Episode 1: The child
For several years my young daughter had stopped learning in school after
the clocks changed. Then we spent a month in Australia in winter (their
summer). The improvement in my daughter’s school performance after we
got back was astonishing. It wasn’t the same child. When we took her to
a photobiology meeting in Florida in June, she was bouncing off the
walls, and the light of the situation hit me. She had Seasonal Affective
Disorder (the SAD syndrome). The reaction in June was the manic phase.
SAD had been recently reported by Rosenthal at NIH and was a subject at
photobiology meetings. Thereafter my daughter’s academic work was
satisfactory in the winter after light therapy (a special lamp).
Experiments showed that the light exposure to the eyes was the trigger
affecting mental functioning. Light on the skin had no effect on the SAD
syndrome.