Color and Healthcare

This chapter discusses the significance of colors in the context of healthcare. While contemporary medicine is regarded as an objective and scientific enterprise, color plays a special role in healthcare activities. For a long time, diagnostic means were limited and doctors relied on inspection and observation to clarify the complaints of patients. Even today, medical students are taught to take a medical history and perform a physical examination. This involves first of all a systematic inspection of the body of the patient, and its various parts. Colors of the body such as redness, cyanosis, jaundice, and pallor may give clues for possible diagnoses. Excretions may have various colors, indicative for specific problems. The theoretical framework of the four humors that dominated medical thinking and practice was for a long time based on colored substances, viz. blood (red), black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm (white). This is reflected in the naming of diseases (e.g. scarlet fever and rubella), recognizable because of typical coloring. Many efforts have been invested in examining the effect of color on medication. This is not surprising since in the past many pigments were used for painting and coloring objects but also as drugs for a variety of ailments. The search for new synthetic dyes in the 19th century was a major catalyst of the emergence of the pharmaceutical industry. Many companies were initially focused on chemically manufacturing new pigments, discovering in the process that they were efficient as therapeutical agents. The belief in the healing powers of colors has stimulated chromotherapy. When colors are a physical phenomenon, it can be supposed that each color has a specific wavelength and thus vibration which is affecting the body and specifically its chemical constitution. Physician and scientist Niels Finsen is regarded as the father of modern phototherapy, using light radiation for the treatment of diseases and arguing that certain wavelengths of light have beneficial effects. He used for example red light to treat smallpox. Phototherapy is now commonly used for babies with excess of bilirubin. Another application of colors in healthcare is within the environment of patients. The rationale is that the interior design of hospitals and other healthcare facilities should contribute to the recovery process of patients and to enhance the well-being of all users of these facilities. Colors may contribute to the positive experience of these surroundings. The most common color in hospitals used to be ‘hospital green’, also called ‘spinach green,’ first invented and applied during the first World War. Before that time, hospitals and clinics were mostly painted white since that color was associated with cleanliness and purity. Also the uniforms of healthcare workers used to be white. Surgeons however found white too bright, and too contrasted to the color of blood. It reduced their ability to discriminate anatomical features in the operating theatre. Spinach green worked much better, and brought the eyes to rest, facilitating concentration on the details of the intervention.