d violet glass in the roof of his grapery, and noticed as a
result an apparent extraordinary rapidity and luxuriance of growth of
the vines, and later a correspondingly large harvest of grapes.
Encouraged by this success, he built a piggery, having a glass roof, of
which one portion was fitted with panes of blue glass, and the other
with ordinary transparent glass. It was claimed that the pigs kept under
the former developed more rapidly than those under the latter. An
Alderney bull-calf, which was very small and feeble at birth, was
placed in a pen under violet glass. In twenty-four hours it was able to
walk and became quite animated. By the same method a mule was reported
to have been cured of obstinate rheumatism and deafness. Again, a
canary-bird, which had been an exceptionally fine warbler, declined to
eat or sing, and appeared to be in a feeble state of health. The bird in
its cage was placed in the bath-room of its owner's dwelling, the
windows of which contained colored-glass panes. It was alleged that the
little creature speedily improved; its voice became sweeter and more
melodious than ever, while its appetite was simply voracious.

Notable cures of human beings were also reported. Cases of neuralgia and
rheumatism were said to have been benefited, the development of young
infants vastly promoted, while as a tonic for producing hair on bald
heads, blue glass was a veritable specific. During the year 1877 popular
interest in the craze reached its culmination. In this country the
furore assumed national proportions. Peddlers went from door to door in
the cities, selling blue glass, and did a thriving business; while many
instances of remarkable cures effected by the new panacea were recorded
in the newspapers. Then after a time came the reaction; the whole theory
became a subject for ridicule and satire, and the public mind was ready
to turn its attention to some other fad.

But in spite of the fickleness of the popular mind, this well-known
fact remains, that a good sun-bath, with or without the medium of
colored glass, is often of great hygienic value. There is truth in the
Italian proverb: _Dove non va il sole, va il medico_: where the sunlight
enters not, there goes the physician.

I have thus attempted briefly to describe the blue-glass mania, because
it seems aptly to illustrate the healing force of the imagination. So
long as people have confidence in blue glass and sunlight combined, to
cure fleshly