Healing with Colors
It's as Easy as Duck Soupe!
by Frances Oman, MA

The sweetness arose from my French Summer garden's pinks, yellows, reds and purples, bursting the beds I'd filled with seeds not so many weeks ago. Little did I know yet of the healing properties of colors. Today I had nothing that needed healing and was filled with hope. I had determined that whatever obstacles might bar my way, I was going to overcome the intimidation of eons of French chefs, and produce a traditional French meal to perfection; Duck a l'Orange.

In France the cooking of duck is a very serious business. The cooking of all food is a very serious business, unsurpassed by anything except the native fascination for curing ills. I took note soon after moving to this tiny village of Brie-Comte-Robert that, small as it was, there were four boulangeries, matched only by the four pharmacies.

I found my French friends to be unusually fond of medical cures, always ready with a soothing tea or concoction from antiquity. In a recent survey the French were shown to have more prescriptions per capita in their medicine chests at any one time than any other nationality. Americans might think of Madame Curie as being the height of this national trait, but it has not diminished to this day. France is still at the forefront of medical discovery.

This direction of interest also means that the French are more open to untried methods of medical treatment than in most parts of the United States . I discovered while having physical therapy for a severely stiff neck, that my therapist had schooled herself in many of these new methods, from Chinese acupuncture to healing with high intensity colored lights.

This spurred me to write an article on what she was doing and research others doing similar work from France to Japan . I began this project in Winter, but with the coming of Spring, lost myself in seed planting which I have always found the most excusable form of procrastination. It had paid off in the bowers from which I could now daily pluck a vase-full to grace my dinner table. Today fate was to abruptly draw me back into the subject of my article.

More than medicine, cooking is the tradition for which the French are most acclaimed, and this was my day to do some serious French cooking. Making Duck a l'Orange was the mission that I had set myself for the day. I had spent all morning selecting the fowl with great conversation and advice from the seller in the open air marché. Now I was on my own.

In France the "soupe” comes first, because you must make the Orange sauce--everything is "'La sauce" here--from a very concentrated fresh duck bouillon. My nearest experience to this was back home in the United States where turkey soup meant it was a week past Thanksgiving and all that was left was the bones. I was required by the massive notes I referred to from my few hours of training at the Cordon Bleu cooking school to make a stock from portions of the duck itself.

The wings, legs and less than beautiful portions of the duck I had ceremoniously removed from it's body and placed in a pot of water. Now the duck soup was boiling on the stove. It was to reduce for two hours so that it would be very strongly flavored. When finally it had simmered the requisite length of time, I patted myself on the back for my uncharacteristic patience.

Ducks are particularly fatty birds that have never been the normal fare in America . But when one begins with a large bird and the fatty parts are boiled and the grease lifted off, the nice lean back and breast meat is unmatched. I carefully spooned the fat off the top of the soup. Not known for my neatness in cooking in the first place, I spattered grease on the pot handles and counter.

Perhaps it was my self-congratulation for a job so far well done that distracted me. I picked up the slippery pot and poured the aromatic soup into a crock resting precariously on the counter. My left hand suddenly slipped off the pot handle, knocking the crock to explode on the floor and splashing the bubbling soup over my right hand and forearm up to my elbow. I had never been so aware that my hand went clear up to my elbow, but its newly parboiled condition made it all one to me. Even my palm was throbbing. I stood staring at it as if it would go away, but it was reddening. Every second the pain got worse.

Left handed for now, I awkwardly picked up the phone and called the number for le Docteur Martin. He said to go to the pharmacy immediately and buy the brand of burn cream called Cetavlon and spread it thickly over the entire burn area as soon as possible. He would see me tomorrow.

I jumped in the car, feeling the pain mount by the second, continuing only in the faith that the good doctor's burn cream would end my pain. Brie was built in the 12th century and although only two of the pharmacies were located on cobblestone streets, all the streets were narrow and snaking, many were one way.

Normally I'd just walk from our house past the open-air marché, past the 12 th century stone church to one of the pharmacies and pick up what I needed. Usually they were all open, so I could take my pick. Now it was after hours and they had agreed amongst themselves for one of them to stay open or at least available (which meant willing to come downstairs from their upstairs apartment to help you in emergency).

I quickly found that all four pharmacies in the town were closed; and no pounding on the door called forth a grumpy pharmacist. Unheard of!

I was feeling panicky and desperate as I headed back home, on one of the many alternative tiny curving streets which I had bypassed on my way through town moments before. As luck would have it, I happened to pass the clinic of Madame Simone Noulez, the color-healing therapist whose door was standing ajar!

Now that is a rare event in France, for any place of business to be open to customers after normal closing hours. Madame Noulez had given me much of my information on healing with colored light two months ago when I was actively researching my story on the subject a few weeks before Spring had distracted me from finishing it.

I jerked the steering wheel to the right with my good left hand and pulled my tiny Peugeot up onto the sidewalk, the only polite way to park on such a narrow street. (Here you can get a ticket for not parking up on the sidewalk.) As soon as I entered the clinic and she saw the burn, Madame Noulez said, "Quick into this room,” a little treatment room which was dark, except for the crack she left open in order to see enough to get her equipment set up.

In my thoughts I could hear le Docteur Martin's voice carefully spelling out Cetavion so that I would get the right kind, C-e-t-a-v-1-o-n. I should be racing to the neighboring village in search of this cream.

"No," said Madame Noulez, "No burn cream! Nothing but the colored light.” By disobeying the doctor, I wondered what unknown pain and scarring I was risking. But there I was and she was almost ready to begin her mysterious treatment in the dark. I knew from talking to her previously that the moment the treatment began, the door would be sealed to let no light in other than what her equipment would be generating.

“Don't worry," said Mme. Noulez, "In 15 minutes the pain will be completely gone and with this treatment you will not even have a scar!" I didn't believe her but I wanted to try. Experimental by nature, I was now curious enough to see for myself if her therapy worked. Plus, I was not blind to the possibilities of finishing this article on color healing with some real first-hand, so to speak, proof. I had been putting off finishing this article for several weeks already, perhaps now I could finish it. Never has there been such a painful solution to procrastination. Surely this would teach me for once and for all.

She had a square electrical apparatus, about two feet long and six inches high with two wires coming out of it and at the end of each was a tiny high-intensity bulb about half an inch wide, the colored lenses of which could be changed. There were just blue, orange, green and red lenses.

She began with the red. You could see the nasty purpley-red mark that the soup had made on my palm, the back of my hand and all the way up my arm up to the elbow. She slowly passed the red light all over the burn mark, very close to my skin for one minute. Then I stayed in the dark one full minute which she timed while she changed to a green lens.

She did the same thing with the green light for one minute and again had me stay in the dark one minute, repeating the green two more times. Then she slipped out, leaving me 15 more minutes in the complete dark.

My mind began to wander. I wondered if I'd turned off the burner on the stove, locked the house. Yes. I was sure I had. I was beginning to mull over what venture into the countryside our family would be making on the weekend. Then I noticed that I had no attention at all on the pain anymore. Because there wasn't any more pain.

Mme. Noulez opened the door with a mischievous grin which I could see despite the brightness pouring into my eyes from her central office. "You see," she said, "It works. Look at your hand, too." She flipped on the light. The red mark in the palm of my hand had also completely disappeared.

She suggested I come back each morning for the same treatment for three days, which I agreed to do since by now I was quite committed to this course of treatment. Vividly I remember taking my shower the next morning. I had completely forgotten that even with a little sunburn, hot water hurt! "Au contraire " (quite the reverse); the hot water hitting my skin felt as if nothing had ever happened.

Although the burn in my palm was no longer visible, when I went the next morning to see le Docteur Martin the red marks on the back of my hand and forearm still showed where the burn had happened. He was amazed at my story, although not so very, since he frequently sent his patients to Madame Noulez when he had reached a dead end in some treatment or other.

I asked him how burns normally progress so that I could more accurately monitor the course of my treatment. He said that within one day it should bubble up. Then it would ooze, crust and slowly heal.

I went for two more light treatments and was awaiting the phase in which the doctor said to expect the blistering to appear. Nothing had happened as he said it would. On the third day there appeared what looked like the beginning of some blistering, but it vanished during the next treatment, and like the burn in the palm, never returned. After a month's time all signs of the burn were gone, no scars.

Someday I may write a scholarly article on the subject because I still have pages of fascinating notes on the scientific and esoteric discoveries in healing with color. Meanwhile my right hand is as soft and lovely and unscarred as my left. I recently cooked Duck a l'Orange in California for a Frenchman who said it was "superbe". Best of all I may never procrastinate any more. What scholarly article?