions across America have become sufficiently convinced of the pacifying effect of bubble gum pink to color at least one room that shade. Not all psychologists are quite so sure many, to put it mildly, remain skeptical. ”We used to have to literally sit on them,” said Mr. This approach to calming manic and psychotic juveniles contrasts sharply with the use of brute force favored as little as three years ago. Boccumini, director of clinical services for the department. The children tend to relax, stop yelling and banging and often fall asleep within 10 minutes, said Paul E. WHEN children under detention at the San Bernardino County Probation Department in California become violent, they are put in an 8-foot by 4-foot cell with one distinctive feature – it is bubble gum pink. COLOR HAS A POWERFUL EFFECT ON BEHAVIOR, RESEARCHERS ASSERT
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