the lobe of his wife's ears and
concentrated powerful blue rays on the other side. Five minutes of
exposure made no impression on the paper; it remained white. But
when he squeezed all the blood out of the lobe, by pressing it
between two pieces of glass, the paper was blackened in twenty
seconds.

That night Finsen knew that he had within his grasp that which would
make him a rich man if he so chose. He had only to construct
apparatus to condense the chemical rays and double their power many
times, and to apply his discovery in medical practice. Wealth and
fame would come quickly. He told the writer in his own simple way
how he talked it over with his wife. They were poor. Finsen's salary
as a teacher at the university was something like $1200 a year. He
was a sick man, and wealth would buy leisure and luxury. Children
were growing up about them who needed care. They talked it out
together, and resolutely turned their backs upon it all. Hand in
hand they faced the world with their sacrifice. What remained of
life to him was to be devoted to suffering mankind. That duty done,
what came they would meet together. Wealth never came, but fame in
full measure, and the love and gratitude of their fellow-men.

There is a loathsome disease called lupus, of which, happily, in
America with our bright skies we know little. Lupus is the Latin
word for wolf, and the ravenous ailment is fitly named, for it
attacks by preference the face, and gnaws at the features, at nose,
chin, or eye, with horrible, torturing persistence, killing slowly,
while the patient shuts himself out from the world praying daily for
death to end his misery.

In the north of Europe it is sadly common, and there had never been
any cure for it. Ointments, burning, surgery--they were all equally
useless. Once the wolf had buried its fangs in its victim, he was
doomed to inevitable death. The disease is, in fact, tuberculosis of
the skin, and is the most dreadful of all the forms in which the
white plague scourges mankind--was, until one day Finsen announced
to the world his second discovery, that lupus was cured by the
simple application of light.

It was not a conjecture, a theory, like the red-light treatment for
smallpox; it was a fact. For two years he had been sending people
away whole and happy who came to him in despair. The wolf was
slain, and by this silent sufferer whose modest establishment was
all contained within a couple of small shanties in a