Plain colored glass cures made a comeback in the 1920s and 1930s when a thick circle of colored glass was enclosed in a handle similar to the design of a hand mirror. The devices were cure-alls claiming to treat dozens of common medical complaints, including aches and pains. The most notable was the Von Schilling Surgical Ray, a thick lens of green glass set in an Art Deco-style cast iron handle. One of the earliest colored light cures in the U.S. was the Blue Glass Craze in the 1870s. People would sit under the blue glass for an hour and more every day and were perfectly sure that nothing in the world had ever done them so much good as the “blue glass cure.”[1]
