Artificial Light, Artificial Illness

It has to be said at the outset of our explanation that other factors, in truth many other factors, combine with the Photoperiod Effect to make it even more destructive; but if my reading of the research we now have is anything like correct, the engine driving chronic illness in industrial societies is artificial light of all kinds extending our days and abbreviating our nights. As mentioned, we have long known that photoperiod, the length of the day, strongly affects other plants and animals, but it is only in recent years that we are belated discovering that light affects human health dramatically, too. We are no less in need of nature than any other living creature. This Photoperiod Effect is possible, as I'll detail shortly, because light and darkness control almost our entire hormonal system – again a quite recent discovery. Which daily hormonal rhythm controls much of what happens within every one of our cells. Mess with that hormonal system seriously, year after year, as we have done for nearly two hundred years, and grave consequences can be expected.

For, make no mistake, we moderns have suffered over the last nearly two hundred years from many illnesses that no other society in history or anthropology has ever had to concern itself with. New illnesses that were either very rare or simply didn't exist before modern times. Studies with regard to, for example, diabetes, have shown that this is not just a matter of better reporting of illnesses in modern times, or within industrialized countries. Illnesses such as multiple sclerosis and hayfever are historically unique; these didn't show up until about two hundred years ago - ever - so far as can be discovered (and it's pretty hard not to notice end-stage MS). As well, the heaviest hitters now driving health care costs through the roof, such as diabetes, that now affect as many as one-third of the population (and are still growing more common) were truly rare two hundred years ago. (A more thorough, even exhaustive review of the still-accelerating epidemic of modern chronic illnesses can be found elsewhere and at some time I'm likely to sketch out an examination of the history and anthropology of chronic illnesses, showing their novelty, and possible effect on history.)

So if so much has happened to us since then, what happened two hundred years ago that hadn't happened before? A great many things, of course, society was undergoing tremendous change including not just an industrial revolution but an agricultural one as well. Notably, organic solvents were first introduced into the world, as part of the process of creating gas from coal and wood. More efficient agriculture began to dilute food values, and new ways of storing food began to sharply restrict our intake of many vitamins as well as a whole range of conditionally essentially nutrients and enzymes. Far more changes could be listed which are less obvious health villains. Even so, one revolutionary change deserves special mention. Two hundred years ago, gas lighting was invented, followed soon afterward by modern chronic illnesses such hayfever and multiple sclerosis, which appeared first in precisely those places (Paris and London) where cheap and abundant gas lighting had first become available. The same diseases then spread to other urban areas after gas lighting began to arrive in smaller cities and towns. Ultimately gas and then electric lighting slowly expanded into nearly every corner of the industrialized world, including remote rural areas, as ever cheaper, brighter, and more transportable sources of light became available. This process is continuing today with the development of LED lights, superconducting transmission lines, etc. The critical point to take from this highly-condensed history of industrialization and chronic disease is highly notable that these illnesses and so many more we haven't mentioned yet – quite possibly including both schizophrenia and the modern phenomenon of chronic depression - had a point-source in space and time.