Calling Israeli Medical Researchers

Israel is known for its amazing medical innovations which have truly advanced medicine as a healing art. Its medical pioneers have introduced to the world numerous technologies that have changed the face of medicine around the world and which have been a boon to suffering people everywhere. But there may have been one area that has been overlooked by these ingenious researchers and which deserves further study. This is the healing art of color therapy which lacks formal scientific investigation.

I write this because my brother, Steven M. Rachlin, M.D., and I became privy to a little-known story that spurred us to write a book about it. The story is about a Parsee Indian named Dinshah P. Ghadiali who in 1920 introduced in New York City a new healing science that he spent decades researching. The Bombay native believed he had perfected a method to cure many human diseases and ailments, and he demonstrated his work to medical doctors and other health professionals. His healing art was based on principles of light and color, and because it seemed so far-fetched, health professionals were reluctant at first to investigate it. But over time word about its efficacy got around and hundreds of doctors and other health professionals came to use it in their practices with astonishingly successful results — often on patients that conventional medicine could not help. They reported the successful treatment of cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, tuberculosis, rheumatism, arthritis, asthma and numerous other diseases.

Within five years of introducing his healing art called Spectro-Chrome, Dinshah (as he was known) had trained, by his estimation, some 2,000 health professionals and laypersons in his light-healing science. Adherents to this science wrote numerous case histories of sufferers treated with it and Dinshah published thousands of these in his monthly journal. Some physicians stated that Spectro-Chrome worked so well that reporting case histories was redundant. Spectro-Chrome received unanimous praise from its myriad users.

For many years Dinshah, who was dark-skinned and wore a skullcap and was often confused for being a Jew (he responded he would be proud to be a member of the wonderful Hebrew race), constantly challenged the American Medical Association to investigate his methods. He stated that if Spectro-Chrome was proven effective he would donate his patents to the US government provided that his healing methods would be made available to the public for free; if proven ineffective, he would leave the US and never return and the federal government would not have to spend substantial sums of money any more prosecuting him in court. The challenge was never accepted. Instead, he was constantly brought to court. In one trial, Dinshah was accused of grand larceny and in others he was accused of practicing medicine without a license. Many of his trials received national media attention and he was imprisoned 11 times, once receiving a presidential pardon for exposing corruption in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.

Since laypersons could be trained to use Spectro-Chrome, Dinshah’s healing science largely removed the need for doctors and drugs. Needless to say medical professionals and drug industry executives, whose livelihoods were threatened, vehemently opposed him, and branded him a quack. At that time alternative medicine was derided and not looked at for the health benefits it could offer as it is today.

My co-author and I tell in full the brief synopsis just described in our book Color War: Dinshah P. Ghadiali’s Battle with the Medical Establishment over his Revolutionary Light-Healing Science, but I write this not to publicize the book but to try to interest Israeli scientists in investigating Dinshah’s science of Spectro-Chrome. Investigation of Spectro-Chrome requires an open mind but the potential health benefits may be vast. I could think of no better investigators for the healing art of color therapy than those golden Israeli pioneers of medical research.