Ghadiali, Dinshah Pestanj (1873-1966)

Reference-encyclopedia biographical entry, verified by direct fetch of the live page on 2026-08-13. No individual author is credited (standard for this reference work's short entries); the page attributes the entry to the Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology and provides no separate byline. States Ghadiali was born November 28, 1873 in Bombay into a Zoroastrian family, moved to the United States in 1911, was naturalized in 1917, states verbatim that "His medical degree was not recognized in the United States", and that he was alienated from mainstream medicine as it then existed, became vice president of the National Association of Drugless Practitioners in 1919, announced perfected spectro-chrome technique in 1920, completed the three-volume Spectro-Chrome Metry Encyclopedia in 1933, was arrested for fraud in 1931 and acquitted, faced an unsuccessful 1934 attempt to strip his citizenship under the 1924 anti-Asian immigration law (which he defeated by arguing Persian rather than Indian ancestry), was convicted in 1947 of making false claims about his device (not imprisoned, on condition he cease practicing chromotherapy; his books and unsold devices were destroyed and sold devices were confiscated from owners), resumed a quiet practice in the 1950s, and died April 30, 1966. Used as a directly fetched, independently sourced biographical timeline cross-checked against dinshah-let-there-be-light-11th-ed-2012 and fda-nlm-notice-judgment-2389-ghadiali-1949.