CASE — WHEN YELLOW IS INJURIOUS – Edwin Babbitt

1. Yellow is injurious and over exciting to a system which have a nervous condition that is already very active and perhaps irritable. Dormant, paralytic, costive, cold, chronic, and stupid conditions, inert tumors, etc., are greatly relieved by the yellow principle, aided by the red principle. However, in fevers, acute inflammations, delirium, diarrhea, neuralgia, palpitation of the heart, and over-excitement of any kind, it is evident that these colors are contraindicated.

I will quote briefly again from Dr. Hale:

  1. “Green is a quieting color, if not too green. A dark green is like a dark blue, it seems to lose its calmative power. Nor must the green have a suggestion of yellow in it, for yellow, like red, irritates the nerves of the insane. I have had patients who begged to have the yellow shades removed from the windows, it irritated them so. In the asylum to which I have alluded, there were a number of patients afflicted with melancholy. Some of them were placed in the blue rooms, others in the green. In both instances, their malady seemed aggravated, or at least not benefited. They complained that the yellow made them feel badly. They became morose. All were benefited, however, by being placed in the red room, or in rooms lighted by ultra-violet rays. The extreme violet rays, which some would call purple, are very stimulating to the nervous system. Children become exceedingly nervous from the bright sunlight, containing an excess of red and yellow rays. When ill from teething, from fever, and especially when the brain is affected, they seem to be soothed by a pale blue, or gray light.”
  2. These remarks show a thoughtful study of the subject on the part of Dr. Hale, but should be modified slightly to prevent readers from being misled. Dark green and dark blue are spoken of as not being calmative in their nature. The doctor is evidently speaking of those persons who are melancholy and are already overstocked with the blue venous blood. To such ones, these colors would simply be adding sombreness to sombreness, and of course, they would not calm them. All the electrical colors must be more or less calmative to an excited human system, as will be shown hereafter. All the circumstances with reference to the inmates of the asylum show that their melancholy was due to a considerable extent to an excess of venous blood, from their repugnance to blue, and to an excess of nervous sensibility from their being injured by the yellow. Whenever they were under the chemical affinity of the yellow, namely the violet, they were benefited, not because the ultra-violet is stimulating to the nerves, as the doctor supposes, but just the contrary as already shown (Chap. Fifth, XX, 18). Their nerves were already over-excitable. A red purple is stimulating, especially to the blood. The stimulus which they most needed was in the red to offset the excess of blue in the veins, and this is the reason that the red was so useful to them.My own experience has shown me that persons with the erysipelas or an excitable nervous condition cannot endure much of the strong sunlight without harm. The red, orange, and yellow rays prove too exciting for them.

    A lady patient who inherited something of an erysipelatous condition, and was also neuralgic and otherwise excitable until she had spells of insanity, always became worse after taking baths of white light and found even blue and white light too exciting for her. Blue glass was far more soothing, but the glass which she used, being mazarine, admitted so many of the other more exciting rays, that she could not use that very long at a time without feeling their exciting effect. I advised two thicknesses of the blue and the exclusion of all other rays.

  3. One great reason why yellow rules in the most violent of poisons, such as Prussic acid and strychnine, is because of the prominence of the yellow principle as a stimulus of the nerves combined with the red principle as a stimulus of the blood. Thus, strychnine, according to Liebig, is composed as follows: N2C44H23O4, which shows a decided predominance of the yellow principle in the carbon, much power of the red in the hydrogen, and not enough of the electrical oxygen to balance the irritating and fiery action of these thermal elements. “Next to Prussic acid, strychnine is perhaps the most violent poison in the catalogue of medicines.” Prussic acid is constituted as follows: CNH, which gives great power of the yellow principle in carbon, and even in nitrogen, predominating red in the hydrogen and no decided electrical element to balance all this thermism, although the nitrogen may be considered slightly more electrical than it is thermal when in combination. “Strichnine acts especially as an excitor of the motor filaments of the spiral cord, causing tonic muscular contractions.” “Hydrocyanic (prussic) acid, in poisonous doses, acts conjointly on the cerebrum and spinal cord. All the animals I have seen killed by this agent, utter a scream, lose their consciousness and are convulsed. These are the symptoms of epilepsy. * * * The phenomena of epilepsy are eminently congestive. While the cerebral functions are for the time annihilated, the spinal ones are violently excited.” (Bennett.) When prussic acid is taken in large amounts, the patient may fall almost as if struck by lightning.
  4. The yellow principle, then, being so powerful in its action on the nerves, we may easily understand why large doses of yellow drugs are said to cause convulsions, delirium, vomiting, drastic purging, etc. Even so mild a substance as coffee, with its yellow-brown principle, is said to be “contra-indicated in acute inflammatory affections,” causing “nervous excitement” and a “disposition to wakefulness.” Of dandelion, it is said that “an irritable condition of the stomach and bowels, and the existence of acute inflammation centra-indicate its employment.” Other even more active drugs with yellow, and especially with yellow and orange, or yellow and red potencies predominant, such as mercury, jalap, opium, alcohol, etc., must be still more disastrous to a sensitive nervous or sanguine system, especially when taken in large amounts. Coffee, though yellowish-brown and laxative in some of its elements, has an astringent principle in its tannin. Those who wish to escape some of the worst effects of coffee should not let it steep more than five to ten minutes, when the coffee grounds should be removed from the liquid to prevent the tannin from escaping into it. Under such circumstances, I have found coffee to be more laxative than otherwise.