Quackery Books

This book shows how foolish people have been in their quest for cures from disease and perfect health. The sad part is that it's still going on all around us and people are absolutely serious about it. Except now it's called "alternative medicine" and the government is spending taxpayers' dollars on it. Hilarious indeed!

This is a hilarious, engaging and interesting coffee table book that would make a great gift for anyone in the medical profession, or an interest in health, a skeptic, or just someone with an offbeat sense of humor!

It might be a good thing if there were no placebo effect, because then people could quickly tell if a drug or gadget worked. But since we aren't really good judges of that (it takes complicated experiments to tell if a drug is effective or not, for instance), all sorts of weird remedies have been tried and have been lucrative for their makers. These are the rightful prey of Bob McCoy, who a decade or so ago established the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices in Minneapolis. In _Quack! Tales of Medical Fraud from the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices_ (Santa Monica Press), McCoy shows some of the contents of his museum, in book form. It's a treat.

All sorts of nostrums and gadgets are described and illustrated here: soaps that wash away weight, breast developers, and various stimulants to the sexual appetite. These are funny, but also covered is the tragedy of radium and those poisoned by it. The gadgets are hilarious. Nose adjusters, height developers, even glasses that would reduce your weight. The book has abundant quotations from the advertising and pamphlets that came with the quackery, and is profusely illustrated. Americans spend a hundred million dollars a year on quack pills and gadgets that do nothing and may be harmful. So _Quack!_ might not just deliver the fun of laughing at human greed and credulity, but it may help the serious education of readers as well.

Quack!: Tales Of Medical Fraud From The Museum Of Questionable Medical Devices is an informative and fascinating compendium of quaint, preposterous, and occasionally horrifying medical devices foisted upon the public by calculating charlatans and misguided medical practitioners. Some of these purveyors held the public's rapt attention for a time (Albert Abrams, who believed that all that was needed from a patient was a drop of blood, a single hair, or a handwriting sample which gave off a "vibration" that could be used for diagnosis and treatment, was promoted by Upton Sinclair in "Pearson's" magazine), while others were simple snake-oil vintage conmen whose tactics were to "hit and run". Profusely illustrated with photographs of odd medical mechanism, period advertisements, and newspaper clippings of the day, Bob McCoy (curator of the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices) offers a full-spectrum, very highly recommended survey of American medical quackery from the Prostate Gland Warmer to the Recto Rotor, the Nose Straightener to the Wonder Electric Generator.

The long wait ends for a modern book on quack medical devices! The quality is everything one might hope for and more. Excellent quality, and highly entertaining.

I enjoyed this well-written, informative book. The author placed medicine shows in the context of American society and culture. Who knew that medicine, advertising and show business were so intertwined? A fascinating, fun read. I highly recommend this lively book. Ms. Anderson has a wonderful way of relating a subject that did not, at first, sound like one that could hold me for a whole book. It left me wanting to know even more. A terrific and entertainingly researched tome!

Ann Anderson has done her homework. Finding information about early medicine shows is about as easy as finding a fossilized T-Rex's tooth. Anderson has done a superb job with this work and I recommend it very highly to anyone interested in the "beginning entertainment" of the United States.

Arkansas Red-Ozark Troubadour
Eureka Springs, Arkansas

A thoroughly entertaining and informative book with a subject matter I never thought would interest me. Having an advertising background, I was intrigued and facinated by the history of the medicine show and the impact it has had on our culture from a media standpoint. Well written, incredibly reasearched, and fun to read. Read it!

August 6, 2000

Book Review - SNAKE OIL...GOOD FOR WHAT AILS YA!

Ann Anderson SNAKE OIL, HUSTLERS AND HAMBONES The American Medicine Show

McFarland & Company,Inc., Publishers

As an avid reader with very eclectic tastes, I found Ann Anderson's SNAKE OIL, HUSTLERS AND HAMBONES to be highly satisfying to my literary pallet. I am an actor who has made a living over the years doing T.V. commercials. It has long been of interest to me to know just how this crazy way of marketing came to be. However, any person that has ever watched a T.V. commercial, an info-mercial or read an advertisement in a magazine or newspaper, and wondered why ads are everywhere, will get a kick out of this book. This wonderful, funny, deliciously informative book is simply chock full of "Oh, I didn't know that!" and "So that's how that got started!" moments. She has also thought to delight our eye by including many authentic labels, illustrations and flyers from the periods she discusses. She has managed to be fastidiously scholarly in her research with out being at all dry or dull. Ms. Anderson's writing style is so accessible and real, it makes one feel you're having a cup of coffee and sitting down for a long lively chat with a very interesting friend. It's full of factual information both serious and humorous. It runs the gamut of historically profound and fancifully trivial information. She provides for us the "missing link", as it were, of how we got from there to here. SNAKE OIL, HUSTLERS AND HAMBONES is a darned good read. I'm looking forward to her next book.

This terrific book is as fun as it is informative. Anderson's exhaustive research is evident on every page, and her writing style is perfect: spare enough to let the color of the topic shine through, but never dry. As she relates the history of the medicine show, she shows how modern medicine, advertising and entertainment evolved together; her skill at illuminating these linkages gives the book even more weight and depth. It's an outstanding work of scholarship...and a damned good read!

Carolyn Thomas de la Pena has written a masterful book. In exploring the ways Americans have used their bodies to understand new technologies, she sheds light on the origins of our own interactions with modern machines. The author supports her findings with meticulously researched facts, and it is clear she spent exhausting hours in the archives, combing through newspaper articles, advertisements, and product materials. She does an equally thorough job of contextualizing her conclusions. By linking her findings to social and cultural shifts taking place at the same time people were drinking radium water or experimenting with electric belts, she strengthens her argument and is able to draw new and important conclusions about the ways Americans were using technology around the turn of the twentieth century. Her clear and concise writing style make the book a smooth and enjoyable read, besides being one that is extremely relevant to our modern lives.

As I read this book, I marveled at the way in which Ms. Thomas de la Pena explained in detail the obsession Americans have had for so long with physical fitness and weight loss techniques; the belief by many Americans that their bodies, after use of some of these documented, extreme -- to us -- measures, would emerge greatly improved. This book helps us energy-bar-eating, aerobically-charged, iron-pumping 21st-Century individuals understand how it is that we got this way!

This book shows that our current obsessions with our bodies and machines have roots as old as the rise of consumer electricity. Technology in America takes on religious forms. And Professor de la Pena shows the extent of influence of such ideas as "electricity as therapy." This is so well written you won't be able to put it down. It explains complex technological details in clear and precise terms. Its influence should last a long time.

A delightful history of our American obsession with self-improvement and reinvention, our love affair with gimmicks and gadgetry, and our unshakable devotion to the promise of the quick fix. A font of well-researched information treated with humor and insight, this book provides a rich context for the ongoing body-image debate in present day American culture. Highly recommended!

For anyone with an interest in the history of medicine, this book is a fascinating introduction. It's richly illustrated with museum-quality examples of period equipment, from original Laennec stethescopes to bloodletting instruments. The text is well-written, and shows the author's broad expertise with medical and scientific history. There are many quotes directly from centuries-old source material which help the reader understand the context and mindset of physicians who practiced their art so long before any understanding of anatomy and physiology. The final chapter on medical quackery is a wonderful review of the often humorous (and sometimes sad!) ways that charlatans have learned to take advantage of even well-educated people-- and gives great insight into how these same tricks are still being played.

I would particularly recommend this book for any student entering medical school or thinking of pursuing a medically-related career in nursing, dentistry, or pharmacy. It's beautifully bound and put-together, and would make a great gift.

This is a really fascinating review of medical history and medical instruments. Very seldom does this sort of volume become more than an unread coffee table book, but this book is really fascinating and well written. There is a host of pithy background to flesh out the outlines that you already know, and this is what makes it so enjoyable. I originally purchased it for the information on antique medical instruments. While this is a good part of what is covered, it is less of a primary focus.

I read this book way back in seventh grade and I remember really liking it. In fact, it was the first Avi book I really enjoyed. Confessions of Charlotte Doyle was forced on us in sixth grade and I thought I'd never go back to Avi again. But Punch with Judy restored my faith.

A fabulous Book! The best I've ever read!

This book is all the more shocking when you realize that RIGHT NOW the taxpayer, thanks to credulous politicians like Senator Tom Harkin and Congressman Dan Burton and others, is being made to pay for "medical care" that is every bit as crazy as the things in this book. Someday someone will write a book like this but it will be about *present-day* nonsense, including a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (the only center in the NIH oriented around the needs of practitioners - CAM practitioners in this case - as opposed to the needs of patients) that pays for psychic power therapy, a White House Commission on CAM headed by a former devotee of the Bhagwan guru whose group launched a biological attack in Oregon, and on and on ...

We have had a boom in interest in "alternative health care" recently, but that interest has been with us ever since there has been a medical establishment to which there could be "alternatives." In the American Midwest in the 1930s three alternative healers began a rise to financial, social, and political power. _Quacks & Crusaders: The Fabulous Careers of John Brinkley, Norman Baker, and Harry Hoxsey_ (University Press of Kansas) by Eric S. Juhnke documents the rise and fall of all three medical conmen, and gives a lesson in the dangers of credulousness.

John Brinkley was a licensed doctor, having graduated from a diploma mill. He latched on to the "gland transplant" experiments done on animals, and believed that transplanting animal glands into humans was a key for rejuvenation. "A man is as old as his glands, and his glands are as old as his sex glands," he proclaimed. Male goats were the randiest animals, so they were the tissue donors, but they turned out to be just the thing to boost female fertility and development of the bust, too. He compared himself to Jesus, gave sermons, and demonized the American Medical Association. Norman Baker specialized in cancer cures. He worked as a machinist and in vaudeville before settling down in Muscatine, Iowa. He persuaded city officials to let him start a radio station that would present honest-to-goodness down home programs as opposed to the high-brow fare coming from the cities. Baker called Morris Fishbein, the head of the AMA, the "Jewish dominator of the medical trust of America," and insisted that his clinic was a bastion for personal freedom and against the evils of urban industrialism. Harry Hoxsey proved to have the most staying power. He specialized in herbal cancer cures as well. Not a physician, he was able to enroll renegade physicians into his service, and he was bankrolled by an evangelist minister. In Dallas, he enjoyed poker, nightclubs, and womanizing, and his diatribes against interference by the AMA and the government won him friends from the political right wing.

Juhnke's tales of these colorful characters are great fun to read, even though the rascals bilked many of their patients of money and sometimes their lives. The eventual success of the AMA against them is not a pure victory; the shortcomings of the AMA at the time are examined here, too. Few people remember these quacks now. The towns that boosted them because they brought in business now view them as an embarrassing part of their histories. It is important that Juhnke has brought them again to our attention. We may no longer have such manifestations as goat gland transplants, but anyone who watches television knows that herbal cures, homeopathy, and healing magnets are still taking money from the gullible. There is still a large group of potential patients who view organized medicine (and governmental regulation of medical treatment) as some sort of conspiracy, and of course there are plenty of faith healers who are glad to have their flocks doubting the efficacy of regular medical treatment. People are finding it harder to pay for physicians, and drug costs are up. Brinkley, Baker, and Hoxsey may have eventually lost their power and their millions, but Juhnke's useful study reminds us that there are always healers ready to take their place.

I would highly recommend this biography to anyone! Imagine a movie about Dr. Brinkley starring Robin Williams............

Lots of hoaxes, and all referenced too. The best book out there if you're doing research on hoaxes.

"In the lordly brain and mobile face are found the basis of character and expression."

Sizer and Drayton hold forth in great detail about how head and facial characteristics reveal human psychology. Machine-tooled, 3-color cloth over hardback boards. 204 pages and over 175 illustrations.

After having been assailed by many men of medicine to share his secrets, Joseph R. Poulin, who is known as stage as Pauline, shares all. Amazingly, in this self-published hardback book, he demonstrates many of his methods in 19 photographic illustrations.

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: My Blood Control
Chapter 2: The Law of Suggestion Controls the Universe
Chapter 3: Psychology of Business
Chapter 4: the Law of Suggestion in Advertising
Chapter 5: The Term of Human Nature or Psychology
Chapter 6: The Study of Psychology
Chapter 7: Catalepsy and Suggestive Therapeutics -- What It Is / Hypnotic Control in its Deeper Stages
Chapter 8: The Hypnotic Look Used in All Hypnotic Work / Simple Hypnotic Suggestion
Chapter 9: The Training for New Material / The Passes
Chapter 10: My Own Discovery of Blood Control