The healing power of colour: chromotherapy in British design and medicine, 1870-1950

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This study will examine the practice of using colour as a therapeutic or curative agent, what was sometimes calledchromotherapy, in British design and medicine from 1870 to 1950. This project will begin with the dawn of scientificenquiries into how colour could be used in medical settings during the final decades of the nineteenth century. This focuswill then shift to the ways in which these theories and practices were mainstreamed and mobilised to treat shell-shockand neurasthenia during and in the immediate aftermath of World War I Britain, followed by the intensification ofdiscussions around chromotherapy in diverse fields such as psychiatry, oncology, art therapy and hospital design duringthe interwar years. This project will conclude with the decline of chromotherapy after World War II but will examine theenduring influence of interconnected ideas such as colour psychology and the use of colour in medical spaces. It will bedemonstrated how these controversies, technologies, and variegated efforts to define the role of colour in the therapeuticencounter encompassed much wider concerns including how the mood and mind of the patient were prioritised inmedical settings; the role of art and design for health and wellbeing in a rapidly modernising, mechanised world; and howbeliefs about the affective power of colour defined wider poetic, political and scientific understandings of bodies, brainsand emotions.