Spectro-Chrome.
Devoted to: Spectro-Chrome Therapy. Dedicated to: Service to Humanity / Attuned Color Waves, Spectro-Chrome Metry, The Science of Automatic prescription.
1922--1947
Monthly
Philadelphia, PA.
Editor: Colonel Dinshah P. Ghadiali, M.D., M.E., D.C., Ph.D., LL.D., N.D., D.Opt., F.F.S., D.H.T., D.M.T., D.S.T., Metaphysician and Psychologist.
Publisher: Spectro-Chrome Institute; Dinshah P. Ghadiali, editor and publisher.
Succeeded by: Visible Spectrum Researcher (January 1955-November 1957)
1/1, June 1922 (Blue)-->23/10, October 1947 (Purple).

The severe presentation of this journal intentionally bore all the hallmarks of a regular medical journal but it was the product of a dubious Parsi immigrant from Bombay who used it and its successor to tout the benefits of his color-therapy device (a light bulb, fan and two focusing lenses and a variety of colored glass filters), some eleven thousand of which were sold for amounts up to $750.00 each. Colonel Dinshah P. Ghadiali, M.D. (1873-1966) labeled himself as a "Metaphysician and Psychologist" after he immigrated in 1911 and had become a Theosophist in India in 1891, and claimed several other inventions before he came up with Spectro-Chrome in 1920. The idea, he freely admitted, was derived from his reading of Edwin Babbitt and continued the "Blue Light Mania" of the era, following in the footsteps of General Augustus Pleasanton and Seth Pancoast. The early years of the journal recited a long list of academic degrees after his name, all of which, including his "M.D.," awarded by various mail-order institutions. In later years, after various encounters with the law, he carefully added "Honorary" before his medical degree. (The title of "Colonel" was earned legitimately by Ghadiali by his service in the New York Police Air Reserves.)

The journal consisted of expositions on the theory and practice of the therapy and the the organization of his treatment empire, attacks on the Medical Octopus of the American Medical Association, and Ghadiali's wandering thoughts on general topics of interest to him. The masthead bore the trademark of a sun centered in a six-pointed star composed of two interlocking triangles, black and white, surrounded at the key points and angles by the names of 12 colors spaced circumferentially every 30° and labeled with descriptions of the appropriate medical weaknesses to be cured by application of that specific color to that part of the anatomy. Ghadiali added to the simple intuition of Babbitt a variety of astrological and quack medical injunctions, requiring his followers to eschew meat, alcohol, tobacco, vaccinations, tampons, high-heeled shoes, furs and silk stockings, and to bath in coconut oil and plan their diets around the recipes provided in his cookbook.

He was convicted in 1925 for violating the Mann Act ("White Slave Traffic Act" of 1910) by traveling interstate for the "immoral purpose" of having sex with his secretary while on a promotional tour to tout his invention around the country (she said she had been mesmerized by him). He spent 18 months in prison and the journal carried the caption "Incarceration Issue" while he was imprisoned. In 1931, he was arrested again, for larceny by fraudulent promotion of his device, but succeeded in convincing a jury of its bona fides. The Government tried again in 1946, successfully, and Ghadiali spent three years in prison and was forced to stop the journal. On his release he reorganized the business as the Visible Spectrum Research Institute and in 1955 re-started the journal as the Visible Spectrum Researcher, which was ordered closed a few years later, although a Spectro-Chrome kit can still be acquired from Amazon as a experimental novelty. An illustrated discussion of Ghadiali and Spectro-Chrome is provided by Christopher Turner, "Kingpin of Fakers," Cabinet, Summer 2005.

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