Quacks and Crusaders: The Fabulous Careers of John Brinkley, Norman Baker, and Harry Hoxsey 0700612033, 9780700612031

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One promoted goat gland transplants

as a remedy for lost virility or infertility. Another blamed aluminum cooking utensils for causing cancer. The third

was targeted by the Food and Drug Administration as “public enemy number one” for his worthless cures. John Brinkley, Norman Baker, and Harry Hoxsey were the ultimate snake

oil salesmen of the twentieth century. With backgrounds in lowbrow perform-

ance—carnivals, vaudeville, nightclubs— each of these charismatic con men used the emerging power of radio to hawk alternative cures in the Midwest begin-

ning in the roaring twenties, through the Depression era, and into the 1950s. All scorned the medical establishment for avarice while amassing considerable fortunes of their own; and although the American Medical Association castigated them for preying on the ignorant, this book shows that the case against them wasn't all that simple. Quacks and Crusaders is an entertaining and revealing look at the connections between fraudulent medicine and populist

rhetoric in middle America. Eric Juhnke examines the careers of these three personalities to paint a vision of medicine that championed average Americans, denounced elitism, and affirmed rustic values. All appealed to the common man, winning audiences and patrons in rural America by casting their pitches in everyday language, and their messages proved more potent than their medicines in treating the fears, insecurities, and failing health of their numerous supporters.

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Quacks and Crusaders

Quacks and Crusaders The Fabulous Careers of John Brinkley, Norman Baker,

and Harry Hoxsey

ERIC S. JUHNKE

are University Press of Kansas

© 2002 by the University Press of Kansas All rights reserved Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66049),

which was organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and is operated and funded by Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Juhnke, Eric S., 1970-

Quacks and crusaders : the fabulous careers of John Brinkley, Norman Baker, and Harry Hoxsey / Eric S. Juhnke. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7006-1203-3 (alk. paper) 1. Quacks and quackery—United States. 2. Brinkley, John Richard, 1885-1942. 3. Baker, Norman, 1882-. 4. Hoxsey, Harry M. I. Title.

R730 .J845 2002 615.8'56—dc21 2002006162 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Printed in the United States of America

HMO) SY 83 6 Gy ies) 2 al The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

Contents

List of Illustrations / vii Acknowledgments / ix Introduction / xi 1

The Populist Politico Medico of Kansas: Goat-Gland Doctor John R. Brinkley / 1

2 3.

Demagoguery in the Corn Belt: lowa’s Norman Baker / 36 Salves and Salvos: The Career of Cancer Charlatan

Harry Hoxsey / 64 4

Senseless Dupes or Sensible Pragmatists? The Patients of John Brinkley, Norman Baker,

and Harry Hoxsey / 92

5

Medicine for the Masses: The Popularity of Quacks Among Healthy Americans / 119

Conclusion / 147

Notes / 157

Selected Bibliography / 195 Index / 209

a

See se diel =

wee

aoe

hares:

ne ! Nor were his services for men only. He suggested that indeed

women

“deriv[ed]

more

benefit from

the glands than

men.”32 Goat glands, he asserted, cured female infertility, de-

mentia, and obesity. “Development of the bust” and disappearing wrinkles were other side effects.°3 Brinkley maintained that by transplanting either male or female goat glands into pregnant women, couples could even determine the gender of their children. As he described it, the potential of goat glands seemed limitless. “At this minute, I cannot [cure the blind],” he told a crowd of forty-five medical men in Connecticut; “six months from now

8

I think I will be able to.” To accommodate the flood of patients who began to pour into Milford, Brinkley converted his home into a full-service hospital. Its facilities included up-to-date diagnostic equipment, an operating room, and a corral for the forty goats shipped in weekly from Arkansas. “Inside as well as outside,” noted an observer, the hospital’s “air of efficiency” and “automation” rivaled “large city institutions.” It was “an ideal combination: modernity set in the midst of truly rural peace and quiet.”35 The contrast between country and city was typical Brinkley. Throughout his career he championed an agrarian ethos, yet he also understood rural midwesterners’ unsettled relationship with urban culture. Washing machines, John Deere tractors, and department store catalogs had introduced new levels

JOHN R. BRINKLEY

Dr. Brinkley performing surgery at his hospital in Milford, Kansas. (Courtesy Kansas State Historical Society.) of convenience to rural life. Yet however beneficial or desired,

the onslaught of modernity also seemed overpowering, imperialistic, and oppressive to many people in its wake. The dilemma facing agrarian communities across the nation was how to re-

ceive urban advancements while still maintaining a rural way of life.56 Brinkley offered one solution. If farmers could not defeat the specter of urban culture, they might at least control it for themselves. In 1923 he proposed the construction of a radio station to serve as a mouthpiece for rural Americans. By opening a station in the wheat fields of Kansas, he gave farmers two reasons to cel-

ebrate. Not only would the station help alleviate rural isolation, but also it suggested that farmers could beat city folk at their own game. In 1923 he announced that his new station would “be one of the largest in the United States” and its concert room “larger

o

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

and finer than [those] found in the largest cities and the machin-

ery is the best that money can buy.”97 The station’s call letters KFKB, an acronym for “Kansas Farmers Know

Best” and “Kansas First, Kansas Best,” inspired

rural pride. And KFKB’s slogan, “the Sunshine Station at the Heart of the Nation,” appealed to the downtrodden. “[It] was suggested by a crippled child, a shut-in who expressed her enjoyment of the programs,” explained Brinkley. “Nothing could more surely typify the underlying principle of this station’s existence.”38 “When I come to this microphone,” he declared during one KFKB broadcast, “I never know whether friend or foe are lis-

tening in, whether nobility, official, intellectual or just ordinary folks ... and it is the latter I want to reach.”°? Brinkley promised listeners that KFKB would not broadcast the phonograph recordings played on urban stations. “No records shall be played,” he proclaimed. “Records are cheap, but full time talent is far more valuable than its great initial outlay.”40 When KFKB began broadcasting in September 1923, Brinkley kept his word. “It was all live entertainment,” remembered

one listener,

Bill Stittsworth. “You could go in there and sit in that studio and watch some of the best entertainment in the world.”4! Among KFKB’s twenty-five full-time artists and performers was Roy Faulkner, the Lonesome Cowboy, who yodeled and crooned western ballads.4? Listeners could also hear Steve Love’s twelve-piece orchestra, which played popular and semiclassical songs. The Tell-Me-a-Story Lady delighted children with her character voices and descriptive fiction. Even Brinkley’s wife Minnie and son Johnny Boy joined the cast, reading poetry and singing birthday greetings over the air. In between acts, the popular announcer D. D. Denver told jokes and relayed the latest news, weather, and

10

market reports. The diverse format was a hit. In a 1930 Radio Digest poll, KFKB received 256,827 votes, winning that year’s Gold Cup Award for the most popular station in the United States.4 Although many of KFKB’s featured artists developed a wide following, Brinkley was always the star attraction. Delivered in a

JOHN

R. BRINKLEY

slow-paced Appalachian drawl, his daily lectures on hygiene, disease prevention, and baby care became a popular feature of KFKB’s lineup. His talks sparked inquiries from listeners throughout the country. “I was getting three and four and five thousand letters a day,” he recounted years later. “In 1928 I began to realize that I was not doing myself any good by refusing to answer these letters. Therefore, I conceived this idea: Why not have

a Medical Question Box reading and responding to inquirers’ letters over the air. . . . It was an immediate success.”44 Using a code to hide each questioner’s identity, Brinkley read their cases over the air, diagnosed their problems, and advised prescriptions obtainable by writing his Milford drugstore. “You are listening to Dr. John R. Brinkley speaking from his office over station KFKB. We must dig into our Question Box this morning,” he typically began. “Here’s one from Tillie. She says she had an operation for some trouble ten years ago. I think the operation was unnecessary. My advice to you is to use women’s tonic No. 50, 67, 61. This combination will do for you what you

desire.” In another installment, Brinkley responded to a mother whose six-year-old girl complained of cramps. “I think she is wormy. Ask for prescription 94 for worms. In regard to yourself, you had your appendix taken out. You are going to get in a little trouble later on. My advice is number 61 and stay on it for about 10 years.”46 And so it went, three times a day, week after week. As the popularity of the Medical Question Box increased, Brinkley added a new wrinkle. In order to accommodate listeners’ needs, he organized the Brinkley Pharmaceutical Association,

with five hundred distributers throughout the Midwest.’ Brinkley’s prescriptions were concoctions of medicines from Lloyd's and Merck and Company, advertised to correct everything from bed-wetting to nervousness. “These prescriptions must be kept confidential,” Brinkley warned his druggists. “Stand behind me in this station, KFKB, and your future success is assured.”48 The

prediction soon proved correct. Participating pharmacists reported sales increases as high as seventy-five dollars per day.

is

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

“The results that [Brinkley] has been able to produce . . . have been phenomenal,” an editorial in the Midwestern Druggist reported. It was “more like a fairy tale than real happenings in modern business.”4 The arrangement profited Brinkley as well. With each sale he received a one dollar kickback, adding an estimated fourteen thousand dollars each week to his already bulging income.°? Radio was integral to Brinkley’s medical practice in other ways. According to the historian Francis Chase, Brinkley was “the man who, perhaps more than any other, foresaw the great potentialities of radio as an advertising medium.”5! He asserted that radio technology had ushered in a new era of medical treatment, in which he had unparalleled experience. The traditional surgical scalpel would soon be passé, he wrote prospective patients in 1923. Instead, doctors would

use a “radio knife” that

“does not burn, nor cut, but opens where we want . . . and has-

tens healing.” Such a knife, he explained, would be used only by “specialists” and “not the common physician, because he cannot afford it,” asserting, “I have the only one in the state.”52 In a 1929 broadcast, Brinkley claimed, “It makes no differ-

ence been ever. able

to us whether you come to our hospital or not.”5> He had using KFKB to boost his hospital business for years, howThe station broadcast regular updates on patients’ remarkimprovements. And when appreciative letters arrived from

satisfied customers, he reported these over the airwaves as well,

V2

although oftentimes in somewhat edited form. For example, Brinkley shared one former patient’s statement that he was “getting along fine” but omitted his cautious addendum: “Of course I don’t expect to get well all at once, it will take time.”™4 Brinkley also employed a team of hack writers, fictioneers, and testimonialists who deluged prospective patients with pamphlets, circulars, and flyers. Occasionally, the doctor personally corresponded directly with inquirers. “If your son is taking a diet to cure his Epilepsy, it is to laugh,” he wrote a mother from Minnesota in 1928. “You will spend your time and you will spend

JOHN R. BRINKLEY

your money and your boy will be right where he was and you will have these words of mine to remember what I told you.”55 To a Detroit man uncertain about coming to Milford, Brinkley responded, “If you go ahead to the doctors there and have your prostate removed, you will be just the same as a castrated man or an old steer and good for nothing. . . . Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.”56 By 1928 Fishbein and the AMA had monitored Brinkley’s unorthodox methods for years but had taken little action. “As long as he confined himself to goat gland practice, we didn’t bother much about him,” Fishbein said. “But when he began prescribing over the radio for the ills of patients he had never seen, treating dangerous afflictions by air, some agency simply had to come to the front for the protection of the public.”5” Fishbein began publishing a series of articles in JAMA targeting Brinkley’s quackery. In early 1930, A. B. McDonald, a senior reporter for the Kansas City Star, joined the campaign. In a series of editorials and investigative reports, Fishbein and McDonald attacked Brinkley from all angles. Vowing to “make clear to the public . . . the heartless venality and worthlessness” of Brinkley’s quackery, Fishbein exposed the doctor’s shady past, debunked his military record, and questioned his academic credentials.°8 McDonald’s columns in the Star, published during spring and summer 1931, surpassed Fishbein’s pieces in both coverage and invective. “For sheer, unadulterated vitriol and vituperation,” observed the Brinkley historian Don Slechta, “the Star had no peer.” McDonald “lambasted Brinkley whenever the opportunity presented itself, and when an opportunity was lacking, they made one.”°? The Star printed vivid stories of Brinkley’s fits of insobriety, cursing, and rage, told by disgruntled patients and hospital employees. One woman, McDonald reported, had sworn that Brinkley held her prisoner in her hospital room.

“I lay at the point of death,” she recounted,

“while

[a

drunken Brinkley] straddled the doorway, with a revolver in his hand, and threatened to shoot my two brothers if they did not

13

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

pay him.”© Claiming to hear the doctor use “vile language” and “the coarsest oaths,” another former patient told McDonald, “Brinkley a godly man? Shucks!’6! Brinkley denied all charges and lashed back at his critics. “Let them come on with it,” he challenged them in April 1930. “They have fought me for years and I have thrived on their opposition. I defy them now as I always have.”® In his nightly radio broadcasts, he ridiculed the AMA, which he called an acronym for the

14

Amalgamated Meatcutters Association. “These M.D.’s are a stinking, thieving, lying bunch,” he railed in one 1930 broadcast. “T’ll grind their heads off under my heel like I would a snake.” Brinkley cast himself as a martyr “steam rolled” by a monopoly determined to maintain its stranglehold on all medical treatments and profits.64 The AMA, he charged, sought to ruin him out of “jealousy” over his success. The conspiracy, he argued, began with Fishbein, whom he derisively called “old Fishy.” From there it spread its influence across the country. Even McDonald and the Kansas City Star, Brinkley charged, were caught in the AMA’s web. “I have received letters from several friends who said they never liked the Kansas City Star, Brinkley said in April 1930. “Since this Fishbein attack on me was published, they liked it less.” “With its many thousands of doctors and its mighty influence, [the AMA] is an imposing antagonist when arrayed against one country doctor,” he conceded in 1930. “But I defy you, and I will beat you, because I have right and truth, and these will eventually triumph.”°7 Still, Brinkley’s detractors began to close in. On 20 April 1930, Dr. L. F. Barney and Dr. Robert Hassig of the Kansas State Medical Society filed a formal complaint demanding a review of his state medical license. Weeks later, the Federal Radio Commission conducted a hearing to decide the fate of KFKB. Brinkley threatened to storm Washington, D.C., with an army of “two or three thousand” satisfied patients and radio fans to testify in his behalf.°8 After he rescinded his original offer to pay all travel expenses, a significantly smaller group of thirty-five boosters made

JOHN

R. BRINKLEY

the long train trip and took the stand in his defense. Still, the FRC decided against the radio doctor. Swayed more by a host of medical experts who testified that Brinkley was a quack, the FRC voted three to two to remove KFKB’s operating license on the grounds that the station no longer met proper standards of “convenience and necessity.”°? Outraged, Brinkley charged that the commission had been “bought by the AMA” and that President Herbert Hoover was part of the conspiracy.7? KFKB continued to broadcast throughout the fall, pending an appeal. When that failed, Brinkley closed up and sold the station to the Kansas

Farmers’ Insurance Company.”! With KFKB lost, Brinkley faced the prospect of losing his medical practice as well. In mid-July the state medical board began its hearing in Topeka’s Kansas Hotel to decide the fate of his medical license. Acting as chief prosecutor for the state, Attorney General William Smith reiterated Fishbein’s and McDonald’s accusations of quackery and brought forth other charges that Brinkley was a bootlegger, a bigamist, and a deadbeat dad.” As they had during the FRC hearing, Brinkley’s lawyers bombarded the proceedings with four hundred and fifty affidavits and forty live witnesses providing statements of support and testimony on the doctor’s behalf.7? When the medical board voted to disallow additional anecdotal evidence, Brinkley took the stand in his own

defense. As an overflow crowd looked on with interest, the doctor calmly refuted all charges. In the course of Smith’s interrogation, Brinkley displayed an impressive command of the appropriate medical terminology. Gaining confidence, he even showed a bit of humor. Asked if the “so-called beneficial results of his operations” were due to “psychic causes and hypnotism,” he remarked, “If I could hypnotize, I’d be working on some of the folks around here.””4 But when Smith’s examination turned to the particulars of the goat-gland operation, Brinkley became serious: Q: You say in the literature you furnish a new blood supply and you furnish new nerve supply to the testicle?

iD

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

A: Yes Sir. Q: How do they benefit the testicle? A: Well I believe they do; that is my opinion. : How? : Well I can’t explain it. : Is it in any textbook? : I don’t know. : Did you learn it in school? : [don’t know that I did. : How do you know it? {Oo: From the results I get with my patients.” Fe (@) Pe 7S) G2 12) pe

Unimpressed by Brinkley’s affirmation of practical experience, the Kansas City Star proclaimed that its charges of quackery had been upheld. Not only had Brinkley become “lost in his own fog of technique,” McDonald wrote, he had been forced to admit that

his four-phase compound operation for virility and pep actually rendered patients sterile.” Sensing that the case was lost, Brinkley unveiled a final surprise. He urged the board to investigate his hospital and to witness his surgical skill for themselves. He hoped that the demonstration would delay the board’s ruling. Fairness demanded it, he argued, since the positive effects of the goat-gland transplantation could not be effectively measured for at least six months.”” But the board had already made up its mind. “This was no prosecution,” Brinkley thundered in response to their verdict. “It was persecution.”78 After losing KFKB

16

and his Kansas medical license in 1930,

Brinkley sought a new platform from which to battle his enemies. Returning from a brief vacation in Florida, he revealed his plan to exact vengeance on the state medical board. “Why, I think I’ll go back up to Kansas and get on my radio and get myself elected governor,” he told one reporter.”? Two days later he officially announced his candidacy for governor on an Independent ticket. With the primaries over and the general election just six weeks

JOHN

R. BRINKLEY

John and Minnie Brinkley in 1932. (Courtesy Kansas State Historical Society.)

away, Brinkley was too late to have his name included on the of-

ficial ballot; he would have to win as a write-in candidate. But the doctor was not concerned. “I get thousands of letters every day, understand. These people who write to me are intelligent people. They are for me and they know enough to know how to write my name on the ballot.”8° Despite Brinkley’s late entry in the race, his baptism in politics could not have come at a more opportune time. During fall 1930, Kansans were deep in the throes of the Great Depression. In “hard times folks feel that they are getting the worst of it, thru no fault of their own,” observed a Kansas City Star editorial. “So after Dr. Brinkley lost his medical license and [radio station] ... and

announced daily, almost hourly, that he was being persecuted, a

iE

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

fellow feeling was established immediately between him and many [Kansans.]’8! Moreover, Brinkley’s two challengers inspired little hope for economic improvement. Both candidates, Republican Frank Haucke and Democrat Harry Woodring, were affable American Legion commanders with little political experience who favored the status quo. According to W. C. Clugston, a Brinkley supporter and political journalist, Haucke, in fact, had been approved by the state’s powerful Republican Party machine because “he wouldn’t dare upset anybody’s apple cart.” The environment was ripe, Clugston maintained, for Kansas voters to “throw off the yoke” of the monopolized power of “the estab-

lished parties” and to try something new.*? Brinkley seized the opportunity. On the campaign trail, Brinkley billed himself as “the People’s candidate” and denied any ties to “special privileges or any group or combination whatever.”®? “You often hear about the efficiency of the two party system, because the Republicans watch the Democrats and the Democrats watch the Republicans,” he said at one political rally. “Vote for me and you'll get double protection. They’ll both watch me.”* Brinkley pledged that if elected he would “keep an open forum” for the public by installing a radio microphone in the governor’s office.85 Compiled from supporters’ suggestions, his platform promised something for everyone—watersheds

built in every

county

for farmers,

free

textbooks for students, free hospital care for the poor, a work-

men’s compensation law for laborers, and reduced taxes for all.86 Brinkley also catered to religious voters. As a committed Methodist and outspoken antievolutionist, he had earned a reputation as a fundamentalist. His KFKB broadcasts had often combined medicine and religion. And he took his Bible with him on the campaign trail. With his Van Dyke beard, tortoiseshell spectacles, white suit, and diamond rings, he seemed the precur-

18

sor of some of today’s televangelists. His words helped complete the costume. “I don’t talk politics on Sunday,” he announced to a crowd of twenty thousand Kansans convened in a pasture out-

JOHN R. BRINKLEY

side Wichita. Instead, he preached a sermon. “The men in power wanted to do away with Jesus before the common people woke up. Are you awake here?” he asked. “I too have walked up the path Jesus walked to calvary, .. . |know how Jesus felt.”87

Although grounded in old-time religion, Brinkley’s political style was uniquely modern. By swooping down from the sky in his airplane to attend rallies across the state and by broadcasting speeches day and night over the radio, Brinkley, noted one newspaper, altered the “routine pattern” of Kansas politics. Not only were his political revivals “record breakers in the way of attendance for rural meetings,” observed one Wichita Eagle editorial,

but they were also “entirely novel in that the great audience came in motors and the speaker of the day in an airplane.”8° Brinkley’s custom-built

sixteen-cylinder

Cadillac,

Romancer

monoplane,

and glittering diamonds, the Chicago Tribune reported, “fascinate the rural and city crowds alike.”? On election day, KFKB’s astrologist, the Peoples’ Psychologist, told listeners that the stars had forecast a “landslide” victory

for Brinkley.?? But few political insiders took much notice. Just days before, the Kansas City Star had predicted that “the Brinkley tide was ebbing.”*! They were wrong. Brinkley’s final count totaled 183,273 votes, just 40,000 votes behind the winner, Harry

Woodring. Outright fraud, along with strict enforcement of write-in ballot procedures, might have cost Brinkley the victory.? Woodring later admitted that “there were sufficient votes” to elect Brinkley, “had all invalidated ballots been counted.”93 The magnitude of the Brinkley vote was phenomenal. He received write-in votes for U.S. senator, justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, and all minor state offices.°* Twenty thousand people in Oklahoma even voted for him to lead their state. Despite the loss, Brinkley proclaimed himself the “popularly elected Governor of Kansas.” He vowed to oust Woodring from office and claim his prize after the 1932 election.%° With KFKB closed down, he devised other means to keep his name fresh in the minds of Kansas voters. In early 1931 he opened radio station

19

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

Brinkley’s novel invention to reach Kansas voters during the 1932 gubernatorial campaign. (Courtesy Kansas State Historical Society.) XER, along the Mexican side of the Rio Grande across from Del

Rio, Texas. Backed by XER’s five hundred thousand watts of power, Brinkley and his staff of radio performers returned to the airwaves, blaring through radio sets in Kansas and beyond. And because XER broadcast from Mexican soil, the station was out-

side the jurisdiction of the FRC. Brinkley also arranged “to flood” Kansas with bumper stickers, pamphlets, and a traveling campaign truck.* “I just realized,” he wrote a consultant in March 1932, “that I could put a

talking machine on my truck and it could stop in a lot of little towns where I would not appear in person to make speeches. . . . I think it’s the biggest idea I have had.’”°8 That fall, he unleashed the Ammunition

20

Train no. 1, a Chevrolet truck equipped with a

retracting platform, phonograph, microphone, and _speakers, which blared its “heavy artillery” of canned speeches and music from county to county.” The Ammunition Train also helped popularize Brinkley’s campaign song, “He’s the Man,” written by a

JOHN

Brinkley

Man? “He’s from clean

Booster

Club

member,

Mandi

Shreffler.

R. BRINKLEY

“Who’s

the

He’s the Man, Who’s the Man,” the song playfully asked. the one and only Doctor Brinkley. He’ll tell you wrong right, he’ll stand right up and fight to clean out, and keep you'll see.’””100

On the campaign trail, Brinkley announced that it was time

to end the corrupt rule of the major parties. “[Let’s] Clean Up, Clean Out, and Keep Kansas Clean,” he cried.1°! To emphasize the point, he reminded voters that he was a political outsider. “I shall in no sense . . . affiliate myself with any politicians,” he wrote. “I shall remain free as an individual speaking for the people, and the people only. And that means ALL the people—everyone of you— regardless of your politics, your race, your creed, your religion, your color, whether you are a farmer or a business man, whether you wear a winged collar and a silk shirt, or whether you wear overalls and carry a dinner bucket.”102 Stroking state pride and antiurban sentiment, Brinkley vowed that if elected, he would “move the state capital from Kansas City, Missouri, back to Topeka.” “Missouri is a unique state,” he joked. “It has two governors. Kansas has none. So Missouri has loaned one of them to run our affairs for us.” Brinkley charged that Governor Woodring was beholden to the interests of the Kansas City Star. “The Star has no business trying to run Kansas,” he continued. “And I can prove that a man in [its] edi-

torial room . . . has controlled every governor of Kansas for the last 10 years. I give you my word that if I were governor the Kansas City Star would not make that boast [again].”19 In covering Brinkley’s campaign, the Nation reported that the doctor’s following had grown since 1930.!% Brinkley’s many critics, however, had gained strength as well. During the 1932 campaign, a number of influential Kansas newspapers joined the Kansas City Star in assaulting his candidacy. Thirty-six years earlier, the

Emporia

Gazette’s

editor,

William

Allen

White,

had

scolded Kansans for supporting the Populist Party. Now he urged citizens to “save Kansas” again by stopping Brinkley and

21

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

his “moronic underworld” of followers that threatened to put him in office:!05 “Shall Kansans be greeted by a jibing ba-a-a, the cry of the billy goat, when they walk the streets of other states ?”106 Brinkley also came under the fire of a little-known Topeka tabloid, the Pink Rag. The newspaper’s circulation quickly skyrocketed

to over

ten thousand

after its editor, Charles

Trapp,

turned it into a scandal sheet lampooning Brinkley’s candidacy. In one editorial Trapp responded to Brinkley’s claim that he would “wade through blood for the downtrodden and the starving people of Kansas.” “As I am in favor of Doc wading thru BLOOD for the downtrodden and forgotten man,” Trapp wrote, “I wondered where he was going to get the BLOOD to wade in?” Perhaps, he suggested, “Doc [should] use the BLOOD of the 6 thousand he-goats he has sacrificed in his 4-phase-confounded operations on lecherous old coots.”!° In a private letter, Trapp commented that Brinkley had had a “dirty deal from the AMA.” “No man has the right to take away one man’s right to free speech or beer or whiskey,” he wrote. “But Doc Brinkley for governor of Kansas! That’s too strong a graft.”108 Brinkley embraced such criticism as further evidence of his martyrdom. In a campaign flyer, he suggested that his enemies had become “desperate” in their attempt to derail his campaign. He revealed that he had discovered a conspiracy to kidnap and kill Johnny Boy in order to “break [his] morale and cause [him]

22

to give up in despair.” Others, Brinkley reported, had “decided that [the doctor] himself must be disposed of at all costs.” He claimed that Governor Woodring had “extended executive clemency to certain inmates of the Lansing [Kansas] prison” if they killed him before the 8 November election.!° Although the rumors had no basis, Brinkley was frightened enough to order a bulletproof vest for his own protection.!!0 Brinkley also deflected his critics’ attacks by launching an official campaign newspaper, Publicity. Its editor, Elmer J. Garner, was a former Populist Party campaigner and the current secre-

JOHN

R. BRINKLEY

Hands up for Brinkley at a political rally in 1932. (Courtesy Kansas State Historical Society.)

tary of Brinkley’s Good Government Club. “The present depressed conditions very much resemble the early [1890s] Populistic days,” wrote Garner. “Watch your step and vote right in November or you will regret it.”!11 Under Garner’s direction, the

Wichita newspaper echoed Brinkley’s platform and championed alternative medicine, farmers, and blue-collar workers.

Public-

ity’s team of writers also lambasted Brinkley’s enemies. They called White a “slimy traducer of humanity and human rights,” publicized that Trapp was an ex-con, denounced the “Kangaroo Court composed of AMA doctors,” and warned of a “conspiracy to ‘get’ Dr. and Mrs. Brinkley.”!!2 Garner cautioned that Brinkley’s detractors had better “pack their political grip, for a 1932 cyclone is forming and all obstructions will be swept off the map, and Dr. John R. Brinkley and Publicity will do the sweeping.”!!8 Despite Garner’s prediction, Brinkley’s bid for Kansas governor again fell short. This time with his name on the final ballot,

he managed 244,607 votes and another close third-place finish behind Woodring and the winner, Republican Alf Landon. Devastated by the loss, Brinkley sank into despair. “I have no more idea than a man in the moon what the future has in store for us,”

23

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

he wrote Minnie that Christmas Eve. “Personally, I would like to discontinue every business project that I am in and shake loose of the whole mess and start life all over again on a different path. However, I have so many obligations to meet, so many ways that it seems almost a ‘hopeless’ thought to break loose from what I am associated with.”1!!4 Although Brinkley did not give up his medical practice, he did follow a new path, which led him from the wheat fields of

Kansas to the sagebrush of southern Texas. A promotional flyer explained that “after three years of abuse, hardships, persecution, and enough to wreck the heart and soul of any mortal man,”

he and his family had no choice but to move and “carry on [their] service to the public.”!!5 In October 1933 Brinkley left Milford and relocated in the border town of Del Rio, Texas, to be near his radio station XER, later rechristened as XERA.!16 Remote control lines, which crossed the Rio Grande, allowed him to broadcast

from the comforts of a plush studio apartment built above Del Rio’s J. C. Penny’s Department Store. A block away, he converted

the six-story Roswell Hotel into the new Brinkley Hospital, complete with operating rooms, diagnostic equipment, and a gift shop. On the outskirts of town, the doctor built a two hundred thousand dollar mansion under the shadows of XER’s transmitter towers. When finished, the twelve-acre estate included assorted statuary, a swimming pool the “size of a small volcanic crater,” and a sign of electric neon lights illuminating the name “Dr. Brinkley” upon two majestic fountains.!!7 Brinkley was back in business. However, his hospital no longer advertised the standard goat-gland transplant that had made him famous. The operation was unnecessary, he professed,

24

because newly invented glandular emulsions offered the same benefits from a simple injection. Brinkley instead developed an entirely new treatment for enlarged prostate sufferers. He had noticed that many of his goat-gland patients suffered from enlarged prostates.!!8 Thus, he concluded that the prostate was a “robber” gland that stole the male’s normal sexual life and good

JOHN

R. BRINKLEY

health as it grew.!'!9 Brinkley declared that sexual dysfunction represented only one of many symptoms of prostate disease. There were other signs—including such common ailments as lumbago, lethargy, constipation, memory loss, incontinence, indigestion, headaches, and nervousness.!20 He explained that the causes of prostatic disease were “as indefinite and numerous” as its symptoms. “Over indulgence in sexual intercourse, masturbation, and ungratified sex desire . . . are all factors,” he warned.!2!

“My idea of the whole thing,” Brinkley later explained, was to try to reduce the size of the prostate without having it removed, because prostate surgery resulted in “death in 40 percent of patients” and severe side effects for survivors.!22 “Your doctor can show you these same records if he cares to, and wants to be perfectly honest with you,” he told XER listeners.123 Brinkley claimed that his new treatment could shrink the prostate gland by depleting its “food supply” in the blood through a series of cuts and ligations of various tissues, blood vessels, and nerves.!*4 Compared to the horrors of prostate surgery, his method seemed remarkably benign. “We use local anesthetic all the time, we do not put the patient to sleep,” he explained. “The patient talks with the doctor while his work is being done; then afterwards

he walks back to his room, loafs

around the hospital grounds within two or three days, and in two or three days more he is on his way home.”!25 “What more do you want, folks?” Brinkley asked.!76 Aimed at a rural audience, Brinkley’s hospital promotions stroked farmers with flattery. “Knowing your progressive turn of mind and that you are a diligent seeker of knowledge,” he wrote one prospective patient, “I am convinced that you will receive much encouragement from a perusal of this booklet.”!2” Another circular encouraged readers to ignore Brinkley’s many critics and to check out his Del Rio hospital for themselves: “I would consider that my brain was as good as anybody’s and that I was the one suffering and not those talking against Brinkley.”!28 Advertisements also reinforced farmers’ antiurban and anti-intellectual

25

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

From rags to riches: a Brinkley postcard from the late 1930s. (Courtesy Kansas State Historical Society.)

biases. “We tell the story in plain understandable language,” one 1940 pamphlet claimed, “so that the reader will not be confused by long medical and scientific phrases which . . . take a ‘Philadelphia Lawyer’ to understand.”!?° By the mid-1930s, Brinkley could point to his own longevity as vindication for his controversial treatments. He had survived assaults from the FRC, the AMA, and the Kansas Medical Board

as well as persistent efforts of the Texas Medical Society to close his Del Rio hospital. “Don’t you think it stands to reason that any hospital doing work on such a large scale would have somebody kicking if results were not being produced?” he asked.!5° “My friends, there is no argument against this.” “Any method that will stand up under 21 years of national advertising MUST BE GooD,” he boasted in 1938. “The fact that the Brinkley methods

26

have stood the test of time, proves beyond a question of doubt their value to suffering men and women.”!s1 Having performed thousands of prostate operations, Brinkley claimed that he was the foremost expert in this field of medi-

JOHN R. BRINKLEY cine. Conventional doctors, he argued, simply lacked his expertise and experience. “So many doctors are not familiar with prostatic cancer [Brinkley did not distinguish between an enlarged prostate, an infected prostate, and prostate cancer] that they do not recognize it in its beginning,” he warned during one XER broadcast.!5? As evidence, he shared the story of his own patient who had previously spent two thousand dollars at the “famous Mayo Clinic” without relief. “The Mayo’s couldn’t help him,” Brinkley explained, because they had misdiagnosed his problem. But “four days after being under my careful supervision he was out of bed in a wheel chair.”193 Brinkley charged that conventional doctors were far more concerned with profits than with patients’ needs. “To my way of thinking,” he wrote in 1933, AMA members were the “biggest bunch of grafters and the biggest bunch of crooks and the biggest bunch of thieves on the top side of this earth.”154 Many doctors, he insisted, scared patients into succumbing to unnecessary and expensive surgery. “[They] want to X-ray you, violet ray you; take out your vital organs; study your case; leave you weak and suffering ... and then send you a bill and keep on bleeding you for money.”135 “This is where your life is at stake,” he warned. “It

is your health or your funeral.”136 Brinkley contrasted conventional doctors’ avarice with his own selfless philanthropy. Despite his ostentatious display of personal wealth, he professed to have no interest in financial gain. “I give away about one half of my money,” he told one reporter during an interview conducted on his 172-foot luxury yacht in 1937.197 In reality, he meticulously reviewed hospital business in order to maximize profits. After examining hospital expense reports while away from Del Rio in 1936, he became en-

raged over a $90.60 purchase of salihexin. “Tell Mrs. Brinkley that I don’t know what salihexin is, that I have never ordered it used

in our hospital and have never been consulted about it,” he instructed a subordinate. “Tell her also, that I wish she would tell

her Doctors that since I am the lousy son-of-a-bitch that pays

2

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

their salaries and also pays all the bills that before they go to spending my money so generously and lavishly for stuff like this I wish they would at least give me the courtesy of asking me whether in the hell I want to do it or not.”135 Brinkley claimed that his medical services were for all people, regardless of financial status. In 1935 he inaugurated price gradations for prostate sufferers of different economic means. For $1,000 the Business Man’s treatment included Dr. Brinkley’s “personal services” and a lifetime guarantee; the Average Man’s Treatment involved a less invasive technique and fewer perks for $750; and the Poor Man’s Treatment consisted of one intravenous

injection for the bargain price of $150. Those opting for the Poor Man’s Treatment were urged to purchase more than one injection treatment if they could afford it. “You really should have 3 to 5,”

one pamphlet recommended.!%? With his sliding pay scale, coupon offers, and radio-contest giveaways, Brinkley came across as more sensitive to his customers’ financial status than conventional doctors. “Do you know of any other hospital anywhere that protects their patients from spending their money as foolishly as we do?” he asked.!40 Brinkley openly sympathized with Americans’ financial struggles during the 1930s. “I know you are hard up for money,” he wrote prospective patients in 1934. “We are too.”!4! He claimed that the depression had forced him “to cut every possible expense” in running his hospital.'42 “We have been losing money . . . due to the fact that we have been making special offers and trying to help the poor people out,” he claimed in 1937. “We give the patient so much . . . that we cannot carry on our socalled low prices.”!43 He urged midwestern farmers to come to Del Rio despite their troubles because good health was the only way to “weather” the depression. “If you are sick,” he warned, “you are whipped before you start.” 144 Brinkley also advised Americans not to neglect their spiritual health. In radio sermons, which he occasionally plagiarized

28

from books and magazines, he preached the message of family

JOHN R. BRINKLEY

values, forgiveness, and peace. His first marriage had ended in failure after six years and three children. However, his love for his second wife, Minnie, and their son, Johnny Boy, born in 1928,

inspired frequent sermons on family togetherness. In a 1940 broadcast, he encouraged parents to take a renewed interest in their family. “Give the nation godly homes and a manhood and womanhood that Angels can applaud,” he instructed.145 A promotional cartoon of the Brinkley family huddled together as they watched the sun set reinforced the message. “Find God and be happy,” the caption read. “It is the only way.’””146 Brinkley tempered his weekday diatribes against Morris Fishbein with pleas for compassion in his Sunday sermons. In one broadcast he called hate a “cancerous growth . . . more deadly than your worst enemy.” Forgiveness, he proclaimed, was the only solution. “Your salvation depends on it, your life depends on it, your health depends on it, your happiness depends Onat a2 During the late 1930s and early 1940s, Brinkley’s radio lectures increasingly focused on the deepening international crisis in Europe and Asia. While urging military preparedness, he warned Americans to remain neutral in their hearts. “Get this war bug out of your system,” he told listeners in May 1940. “Mix with the flowers in your yards, listen to the birds singing, think more lovely things and less shooting, blasting, and killing.”148 Mrs. Brinkley joined the campaign for peace with her own radio broadcasts. “Women,” she insisted, “have a great part in the task of keeping our country at peace.”149 She challenged the “forces of womanhood” to rise up with “Christian zeal” and fight against warfare as they had against child labor decades before. A petition drive urging Congress to reconsider passing the Ludlow amendment, which proposed a national referendum before declaring war, she maintained, was the only way to prevent “propagandists from sweep[ing] the United States into war.”5° “Now mothers, don’t you think you ought to help in this great work?” she asked. “It is for you... and your boy.”!°!

29

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

Brinkley blamed the eroding neutrality in the United States on “Jewish agitators” who had orchestrated a “campaign of hate against Hitler.” The people must “wake up and rebuff these Judases,” he warned.152 Such anti-Semitism was standard fare for

Publicity, which published Brinkley’s XERA addresses between 1939 and 1941. Claiming to run “one of only 12 newspapers in the English-speaking world not influenced by Yiddish advertisers,” Garner warned that Congress and the Roosevelt administration had caved in to Jewish pressure for increased American involvement in Europe.15? They “needed Jew Money for their campaigns,” Garner wrote, so they yielded “to the chosen people.”!>4 Garner’s newspaper embraced Brinkley’s anti-Semitism as well as his outspoken hatred for Communists, civil libertarians,

and “Godless” academics. Brinkley cautioned against being “lulled to sleep by the belief” that a Communist takeover “cannot happen here.” Lauding the Dies Committee’s efforts against the “Red Menace” in Washington, he encouraged citizens to “root the reds out” of their own communities. You must “keep the Communist coyote from the door of your home; shield the cradle from those who would despoil our children.”155 Brinkley claimed to possess “a list of 300 Wutzkis, Ezekiels, and Domeratskys holding prominent positions in the United States government.”!56 He warned that the “Fifth Column” threat was everywhere: “Parlor Pink” civil libertarians were just as dangerous as “rioting red” members of the Communist Party.!57 Even

30

worse,

he charged,

were

the

“scholars

of subversion”

worming their way into academic institutions. “Intellectuals are the red salesmen,” he proclaimed in 1940. “College professors, who use more big words than the numerals in the figures setting out the [national debt], are stuffing the gullible on something the average citizen cannot understand.”1!58 “I am charitable, I am just, I am kind,” he asserted, “but I am intolerant of every creature who would lift his voice against this country.”159 Brinkley’s evangelism and bigotry brought him into contact with various forces of the far right. In 1940 the Special House

JOHN R. BRINKLEY

Committee

on

Un-American

Activities,

headed

by Texas

con-

gressman Martin Dies, uncovered that Brinkley had contributed five thousand dollars toward the outspoken anti-Semite and Nazi supporter William Dudley Pelley and his Silver Shirt band of storm

troopers.'©9 According

to his biographer, Gerald

Carson,

Brinkley even traveled to Asheville, North Carolina, to meet Pel-

ley in person and receive “lessons in fascism.”!6! Beginning in August 1940, the Hour, the official organ of the American

Council

Against Nazi Propaganda, began monitoring Publicity’s editorials.1°* The newspaper, the Hour charged, was a mouthpiece for “notorious fascists,” including Brinkley, Garner, and Edward J.

Smythe, a crusader for Father Coughlin and spokesman for the German-American Bund.!® Brinkley also developed a friendship with the evangelical publisher and rabid anti-Semite Gerald B. Winrod.!¢ The Wichita minister had publicly endorsed the “moral righteousness” of Brinkley’s candidacy for governor of Kansas in 1932.165 Years later, when Brinkley began to embrace Winrod’s anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, the two combined forces again. In 1939 and 1940, Winrod joined Brinkley in Del Rio for a series of radio lectures. Publicity invited all “Brinkley—Winrod brand of Americans” to listen in.16¢ Despite his growing ties with native-born Fascism, Brinkley remained a political maverick and contributed money to both major parties. He claimed to be a “rock-ribbed Republican” but accepted advertising for Democrat John Garner’s presidential candidacy

over

his radio

station.!67

Between

1939

and

1940,

Brinkley flirted with the idea of running for president himself. He tested the waters by attending numerous political rallies, including an Oklahoma State House banquet, featuring guests J. C. Penny and U.S. senator Elmer Thomas, an outspoken supporter of alternative medicine.!°8 Rejected by both Democrats and Republicans, Brinkley considered running on either the Independent, Farm-Labor, Progressive, or Socialist ticket.!6? However, he

claimed to prefer Francis Townsend’s Old Age Pension Party.!”° “Some man must have guts enough to come out and advocate a

eH

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

National Old Age Pension Law,” Brinkley wrote in early 1939. “i would be willing to do it.”171 Although Brinkley’s presidential campaign never developed, he made one final effort in 1941 to rally the masses in a Republican campaign for U.S. senator from Texas. “I’m not a politician,” he reminded voters. “[But] I’ll give you the services of an honest man with no strings tied to him.”!”2 Brinkley promised an “energetic campaign,” complete with sound trucks, airplane visits, and radio speeches.!73 Yet his ability to sway the populace was gone. Standard charges of government conspiracies and AMA persecution found fewer listeners as the depression lifted and war loomed on the horizon. Although Brinkley “promised to stand by the President and meet a declaration of war with the burning fever of an American,” his isolationist record and ties with native-born Fascists raised doubts about his patriotism.!74 Less than a year later, Pelley, Smythe, Garner, and

Winrod faced federal charges of sedition for “conspiring to cause insubordination in the armed forces.”175 “The ‘witch hunters’ of yesterday are the ‘witch hunted’ of today,” noted the Topeka Daily Capital.176 Guilty by association, Brinkley became a victim of the backlash against American Fascism during the war years, known as the Brown Scare. Perhaps more important, legal bills and dwindling patient numbers, due to negative publicity, had left the former millionaire broke. “Without money to contribute” toward his Senate campaign, he announced that his candidacy would have to be “a free expression” from his many Texas supporters.!77 Weeks later, he renounced his candidacy in favor of his

challenger, the former Texas governor “Pappy” Lee O’Daniels. Brinkley’s career had actually begun to unravel several years earlier. After a local physician began advertising his goat-gland and prostate treatments at reduced prices, an embittered Brinkley moved his headquarters to Little Rock, Arkansas. It was clear his best days had passed. When his income dropped from $1.1 million in 1937 to $810,000 in 1938, he blamed his old nemesis

O2

Morris Fishbein, who had labeled Brinkley the “apotheosis” of

JOHN R. BRINKLEY

quackery in an exposé published by the AMA’s popular health magazine Hygeia.'78 Brinkley lashed back in typical fashion, lambasting the editor over the airwaves and filing a $250,000 libel suit in the courts. When the trial began in a Del Rio courtroom in March 1939, Brinkley felt confident a jury of local citizens would see him as one of their own. But Fishbein’s lawyers turned the tables on the doctor. During the trial, they pointed out that Brinkley was not a common man but wore a fourteen-carat diamond ring, owned a dozen automobiles, traveled the world on luxury liners, and even em-

ployed a private tutor for his eleven-year-old son.!”? On the stand, Fishbein proclaimed that he knew of no other physicians who earned a gross income in excess of $1 million. “That’s not medical practice,” the JAMA editor contended, “that’s big business.” 180 By the end of the trial, the plaintiff’s case had done little to contradict the battery of medical experts who supported Fishbein’s claims. In his charge to the jury, Judge R. J. McMillan explained that in making its decision, it could “take into consideration the rules of ethics followed by the great majority of medical men.” It doesn’t necessarily follow that every slight deviation or change by a doctor . . . from what the general body of doctors ... do is unethical, but if his course of conduct was far

beyond and contrary to the course of conduct which the other members of his profession followed, then you would say that he was unethical. . . . In other words, it is one of the component elements that go to make up the question as to

whether this man would be classified as a quack or not.!8! Four hours later the jury returned a verdict for the defense. Brinkley appealed the decision, but the Fifth District Court of Appeals dismissed the case, ruling that the “facts [were] sufficient to support a reasonable and honest opinion that the plaintiff should be considered a charlatan and a quack.”1!82

Ce)

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

The courtroom loss proved to be “the straw that broke the camel’s back,”

Fishbein

later reflected.183

Emboldened

by the

jury’s decision, Brinkley’s critics stepped up their attacks. Disgruntled former patients lined up to file suit against the doctor. In March 1940 his lawyers settled with three plaintiffs asking more than nine hundred thousand dollars in damages. More suits were forthcoming. Word of Brinkley’s legal troubles quickly spread across the country. “You know that doesn’t bring any business to us,” he observed.184

That summer he received more bad news when the Mexican government refused to renew his radio broadcasting license. “The sunshine station between the nations is gone,” he lamented in a letter to Minnie. “The world’s most powerful station is silent.”185

Without

radio

advertisements,

Brinkley’s

medical

practice quickly suffered. “It is necessary for us to reduce every expense possible from now on,” he informed hospital employees.!86 As his debts mounted, he auctioned off his fortune piece by piece—real estate, automobiles, airplanes, the family yacht. Although

34

he

licked

his wounds,

retreated

to Del

Rio,

and

planned a comeback, crippling legal expenses forced him to file for bankruptcy in March 1941.187 As Brinkley’s finances deteriorated, so did his health. Years of smoking, poor diet, and stress had taken a toll. The goat-gland doctor was in dire need of rejuvenation. It was hard to believe that this paunchy, gray-haired man had electrified Kansans with his youth and vigor on the campaign trail just ten years before. Following a heart attack in summer 1941, Brinkley developed a blood clot in his left leg that became infected with gangrene. While he convalesced in a Kansas City hospital following amputation surgery, federal marshals served a Post Office warrant for charges of mail fraud. Brinkley’s aggressive advertising had finally done him in.!88 Concerns over the impending litigation accelerated his physical deterioration. A series of heart attacks and complications from his leg surgery kept him hospitalized in San Antonio.

JOHN R. BRINKLEY

From the hospital he wrote Minnie, warning that they would “all go to the pen” unless their political contacts could “get the indictment dismissed.”!8° Although his hope for political intervention never materialized, his failing health helped him avoid certain

conviction and jail time. Only weeks before the trial was to commence, he sadly predicted that this would be his “last mother’s day” with his wife.!9° Seven days later, on 26 May 1942, Brinkley died quietly in a San Antonio hospital at the age of fifty-six. Although Brinkley died with a whimper, he had lived with a bang. Throughout his twenty-five-year career, he electrified Americans with a message that spoke to their concerns during the interwar years. As a maverick in radio, politics, and medi-

cine, he cast himself as a martyr who stood up for the common man against urban encroachment, political corruption, and medical conspiracy. “No doubt this voice is familiar to many of you,” he told a crowd in Kansas City, Kansas, in October 1930. “It has

resounded over the radio until the name J. R. Brinkley has become a household word in thousands of homes across the country. It is the crux of a pioneering movement .. . for life, liberty, and justice.”19! A month later, a Milwaukee newspaper editorial remarked that although the “old woolly days of Populism” were “history,” in Kansas, John R. Brinkley still carried the torch.!*

5)

2

Demagoguery in the Corn Belt Iowa’s Norman Baker On 12 May 1930, Muscatine, Iowa, swelled to well over twice its

normal population of seventeen thousand. People swarmed to the Mississippi River town to witness Norman Baker’s sensational medical triumph. Months before, Baker had electrified listeners of his radio station KTNT (an acronym for Know the Naked Truth) with the claim that he had cured the dreaded scourge of cancer at his Baker Institute in Muscatine. At his request, KTNT

listeners

from as far away as Kansas City flocked to Muscatine for an openair demonstration of his medical breakthrough.! Those who expected a good show were not disappointed. During the evening the charismatic forty-seven-year-old entrepreneur, clad in trademark white suit and lavender tie, directed

36

awe-inspiring medical theatrics and a parade of former patients, who gave stirring testimonials to his powers. Baker promised that his cancer-curing formula was neither “poisonous” nor harmful to normal tissue. As proof, he drew a vial of black-colored liquid from his pocket, announced that it contained enough medicine to cure twenty-five cancer patients, and then swallowed its contents. For the finale, a Baker surgeon removed the scalp and part of the skull of patient Mandus Johnson, exposing what appeared to be his cancerous brain tissue. The sixty-eightyear-old Illinois farmer sat awake in a chair as the surgeon administered Baker’s special powder and carefully replaced his scalp. “Cancer is conquered,” Baker proclaimed triumphantly. Before sending the crowd home, Baker delivered a rousing

NORMAN

Norman Baker at the height of his career. catine Art Center.)

BAKER

(Courtesy Mus-

speech lambasting the “medical trust” for discrediting his cancer cure in its own

quest to retain a prosperous

monopoly

on all

treatment. “Their only concern for the poor cancer patient,” he charged, “is to get his money, and fulfill the definition of the ini-

tials, M.D., meaning ‘More Dough.’”? Though noting that doctors were backed by the “power of money” and “organization,” he assured the crowd that he would stand pat against the evils of the medical establishment and remain in the “fight for humanity to the finish.”4 Five years before this extravaganza, Baker had made a name for himself as a radio station owner and broadcaster in Muscatine.

37

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

His daily broadcasts interspersed direct advertising for his booming mail-order business with fiery attacks on Wall Street, big business, and organized medicine. Revitalizing performance skills he had developed as a vaudeville magician in the early 1900s, he perfected a message that attracted many farmers and rural Americans, who came to perceive him as a common-folks’ crusader. Like John R. Brinkley, Baker was a populist rhetorician who claimed to

represent midwesterners’ interests in battling economic crises, the evils of urban industrial society, and threats to personal freedom. Echoing the Populist Party’s concerns over the “middlemen” of the late nineteenth century, he warned of the “cancer that is financial groups, packers, stock and grain market promoters, gamblers, flour mills, and what-nots” that continued to squeeze farmers’ profits in the 1920s and 1930s.5 These influences, he argued, as

well as the “abusive” and “monopolistic” control of the American Medical Association, had to be stopped. “My fight,” he proclaimed, “is one for humanity, for the farmer, laborer and the common folks in general. . . . This fight is for you.” Born on 27 November 1882, Norman Baker was the tenth and last child of John and Frances Baker of Muscatine, Iowa. As

a young boy, he once evaded his father’s discipline after a bout of disobedience by rolling under a barbed-wire fence. “It doesn’t pay to try to whip Norman Baker,” his hired biographer, Alvin Winston, later asserted, “he won’t take it.”7 Less interested in ac-

ademics than in his father’s machine shop, Baker dropped out of high school during his sophomore year and became an apprentice machinist. Showing promise as a teenager at this skill, he was hired at Muscatine’s freshwater-pearl button industry, owned by the German inventor J. F. Boepple. After this first encounter with “absentee industrialism” ended in a contract dispute, Winston noted, Baker was ready to strike out on his own, “to learn more

than that two-by-four town could teach him.”8 For two years Baker wandered throughout Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana, working as a machinist in various towns until an

38

encounter with a vaudeville magician changed his life. Baker be-

NORMAN

BAKER

came fascinated with “Professor” Flint’s “powers of mental suggestion.” Determined to “outdo Flint,” Baker organized his own vaudevillian troupe, featuring the magic and mind-reading feats of Madame Pearl Tangley: The Mental Marvel.’ The performances “were all along psychological lines,” Baker later said. One stunt, he recalled, presented an “electric man,” jolted with “enough electricity to melt iron bars while held in ice water.”10 The group polished the act for years in small towns throughout the Midwest before hitting the big time, signing a contract in New York with Marcus Loew Theater’s vaudeville circuit. After ten years on the road, Baker married his second Madame Tangley and returned home to Muscatine in 1914 to begin a profitable career as a machinist and an inventor.!! By the late

1910s,

he boasted

that

his patented

air Calliaphone,

a

portable organ instrument run on air pressure, grossed nearly two hundred thousand dollars in a single year.!2 Other ventures reportedly realized similar success. Although he freely admitted that he “couldn’t paint to save his life,” aggressive marketing helped his correspondence art school to rake in seventy-five thousand dollars over a three-year span.! In the early 1920s he launched a mail-order business that was soon selling everything from coffee to overalls. Intrigued by nursery-seed salesman Ww

Henry Field’s use of his Shanandoah, Iowa, radio station KFNF

to sell mail-order products, Baker quickly appreciated the advertising prospects of radio.4 In 1924 he approached Muscatine’s Chamber of Commerce with plans to build a radio station. In return for free utilities and taxes, he promised to “lift Muscatine from being a little burg lost in the Mississippi cornfields, to a city the whole world knows about.”!5 Unsuspecting of the notoriety Baker’s radio station would eventually bring to Muscatine, the chamber consented, thus clearing the way for the construction of KTNT a year later. Baker crafted an image for his new station that appealed to rural people frustrated by urban society. He asserted that radio officials had ridiculed his dream of establishing a station in “the

39

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

wilds of Iowa.” But rural underdog that he was, Baker ignorea

his urban critics and announced that he would make KTNT “the most popular station in the United States.”1© He assured listeners that KTNT would provide the “honest-to-goodness” small-town radio they craved as opposed to the “monotonous and highbrow” programming common among large city stations.!7 “The listening public is not eager [for] . . . Jazz orchestras and soprano singing,” Baker told Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in late 1925, “and there is no use deceiving ourselves, thinking that

they aren1° Wanting an easily recognizable station name with flair, Baker had secured the call letters KTNT. The acronym served a dual purpose: KTNT played on the veracity of his Naked Truth broadcasts and also suggested dynamite. Constructed in Spanish-style architecture, the station stood majestically on a high bluff known as KTNT Hill, overlooking Muscatine to the west and the Mississippi River to the east. Although originally licensed for a five-hundred-watt transmitter, KTNT regularly broadcast at the ten-thousand-watt range. When the inspectors came,

as former KTNT

announcer

Adam

Reinemund

remem-

bered, the engineer atop KTNT Hill would spot their car at the “head of the driveway.” “By the time the fellows got up there, the dials were all registering five hundred watts.”!9 “Apparently, he has a freak station,” remarked a suspicious W. D. Randall of Muscatine in 1926.70 Indeed, listeners from as far as Pennsylvania,

Manitoba, Hawaii,

and in one tuned

long-distance

in Baker’s

reception contest,

“five-hundred-watt”

even

broadcasts

on

their radio sets.*! In 1928 Baker received permission to expand KTNT’s power to ten thousand watts, enabling his broadcasts to

40

reach into the homes of 1 million listeners within a 100-mile radius of Muscatine.?2 Baker’s flamboyant style contributed to his radio appeal. Although his formal education had ended as a sophomore in high school, years as a vaudeville performer had honed his speaking abilities and performance skills. He was a “dynamic and power-

NORMAN

BAKER

ful speaker,” remembered Reinemund. Catering to a predominantly rural audience, Baker scheduled his daily talks for the supper hour, when farmers would be in from the fields. Starting at 6:00 P.M. Reinemund took the microphone and set the stage for Baker’s talk. “I was a past master of building the great Norman Baker,” he recalled. He reminded farmers that Baker “saved them

money” and “protected” them from the evils of urban society. “T’d build him up,” Reinemund said, “and at the proper moment, Norman would come in: ‘Good evening my friends,’ and then we'd go.”23 Baker regularly used his new mouthpiece to disparage Herbert Hoover for “the chaos in radio today.”24 However, such attacks ended in 1928 when Hoover emerged as the Republican nominee for president. Seeking future political favors, Baker then marshaled KTNT support for Hoover’s presidential campaign. Hoover’s

challenger,

Democrat

Alfred

Smith,

represented

the

perfect target for Baker’s populist rhetoric. With his New York City Tammany Hall background, Irish Catholic heritage, and proalcohol views, Smith stirred rural emotions and prejudices against urban society to new heights. Hoover, on the other hand, an Iowa native, established his image as a farm boy “steeped in the traditions of rural America.”25 A vote for Smith, argued one western Illinois editor, would “open the gates of graft to Tammany and its cohorts,” but a vote for Hoover affirmed the “home and the safeguarding of the same against the aggression of the liquor and vice lords” behind Smith’s candidacy.”° Playing on common rural midwestern prejudices against Smith,

Baker’s

KTNT

broadcasts

maligned

the New

Yorker’s

Catholicism, Irish-immigrant heritage, and Tammany Hall connection.2” Baker’s remarks hastened a sharp telegram from the Democratic Party’s radio advertising agency: “MANY COMPLAINTS RECEIVED DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE RE INTOLERANT RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDA EMANATING FROM YOUR STATION AGAINST SMITH REPETITION OF SUCH SUBJECT MATTER GROUND FOR CANCELLATION RE-

MAINING FARM NETWORK PROGRAMS.”28

4]

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

Not intimidated, Baker proudly sent to Hoover a copy of the telegram and considered it a compliment “to the force and power of KINT.” “Bedamned as far as I am concerned,” Baker assured

Hoover: “no one is going to bluff me into the silencing of my station for a few dollars of advertising.”?? Baker later boasted that “Hoover and his campaign managers gave [Baker] credit for carrying the Midwest for him.”°0 After his 6 November victory, Hoover cabled Baker to express his “appreciation” for KTNT’s support.3! Baker’s campaigning earned him a private White House meeting with Hoover in September 1930. During their talk, Baker urged the president to abolish the Federal Radio Commission, which had governed the radio industry since 1927, and officially to examine

his cancer

treatment. “Give me some time to investigate this,” Hoover reportedly responded, before ushering his visitor out the door.?? Although the president never acted on either proposal, he did agree to a publicity stunt in 1930 helping to launch Baker’s tabloid newspaper, the Midwest Free Press. Remote control wires between Muscatine and Washington enabled the president to start Baker’s new three hundred thousand dollar printing press by pushing a golden key. A front-page photo of the president commemorated the act and helped to start the newspaper off with a bang. The ceremony, noted one editorial in the Des Moines

42

Register, “has given Baker the opportunity to convey the impression to his followers that although numerous groups are ‘conspiring’ against him, President Hoover stands on his side.”33 By the late 1920s KTNT stood as one of the most popular radio stations in the Midwest. Baker boasted that in 1927 alone it had received roughly one hundred and fifty thousand fan letters.54 Tangible evidence of Baker’s appeal could be seen in the crowds of area listeners who converged in Muscatine to picnic on KTNT grounds during summer Sundays and holidays. Normal crowds of five thousand to ten thousand ballooned to a reported fifty thousand on 12 May 1931.35 As the crowds arrived, Baker moved KTNT’s broadcasting equipment outside so he could in-

NORMAN

BAKER

A weekend gathering outside Baker’s KTNT studio during the late 1920s. (Courtesy Muscatine Art Center.)

teract with the people. In between his radio talks, KTNT’s troop of comedians and musicians performed live, to the enjoyment of those in attendance as well as of listeners at home. Baker gleefully anticipated the economic windfall afforded by the large KTNT crowds. Always an opportunist, he catered to visitors with his KTNT chain store, souvenirs, restaurant, excur-

sion boat, and six-pump gas station, which advertised the cheapest prices in town. According to Reinemund, such enterprises netted Baker three thousand dollars on an average summer Sunday.%° As the crowds rolled in, Baker’s charged rhetoric reached new heights. But even as his audiences grew, people began to criticize his daily broadcasts, which spewed personal invective in various directions. His targets frequently included local business competitors, unsympathetic newspapers, and all practitioners of conventional medicine. In one broadcast Baker accused the Muscatine Journal's editors of “visit[ing] other men’s wives” and implored listeners to cancel their subscriptions to the newspaper.

43

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

He referred to the State University of Iowa hospital as a “slaughterhouse” and labeled Iowa’s director of health investigation a philanderer, “lower than a rattlesnake” and “worse than a yellow dog.”37 For a time he even berated Muscatine’s Parent Teacher Association as a Communist organization.%® His remarks sparked a flurry of complaints to Hoover, as secretary of commerce, and to the FRC. “No one escapes his tongue,” complained a listener.3? Fed up with Baker’s incessant tirades, another Muscatine resident pleaded with Hoover for “some kind of relief from our present affliction.”40 Not only were Baker’s harangues repulsive, as R. C. Conybeare of Cedar Rapids reported, his programs were “no longer necessary” since “there is now in our city one of his wonderful calliaphones and whenever we feel like listening in to his station we can open our windows and get his music directly off the street.”4! Undeterred by such complaints, Baker wrote Hoover: “Because my programs could not be dictated by the industrial financial group; because I insisted on arranging my programs to suit the demand of the laborer and farmer; and exercised ‘free speech’ on questions of public importance, it brought upon me the wrath of some few local citizens.”42 Criticisms of KTNT increased in 1929 as Baker used the radio to promote his claims for a cancer cure. In April 1930 the AMA called upon the FRC to take action against both KTNT and station KFKB, owned and operated by the Kansas goat-gland charlatan John R. Brinkley.43 “The Federal Radio Commission must be depended on by people in other states to spare them the possibility of hearing the obscene mouthing and pernicious promotions that are broadcast by the stations that these quacks dominate,” wrote

44

Dr. Morris

Fishbein,

editor of the Journal of the

American Medical Association. “If these authoritative bodies do not function for the good of the people, our government must find some system that will.”44 Spurred by such condemnation, the FRC began to investigate Baker and KTNT. After months of monitoring Baker’s broadcasting, the FRC felt it had grounds to deny KTNT’s application for licensing re-

NORMAN

BAKER

newal in spring 1931. Summing up his case against KTNT, the chief examiner for the FRC stated, “Since the home is the principal listening post in the broad field of radio reception, nothing which tends to vulgarity, immorality, or indecency has any place in radio communications.”45 On 13 May 1931 the FRC officially refused KTNT’s license renewal, forcing Baker off the air a month

later. Irrevocably damaged by the station’s closing, he never again realized the popularity he had found behind the microphone. Nevertheless, he continually found other means to keep himself in the limelight. Years before KTNT’s closing, Baker had begun a campaign on behalf of alternative medicine. In writings and broadcasts he portrayed himself as a self-taught expert on healing, offering home remedies for various ailments. For treating lockjaw, he prescribed, “Heat common turpentine and put it on the sore, that’s all there is to it.”46 The way to cure appendicitis, he suggested in another KTNT broadcast, “is with a hot onion poultice. Rub the abdomen downward; if the appendix is kinked, it will straighten out.”47

The danger of aluminum poisoning was a frequent topic of Baker’s health program over KTNT. He warned listeners to avoid use of aluminum utensils, canned products, and water pipes. “Throw all aluminumware out of the kitchen,” he urged over KTNT

in 1930; “I don’t care

what

you paid for it, throw

it

away.”48 He charged that Secretary of the Treasury and Alcoa owner Andrew Mellon had a financial interest in ensuring government ambivalence toward the aluminum danger. Baker even accused Mellon, whom he dubbed the “aluminum overlord,” of

initiating income tax audits of his Muscatine enterprises in retaliation for KTNT’s outspoken criticisms of aluminum ware.” In mid-1929 Baker capitalized on the financial possibilities of an alternative cancer treatment. While searching for a sensational story to print in his new magazine, TNT, he settled on an investigative report on the cancer cure offered at the Charles Ozias Cancer Clinic in Kansas City, Missouri. Baker and TNT’s

45

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

editing staff selected five patients to test the Ozias treatmeni.”! After reportedly witnessing miraculous recoveries in these five cases, TNT printed its findings and announced that Baker’s new cancer-cure hospital, the Baker Institute, would use a perfected

form of the Ozias treatment. In December 1929 TNT advertised that cancer was “curable without operation, radium, or x-ray” at Baker’s hospital in Muscatine.52 Treatments involved “secret and special exclusive” cures for internal and external cancer as well as for other medical problems, ranging from tuberculosis to constipation. As did Brinkley, Baker charged that modernization had increased Americans’ susceptibility to illness. “Too many of us have deviated from nature’s gardens and live our lives from tin cans and fancy labeled boxes,” he warned. A poor diet, vaccinations, and the use of alu-

minum cooking utensils, he explained, caused cancer by “robb[ing]” tissue of the “proper blood supply or nourishment.”°9 He claimed that his treatments, which included natural ingredients such as roots, barks, and herbs, helped “purify the blood and tone up the system.” “When the blood is pure,” he proclaimed, “disease cannot exist.”54 Baker’s hospital provided roughly one hundred beds and a staff of chiropractors, osteopaths, and diploma-mill M.D.s advertised as “masters of their chosen profession.”5> Although Baker tried to solicit graduates from the State University of lowa Medical School, most employees had little if any formal medical training. The hospital’s general manager, for example, R. A. Bellows, was a former barber from Rockford, Illinois, who had impressed

46

Baker after winning a letter-writing contest through KTNT.% In spring 1930 Baker announced that he had hired Harry Hoxsey, a twenty-nine-year-old cancer healer from central Illinois. Although the partnership soon dissolved, Hoxsey’s regional celebrity gave additional recognition to the institute. Since Baker lacked a license to practice medicine himself, he claimed to leave the supervision of treatments to the discretion of his doctors. However, in 1930 the Iowa State Board of Health ac-

NORMAN

BAKER

Doctors; .~ - RALLY Salutes:

i stale

»oatle stands like a beaten anvil

to resist the tyranny of the Medical Mor ep he Medicol: Menspely

“Hoxsey’s coe ig stronger than money, brute force or official authority. He has the power to heal.”

HARRY A TRIBUTE,

INCLUDING

i

M. HOXSEY A REPRINT OF THE FAMOUS

ARTICLE FROM "MAN'S MAGAZINE”

Siege Airy Cervwiy nen

HBO

Su da-$S"

The American Rally chooses its candidate for vice president of the United States. (Courtesy American Medical Association Archives.)

141

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

American Rally supporters applauded their presidential hopefuls. A woman from Plymouth, Massachusetts, urged Langer to keep battling: “There is no power on earth strong enough to crush TRUTH—and the AMA and every other organization will do well to recognize the fact.”1"1 Convinced that Hoxsey and Langer would “substitute the Golden Rule for the Rule of Gold that now prevails,” a Nebraska woman pledged one hundred dollars to their campaign. The road to victory would be hard, noted another follower from Michigan. “Both of them probably have to use their fists and clubs to get results. The enemy wants to destroy the truth. .. . I hope Dr. Hoxsey and Senator Langer will go over the top. God help them.”"2 Despite such enthusiasm, the proposed Langer-Hoxsey ticket quickly fell apart. In November 1955 thirty delegates renamed the American Rally the Pioneer Party and nominated Burr McCloskey, its executive secretary and a personal friend of Hoxsey, to replace him on the ticket. The Pioneer Party’s platform, which “repudiated war and conscription” and urged a return

to “constitutional

government,”

a “golden

rule

foreign

policy,” and free health care, failed to attract a significant following during the campaign of 1956.!!3 One month before the election, Langer dropped out of the race and endorsed President Eisenhower’s reelection for another term.!!4 Although Hoxsey’s associations with far-right politicians kept him in the headlines, much of his support was related to popular resentment of intellectual elites. Hoxsey’s boosters lashed out at “swivel chair” experts who denounced irregular healers and their patients.!!5 “Imagine a physician refusing to cure [the sick] simply because the drug had been found by a layman,” a California couple wrote Dr. Walter Alvarez of the Mayo Clinic in 1956. “This is silly and beyond belief; and yet of late people so well educated that they could write a neat letter have been telling me that this is what [the medical profession] is doing on a big scale.’”"116

142

The tendency of scientifically oriented people to characterize those who oppose progressive health measures as ignorant ex-

THE POPULARITY

OF QUACKS

AMONG

HEALTHY

AMERICANS

tremists served only to strengthen the opposition.!!7 Indeed, when

the AMA’s

official mouthpiece,

JAMA,

insinuated

that

Hoxsey’s supporters were either “stupid” or dishonest, the organization received a flood of angry letters.!!8 “This is pretty raw language,” wrote one man. “I am not stupid and I am not dishonest. . .. When you reply to this letter, will you be so kind as to explain the real reasons why you so fiercely object, even to the point of crude dishonesty and rabid name-calling, to giving Hoxsey an official investigation?” 119 In the final analysis,

the appeal of Brinkley,

Baker,

and

Hoxsey among healthy Americans was neither universal nor consistent. Numerous people viewed their antics as annoying rather than entertaining or psychologically uplifting. Some Del Rio residents grew weary of Brinkley’s powerful broadcasts buzzing through their telephone receivers.!29 Nor did everyone appreciate the reality that Baker’s station, KTNT, drowned out “the wonderful musical programs and artists” offered by urban chain stations.!2! Even Hoxsey’s extravagant rallies and band-led parades annoyed some people, as happened in Portage, Pennsylvania, in 1954. Despite an advertising blitz of fifty thousand handbills, the anticipated crowd of ten thousand never arrived;

fewer than two thousand showed up.!22 Others found quacks’ commercialism offensive. It was the merchants of Muscatine, Iowa, who led the campaign to run Baker out of town. “They were good, high grade, conservative business people and Norman was anything else but. They didn’t want any part of him,” recalled Adam Reinemund.!% Similarly, a reporter found that a “carping minority” in Del Rio thought that Brinkley was giving their town a bad reputation and wanted his “weekly wad of fresh money, however handsome, [to go] somewhere

else.”124 Citizens

of Taylorville, Illinois, also found

the

negative publicity surrounding their Hoxsey clinic too much to take. Local merchants, who initially had endorsed the venture,

reneged on their support when area newspapers began reporting the deaths of numerous patients under Hoxsey’s care.!?°

143

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

Anger could also erupt when the economy of quackery was abruptly taken away. When Brinkley bulldozed his hospital buildings in Milford in 1933 and headed for southern Texas, em-

bittered locals retaliated by smearing a mural of their former benefactor with yellow paint. Asked by a reporter what citizens now thought about their previous petition to rename the town Brinkley, Milford’s mayor, C. E. Lacer, “answered with an elo-

quent shrug.” 126 Election results suggested that some people questioned whether Brinkley, Baker, and Hoxsey were genuine political reformers. Unable to inspire a broad-based grassroots movement to rival established party candidates, neither Baker, in his bid for Iowa governor in 1932 and U.S. senator in 1936, nor Hoxsey, as a

144

third party vice-presidential candidate, was a serious political contender. Entertaining as they were, the two men attracted few supporters beyond their minority of true believers. Most voters simply saw more promise in conventional politicians than in the bombastic campaigning of upstart politico-medicos. Still, Brinkley’s success in attracting voters during his 1930 and 1932 campaigns for governor of Kansas cannot be discounted. However, the extent to which his showing represented a protest vote against the major parties’ inability to combat the depression is unclear. “The stage was set” for Brinkley, observed the Kansas City Star, following the 1930 election. “Large masses of voters were sore and disgruntled over economic conditions and the price of wheat. They were in a mood to kick the table over... and Brinkley gave them their opportunity.” 127 Indeed, many grassroots Americans wondered whether Brinkley, Baker, and Hoxsey represented the interests of the people or their own selfish desires. Charges that Brinkley was “high hatting” on the campaign trail and that he looked more like a “well-fed bank president” than a midwestern farmer weakened his status among Kansans.!8 Questions of credibility also hindered Baker’s acceptance among Iowans. An article in the Manchester Press noted that, before his Farm—Labor campaign for

THE POPULARITY

governor,

much

“Baker’s

OF QUACKS

AMONG

interest in the farmer

was

HEALTHY

limited

AMERICANS

to how

he could sell him.”!2° Indeed, wrote J. W. C. Hesser of

Nichols,

Iowa, to the secretary

of commerce

in 1926, Baker’s

“love of the common people” was no different from that of larger chain radio stations. They both “expect to secure a return... through advertising, although [Baker] seems loath to admit the fact.”150 It is also worth noting that members of Baker’s own United Farm Federation were disturbed when he became the association’s lifetime secretary. After all, members noted, the UFFA

Was an organization for “farmers only,” and Baker had never been a farmer.!3! Ultimately, Brinkley’s, Baker’s, and Hoxsey’s extremism tainted their public image. Though some disgruntled Americans reveled in their brashness, most recoiled on hearing them slander respected politicians, business leaders, doctors, and minorities.

“Tt is very unfortunate that a person of Mr. Baker’s politics and nature should have been able to secure a station, by means

of

which he could publicly malign everyone and everything which does not meet his approval,” complained an Iowan in 1926.19? A decade later, Brinkley’s and Baker’s ventures into native Fascism isolated them among the far right. Although some people still maintained that Hoxsey’s ties to Nazi “scoundrels” were irrelevant, after World

War

II and the Holocaust,

nativist rhetoric

seemed particularly distasteful.93 Even during the Red Scare, when conspiracies and red-baiting were in vogue, such conservatives as Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Protestant evangelist Billy Graham condemned the bigotry spread by Winrod, Langer, and Hoxsey himself.!94 Although their appeal was isolated among the fringe, Brinkley, Baker, and Hoxsey attracted a vociferous minority of farmers, conservative

Christians,

small-town

citizens,

and

far-right ac-

tivists who warmed to their showmanship, politics, and commercial influence. Though limited in numbers, quacks’ supporters were dedicated and loyal. They held political rallies, organized petition campaigns, and listened to quacks’ radio stations en

145

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

masse. Such efforts proved invaluable to the quest of the three men for broader acceptance and legitimacy. Quacks’ healthy supporters helped battle for “medical freedom,” and their devotion to the cause convinced others in need of medical treatment to give Brinkley’s, Baker’s, and Hoxsey’s cures a try.

146

Conclusion

By 1970 John Brinkley, Norman Baker, and Harry Hoxsey had faded from the national scene. Still, thirty years after Brinkley’s death in 1942, a handful of former patients and acquaintances reminisced about his medical abilities. “I could never be more grateful to anyone than Dr. Brinkley,” a former Milford, Kansas,

resident said. “They called him a quack and that just breaks my heart.” Brinkley “saved the life of my husband and my daughter,”

iA

added

a woman

didn’t matter to wealthy.”! Some organ transplant procedure. “[My

from

Overland

Park, Kansas.

“Money

him; he took care of the poor as well as the admirers also pointed to modern advances in surgery as vindication of Brinkley’s goat-gland husband was] forty-five years ahead of his

time,” declared Minnie Brinkley in 1973, three years before her

own death. “They said at the time that no foreign body could live inside a human, but just look what they’re doing now!” In the late 1970s, residents of Del Rio, Texas, where Brinkley

made his home during the last decade of his life, celebrated their association with the controversial doctor. Memories of the charity and tourism he brought to the town bolstered his reputation. “So many people . . . loved Dr. Brinkley very much,” asserted a local museum curator. “Famous people from all over, including governors, visited him here; and he [took] care of the needy,”

added Flo Cadena, a real-estate broker handling the sale of the Brinkley mansion, listed for $250,000.3 Longtime

residents of Muscatine,

lowa, had more

trouble

coming to terms with Baker’s impact on their community. The

147

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

razing of the KTNT studio in 1968, and of Baker’s downtown hospital a decade later, stirred memories

of the turmoil he had

generated. It was a touchy subject, according to Max Churchill, a local historian. Many people hoped to forget Baker completely.* Some residents, however, spoke of him and of KTNT with fondness.

“That

was

our

entertainment,”

recalled

Eunice

Tobias.

“That was an evening out—to go to the radio station on the hill.”° A few locals, such as Fred Mannhardt, a former employee of KTNT,

still believed that Norman

“He did cure some

Baker was

a genuine healer.

cancer,” said Mannhardt

in 1974. “He had

something . . . Norman proved that.”6 Hoxsey also retained his share of disciples after his retirement in the late 1950s. Indeed, thousands of cancer sufferers continued

to receive

his

treatments

through

Mildred

Nelson,

Hoxsey’s former head nurse, who opened her own clinics in Utah and California during the early 1960s. After two court injunctions halted her practice in the United States, she relocated in the Mexican border town of Tijuana, a haven for various rene-

gade doctors and irregular healers.? Drawn by the legend of Hoxsey and the promise of his cure, hundreds of cancer sufferers crossed the border each year to visit Nelson’s Bio-Medical Center, until her death following a stroke in January 1999.8 In recent

years,

Ken

Ausubel,

an

investigative

journalist

with an interest in botanical medicine, has helped revive interest in the Hoxsey treatment. In 1987 Ausubel portrayed Hoxsey as an embattled crusader for medical freedom in his documentary film, Hoxsey: How Healing Becomes a Crime. As a follow-up to it, Ausubel published When Healing Becomes a Crime (2000), which

again characterized Hoxsey as an “unjust victim” of the “shadow side” of orthodox medicine.? Reviving an old argument, he contended that Hoxsey had never received a fair investigation until he and a handful of naturopathic practitioners had taken up the case. Their research, Ausubel claimed, proved that components of Hoxsey’s formula, including licorice root, prickly ash, and buckthorn, actually possessed genuine “anticancer” qualities.10

148

He concluded, as Judge Atwell had in the 1952 case Hoxsey v.

CONCLUSION

Fishbein et al., that Hoxsey’s remedy was not only as effective as orthodox treatments against cancer but also less destructive.!! In recent decades, rising health-care costs, diminished access to doctors, and deteriorating hospital care have created a ripe environment for quackery to flourish.!2 In 1992 a House of Representatives subcommittee estimated that one of every ten dollars spent on health care ended up in the hands of a quack. The subcommittee figured the total annual loss to health fraud at $70 billion. “The crooks have gotten greedier and they have gotten smarter,” Congressman Ron Wyden commented.

While “charla-

tans are using state-of-the-art technology and new wave marketing ploys to ply their trade, . . . the Government,” he concluded, “seems to be in the regulatory Dark Ages.”15 Quackery’s pitch may be more high tech, but its clientele has remained as diverse as ever. In 1994 the National Institute on Aging found that 60 percent of all victims of health-care fraud were senior citizens.!+ However, a recent FDA pamphlet warned that teenagers had become “fertile ground for quacks” as well.!5 And studies show that increases in quackery have cut across demographic lines. Men, women, children, and the elderly today support dubious treatments in larger numbers than ever before. Recent findings also reveal that members of “plain people” religious sects still seek unorthodox cures as viable health-care alternatives. A Kansas City Star study in 1996 estimated that Amish,

Hutterites,

and conservative

Mennonites

made

up as

much as 10 percent of all patients of Mexico’s bevy of bordertown quacks. “Deliberately secluded from much of modern life and rarely schooled beyond the eighth grade, plain people don’t easily sort the medically remarkable from the clearly impossible,” reported the Star.16 “Some of them who come here don’t even know what our methods are until they arrive,” said Harlan Dismuke, the proprietor of a dietary clinic denounced by the American Medical Association. “But once they’re here, it’s something that fits with their nature.”!7 Nor have increased urbanization, education, and economic

prosperity diminished Americans’ desire for unorthodox cures.

149

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

In 1988 sociologists at Montclair State College found that middleincome suburbanites living in western Essex County, New Jersey, sought all sorts of pseudomedical remedies. Meredith McGuire, the study’s principal investigator, concluded that the “acceptability of belief in alternative healing systems among middleclass persons belies the notion that marginal medicine is characteristic of the lower classes, a remnant of folk culture wan-

ing as education and socioeconomic prospects increase.”18 As was the case during the era of Brinkley, Baker, and Hoxsey, contemporary

advocates

of alternative medicine

have

remained tied to the political right. The Internet website for the ultraconservative John Birch Society, for example, recently recommended health-care books, which, according to one observer,

highlighted “outrageous examples of the efforts of the government and other health authorities to prevent [doctors] from fulfilling the desire of patients to select the kind of treatment they desire.”19 John Birchers have also supported the Committee for Freedom of Choice in Medicine, an organization formed in 1972

following the arrest and prosecution of John A. Richardson, a California physician who prescribed laetrile, an alleged treatment for cancer derived from apricot pits and almonds.”° During the 1990s, the National

Health Federation

(NHF),

which Hoxsey helped organize in the mid-1950s, denounced government opposition to unorthodox cures as undemocratic and monopolistic. The organization’s mouthpiece, the NHF Bulletin, published articles supporting unorthodox treatments, including Hoxsey’s, as well as other articles questioning such proven health measures as food processing, immunization, and

150

pasteurization of milk. According to Stephen Barrett, a public health advocate and antiquack crusader, NHF members remained “very active in the political arena,” waging lawsuits against government agencies, sponsoring legislation limiting health-care regulation, and initiating letter-writing campaigns urging others to join the fight against the medical conspiracy.?! Propaganda for Ed Skilling, a healer using electromagnetics

CONCLUSION

who was investigated by Congress in 1992, also catered to the paranoia of right-wing extremists. An article published in the Journal of the United States Psychotronics Association claimed that Communists used the World Health Association as a front in order to wage biological warfare against the United States, spreading plagues such as AIDS, cancer, and sleeping sickness under the guise of a vaccination program to eradicate smallpox. “Unless we move immediately to affect a total cure,” the authors warned, Nikita Krushchev’s prophecy that Communism

would

“bury” the United States “would soon be fulfilled.” According to the article, there was but one hope—electromagnetic medicine, which allegedly “negated the structured critters” of all viruses and cancers.?2 Although offbeat cures have long appealed to the far right, since the 1960s such cures have begun to attract advocates from the left as well. Alternative medicine played a prominent role in the Human

Be In, the counterculture’s

“union of love and ac-

tivism” between hippies and political radicals, held at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in January 1967. From Allen Ginsberg’s blessing the health of festival-goers with a Hindu mantra to Hare Krishna’s free distribution of an organic diet so that everyone could commune with nature, the message of alternative health was ubiquitous. Mukundah Das Adhikery, an Indian guru and a contributing editor to the Oracle, a Haight-Ashbury newspaper, urged Americans to embrace the “New Science of Health” as a means to achieve greater consciousness, vitality, and inner peace. Popularized in the United States as part of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, such alternative techniques as yoga, acupuncture, and meditation have continued to influence the health-care

practices of liberals into the new century. Because alternative healers have been open to multicultural healing traditions and because they rival mainstream physicians, long perceived as wealthy elitists, their appeal has increased among the left.” In recent years the far right and far left have formed an uneasy alliance over the issue of health care. According to Michael

= 151

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

Goldstein, a professor of public health and sociology at UCLA, “It has become difficult to predict where on the political spectrum alternative medicine may draw support.”4 Indeed, trade shows featuring alternative medicine attract militia members and New Age liberals alike. Even in Washington the two most prominent supporters of alternative medicine, U.S. senators Tom Harkin of Iowa and Orin Hatch of Utah, hail from opposite ends of the political spectrum. In 1993 Hatch, a conservative Republican, introduced a bill that greatly restricted the FDA’s oversight

of herbal remedies and dietary supplements. The same year, Harkin, a liberal Democrat

and a two-time presidential candi-

date, successfully campaigned to increase funding for the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Office of Alternative Medicine

(OAM). Harkin did not stop there. According to Joseph Jacobs, director of the OAM, the senator, who chaired the NIH’s appropriations committee, pressured Jacobs into appointing candidates to an OAM advisory panel who were openly hostile to the medical establishment. Convinced that the “Harkinites’” plans for the OAM to initiate hasty field trials on numerous unorthodox treatments would not hold up to the rigors of scientific objectivity, Jacobs resigned in protest.” Still, the OAM, renamed the National

Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM)

in 1998, continued its assignment to investigate unorthodox treatments neglected by mainstream medicine, including beepollen

supplements,

electrochemical

currents,

intercessory

prayer, and even Hoxsey’s treatment for cancer.?6 In 1999 Dr. Mary Ann Richardson, a professor at the University of Texas at Houston and a program director for the NCCAM, headed a government-sponsored pilot study to test the feasibility of three alternative cancer clinics, including Mildred Nelson’s Bio-Medical Center in Tijuana. Richardson’s team determined that the five-year survival status of 149 patients treated for cancer by Nelson in early 1992 included 68 deaths, 17 survivors, and

152

64 unknown. Echoing the findings of the National Cancer Insti-

CONCLUSION

tute fifty years earlier, the assessment concluded that a full scientific feasibility study on the use of the Hoxsey treatment at Nelson’s clinic was not possible, due to incomplete patient records. For example, the clinic provided pathology reports for only 43.6 percent of the 149 patients studied.?7 Richardson’s concern over incomplete records demonstrated the NCCAM’s new attention to scientific standards. In February 2000, Dr. Stephen Straus, the new NCCAM

director, announced

his intention to apply “the same designs that are used in definitive studies of conventional practice” to alternative medicine, including the use of random double-blinded trials. “Since gaining acceptance for alternative medicine is the objective,” he said, “it

is important to convince physicians, scientists, and pharmacologists . . . that studies have been done well and that the answers are as definitive as possible.” No longer could alternative medicine rely on anecdotes: “The plural of anecdote is not evidence.”?8 In response to the NCCAM’s new stance, both the FDA and the AMA softened their positions against alternative therapies. In November 2000 Harvard University, once a bastion of allopathic medicine, opened a Division of Research and Education

in Comparative and Integrative Medical Therapies.”? The increase in the NCCAM’s budget, from $19.5 million in

1998 to $68.7 million in 2000, was reflective of the general public’s growing acceptance of alternative medicine.°° In 1999 a study conducted by the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention found that 69 percent of respondents used some form of alternative medicine.?! According to the AMA, there was a 47 percent increase in the total number of visits to irregular healers between 1990 and 1997.32 Americans spent an estimated $27 million on alternative therapies in 1997 alone. The inclusion of chiropractic, acupuncture,

and massage

therapy in conventional

hospitals and health insurance plans provided further evidence of alternative medicine’s new stature in American society.*4 Once denounced by health-care officials as quackery, alternative med-

icine seemed to have entered the mainstream.

153

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

The recent support behind the NCCAM illustrates the enduring relationship between populism and alternative medicine. With his rolled-up shirtsleeves and invectives against the medical establishment, Senator Harkin calls to mind Brinkley, Baker,

and Hoxsey, whose attacks against greedy M.D.s, unscrupulous politicians, and out-of-touch health agencies also raised doubts about bureaucrats and professional elites.%5 In actuality, alternative medicine and populist rhetoric have often served to camouflage quacks’ criminal nature. Brinkley’s transplant and prostate operations and Baker’s and Hoxsey’s cancer treatments had little if any medical value, and they knew it. Still, they preyed upon the fears of thousands

of Americans

in order to pursue profit,

power, and fame. Yet thousands of their supporters received something in return. Their cures most likely worked as placebos in improving the health and vitality of many true believers. Moreover, thou-

sands of patients, voters, and radio listeners appreciated the entertainment and sense of cultural pride that quacks supplied. For some people, Brinkley, Baker, and Hoxsey offered excitement. For others, their fiery attacks against evil monopolies, conniving Jews, and conspiring Communists provided scapegoats and gave psychological relief to those suffering from hardship and frustration. Disillusioned with conventional leaders’ inability to solve economic and cultural crises, some Americans turned to Brinkley, Baker, and Hoxsey for answers and hope. “Keep whittling away, Brother Baker,” urged a Colorado

154

man,

“and let the chips fall

where they may.”3° Often embedded in the bombastic charges of the three men were kernels of truth. The age of the “good old country doctor... who practiced his profession for the good of humanity is gone,” Baker warned readers of his TNT magazine in 1930. “In his place appears the commercial doctor whose main thought is the Almighty Dollar, and who is peeved because of the fact that his failure to prevent epidemics and cure his patients has brought into the field the drugless healers and other practitioners, cutting

CONCLUSION

down his revenue to such low ebb that the doctors of the medical trust today find it necessary to control the laws and force the public to patronize them.”%” Indeed, the forces of modernity had disrupted the tranquillity of rural culture. Increasingly intrusive government agencies did threaten individual freedom. And many politicians, doctors, and financiers clearly cared little about the

problems

of ordinary

Americans.

Brinkley,

Baker,

and

Hoxsey exploited such perceptions, just as their successors continue to do today.

15D

ot

arn ote 7

: sf

Aes=

a

=

7 _

_—He

'

7

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. “Hoxsey Cancer Treatment,” Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) 160 (14 April 1956): 55. 2. FDA Warning, 4 April 1956, U.S. Department of Health, Educa-

tion, and Welfare. 3. Hoxsey to John Harvey, FDA Deputy Commissioner, 31 January 1957, Box 566, Folder 11, William Langer Papers, Chester Fritz Library, Grand Forks, N. Dak.

4. Ibid. 5. James Harvey Young, American Health Quackery (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 30. 6. Letter to President Eisenhower, 28 February 1957, Box 259, Folder 51, Hoxsey Collection, FDA Archives, Rockville, Md. 7. Ibid., Letter to Larrick, 23 February 1957, Box 259, Folder 50.

8. Dallas Morning News, 17 September 1960. 9. Clarence Moody to Dr. George Crow, 18 May 1955, Box 368, Hoxsey Collection, Historical Health Fraud and Alternative Medicine Collection, AMA Archives, Chicago. 10. Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American

History

(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995) 1-10. By separating populist rhetoric (with a small p) from the Populist reformers of the 1890s, Kazin escaped the snare of the historiographical controversy over the nature of Populism that had begun with the publication of Richard Hofstadter’s Age of Reform in 1955. Hofstadter questioned the progressive historians’ favorable treatment of Populists as righteous crusaders who fought valiantly against the encroachments of a monopolistic plutocracy. It was not that Populists were “foolish or destructive, but only that they had, like so many things in life, an ambiguous character.” Hofstadter exposed a reactionary temperament within the movement. Populists were not champions of democracy, he suggested, but petty capitalists obsessed with their declining status in society. Searching for scapegoats to

ibe

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

vent their frustrations, they served up Jewish Shylocks, Wall Street fi-

nanciers, and foreigners as part of a vast conspiracy against common people. Though Hofstadter admitted that Populism’s paranoia and nativism were

“entirely verbal,” their lineage, he argued, included later

connections with the Ku Klux Klan’s program of bigotry, Henry Ford’s virulent anti-Semitism,

and the “cranky pseudo-conservatism”

of the

1950s, notably “McCarthyism.” See Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Knopf, 1955), 17, 19, 80-81. Other scholars echoed Hofstadter’s conclusions. Peter Viereck, a poet and social critic, observed a direct line between Populists and the follow-

ers of Joseph McCarthy. Victor Ferkiss, a sociologist, agreed that Populism and American Fascism were inexorably linked. In fact, said Ferkiss, “Populist thinking” was “compatible in spirit” with that of “Hitler” as well. Another sociologist, Daniel Bell, concluded that “the radical right of the early 1960s was in no way different from the Populists of the 1890s who for years traded successfully on such simple formulas as ‘Wall Street,’ ‘international bankers,’ and ‘the trusts’ in order to have not only targets but ‘ex-

planations’ for politics.” Once hailed as harbingers of progressive reform, Populists had now become rustic reactionaries. See Peter Viereck, “Revolt Against the Elite,” chapter 7, in The Radical Right, ed. Daniel Bell (Garden

City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964), 172; Victor Ferkiss, “Populist Influences on American Fascism,” Western Political Quarterly 10 (June 1957): 350-51, 356;

Daniel Bell, “The Dispossessed,” chapter 1, in The Radical Right, 3. The assault on Populism did not go unchallenged. During the 1960s and 1970s, younger historians countered that the critics of Populism had obscured the humane character of the movement and overemphasized the nativist and irrational tendencies of its leaders. Further research, they contended, revealed that anti-Semitism, bigotry, and con-

spiracy theories had not been central components of Populism. In fact, argued Walter Nugent, the evidence suggested that Populists had been more “tolerant” and level-headed than the majority of the population during the late nineteenth century. So convincing were Nugent and others in defending Populism that even Hofstadter began to reassess the harshness of his interpretation in the Age of Reform. See, for example, Walter Nugent, The Tolerant Populists: Kansas Populism and Nativism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963); Norman Pollack, “Hofstadter on Populism: A Critique of The Age of Reform,” Journal of Southern History 26 (November 1960): 478-500; C. Vann Woodward, “The Populist Heritage and the Intellectual,” American Scholar 29 (winter 1959): 55-72;

and Robert M. Collins, “The Originality Trap: Richard Hofstadter on Populism,” Journal of American History 76 (June 1989): 150-67.

158

By the late 1970s, the legacy of the Populist movement appeared safe. Revisionism was dead, declared the historian Lawrence Goodwyn. The backlash against Hofstadter had discouraged other historians from

NOTES TO PAGE xiii

studying the agrarian reformers as native-born Fascists. Beginning in the 1980s, however, a group of historians, including Kazin, Leo Ribuffo, and

Alan Brinkley, launched a reappraisal of Hofstadter’s conclusions and once again pursued connections between Populism and later right-wing activists. They proceeded with caution. Hofstadter and his followers, conceded Ribuffo, had “exaggerated bigotry among Populists” and “compounded the error by presuming, instead of proving, that the later far-right agitators acquired their ideas from Populists.” Still, Ribuffo asserted that he had found similarities between Populist rhetoric and that of three anti-Semitic preachers: Gerald Winrod, Gerald L. K. Smith, and

William Dudley Pelley. Alan Brinkley also argued that Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin had “adopted the rhetoric of populist localism, but little of its substance.” Long and Coughlin were not Populists themselves, suggested Brinkley, but had tapped into Populism’s rhetorical legacy, which provided an “elaborate explanation of the inequities of a modern industrial economy.” See Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); Alan Brinkley, “Richard Hofstadter’s The Age of Reform: A Reconsideration,” Reviews in American History 13 (September 1985): 462-80; Michael Kazin, “The Grass-Roots Right: New Histories of U.S. Conservatism in the Twentieth Century,” American Historical Review 97 (February 1992): 136-49; Leo Ribuffo, “Why Is There So Much Con-

servatism in the United States and Why Do So Few Historians Know Anything About It?” American Historical Review 99 (April 1994): 438-49; Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983), 237-40; and Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (New York: Knopf, 1982), 161, 166.

In The Populist Persuasion, Kazin articulated what Ribuffo and Brinkley had already observed. Populist language, he wrote, was neither the property nor the brainchild of the reformers of the 1890s. It was instead a flexible mode of rhetoric that conceived of “ordinary people as a noble assemblage not bounded narrowly by class, viewed their elite opponents as self-serving and undemocratic, and sought to mobilize the former against the latter. . . . To call populist only the People’s Party and its immediate antecedents is to neglect the potent tradition to which insurgents in the late nineteenth century added their own blend of economic dread and missionary zeal” (1-3). 11. Kazin, Populist Persuasion, 9-25.

12. Dan Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 425. 13. Transcript of KTNT broadcast, 15 March 1930, Box 70, Norman Baker Collection, AMA Archives, Chicago.

159

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

14. Publicity (Wichita, Kans.), 2 February 1939. 15. Hofstadter identified the Populist impulse as part of a “paranoid style,” marked by a susceptibility to “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy,” which waxed and waned over time but appeared “all but ineradicable.” See Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 3, 6. 16. Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford, Border Radio (New York: Lime-

light, 1990), 69. 17. Morris Fishbein, A History of the American Medical Association, 1847-1947 (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders , 1947), 503. 18. Warren B. Smith, “Norman Baker—The King of the Quacks,” Iowan 17 (December-January 1958-1959): 16.

19. AMA News, 1 December 1958. 20. Hoxsey: Quacks Who Cure Cancer? (film) (Sante Fe, N.Mex.: Realidad Productions, 1987).

21. See, for example, James Harvey Young, The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America Before Federal Regulation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961); Young, The Medical

Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967); and Stewart H. Holbrook, The Golden Age of Quackery (New York: MacMillan, 1959). 22. The word “quack” evolved from the Dutch word “quacksalver,” meaning to brag, boast, or quack “about the value of one’s salves.” However, it is used here to refer to those within the medical profession who, out of deceit rather than ignorance, made fraudulent claims about the ef-

fectiveness of their cures. See Webster’s New World Dictionary, 2d college ed. (1986), s.v. “Quacksalver”; William T. Jarvis, foreword to Health Smarts:

How to Spot the Quacks, Avoid the Nonsense, and Get the Facts That Affect Your Health, by John Renner, M.D. (Kansas City, Mo.: Health Facts , 1990), ii. 23. See Lester King, American Medicine Comes of Age, 1840-1920 (Chicago: AMA, 1983), and Morris Fishbein, Fads and Quackery in Heal-

ing: An Analysis of the Foibles of the Healing Cults, with Essays on Various Other Peculiar Notions in the Health Field (New York: Blue Ribbon Books,

1982), 24. See J. Stuart Moore, Chiropractic in America: The History of a Medical Alternative (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Walter

Wardwell, “Chiropractors: Evolution to Acceptance,” chapter 7, in Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America, ed. Norman Gevitz (Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988); Gevitz, The D.O.'s: Osteopathic Medicine in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982);

and

Frank

Campion,

The AMA

and

U.S.

Health

Policy Since

1940

(Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1984), 117-25.

160

25. Transcript of KTNT broadcast, 15 March 1930, Norman Baker Collection, Box 70, AMA Archives, Chicago, Illinois.

NOTES

TO PAGES

xiii-5

26. Transcript of KTNT broadcast, 15 March 1930.

1. THE POPULIST POLITICO MEDICO OF KANSAS

1. Kansas City Times, 31 July 1930. 2. Gerald Carson, The Roguish World of Doctor Brinkley (New York: Rinehart, 1960), 137-40. 3. Kansas City Journal—Post, 16 September 1930. 4. Ibid. 5. Kansas City Star, 17 September 1930. The decision was later upheld by the Kansas Supreme Court. See Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Kansas, 15 February 1930-13 June 1930, vol. 130 (Topeka: Kansas State Printing Plant, 1930), 874-84.

6. Kansas City Star, 13 April 1930. 7. Topeka Daily Capital, 2 August 1931. 8. Morris Fishbein, “John R. Brinkley—Quack,” JAMA 90 (14 Jan-

uary 1928): 134, and “Modern Medical Charlatans II,” Hygeia 16 (February 1938): 172. 9. Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), 9-46.

10. Carson, The Roguish World of Doctor Brinkley, 144. 11. John Thomas, “Diamond-Studded John Richard Brinkley, the Goat-Gland Broadcaster of Kansas,” Real America (July 1933): 46. 12. XER radio transcript, undated, in Goat Gland Doctor (film),

David Kendall, producer (Topeka, Kans.: Washburn University, 1986). 13. Donald Copper, “Doctor Brinkley’s Own (August 1933): 5. 14. Kendall, Goat Gland Doctor.

Story,” Radio Stars

15. Clement Wood, The Life of a Man (Kansas City, Mo.: Goshorn, 1934), 68. 16. Ibid., 60. 17. Fishbein, “John R. Brinkley—Quack,” 135.

18. James E. Crawford deposition, John R. Brinkley v. Morris Fishbein, 8 October 1930, Box 108.1, Gerald Carson Papers, Kansas State His-

torical Archives (KSHS), Topeka. 19. Wood, Life of a Man, 73-75.

20. Kansas City Star, 20 April 1930. 21. Walter D. McCaw, Brigadier General, Medical Department, to Arthur Cramp, 1 November 1924, Box 97, John R. Brinkley Papers, AMA

Archives. 22. Francis Chase Jr., Sound and Fury: An Informal History of Broadcasting (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942), 62.

23. Copper, “Doctor Brinkley’s Own Story,” 37.

161

QUACKS

AND CRUSADERS

24. Jack Walker, “The Goat Gland Surgeon: The Story of the Late John R. Brinkley,” Journal of the Kansas Medical Society 57 (December 1956):-750. 25. John Gunn, “John W. Gunn, Staff Writer, Interviews Dr. Brink-

ley, Pioneer in Science of Gland Transplantation; Amazing Record Made in Small Kansas Town, Attracting National

Notice,” Life and Letters 2

(December 1923): 4.

26. Ray Martin (Brinkley’s secretary), flyer for the Brinkley-Jones Hospital Association, September 1923, Box 97, Brinkley Papers. 27. Flyer for the Kansas General Research Hospital, 17 November 1926, Box 96, Brinkley Papers. 28. Gunn, “Interviews Dr. Brinkley,” 1.

29. Ibid., 10. 30. John R. Brinkley, The Brinkley Operation (New York: Macmillan, 1921);3. 31. Brinkley Research Laboratories flyer, 12 November 1921, Box 96, Brinkley Papers. 32. Sydney Flower, The Goat-Gland Transplantation (Chicago: New Thought Book Department, 1921), 24. 33. John R. Brinkley, “The Spark of Life,” October. 1920, in Flower,

The Goat-Gland Transplantation, 86. 34. New Haven Courier, 13 July 1921, miscellaneous newspaper clippings, Box 15-03-05-03, John R. Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives, Topeka. 35. Gunn, “Interviews Dr. Brinkley,” 1.

36. See Don Kirschner, City and Country: Rural Responses to Urbanization in the 1920s (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1970), 232-57.

37. Brinkley-Jones Hospital Association Flyer, September 1923. 38. The Blue Book (Milford, Kans.: Brinkley, 1928), Box 97, Brinkley Collection. 39. Undated transcript of Brinkley broadcast over KFKB, Box 107.2, Brinkley Papers. 40. Wood, Life of aMan, 225. 41. Kendall, Goat Gland Doctor. 42. Chase, Sound and Fury, 67.

43. Kansas City Journal—Post, 27 April 1930. 44. Copper, “Dr. Brinkley’s Own Story,” 37. 45. Walker, “Goat Gland Surgeon,” 752.

46. Transcript of radio broadcasts for Hassig v. Brinkley (July 1930), 222, Box 107.3, Brinkley Papers.

162

47. “Five Hundred Druggists Become Members of Dr. Brinkley’s Pharmaceutical Association,” Midwestern Druggist (April 1930): 14. 48. Memorandum to “Brinkley Druggists,” April 1930, Box 107.3, Brinkley Papers. 49. Kansas City Star, 16 April 1930.

NOTES TO PAGES 6-15

50. Ibid. 51. Chase, Sound and Fury, 73. 52. Brinkley promotional material, 1923, Box 108.1, Carson Papers. 53. Transcript

of KFKB

broadcast,

26 October

1929, Box

107.2,

Brinkley Papers. 54. Letter from C. C. James to John R. Brinkley, 17 December 1932,

Box 107.2, Brinkley Papers. 55. John R. Brinkley to Mrs. Frank Bell, 14 March

1928, Box 97,

Brinkley Collection. 56. John R. Brinkley to Samuel Wilcock, 22 December

1928, Box

108.1, Brinkley Papers.

57. Kansas City Star, 7 May 1930. 58. “John R. Brinkley—Quack,” JAMA 94 (26 April 1930): 1139. 59. Don B. Slechta, “Dr. John R. Brinkley: A Kansas Phenomenon” (Master’s thesis, Kansas State Teachers College, 1952), 94. 60. Kansas City Star, 6 May 1930.

61. Ibid., 7 May 1930. 62. Ibid., 13 April 1930. 63. H. S. Lamdin

to the AMA,

24 March

1930, Box 91, Brinkley

Collection. 64. Ernest Dewey, “What the Medical Steam Roller Did to Dr. Brinkley,” Plain Talk Magazine 8 (April 1932): 1. 65. Thomas, “Diamond-Studded John R. Brinkley,” 84. 66. Kansas City Star, April 13, 1930. Brinkley also suggested that the Star was envious of KFKB because it had outrivaled its flagship radio station WDAF. 67. Wichita Beacon, 20 April 1930. Taking another approach, Brinkley filed libel suits against both Fishbein and the Kansas City Star. District Judge C. M. Clark dismissed the Fishbein case in February 1934 after Brinkley failed to post one thousand dollars security for court costs. Brinkley went to trial against the Kansas City Star in district court in 1934. The jury’s decision upheld McDonald’s reporting and denied Brinkley any financial award. See the Kansas City Star, 26 January 1934, and the Topeka Capital, 17 February 1934. 68. Kansas City Star, 13 April 1930. 69. KFKB Broadcasters Association, Inc. v. Federal Radio Commission, Court of Appeals of District of Columbia, no. 5240, 2 February 1931. 70. Kansas City Times, 16 June 1930. The newspaper transcribed a broadcast over KFKB in which Brinkley claimed that the AMA had spent either fifteen thousand dollars or fifty thousand dollars (the reception was not clear) in bribing the three dissenting members of the FRC. “Now if you people think myself and my station have been crucified and will tell your congressmen and senators that you sent them to Washington to represent

the folks back home,” Brinkley added, “I may get my radio license back.”

163

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

71. Carson, The Roguish World of Doctor Brinkley, 181. 72. See Kansas City Star, 15-23 July 1930. 73. Helen B. Branyan, “Medical Charlatanism: The Goat Gland Wizard of Milford, Kansas,” Journal of Popular Culture 25 (summer 1991): 35.

74. Kansas City Star, 1 August 1930. 75. Transcript of J. F.Hassig and the State of Kansas v. John R. Brinkley, 1930, 1823. 76. Brinkley conceded that the operation, which involved the ligation of the vas deferens, was essentially a vasectomy (Kansas City Star, 1 August 1930). 77. Kansas City Journal—Post, 16 September 1930. 78. Wichita Beacon, 21 September 1930. 79. Carson, The Roguish World of Doctor Brinkley, 154. 80. Ansel Harlan Resler, “The Impact of John R. Brinkley on Broad-

164

casting in the United States” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1958), 156. 81. Kansas City Star, 5 November 1930. 82. W. G. Clugston, Rascals in Democracy (New York: Richard R. Smith, 1940), 143. 83. Wichita Beacon, 29 October 1930. 84. Topeka Daily Capital, 31 October 1930. 85. Wichita Forum, 29 October 1930. 86. Wichita Beacon, 29 October 1930. 87. Kansas City Star, 27 October 1930. 88. Wichita Eagle, 27 October 1930. 89. Chicago Tribune, 3 November 1932. 90. Kansas City Kansan, 4 November 1930. 91. Kansas City Star, 28 October 1930. In Kansas City, “where few people listened to KFKB,” newspapers, like the Star, predicted that Brinkley would receive only twenty thousand votes. 92. Prior to the election, the attorney general ruled that only those write-in ballots stating the name “J. R. Brinkley” would be accepted as valid. Republican and Democratic Party officials, who monitored the election-day proceedings, allegedly discarded an estimated thirty thousand to fifty thousand ballots for misspellings, the listing of “Doc Brinkley,” or for some other variation. Other reports surfaced that Brinkley supporters had been “barred” from the polls and that boxes of Brinkley ballots had been purposely misplaced. Extensive coverage of the “shortcount” election can be found in Francis Schruben, Kansas in Turmoil: 1930-1936 (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1969), 23-46. 93. Francis Schruben, Harry H. Woodring Speaks: Kansas Politics During the Early Depression (Los Angeles: Francis Schruben, 1963), 8. 94. Kansas City Star, 16 October 1930. 95. Carson, The Roguish World of Doctor Brinkley, 166.

NOTES TO PAGES

15-25

96. New York Times, 15 March 1931. 97. Slechta, “Dr John R. Brinkley:

A Kansas Phenomenon,”

140.

98. Ibid., 141. 99. Carson, The Roguish World of Doctor Brinkley, 156-57. 100. Mandi

Schreffler, “He’s the Man”

(Milford, Kans.: Vosberg,

1932), Box 108.1, Brinkley Papers. 101. Clugston, Rascals in Democracy, 157. 102. Campaign flyer, 1 June 1932, Box 107.2, Brinkley Papers.

103. Topeka Daily Capital, 2 August 1931. 104. Richard Hughes Bradley, “The Political Front: Dr. Brinkley of Kansas,” Nation 135 (21 September 1932): 254. 105. Kansas City Star (no date), quoted in James C. Carey and Ver-

lin R. Easterling, “Light on the Brinkley Issue in Kansas: Letters of William A. White to Dan D. Casement,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 20 (November 1952): 353.

106. Carson, The Roguish World of Doctor Brinkley, 172. 107. Pink Rag (Topeka), 23 September 1932. 108. Letter from Charles H. Trapp to Mel-Roy, 31 August 1932, quoted in Slechta, “Dr. John R. Brinkley: A Kansas Phenomenon,” 159.

109. Campaign letter, 2 August 1932, quoted in ibid., 148. 110. Letter from John R. Brinkley to Ernest Dewey, 4 June 1932,

quoted in ibid., 145. 111. Publicity, 15 September 1932. 112. Ibid., 13 February 1931; 10, 24 April 1931. 113. Ibid., 13 February 1931.

114. John R. Brinkley to Minnie Brinkley, 24 December 1932, Box 107.1, Brinkley Papers. 115. Brinkley flyer, 29 November 1933, Box 97, Brinkley Papers. 116. Although still licensed for .5 million watts, XERA’s “directional antennas” pointed toward the United States gave “the effect” of 1 million watts of broadcasting power. See “The Case of Brinkley v. Fishbein: Proceedings of a Libel Suit Based on an Article Published in Hygeia,” JAMA 112 (27 May 1939): 2153 117. J. C. Furnas, “Country Doctor Goes to Town,” Saturday Evening Post 212 (20 April 1940): 46. 118. “The Case of Brinkley vs. Fishbein” JAMA 112 (13 May 1939): 2145-46. 119. Walker, “Goat Gland Surgeon,” 750.

120. The Story of “Paw and Maw,” Dedicated to the Prostate Man (Del Rio, Tex.: Brinkley, n.d.), 2, Box 107.3, Brinkley Papers. 121. Your Health (Milford, Kans.: Brinkley Hospital, n.d.), 14, Box

107.2, Brinkley Papers. 122. “The Case of Brinkley vs. Fishbein,” JAMA 112 (13 May 1939):

2145-46.

165

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

123. Transcript of Brinkley 107.2, Brinkley Papers.

124. 125. 126. 127. 128.

over

XER,

30 November

1932, Box

Kansas City Star, 22 August 1930. Transcript of Brinkley over XER, 30 November 1932. Ibid. Resler, “The Impact of John R. Brinkley on Broadcasting,” 219. Brinkley form letter, 1 March 1940, Box 98, Brinkley Collection.

129. Dr. Brinkley’s Doctor Book (Little Rock, Ark.: John R. Brinkley,

1939) 1% 130. The Story of “Paw and Maw,”

11.

131. After Twenty-one Years: A Success Story (Little Rock, Ark.: Brinkley Hospital, 1938), 4, Box 107.3, Brinkley Papers. 132. Transcript of Brinkley over XER, August 1936, Box 96, Brink-

ley Collection. 133. Ibid., Letter from Dr. Waltman Fishbein, 22 December 1939.

Walters, M.D., to Dr. Morris

134. Ibid., Brinkley to Mrs. C. E. Lusk, 20 April 1933, and “The Impact of John R. Brinkley on Broadcasting,” 215. 135. Kansas City Star, 11 April 1930. 136. Transcript of Brinkley over XER, August 1936, Box 96, Brinkley Collection. 137. El Paso (Tex.) Herald, 1937. Although Brinkley contributed to numerous charities, there is no evidence this statement is true.

138. Brinkley letter, 14 March 1936, Box 107.2, Brinkley Papers. 139. Ibid., “The New Price Policy of the Brinkley Hospital, Del Rio, Texas,” 20 February 1935, Box 15-03-05-03. 140. Brinkley form letter, 24 February 1934; see Resler, “The Impact of John R. Brinkley on Broadcasting,” 183. 141. Brinkley flyer, 14 August 1934, Box 97, Brinkley Collection. 142. Brinkley flyer, 1933; see Resler, “The Impact of John R. Brinkley on Broadcasting,” 189. 143. Brinkley flyer, 1937, Box 98, Brinkley Collection.

144. Ibid. 145. XERA broadcast, 12 May 1940, printed in Publicity, 20 June 1940. 146. Dr. Brinkley’s Doctor Book, back cover, Box 107.3, Brinkley Papers. 147. Ibid., undated broadcast, Box 107.2.

148. XERA broadcast, 12 May 1940, printed in Publicity, 20 June

1940. 149. XERA broadcast, undated, Box 107.3, Brinkley Papers.

166

150. Ibid., XERA broadcast, undated, Box 107.2. 151. Ibid., XERA broadcast, undated, Box 107.3. 152. XERA broadcast, 30 April 1939, printed in Publicity, 11 May

1939.

NOTES TO PAGES 25-32

153. Publicity, 7 August 1941. 154. Ibid., 13 February 1941.

155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162.

Ibid., 16 February 1939. Ibid., 24 October 1940. Ibid., 30 March 1939. Ibid., 16 September 1940. Ibid., 2 March 1939. Chicago Daily News, 10 February 1940. Carson, The Roguish World of Doctor Brinkley, 247. Hour, 24 August 1940.

163. Ibid., 29 March 1941. 164. See Leo Ribuffo, The Old Christian

Right: The Protestant Far

Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983), 80-127.

165. Publicity, 22 September 1932. 166. Ibid., 27 April 1939. 167. Furnas, “Country Doctor Goes to Town,” 49. 168. Clugston, Rascals in Democracy, 155; Oklahoma City Times, 17 November 1940. 169. In 1932 the Farm—Labor Party considered Brinkley as a potential presidential candidate but eventually nominated the elderly common-man

crusader

Jacob

Coxsey

of Ohio.

See Schruben,

Kansas

in

Turmoil, 84. 170. During the depression, Townsend, a retired California physician, advocated an Old Age Revolving Pension Fund to aid the elderly and provide jobs for the unemployed. Cloaked in “patriotism and Protestant morality,” Townsend’s message attracted millions of devotees who pushed Congress to enact the Townsend Plan into law. Although Franklin Roosevelt's Social Security Act of 1935 stole Townsend’s thunder, his movement remained a political force through the late 1930s. See Anthony Badger, The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), 292, and William Graebner, “The Townsend

Movement and Social Security,” in True Stories from the American Past, ed. William Graebner, vol. 2, Since 1865, 2d ed. (New York: McGraw

Hill,

1997), 158-74. 171. Publicity, 2 February 1939. 172 . XERA broadcast, 1941, Box 190MS044, Brinkley Papers. 173. Del Rio (Tex.) News Herald, 14 May 1941. 174. XERA broadcast, undated, Box 190MS044, Brinkley Papers.

175. The case United States v. McWilliams eventually went to court in April 1944 and ended in a mistrial eight months later when the presiding judge, Edward Eicher, died of a heart attack. See Leo Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right, 193, 211.

176. Topeka Daily Capital, 17 April 1942.

167

QUACKS

AND

CRUSADERS

177.

Wichita Eagle, 13 May 1941.

178. “The Case of Brinkley v. Fishbein” JAMA 112 (13 May 1939): 1969; Morris Fishbein, “Modern Medical Charlatans IL,” Hygeia 16 (February 1938): 172. ‘179. “The Case of Brinkley vs. Fishbein” JAMA 112 (13 May 1939): 1952-1968. 180. Del Rio (Tex.) News Herald, undated, Box 15-03-05-03, Brinkley

Papers. 181. “The Proceedings of the Brinkley Trial,” JAMA

112 (3 June

1939): 2292.

182. Topeka State Journal, 11 March 1940. 183. Morris

Fishbein,

interview

with

Alan

Resler,

23 December

1953, quoted in Resler, “The Impact of John R. Brinkley on Broadcasting,” 166. 184. Brinkley to Doctor

L. L. Marshall,

13 June 1940, Box 107.2,

Brinkley Papers. 185. Ibid., John R. Brinkley to Minnie

Brinkley, 21 July 1941, Box

OF 186.

Ibid., John R. Brinkley memorandum,

undated, Box 107.2.

187. “The Brinkley Bubble,” Newsweek 17 (7 April 1941): 18, 19.

188. Del Rio (Tex.) News Herald, 29 August 1941. 189. John R. Brinkley to Minnie Brinkley, 5 February 1942, Box 107.1, Brinkley Papers. 190. Ibid., John R. Brinkley to Minnie Brinkley, 19 May 1942, Box

107.1.

191. Kansas City Star, 30 October 1930. 192. Milwaukee Journal, 30 November 1930, miscellaneous newspaper clippings, Box 15-03-05-03, Brinkley Papers.

2. DEMAGOGUERY

IN THE CORN BELT

1. See Eric Juhnke, “Demagoguery in the Corn Belt: lowa’s Norman Baker,” lowa Heritage Illustrated 78 (fall 1997): 110-129.

2. “Thirty-two Thousand See Cancer Cure Proved,” TNT: The Naked Truth 2 (June 1930): 27, 28 (hereafter TNT).

3. Ibid., 28. 4. Tbid., 28, 43. 5. Midwest Free Press (Muscatine, lowa), 8 September 1932. 6. Ibid., 5 June 1931; Baker Hospital: Where Sick Folks Get Well (Eureka Springs, Ark.: Norman Baker, c. 1937), 1.

7. Alvin Winston, Doctors, Dynamiters, and Gunmen: The Life Story

168

of Norman

Baker (Muscatine, lowa: TNT Press, 1936), 24.

8. Ibid., 26, 34.

NOTES TO PAGES 32-42

9. Ibid., 36, 10. Transcript of Norman Baker v. the American Medical Association, March 1932, 66, 69, Box 74, Baker Collection, AMA Archives.

11. Baker and Theresa Pinder divorced a few years later. 12. Winston, Doctors, Dynamiters, and Gunmen, 62. 13. Transcript, Norman Baker v. the American Medical Association, Box 74. 14. Adam Reinemund, interview by Stanley Yates, 7 December 1971, Norman Baker Collection, Musser Art Museum, Muscatine, Iowa. 15. Winston, Doctors, Dynamiters, and Gunmen, 72.

16. Ibid., 82. 17. KTNT transcript, 12 December 1925, quoted in Thomas Hofer,

“Norman Baker and American Broadcasting” (master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1974), 573. 18. Norman Baker to Herbert Hoover, 8 December 1925, Record Group 173, KTNT File, National Archives, College Park, Md.

19. Reinemund interview. 20. Excerpts from the National Association of Broadcasters, Final Hearing on the White bill, 15 January 1926, Record Group 173, KTNT

File. 21. Hofer, “Norman Baker and American Broadcasting,” 40-50.

22. Federal Radio Commission, “Statement of Facts, Grounds for Decision on Reapplication of Norman Baker (Station KTNT),” 5 June 1931, Record Group 173, KTNT File. 23. Reinemund interview. 24. New York Times, 2 July 1926. 25. William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity: 1914-1932 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 238. 26. Galena (IIl.) Gazette, 1 November 1928. 27. See “Prejudice Killed Smith in Cornbelt,” New York Times, 18

November 1928, sec. 3, p. 5; reporting on the midwestern attitude toward Smith, a Times editorial correspondent wrote, “They knew little of Al Smith beyond the fact that he was a Catholic and child of Tammany, but that was enough.” 28. Scott Howe

Bowen,

Inc., to Norman

Baker, 2 October

1928,

General Correspondence, Campaign and Transition, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library (HHPL), West Branch, Iowa. 29. Ibid., Norman Baker to Herbert Hoover, 25 October 1928. 30. Warren B. Smith, “Norman Baker—King of the Quacks,” Iowan

17 (December-January 1958-1959): 16. 31. Herbert Hoover to Norman Baker, 28 January 1929, General

Correspondence, Campaign and Transition, HHPL. 32. Winston, Doctors, Dynamiters, and Gunmen, 322.

33. Des Moines Register, 15 December 1930.

169

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

34. Hofer, “Norman Baker and American Broadcasting,” 172. 35. Winston, Doctors, Dynamiters, and Gunmen, 89.

36. Reinernund interview. 37. Federal Radio Commission, “Statement of Facts.” 38. Quad City Times, 17 April 1977. 39. Mrs. I. H. Schermer to Herbert Hoover, 28 February 1927, Sec-

retary of Commerce Papers, HHPL. 40. Ibid., Mrs. A. L. Branson to Herbert Hoover, 15 December 1926.

41. R. C. Conybeare to Herbert Hoover, 18 February 1927, Record Group 173, KTNT File. 42. Ibid., Norman Baker to Herbert Hoover, 15 December 1927.

43. Brinkley warned Baker in early 1930: “I understand that as soon as they get through with me they are going to fight you. I presume if I lose they will fight you and if I win they won’t cite you. Therefore it would seem that any help you can throw my way would be helping yourself” (quoted in Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford, Border Radio [New York: Limelight, 1990], 61).

44. ’The Brinkley and Baker Quackeries,” JAMA 94 (19 April 1930):

1242. 45. Muscatine (Iowa) Journal, 6 March 1931. 46. Joseph Wolfe, “Norman Baker and KTNT,” Journal of Broadcasting 12 (fall 1968): 396. 47. “Thousands Cured by Cancer Promise,” Quad City Times, 17 April 1977. 48. Federal Radio Commission, “Statement of Facts.”

49. Winston, Doctors, Dynamiters, and Gunmen, 125, 271. 50. TNT acquired thirty thousand subscribers by 1930. See Hofer, “Norman Baker and American Broadcasting,” 192.

51. Winston, Doctors, Dynamiters, and Gunmen, 69. 52. “Cancer Is Conquered,” TNT 1 (December 1929): 24. 53. Baker Hospital pamphlet, 18 (1939), Norman Baker Collection, Eureka Springs Historical Museum (ESHM), Eureka Springs, Ark. 54. Ibid., 7. 55. Baker Institute “Information and Data” Box 70, Baker Collection, AMA Archives.

flier, 6 January

1931,

56. Interview with Stanley Baker, 25 March 1988, Muscatine Heritage Association, Musser Library, Muscatine, lowa. 57. Davenport Times, 1930, Box 70, Baker Collection. 58. Muscatine (Iowa) Journal, 10 February 1932.

59. Muscatine County Medical Society to AMA, 14 April 1930, Box

170

70, Baker Collection, AMA Archives. 60. Ibid., Dr. H. N. Heflin to Morris Fishbein, 20 January 1931. 61. “The Brinkley and Baker Quackeries,” JAMA 94 (April 1930):

1147.

NOTES TO PAGES 42-53

62. “Norman Baker vs. the American Medical Association,” JAMA 98 (19 March 1932): 1014.

63. Davenport Daily Times, 6 March 1931. 64. Undated transcript of Baker over KTNT, Box 70, Baker Collection. 65. “The Baker Ballyhoo: More Melodrama—The Plot Thickens,”

JAMA 94 (26 April 1930): 1240-41. 66. Transcript of Baker over KTNT, 15 March 1930, Box 71, Baker Collection, AMA Archives.

67. Transcript of Baker over KTNT, 3 May 1930, Record Group 173, KTNT File. 68. Federal Radio Commission, “Statement of Facts.”

69. Affidavit of Harry Hoxsey, 5 September 1930, Box 71, Baker Collection, AMA Archives. 70. Norman Baker, “Norman Baker’s Page,” TNT 2 (June 1930): 5.

71. Baker Hospital, 4. 72. Winston, Doctors, Dynamiters, and Gunmen, 193. 73. Federal Radio Commission, “Statement of Facts, Grounds for Decisions and Order of the Commission,” 5 June 1931, Record Group

173, KINT File. 74. Winston, Doctors, Dynamiters, and Gunmen, 226. 75. Transcript of Norman Baker over KTNT, 15 March 1930, Box 70, Baker Collection.

76. Transcript of Norman

Baker Broadcast over KTNT, 23 July

1930, Record Group 173, KTNT File. 77. Hofer, “Norman Baker and American Broadcasting,” 637. 78. L. A. Loos to Walter Newton, 20 January 1932, Walter Newton

(Secretary to the President) Papers, HHPL. 79. Transcript of Norman Baker broadcast over KTNT, 6 May 1930, Record Group 173, KTNT File. 80. Transcript of Norman Baker broadcast over KTNT, 15 March 1930, Box 70, Baker Collection. 81. Ibid., Transcript of Norman Baker broadcast over KTNT, 22 March 1930. 82. Ibid., undated KTNT transcript, Box 72. 83. I. H. Schermer to Herbert Hoover, 28 February 1927, Record Group 173, KTNT File.

84. Ibid., affidavit of I. A.Howe, 2 August 1930.

85. Midwest Free Press, 23 September 1931. 86. Granville Hicks, “The Farmers and the Cow War,” Nation 133

(18 October 1931): 543-44. 87. Lenker testified in behalf of Baker at KTNT’s license renewal hearing with the FRC in Washington, D.C., on 20 October 1930 (Box 70, Baker Collection, AMA Archives).

88. Ibid., Maquoketa (Iowa) Sentinel-Press, 8 May 1931, Box 71.

171

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

89. “Times 1959) 322

of Trouble: The Cow

War,” Iowan

18 (April-May

90. Midwest Free Press, 27 September 1931. 91. Raymond Kroemer of Lowdon, Iowa, interview by author, 27

March 1992.

92. Midwest Free Press, 23 September 1931; the Syndergaard story was first printed in the Iowa Union Farmer (Columbus Junction), 1 July

1931. The girl’s father, N. C. Syndergaard, wrote a letter explaining that none of his milk cows had tested positive for tuberculosis. Antitest forces, he charged, had indulged in “yapping” and “vicious propaganda” (see Iowa Union Farmer, 29 July 1931). 93. Midwest Free Press, 16 August 1931. 94. Ibid., 30 June 1931. 95. Ibid., 24 September 1931. 96. Ibid., 5 August 1931. 97. Ibid., 23 September 1931.

98. Ibid., 30 March 1931. 99. 100. Moore and ton, lowa. 101.

Ibid., 8 August 1931. Peter Malcolm, veterinarian, deposition for State of Iowa v. Paul J. W. Lenker, November 1931, Cedar County Courthouse, Tip“Times of Trouble,” 35.

102. Ibid. 103. Ibid., 33. Although this uncredited article briefly covers Baker’s role in the crisis, most works on the Cow War ignore him and instead portray the incident as an opening act of Milo Reno’s Farm Holiday Movement. See John L. Shover, Cornbelt Rebellion: The Farmers’ Holiday Association (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965), 28-33, and Frank Dileva, “Fran-

tic Farmers Fight Law,” Annals of Iowa 32 (October 1953): 81-109. 104. Norman Baker to President Herbert Hoover, 16 September 1931, Newton Papers, HHPL.

105. Midwest Free Press, 3 September 1931. 106. Ibid., 1 September 1931. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112.

172

113. JAMA 98 114. 115.

1012-14.

Ibid., 6 November 1931. Ibid., 30 August 1931. Ibid., 16 August 1931. Ibid., 14 January 1932; Davenport Times, 6 January 1932. Midwest Free Press, 30 August 1931. Ibid., 5 June 1931. “Norman Baker vs. the American Medical Association,” (March 1932): 1012. Norman Baker, “Norman Baker’s Page,” TNT 3 (June 1931): 5. “Norman Baker vs. the American Medical Association,”

NOTES TO PAGES 53-62

116. Maude Randall, deposition for Norman Baker v. the American Medical Association, September 1931, Box 72, Baker Collection, AMA Archives. 117. Ibid., Mrs. Von Huffal to Norman Baker, 3 February 1932, Box 71. 118. Norman Baker v. the American Medical Association, March 1932.

119. Davenport Democrat, 4 March 1932.

120. Ibid., 16 June 1931. 121. Hofer, “Norman Baker and American Broadcasting,” 448. 122. Midwest Free Press, 23 June 1932.

123. Ibid., 28 July 1932. 124. Originally established in 1919, the Farm—Labor

Party’s plat-

form embraced the Populists’ themes of universal suffrage, democratic control of industry, and the initiative, referendum, and recall. Although the national party dissolved after the 1920 presidential election, it later resurfaced in Minnesota and other midwestern states. See Earl R. Kruschke, Encyclopedia of Third Parties in the United States (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC- CLIO, 1991), 63-65. 125. Midwest Free Press, 3 November 1932. 126. Ibid., 10 November 1932.

127. Baker Hospital, 2. 128. Winston, Doctors, Dynamiters, and Gunmen, 456.

129. Excerpt from Baker’s publicity rag, the News, 20 December 1935, in Hofer, “Norman Baker and American Broadcasting,” 494. 130. Lester Drennen, ed., State of Iowa Official Register, 1936-1937 (Des Moines: State Press of Iowa, 1937), 233. 131. Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock), 16 January 1940.

132. H. Fuller, postmaster general of Eureka Springs, deposition for United States v. Norman Baker, January 1940, Box 75, Baker Collection,

AMA Archives. 133. Eureka Springs Daily Times Echo, 2 August 1937. 134. June Westphal, A Fame Not Easily Forgotten: An Autobiography of Eureka Springs (Conway, Ark.: River Road Press, 1970), 100; D. R. Woolery, The Grand Old Lady of the Ozarks, 4th ed. (Eureka Springs, Ark.: D. R. Woolery, 2000), 75-76. 135. “Advertising Baker’s ‘Cancer Cure’ by Mail Constitutes Use of Mails to Defraud,” JAMA 116 (14 June 1941): 2715. 136. Arkansas Gazette, 23 January 1940.

137. Ibid. 138. Ibid., 24 January 1940.

139. Carroll (Ark.) Courier, 1 February 1940. 140. Davenport Times, 23 July 1941. 141. Smith, “Norman Baker—King of the Quacks,” 55. 142. Davenport Times (c. November 1946), Box 72, Baker Collection,

AMA Archives.

Vs

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

143. Quad City Times, 17 April 1977. 144. Racine (IIl.) Journal-Times, 11 September 1958, Box 71, Baker Collection, AMA Archives. 145. Midwest Free Press, 11 August 1932; Norman Baker, “Norman

Baker’s Page,” TNT 2 (January 1930): 5. 146. Transcript of Baker over KTNT, 6 May 1930, Record Group 173, KINT File.

3. SALVES AND SALVOS

1. Los Angeles Times, 15 April 1956. 2. Arthur Tirrell to Walter Alvarez, 17 September 1956, Box 371, Harry Hoxsey Collection, Box 371, AMA Archives, Chicago.

3. The Hoxsey Treatment (Wichita, Kans.: Defender Publishers, 1954), 9. 4. R.MS. report of the American Rally Convention, Viking Hall, Chicago, 30 April 1955, Box 371, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives.

5. Ibid., “Theory and Application of the Hoxsey Method of Treating Cancer,” by J. B. Durkee, Address Before the Second Annual Con-

vention of the National Medical Society, Los Angeles, Calif., 17 October 1947, Box 368. 6. Ibid., promotional flyer for Allen Bernard, “A Cure for Can-

cer?” Man’s Magazine (August 1954), Box 367. 7. Ibid.; Harry Hoxsey, You Don’t Have to Die (New York: Milestone Books, 1956), 45. 8. Advertisement for You Don’t Have to Die, 1956, Box 214, File

27-026, Harry Hoxsey Collection, FDA Archives, Rockville, Md. 9. Undated pamphlet, Box 371, Hoxsey Collection, Archives.

AMA

10. “Hoxsey Cancer Charlatan,” JAMA 133 (15 March 1947): 774. 11. “Cough Medicine for Cancer?” JAMA 155 (12 June 1954): 667.

12. Food and Drug Administration, Health (July 1956): 37. 13. Dr. Whittle

to Oliver

Field,

“Public Warning,”

28 December

1948,

Today's

Box

366,

Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 14. Ibid., Edward M. Burke to W. T. Matthews, 26 February 1949,

Box 368. 15. Chicago Tribune, 5 April 1956.

16. “Cancer Facts for Men,” American Cancer Society pamphlet, 1947, Box 371, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 17. Hoxsey, You Don’t Have to Die, 62.

174

18. Ibid. 19. According to Francis Brinker, a naturopathic doctor, the King’s

NOTES TO PAGES 62-73

American Dispensatory (1898) and the U.S. National Formulary, 5th ed. (1926) listed Hoxsey’s formula, minus a few ingredients, for treatment of “scrofulosis,” “cutaneous affections,” and syphilis. See Brinker, “The

Hoxsey Treatment: Cancer Quackery or Effective Physiological Adjuvant?” Journal of Naturopathic Medicine 6 (August 1995): 9-23. 20. Ibid., 63-64.

21. A. M. Richards v. Harry M. Hoxsey, District Court of Dallas County,

1948,

transcript,

21-22,

Box

376, Hoxsey

Collection,

AMA

Archives. 22. Hoxsey, You Don’t Have to Die, 68.

23. “Hoxsey—Cancer Charlatan,” JAMA 133 (15 March 1947): 774. 24. Death certificate and record of funeral for John C. Hoxsey, 19 March 1919, Box 364, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives.

25. Hoxsey, You Don’t Have to Die, 69. 26» Ibide. 73774: 27. R.M.S. report of the American Rally Convention. 28. Hoxsey, You Don't Have to Die, 84-86.

29. “The Hoxide Cancer ‘Cure,’” JAMA 86 (2 January 1926): 55.

30. “The Hoxide Quackery Again,” JAMA 93 (3 August 1929): 401. 31. Taylorville Daily Courier, 15 April 1926, Christian County, Ill,

Historical Society. 32. Samuel Herman

to Arthur Cramp, 9 October 1924, Box 365,

Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. Soeulbids 34. Ibid., Aurora Beacon News, 26 July 1926, Box 366.

35. “The Hoxide Cancer ‘Cure’:

A Chamber of Commerce Sponsors

the Nostrum of a Horse-Doctor,” JAMA 56 (2 January 1926): 55-57; Taylorville Daily Breeze,

4 March 1927, Christian County, Ill., Historical Soci-

ety. i 36. People of the State of Illinois v. Harry M. Hoxsey, case no. 6407 in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County Illinois, 29 November 1927. 37. Taylorville Daily Breeze, 5 August 1927. 38. Hoxsey, You Don’t Have to Die, 143-44. 39. Girard Gazette, 10 July 1929, Box 366, Hoxsey Collection, AMA

Archives. 40. Ibid., 18 July 1929. 41. Ibid. 42. Transcript of Norman

Baker broadcast over KTNT, 15 March

1930, Box 70, Baker Collection, AMA Archives. 43. Muscatine (Iowa) Journal, 6 September 1930.

44. Contract between Harry Hoxsey and Norman Baker, 17 March 1930, Box S02, Baker Collection, AMA Archives. 45. Ibid., transcript of KTNT broadcast, 15 March

1930, Box 70.

Hoxsey was referring to the AMA headquarters in Chicago.

is

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

46. Hoxsey, You Don’t Have to Die, 159. 47. Ibid., 160. 48. “Summary of files of Hoxsey v. Fishbein et al., Box 375, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 49. Ibid., Harry Hoxsey, affidavit,

5 September 1930, Box S02.

50. State of Iowa v. Norman Baker, Harry Hoxsey et al., no. 2403 in the District Court of Muscatine County, lowa, 30 October 1930.

51. Muscatine Journal, 8 September 1930. 52. Harry M. Hoxsey v. Norman G. Baker, Petition at Law, District Court of Iowa in and for Muscatine County, 24 October 1930.

53. Davenport Democrat, 10 September 1930. 54. State of Iowa v. Norman Baker, Harry Hoxsey et al., abstract, 151-52. 55. Hoxsey, You Don’t Have to Die, 161.

56. Dr. William J. Burns to the Wayne County Medical Society, 19 February 1931, Box 366, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 57. Ibid., F.C. Warnshuis to Arthur Cramp, 17 March 1931.

58. Detroit Saturday Night, 16 May 1931. 59. F. C. Warnshuis to Arthur Cramp, November 1931, Box 366, Hoxsey

Collection, AMA

Archives.

A year later, the Michigan

State

Supreme Court overturned the conviction. The court noted that Hoxsey had not violated the state’s medical practice act, since he had not per-

sonally treated any patients (Hoxsey, You Don’t Have to Die, 167). 60. Michael V. Hazel, Dallas: A History of “Big D” (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1997), 50.

61. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8 March 1955. 62. Davenport Times, 30 October 1931. 63. Memorandum to Dwight Simmons, 22 November 1948, summary of files, Hoxsey v. Fishbein et al., Box 375, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 64. Ibid., AMA interview with Mr. Rhode, 22 November 1948. 65. Lawrence Wright, In the New World: Growing Up with America from the Sixties to the Eighties (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 15, 16. 66. Hoxsey, You Don’t Have to Die, 185. 67. Ibid., 196. 68. Langer Papers, Box 566, Folder 12. 69. San Antonio Light, 18 February 1948. 70. John William Rogers, The Lusty Texans of Dallas (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1951), 154.

71. Judge William Atwell’s oral opinion, Harry Hoxsey v. Morris Fishbein et al., April 1952, Box 376, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 72. Ibid.

176

73. Gerald Winrod, ed., New Cures for Old Ailments: A Symposium (Wichita, Kans.: Gerald B. Winrod, 1952), 123.

74. Daily Times Herald (Dallas), 29 May 1948.

NOTES TO PAGES 73-84

75. W.L. Thornton’s oral opinion in Harry Hoxsey v. Morris Fishbein et al., July 1952, quoted in Winrod, ed., New Cures for Old Ailments, 122-23. 76. Ibid. 77. Harry Hoxsey, interview by Pat McGrady, 17 August 1948, Box 368, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives.

78. Harry Hoxsey to Henry R. Luce, 11 August 1954, reprinted in “Dr. Hoxsey Answers ‘Time,’” Defender 29 (September 1954): 14. 79. Harry Hoxsey to Oliver Field, 6 June 1953, Box 367, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives.

80. “An Examination of the Claims of the Hoxsey Cancer Clinic” (reprint) Review and Herald 133 (13, 20 December 1956): 6.

81. Ibid., 7. 82. Ibid. 83. “Committee of Noted Physicians Endorses Hoxsey’s Treatment,” Defender 28 (May 1954): 12-13. 84. Transcript of Hoxsey interview by Tom Duggan on KCOPTV, Los Angeles, 3 August 1956, Box 365, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 85. Transcript of KTNT broadcast, 15 March 1930, Box 70, Baker Collection, AMA Archives. 86. Girard Gazette, 18 July 1929, Box 366, Hoxsey Collection, AMA

Archives. 87. Harry Hoxsey v. Morris Fishbein et al., 489, no. 3203 (D. Texas

1949). 88. Notes on American Cancer Society visit to the Hoxsey Cancer Clinic, 10 February 1949, Box 525, File 27026, Hoxsey Collection, FDA

Archives. 89. “Hoxsey Cancer Clinic” (no date), Box 370, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives,

90. Ibid., transcript of Hoxsey interview by Tom Duggan on KCOP-TV, Box 365. 91. “Confidential Government Records Prove Hoxsey Cures Cancer!” National Christian Crusader 2 (August 1956): 2. 92. Hoxsey: Quacks Who Cure Cancer? (Santa Fe, N.Mex.: Realidad Productions, 1987).

93. Harry Hoxsey, “Drug Pollution Versus Naturopathy,” Herald of Health and Naturopath (March 1955): 70, 92.

94. James W. Burke, “Answering a Hoxsey Attack,” Defender 31 (April 1956): 6. 95. Albuquerque (N.Mex.) Journal, 19 May 1956. 96. Tulsa World Herald, 16 April 1947. 97. Elmer Thomas to Harry Hoxsey, 2 June 1947, Box 3, Elmer Thomas Collection, Carl Albert Center, University of Oklahoma, Norman.

177

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

98. FDA

memorandum,

Food

and Drug Administration,

and Cosmetics Division, 26 May 1951, Hoxsey National Archives, College Park, Md. 99. “Senator Langer Blames Democrats Cancer Society Fraud Investigation,” National 1956): 2. 100. “American Rally Salutes: The Most ica!—Harry M. Hoxsey,” flyer, 30 April 1955,

Drug

Papers, Record Group 88, for Stopping AMA and Christian Crusader 2 (May

Powerful Man in AmerBox 371, Hoxsey Collec-

tion, AMA Archives.

101. Ibid. 102. Hoxsey, “Drug Pollution Versus Naturopathy,” 70, 92; R.M.S.

report of the American Rally Convention. 103. Hoxsey, “Drug Pollution Versus Naturopathy,” 70, 92. 104. Leo Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983), 228-30, 81. Winrod died after contracting the flu in 1957; he

had refused to visit an M.D. for treatment. See Gail Sindell, “Gerald B. Winrod and the Defender: A Case Study of the Radical Right” (Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1973), 458. 105. Gerald Winrod, “Cancer Is Being Cured: A Defender

Hour

Broadcast,” Defender 28 (January 1954): 13. 106. Hon. John Dingell, “Statement About the Hoxsey Cancer Treat-

ment—Extension of Remarks,” Congressional Record (7 March 1957): A1857. 107. See Winrod, ed., New Cures for Old Ailments; Ribuffo, The Old Protestant Right, 230-31. 108. The Hoxsey Treatment, 82.

109. Tribune Democrat (Pittsburgh, Penn.), 24 July 1954. 110. Portage (Penn.) Dispatch, 10 June 1954. 111. “Senator Haluska’s Great Speech,” Defender 29 (March 1955): 27, reprinted in “Cancer and Conspiracy,” Common Sense: The Nation's Anti-Communist Newspaper, 15 March 1955. 112. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8 March 1955. 113. Ibid., 26 March 1955. 114. John Harvey, FDA deputy commissioner, to Honorable Paul H. Douglas, U.S. Senate, 19 April 1957, Record Group 88, Hoxsey Papers,

National Archives. 115. Ibid., Department of Health, Education, and Welfare memo-

randum, 116. 117. 118. of British

28 October 1957. Victoria Daily Times, 23 February 1956. Ibid. Report of a Committee of Faculty Members of the University Columbia—Concerning the Hoxsey Treatment for Cancer (19

December 1957), Vancouver, B.C.

178

119. Leland Kordel was a health writer who marketed his own health food products. See Kordel v. the United States, 335 U.S. 345 (1948).

NOTES TO PAGES 84-93

120. Gilbert Goldhammer, interview by James Harvey Young, 26 August 1968, National Library of Medicine, Washington, D.C.

121. James Harvey Young, The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton Uni-

versity Press, 1967), 376. 122. Goldhammer interview. 123. Petition for a writ of mandamus to the U.S. District Court of the Northern

District of Texas, 22 October

1955, Box 525, File 27-026,

Hoxsey Collection, FDA Archives. 124. Ibid. 125. R.M.S. report of the American Rally Convention. 126. J. A. Kedzior to Sidney Cohen, FDA bureau field administra-

tor, 22 January 1957, Box 523, File 27-026/11, Hoxsey Collection, FDA Archives. 127. FDA Warning, 4 April 1956; in 1957 FDA inspector Gordon Thompson reported on his progress in distributing the posters in Iowa. Post offices and courthouses in such small towns as Atlantic, Corning,

Greenfield, and Winterset displayed the warning (Gordon Thompson to Maurice Kerr, chief FDA inspector, Minneapolis District, 25 October 1957, Hoxsey Papers, Record Group 88, National Archives. 128. Hon. John Dingell, “Statement About the Hoxsey Cancer Treatment,” A1857.

129. Chicago Tribune, 5 April 1956. 130. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 25 April 1957.

131. 132. Alexander 1957. 133. 134. 135.

“Hoxsey and His ‘Cure,’” Newsweek 47 (23 April 1956): 25. Hoxsey did not make a bid for governor, and federal judge Holtzhoff dismissed his suit against the FDA on 11 October

“The Great Humiliation,” Time 64 (9 August 1954): 24. Dallas Morning News, 17 September 1960. Ken Ausubel, “The Troubling Case of Harry Hoxsey,” New Age

Journal July-August 1988): 49. 136. Hoxsey, You Don’t Have to Die, 264.

4. SENSELESS DUPES OR SENSIBLE PRAGMATISTS?

1. Daily Times (Chicago), 16 September 1930. 2. Harry Hoxsey, You Don’t Have to Die (New York: Milestone Books, 1956), 59.

3. Dr. Brinkley’s Doctor Book (Little Rock, Ark.: John R. Brinkley, 1939), 1; “The Case of Brinkley vs. Fishbein: Proceedings of a Libel Suit Based on an Article Published by Hygeia,” JAMA 112 (13 May 1939): 1958. 4. AMA News, 1 December 1958.

179

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

5. Eugene Nixon, “The Menace of Radio Quackery,” Hygeia 13 (May 1935): 429. 6. Morris Fishbein, The Medical Follies (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1925). 7. James Harvey Young, M.D., The Medical Messiahs: A Social His-

tory of Quackery (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 427. 8. Food

and Drug Administration

and Department

of Health,

Education and Welfare, A Study of Health Practices and Opinions, Final Report (Springfield, Va.: National Technical Information Service, 1972),

216. 9. The American Medical Association’s Historical Health Fraud and Alternative Medicine Collection, Chicago; the Kansas State Historical Archives in Topeka; the Musser Art Museum of Muscatine, lowa; the FDA Archives in Rockville, Maryland; and the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, offer rich collections of patient sources.

10. Alice G. Marquis, Hopes and Ashes: The Birth of Modern Times, 1929-1939 (New York: Free Press, 1986), 17. 11. Michael

Kazin,

The Populist Persuasion

(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell

University Press, 1995), 115. 12. “Broadcasting Buncombe,” JAMA 89 (19 November 1927): 1786. 13. “Quackery Adopts Radio,” Hygeia 8 (April 1930), 384-85. 14. Nixon, “The Menace of Radio Quackery,” 428.

15. Ibid., 429. 16. M. W. Sherwood to the AMA, 27 April 1936, Box 71, Baker Collection, AMA Archives.

17. 19 April 1930 letter quoted in Ansel H. Resler, “The Impact of John R. Brinkley on Broadcasting in the United States” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1958), 249. 18. Herbert Swartwoudt to Dr. J. R. Brinkley, no date, Box 107.2,

Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives. 19. John Voychok to the AMA, 31 May 1929, Box 97, Brinkley Papers, AMA Archives.

20. N. G. Lushman to Dr. G. R. Phillips, Muscatine, lowa, Chamber of Commerce, 14 February 1935, Baker Collection, Musser Art Museum. 21. Charles Taylor to Dr. Arthur Cramp, 29 January 1929, Box 97, Brinkley Papers, AMA Archives. 22. The Hoxsey Treatment (Wichita, Kans.: Defender, 1954), 96. 23. R. Newby to John Brinkley, 16 December 1932, Box 107.1, Brink-

ley Papers, KSHS Archives. 24. Fred O’Hara, M.D., to Morris Fishbein, 19 August

1929, Box

366, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 25. John Spivak, The Medical Trust Unmasked (New York: Louis S. Siegfried, 1929), 1.

180

26. See “Medical

Monopoly—AMA

Indicted

Under

Anti-Trust

NOTES TO PAGES 93-101

Laws,” New Republic 96 (10 August 1938): 5; “AMA on Trial,” Nation 148

(31 December 1938): 4; James Burrow, AMA: Voice of American Medicine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963), 246-47.

27. Morris A. Bealle, Medical Mussolini (Washington, D.C: Columbia, 1939), 184-85, 46. 28. Frank Campion, The AMA and U.S. Health Policy Since 1940 (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1984), 117-25. 29. “Bats and Roses,” TNT 2 (November 1930): 46. 30. Banner (Ralls, Tex.), no date, Box 373, Hoxsey Collection, AMA

Archives. 31. Walter W. Sims to Mr. and Mrs. John R. Brinkley, 30 December 1932, Box 107, Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives. 32. “Too Much Unnecessary Surgery,” U.S. News and World Report 34 (20 February 1953): 47-55; “Needless Surgery,” Reader’s Digest 62 (May 1953): 53-57; “Unjustified Surgery,” Harper’s Monthly 208 (February 1954): 35-41. 33. “Answer to Charges of Irregularity in Medical Practice,” U.S. News and World Report 34 (3 April 1953): 44. 34. Steven Spencer, “Patients for Sale,” Saturday Evening Post 226 (16 January 1954): 36, 50.

35. Burrow, AMA, 252-53. 36. Laura Lawson to Oliver Field, 25 April 1957, Box 369, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 37. Ibid., William

Rugg to Morris

Fishbein, 25 November

1947,

Box 364. 38. S. E. Arnold to Brinkley, 2 June 1933, Box 107.2, Brinkley Pa-

pers, KSHS Archives. 39. Herman Carlson to J. H. McCoy, 26 December Baker Collection, AMA Archives.

1930, Box 70,

40. Mrs. Roger Smith to Dr. Charles Cameron, 13 April 1955, Box 368, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives.

41. Box 97, Brinkley Papers, AMA Archives. 42. Ray Hosier to Oliver Field,

5 October 1955, Box 368, Hoxsey

Collection, AMA Archives. 43. Amelia

M. Gibson to Mrs. Brinkley, August 1931, Box 107.1,

Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives. 44. Defender 30 (May 1955): 18. 45. N. Davis to Brinkley, 12 December 1932, Box 107.2, Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives.

46. Viola Bernard, Judd namics of Group Opposition chiatry 30 (April 1960): 340. 47. Unsigned letter to Record Group 88, National

Marmor, and Perry Ottenberg, “Psychodyto Health Programs,” Journal of Orthopsy-

the FDA, 4 April 1957, Hoxsey Papers, Archives; the fundamentalist editor and

181

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

Hoxsey supporter Gerald Winrod claimed that “pastries, colas, alcohoi, pork, bread made from bleached flour, fluorinated water, and other ab-

normal foods and liquids create inhibitors to health in the human body” (Winrod, “Hoxsey Science for Treating Cancer Explained,” Defender 30 [October 1955]: 42).

48. J. A. Piatle to John Brinkley, 2 March 1933, Box 107.2, Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives. 49. “Fortune Survey: Doc’s, Dentists, and Dollars,” Fortune 14 (Oc-

tober 1937): 222.

50. Mrs. Roger Smith to Dr. Charles Cameron, 13 April 1955, Box 368, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives.

51. Brinkley advertised his prostate surgery and goat-gland transplant for $750 apiece; Hoxsey’s ceiling price was $400. 52. Ray Hosier to the AMA, 29 May 1955, Hoxsey Collection, Box 371, AMA Archives. 53. E. A. O’Donnell to J. R. Brinkley, 18 June 1933, Box 107.2, Brink-

ley Papers, KSHS Archives. 54. Ibid., R. Newby to Dr. Brinkley, 16 December 1932. 55. Pekin (Ill.) Times, 17 April 1956, Box 368, Hoxsey

Collection,

AMA Archives. 56. F. A. N. Yeager to Dr. John R. Brinkley, 4 March 1933, Box 107.2,

Brinkley 57. 107.1 58. 107.2. 59. 107.1. 60. 107.2.

Papers, KSHS Archives. Ibid., Eda Gemernhardt to Mrs. Brinkley, 15 January 1933, Box Ibid., Mrs. Nathan G. West to Brinkley, 12 February 1933, Box Ibid., L. R. Harris to John R. Brinkley, 12 January 1933, Box Ibid., Walter W. Sims to John Brinkley, 30 December 1932, Box

61. Ibid., S. E. Arnold to Brinkley, 2 June 1933.

62. Brinkley Hospital advertisement, June 1934, Box 96, Brinkley Papers, AMA Archives.

63. “The Story of Larry Reardon,” broadcast over KFBI, 26 November 1934, in Anita Grimm Taylor, “Persuasive Techniques in Selected Speeches and Writings of John R. Brinkley” (master’s thesis, Kansas State University, 1959), appendix B, 178.

64. “The Case of Brinkley vs. Fishbein,” JAMA 112 (13 May 1939):

1964. 65. Laredo (Tex.) Times, 23 November 1937. 66. Mrs. W. D. Swint to Morris Fishbein, 3 April 1939, Box 70, Baker Collection, AMA Archives.

182

67. Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford, Border Radio (New York: Lime-

light, 1990), 74.

NOTES TO PAGES 102-9

68. In a private letter, Brinkley estimated that 75 percent of his business came from farmers. See Brinkley to L. L. Marshall, 13 June 1940,

Box 107.3, Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives. 69. R. G. Leland, “Medical Care for Rural America,” in Rural Med-

icine: Proceedings of the Conference Held at Cooperstown, New York, October 7 and 8, 1938 (New York: Charles C. Thomas, 1939), 227-28.

70. Stephen M. Spencer, “We Need More Country Doctors,” Saturday Evening Post 221 (9 October 1948): 37. 71. “Vanishing Country M.D.’s,” Newsweek 29 (24 March 1947): 56. 72. Dorothy Nelkin and Michael S. Brown, eds., Workers at Risk:

Voices from the Workplace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 63. 73. Fred Apple Jr. to Oliver Field, 12 March 1954, Box 367, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 74. Burrow, AMA, 335-36.

75. Transcript of Hoxsey interview by Tom Duggan on KCOP-TV, Los Angeles, 3 August 1956, Box 365, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives;

Cleveland Plain Dealer, 25 April 1957. 76. Hoxsey, You Don’t Have to Die, 192. 77. Wallace Janssen to Mr. Robert Renwick, 8 April 1957, Box 2387,

File 537.5-.23, Hoxsey Papers, Record Group 88, National Archives. 78. Ibid.; and ibid., Wallace Janssen to Mrs. Anna Greene, 25 April

1957. 79. Viola W. Bernard, “Why People Become the Victims of Medical Quackery,” in Second National Congress on Medical Quackery, Proceedings (Washington, D.C.: AMA and FDA, 1963), 54.

80. “Testimonial of Senator Wesley Staley,” 14 September 1922, Box 99, Brinkley Papers, AMA Archives. 81. A. J. Phil Jelinek to John R. Brinkley, 16 March 1933, Box 107.2,

Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives. 82. Ibid., Dr. F.M. Crume to John R. Brinkley, January 1933. 83. Ibid., E.S. Gilmore, M.D., to Dr. J. R. Brinkley, 13 February 1933. 84. Ibid., Dr. S. E. Maddox to Dr. J. R. Brinkley, 20 December 1932,

Box 107.1. 85. Leo L. Anderson to Oliver Field, 11 September 1955, Box 368, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 86. Sidney B. Flower, ed., The Goat-Gland Transplantation (Chicago: New Thoughts Book Department, 1921), 51-52. 87. C. L. Waller to John R. Brinkley,

17 March

1933, Box

107.2, Brinkley Papers, KSHS

Archives. 88. Davenport (Iowa) Times, 31 April 1930. 89. “Dr. Hoxsey Saves an Infant's Life,” Defender 29 (January 1955):

9-10. 90. KTNT

AMA Archives.

transcript,

20 March

1931, Box

71, Baker

Collection,

183

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

91. Defender 30 (August 1955): 18, 19. 92. Chicago Tribune, 8 February 1920. 93. Walter G. Murphy to AMA, 4 February 1939, Box 98, Brinkley Papers. 94. Wes Gething to Dr. Brinkley, 28 November

1932, Box 107.2,

Brinkley Papers. 95. Letter to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 8 April 1957, Box 529, File 27-026, Hoxsey Collection, FDA Archives.

96. Robert Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 61.

97. John Camp, Magic, Myth, and Medicine (New York: Taplinger, 1973), 108. Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (Boston: Joseph Armstrong, 1875), 13-14.

98. See Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life. 99. Alan Brinkley, Liberalism and Its Discontents (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 269. 100. Quoted in Douglas E. Reinhardt, “Faith Healing: Where Sci-

ence Meets Religion in the Body of Believers” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1982), 28.

101. See David Edwin Harrell Jr., All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 25-149.

102. Gerald Winrod, “Curing with Cancer,” Defender 28 (March 1954): 9. 103. “Four Cancer Cures,” Defender 29 (October 1954): 17.

104. Mrs. Becker to AMA, 8 November 1955, Box 386, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 105. See James Juhnke, “Gerald B. Winrod and the Kansas Mennonites,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 43 (October 1969): 293-98.

106. H. Clair Amstutz, “Health Conditions and Practices Among the Mennonites,” in Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference on Mennonite Cultural Problems (North Newton, Kans.: Bethel College Press, 1943), 78. 107. Kansas City Star: 23 October 1996. 108. John Hostetler, “Folk and Scientific Medicine in Amish Society,” Human Organization 22 (winter 1963-1964): 275.

109. Budget (Sugar Creek, Ohio), 13 October-10 November 1955. 110. See Levi Miller, “The role of a Braucher-Chiropractor in an Amish Community,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 55 (April 1981): 157-71.

184

111. John Hostetler, “Folk Medicine and Sympathy Healing Among the Amish,” in American Folk Medicine: A Symposium, ed. Wayland Hand (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 253. 112. John Hostetler, Amish Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), 289.

NOTES TO PAGES 110-16

113. Gerald Carson, Cornflake Crusade (New York: Rinehart, 1957), 5.

114. “An Examination of the Claims of the Hoxsey Cancer Clinic,” Review and Herald 133 (rpt., 13 December 1956): 2.

115. Arthur K. Shapiro and Elaine Shapiro, The Powerful Placebo: From Ancient Priest to Modern Physician (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 79. Placebo treatment remains controversial. A study completed by two Danish researchers in 2001 concluded that placebos were no more effective than “no treatment” for patients suffering from an array of ailments, including colds, hypertension, and seasickness. However, the study did show that placebos were useful in pain relief. See Janice Horowitz, “Powerless Placebo?” Time 157 (4 June 2001): 65.

116. See Harold Koenig, The Healing Power of Faith: Science Explores Medicine's Last Great Frontier (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999).

117. Eugene Taylor, “Mind-Body Medicine and Alternative Therapies at Harvard: Is This the Reintroduction of Psychology in General Medical Practice?” Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 6 (November 2000): 34.

118. Baker wrote extensively on this subject. See “The Power of Mind over Body,” TNT 1 (May 1929): 21-22, 43. 119. Lloyd Shank to Oliver Field, 8 July 1955, Box 368, Hoxsey Col-

lection, AMA Archives. 120. Ibid., Oliver Field to John D. Bailey, 23 August 1954, Box 364. 121. Claude Pierce to John R. Brinkley, 3 December 1932, Box 107.2,

Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives. 122. Virginia Cowart, “Health Fraud’s Toll: Lost Hopes, Misspent Billions,” JAMA 259 (10 June 1988): 3230. 123. W.C. Walker to Dr. John R. Brinkley, 15 March 1933, Box 107.2,

Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives. 124. Ibid., unsigned letter to Dr. Brinkley, June 1933. 125. Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock), 20 January 1940. 126. Ibid., 17 January 1940.

127. Testimony of Earl DeChaine in Gerald Winrod, ed., “Hoxsey Letters from our Mail Bag,” Defender 31 (September 1956): 8. 128. J. L. Griggs to Oliver Field, 14 December 1933, Box 367, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 129. W. J. Stone to Dr. Brinkley, undated, Box 107.1, Brinkley Pa-

pers, KSHS Archives. 130. Ibid., W. J. Huber to Dr. John Brinkley, 18 January 1933, Box 107-2: 131. K. L. Milstead to Denver District of Division of Regulatory Management of the FDA, 9 April 1957, Box 2387, File 537.5-23, Hoxsey Papers, Record Group 88, National Archives.

132. Inspector Robert Palmer to chief, Philadelphia District, 13 December 1956, Box 523, File 27-026, Hoxsey Collection, FDA Archives.

185

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

133. Unidentified newspaper clipping, 20 September 1957, Box 369, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives.

134. Unidentified Brinkley patient, 2 June 1937; G. C. Buffinger to Dr. N. P. Colwell, 24 May 1924, Box 97, Brinkley Papers, AMA Archives. 135. Muscatine (Iowa) Journal, 17 February 1932. 136. Mrs. Fern Franklin to the AMA, 19 September 1930, Box 366, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 137. R. Coles to Morris Fishbein, 7 January 1949, Box 71, Baker Collection, AMA Archives.

5. MEDICINE FOR THE MASSES 1. Gerald Carson to Dr. James Burrow, 5 January 1959, Box 108.1,

Carson Papers. 2. Federal Radio Commission, KTNT Hearings transcript, 1928, KTNT File; James Harvey Young, American Health Quackery: Collected Es-

says (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 30; Francis Schruben, Kansas in Turmoil, 1930-1936

(Columbia: University of Missouri Press,

1969), 100. 3. See, for example, Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Knopf, 1955), 294-300. 4. Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (New York: Knopf, 1982), xi.

5. Jerry Riseley to Francis Schruben, 23 June 1953, quoted in Schruben, “Dr. John R. Brinkley, Candidate for Governor” (master’s thesis, Municipal University of Wichita, 1953), 112.

6. Lincoln (IIl.) Evening Star, 19 January 1923. 7. Gerald Carson, The Roguish World of Dr. John R. Brinkley (New York: Rinehart, 1960), 124.

8. Ibid., 123. 9. Quoted in “The Case of Brinkley vs. Fishbein,” JAMA 112 (13 May 1939): 1952. 10. J. C. Netts to Clarence Matson, 8 March 1934, Box 1990MS044,

Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives. 11. Ibid., unidentified Del Rio newspaper clipping, c. 1937. 12. Ibid., Del Rio Press, c. 1937, Box 15-03-05-03.

186

13. Ibid., petition sponsored by Arthur Dies of Rio Grande Cleaners, Del Rio, Texas, 15 October 1940, Box 107.3. 14. Stanley Baker, interview, 25 March 1988, Muscatine Heritage Association, Musser Library, Muscatine, lowa. 15. Ibid. 16. Adam Reinemund, interview by Stanley Yates, 7 December 1971, Baker Collection, Musser Library.

NOTES TO PAGES

117-27

17. Eureka Springs Daily Times—Echo, 3 August 1937. 18. Ibid., 6 November 1937. 19. John K. Butt to Dr. Morris Fishbein, 21 May 1938, Box 71, Baker

Collection, AMA Archives.

20. Eureka Springs Daily Times—Echo, 10 January 1938. 21. Girard (IIl.) Gazette, 18 July 1929, Box 366, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 22. Taylorville Breeze,

3 December 1925, Christian County, Ill., His-

torical Society. 23. Springfield Journal, 16 April 1927, Box 366, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 24. Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford, Border Radio (New York: Lime-

light, 1990): 58-59. 25. Kansas City Star, 27 October 1930.

26. Memorandum to Dwight L. Simmons from W. E. Collins, 2 December 1948, Box 375, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 27. Reinemund interview. 28. Jerry Plum to Charles Rawlson, 19 June 1928, Secretary of Commerce Papers, HHPL.

29. Shirle J. Armiston to Dr. John R. Brinkley, 28 February 1933, Box 107.2, Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives. 30. Ibid., Mrs. William Smerehek

to Dr. Brinkley, 25 December

1931, Box 107.1. 31. David Kendall, producer, Goat Gland Doctor (Topeka, Kansas: Washburn University and KTWV, 1986).

32. Wichita Beacon, 27 October 1930.

33. Kansas City Journal—Post, 27 April 1930. 34. S. E. Maddox to Dr. John R. Brinkley, 20 December 1932, Box 107.2, Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives.

35. Ibid., Shirle J. Armiston to Dr. John R. Brinkley, 28 February 1933: 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., E. L. Gilmore to Dr. J. R. Brinkley, 13 February 1933.

38. Ibid., Mrs. Amelia M. Gibson to Mrs. John R. Brinkley, August 1931, Box 107.1. 39. Ibid., Rev. L. W. Pase to Mrs. John R. Brinkley, 28 December

1936, Box 107.3.

40. Reynold Wik, “Radio in the 1920s: A Social Force in South Dakota,” South Dakota History 11 (spring 1981): 107. 41. “Religion by Radio,” Literary Digest 82 (23 August 1924): 31-32. 42. John Kucera to Norman Baker, no date, quoted in “Bats and Roses,” TNT 1 (December 1929): 47.

43. Mr. And Mrs. George Bernet to Secretary of Commerce, 11 May 1931, KINT File.

187

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

44. Mrs. William Smerehek to Dr. Brinkley, 25 December 1931, Box 107.1, Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives. 45. Publicity (Wichita, Kans.), 18 May 1939. 46. Fowler and Crawford, Border Radio, 67. 47. Midwest Free Press (Muscatine, Iowa), 11 August 1932.

48. Mr. And Mrs. George Bernet to Secretary of Commerce, 11 May 1931, KTNT File. 49. Mrs. William Smerehek to Dr. Brinkley, 25 December 1931, Box 107.1, Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives.

50. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 26 March 1955. 51. Kendall, Goat Gland Doctor. 52. Curtis, who served under President Herbert Hoover between 1929 and 1933, helped Brinkley secure a radio license from the Mexican

government, clearing the way for the construction of XER in 1931. See Ansel Resler, “The Impact of John R. Brinkley on Broadcasting in the United States” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1958), 123. 53. Jerrie Plum to Charles Rawson, 19 June 1928, Secretary of Com-

merce Papers, HHPL. 54. John Thomas, “Diamond-Studded John Richard Brinkley: The

Goat Gland Broadcaster of Kansas,” Real America (July 1933): 84. 55. L. R. Tillman to Norman Baker, no date, quoted in “Bats and Roses,” TNT 2 (November 1930): 46.

56. J. D. Ferguson to Norman Baker, no date, quoted in “Bats and Roses,” TNT 1 (December 1929): 47.

57. As had Populist candidates in the 1890s, Brinkley carried the wheat-producing counties of central Kansas but fared less well in the more populous eastern regions and in the remote western parts of the state, where, Francis Schruben observed, “rugged individualism, respect for tradition, and a trust in the Republican party kept those hardy, rural people within the fold” (Kansas in Turmoil, 45-46). 58. Publicity, 3 September 1931. 59. Letter from Tom

188

to the editor of Publicity, 1933, Box

107.1,

Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives. 60. Wichita Eagle, 29 October 1932. 61. Wichita Beacon, 29 October 1930. 62. Pink Rag (Topeka), 9 September 1932. 63. Mrs. C. W. Baker to Dr. and Mrs. Brinkley, 18 February 1933, Box 107.2, Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives. 64. Ibid., Mrs. Walter Sims, 30 December 1932. 65. Ibid., KFKB broadcasting schedule (no date), Box 107.1; Wichita Beacon, 8 November 1930. 66. National Watchman (Topeka), 1 October 1932. 67. Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 64.

NOTES TO PAGES

128-35

68. Prior to the late 1930s, Baker limited his anti-Semitic smears to one man, Morris Fishbein, the editor of JAMA. In 1936, Baker’s biogra-

pher Alvin Winston noted that Baker had credited a Jewish talent agent with aiding his vaudeville career. Another story recounted how a Jewish landlady had helped Baker recover from a bout with pneumonia by treating him with a bowl of ice cream. Winston claimed that Baker “employed Protestants, Catholics, and Jews indiscriminately, and discharged any individual who sought to annoy others with his religious views.” Brinkley also claimed Jewish friends. The Levand brothers, who published the Wichita Beacon, supported Brinkley’s two bids for governor of Kansas. See Winston, Doctors, Dynamiters, and Gunmen: The Life Story of Norman

Baker (Muscatine, Iowa: TNT Press, 1936), 39, 45, 127,

and Schruben, Kansas in Turmoil, preface. 69. See Leo Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983); Suzanne G. Ledeboer, “The Man Who Would Be

Hitler: William Dudley Pelley and the Silver Legion,” California History 65 (June 1985): 127-35, 155; Clifford R. Hope Jr., “Strident Voices in Kansas Between the Wars,” Kansas History 2 (spring 1979): 50-60; and Charles

Higham, American Swastika (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985). 70. Virgil Dean, “Another Wichita Seditionist? Elmer J. Garner and

the Radical Right’s Opposition to World War IIL,” Kansas History 17 (spring 1994): 50-64; Publicity, 19 September 1940. 71. Publicity, 4 July 1940. 72. Ralph Lord Roy, Apostles of Discord: A Study of Organized Bigotry and Disruption on the Fringes of Protestantism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1953),

3-7. 73. In August 1942 the letter was used as evidence against Pelley in district court, where he was tried and convicted of eleven counts of sedition and conspiracy against the U.S. government. Pelley spent six years in federal prison. See Asheville (N.C.) Citizen, 5 August 1942. 74. See Geoffrey S. Smith, To Save a Nation: American Countersubver-

sives, the New Deal, and the Coming of World War II (New York: Basic Books,

1973); Dean,

“Another

Wichita

Seditionist?”

50-64; and Glen

Jeansonne, Women of the Far Right: The Mothers’ Movement and World War II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 75. See David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust,

1941-1945

(New York: Pantheon

Books, 1984), 14, and

Richard Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 49.

76. Publicity, 4 May 1939. 7/SNpid: 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid., 27 April 1939. 80. Undated XERA broadcast, Box 107.3, Brinkley Collection.

189

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

81. Ibid. 82. Ibid., unsigned letter to Mrs. Brinkley, 20 February 1938, Box

1990MS044. 83. In addition to Garner and Smythe, the list of defendants included five other contributors to Publicity, two of whom, Eugene Nelson Sanctuary and Hudson De Priest, also wrote for Winrod’s Defender magazine; and a third, H. Victor Broenstrupp, was an attorney for Pelley. The case, United States v. McWilliams, finally went to trial in April 1944 but ended in mistrial

eight months later, after the presiding judge, Chief Justice Edward Eicher, died of a heart attack. In 1946 Chief Justice Bolitha Laws denied an at-

tempted retrial and dismissed the indictments on the basis that the defendants had been denied a speedy trial. See Dean, “Another Wichita Seditionist?” 61, and Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right, 196-213.

84. Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1977 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 214-16. 85. Robert Welch, The Blue Book of the John Birch Society (Belmont, Mass.: Robert Welch, 1959), 80.

86. American Nationalist, June 1957, Wilcox Collection, Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas, Lawrence. 87. Unsigned letter fragment to the FDA, 4 April 1957, Box 2387, Record Group 88, Hoxsey Papers, National Archives. 88. Marguerite Smith to Hon. Charles Teague, 8 May 1957, reprinted in “Mrs. Smith Writes Her Congressman,” Defender 32 (June 1957): 4-5. 89. Ray Hosier to Oliver Field, 5 October 1955, Box 368, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives.

90. Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right, xvii. 91. Glen Jeansonne, Gerald L. K. Smith: Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 177.

Minister

of Hate

(New

92. Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right, 231. 93: Ibid 7229; 94. The agent, John Findlay, noted Winrod, Smith, Pelley, and “others of their ilk” (memorandum,

190

8 September 1956, Box 523, Folder

27-026, Hoxsey Collection, FDA Archives. 95. National Christian Crusader, 15 May 1956. 96. FDA inspector Frank McKinlay to chief, Los Angeles District, 19 September 1956, Box 523, Folder 27-026, Hoxsey Collection, FDA Archives. 97. Program for the 1951 Annual Convention of the Christian Medical Research League, Box 566, Folder 11, Langer Papers. 98. “Koch’s Advertising Takes on a Religious Flavor,” JAMA 140 (27 April 1949): 1352; James Harvey Young and Richard E. McFadyen, “The Koch Cancer Treatment,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 53 (July 1998): 275-82.

NOTES TO PAGES

135-43

99. Program for the 1951 Annual Convention of the Christian Medical Research League; Arnold Forster and Benjamin Epstein, Danger on the Right (New York: Random House, 1964), 116. 100. “Prayer Crusade Organized,” Defender 31 (January 1957): 6. 101. “Petition Crusade Gathers Force,” Defender 31 (March 1957): 2.

102. “Hoxsey Sentiment Crystalizing,” Defender 32 (July 1957): 6. 103. Gerald Winrod, “The Hoxsey Petition Crusade,” Defender 31 (November 1956): 5.

104. American Rally Convention Supplement, April 1955, Box 365, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 105. Ibid., American Rally Newsletter, April 1955. 106. Ibid., American Rally Convention Supplement, April 1955. 107. Ibid., R.M.S. report of the American Rally Convention, Viking Hall, Chicago, 30 April 1955, Box 371.

108. Ibid., American Rally Convention Supplement, April 1955, Box 365. 109. Roy, Apostles of Discord, 49. 110. Harry Hoxsey to Senator William Langer, 16 January 1951, Box 566, Folder 11, Langer Papers. 111. Ibid., Mrs. Milton Millman to Senator William Langer, 11 July

1956. 112. American Rally Special Supplement, April 1955, Box 365, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 113. New York Times, 29 November 1955.

114. Ibid., 3 October 1956. 115. American Rally Special Supplement, April 1955, Box 365, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 116. Ibid., J. R. and Beulah Brubaker to Walter Alvarez, 23 April

1956, Box 368. 117. Viola Bernard, Judd Marmor, and Perry Ottenberg, “Psychodynamics of Group Opposition to Health Programs,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 30 (April 1960): 330. 118. “Cough Medicine for Cancer?” JAMA 155 (12 June 1954): 668.

119. Ray Hosier to Oliver Field, 5 October 1955, Box 368, Hoxsey Collection, AMA Archives. 120. J. C. Furnas, “Country Doctor Goes to Town: Dr. J. R. Brinkley

Sells Operations by Air from Mexico,” Saturday Evening Post 212 (4 April 1940): 48. 121. J. W. C. Hesser to Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, 7

January 1926, KTNT File. 122. Portage (Penn.) Dispatch, 3, 10, June 1954. 123. Reinemund interview, 7 December 1971. 124. Furnas, “Country Doctor Goes to Town,” 49; Crawford

Fowler, Border Radio, 41.

and

191

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

125. Aurora Beacon News, 26 July 1926. 126. Kansas City Star, 13 October 1933. 127. Ibid., 5 November 1930. 128. El Paso Herald, 1937; unidentified newspaper, c. 1932, Box 15-

03-05-03, Brinkley Collection, KSHS Archives. 129. Manchester (Iowa) Press, 1 October 1932, quoted in Thomas Hofer, “Norman Baker and American Broadcasting” (master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1974), 171.

130. J. W. C. Hesser to Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, 7 January 1926, KTNT File.

131. Hofer, “Norman Baker and American Broadcasting,” 172. 132. J. W. C. Hesser to Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, 7 January 1926, KTNT File.

133. Letter to Gilbert Goldhammer, 8 April 1957, Box 529, File 27026, Hoxsey Collection, FDA Archives.

134. Clyde Wilcox, God’s Warriors: The Christian Right in TwentiethCentury America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 10; Lipset and Raab, The Politics of Unreason, 240-42.

CONCLUSION

1. Kansas City Star (c. 1975), miscellaneous newspaper clippings, Box 15-03-05-03, Brinkley Papers, KSHS Archives. 2. Ibid., Texas Parade, November 1973. 3. Ibid., San Antonio Express—News (c. 1976). 4. Max

Churchill,

interview

by author,

Muscatine,

Iowa,

20

March 1994. 5. Muscatine (Iowa) Journal, 21 October 1999.

6. Fred Mannhardt, interview by Max Churchill, 7 June 1974, Baker Collection, Musser Art Museum. 7. See American Cancer Society, “Questionable Cancer Practices

in Tijuana and other Mexican ber 1991): 310-20. 8. Hoxsey: How Healing Realidad Productions, 1988); Crime: The Amazing Story of the

Border Clinics,” Ca 41 (September—OctoBecomes a Crime, film (Sante Fe, N.Mex.: Ken Ausubel, When Healing Becomes a Hoxsey Cancer Clinics and the Return of Al-

ternative Therapies (Rochester, Vt.: Healing Arts Press, 2000), 356.

9.2ibid.; 199, 351: 10. Ibid., 174-90. 1, ‘Ibid, 353) 12. Alfred Yankauer,

192

“The Recurring Popularity of Alternative Medicine,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 41 (autumn 1997): 136. 13. U.S. House of Representatives Joint Hearing Before the Com-

NOTES TO PAGES 143-53

mittee on Small Business and Aging, Recent Trends in Dubious and Quack Medical Devices (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992), 1-3. 14. National Institute on Aging, Health Quackery, pamphlet (Rockville, Md.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1994).

15. Quackery Targets Teens, pamphlet (Rockville, Md.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1988).

16. Kansas City Star, 23 October 1996. 17. Ibid., 22 October 1996.

18. Meredith McGuire and T. George Harris, “The New Spirituality: Healing Rituals Hit the Suburbs,” Psychology Today 23 (JanuaryFebruary 1989): 57-65; Meredith McGuire, Ritual Healing in Suburban America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 3. 19. Michael S. Goldstein, Alternative Health Care: Medicine, Miracle,

or Mirage? (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), 147. 20. American Cancer Society, “Questionable Methods of Cancer Management: The Committee for Freedom of Choice in Medicine, Inc.,”

Ca 43 (March-April 1993): 117-24. 21. American Cancer Society, “National Health Federation,” Ca 41

(January-February 1991): 61-64; Stephen Barrett and William Jarvis, The Health Robbers: A Close Look at Quackery in America (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1993), 397-98. 22. Thomas Bearden, “AIDS:

Urgent

Comments

on

Mankind’s

Greatest Threat and the Secrets of Electromagnetic Healing,” Journal of the United States Psychotronics Association (November 1988): 19-29. 23. Ibid., 174. 24. Goldstein, Alternative Health Care, 157. 25. Eliot Marshall, “The Politics of Alternative Medicine,” Science 265 (30 September 1994): 2000-2003.

26. James Harvey Young, “The Development of the Office of Alternative Medicine in the National Institutes of Health, 1991-1996,” Bulletin

of the History of Medicine 72 (summer 1998): 281. 27. Mary Ann Richardson et al., “Assessment of Outcomes at Alternative Medicine Cancer Clinics: A Feasibility Study,” Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 7 (winter 2001): 19-32. 28. Charles Marwick,

“New

Center Director States ‘Complemen-

tary’ Agenda,” JAMA 283 (23 February 2000): 990-91. 29. Eugene Taylor, “Mind-Body Medicine and Alternative Therapies at Harvard: Is This the Reintroduction of Psychology in General Medical Practice?” Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 6 (November 2000): 32-34. 30. Marwick, “New Center Director,” 991.

31. “Americans Mingling Alternative and Traditional Medical Services,” USA Today Magazine 127 (February 1999): 15.

193

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

32. David M. Eisenberg et al., “Trends in Alternative Medicine Use in the United 1569-75.

States,

1990-1997,”

JAMA

280

(11 November

1998):

33. U.S. Senate, Special Hearing Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, 106th Cong., 2d sess. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2000), 7. 34. Eisenberg et al., “Trends in Alternative Medicine Use in the United States,” 1569-75. 35. Quoted in Goldstein, Alternative Health Care, 174. Harkin has often been called a “populist”; see, for example, ““American Dream’ Per-

sonified, Harkin Hits the Populist Trail,” Congressional Quarterly Report 49 (7 December 1991): 3607-14. 36. “Bats and Roses,” TNT 2 (November 1930): 46. 37. Norman Baker, “The Power of Influence,” TNT 2 (December 1930): 5.

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Saturday Evening Post 221 (9

October 1948): 34-37.

Taylor, Eugene. “Mind-Body Medicine and Alternative Therapies at Harvard: Is This the Reintroduction of Psychology in General Medical Practice?” Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 6 (November 2000): 32-34. “Thirty-two Thousand See Cancer Cure Proved.” TNT 2 (June 1930): 25-28, 43. Thomas, John. “Diamond-Studded John Richard Brinkley, the GoatGland Broadcaster of Kansas.” Real America (July 1933): 44-47, 82-85, 87. “Times of Trouble: The Cow War.” Iowan 18 (April-May 1959): 28-35, 52. “Too Much Unnecessary Surgery.” U.S. News and World Report 34 (20 February 1953): 47-55. “Unjustified Surgery.” Harper’s Monthly 208 (February 1954): 35-41. “Vanishing Country M.D.s.” Newsweek 29 (24 March 1947): 56. Walker, Jack. “The Goat Gland Surgeon: The Story of the Late John R. Brinkley.” Journal of the Kansas Medical Society 57 (December 1956): 749-55. “Warning Against Hoxsey Treatment.” JAMA 263 (27 April 1957): 1623. Wik, Reynold.

“Radio

in the 1920s: A Social Force in South Dakota.”

South Dakota History 11 (spring 1981): 93-109. Winrod, Gerald. “Cancer Is Being Cured.” Defender 28 (January 1954): 13. . “Curing with Cancer.” Defender 28 (March 1954): 9.

204

——. “Hoxsey Letters from Our Mail Bag.” Defender 31 (September 1956): 8.

SELECTED

BIBLIOGRAPHY

——.. “The Hoxsey Petition Crusade.” Defender 31 (November 1956): 5. . “Hoxsey Science for Treating Cancer Explained.” Defender 30 (October 1955): 42. . “The Pittsburgh Trial.” Defender 31 (November 1956): 6-7.

Wolfe, Joseph. “Norman Baker and KTNT.” Journal of Broadcasting 12 (fall 1968): 389-99. Woodward, C. Vann. “The Populist Heritage and the Intellectual.” American Scholar 29 (winter 1959): 55-72.

Yankauer, Alfred. “The Recurring Popularity of Alternative Medicine.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 41 (autumn 1997): 132-38. Young, James Harvey. “American Medical Quackery in the Age of the Common Man.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47 (March 1961): D7 9-95. . “The Development of the Office of Alternative Medicine in the National Institutes of Health, 1991-1996.” Bulletin of the History ofMedicine 72 (Summer 1998): 279-98.

Young, James Harvey, and Richard E. McFadyen. “The Koch Cancer Treatment.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 53 (July 1998): 254-84.

FILMS

Hoxsey: Quacks Who Cure Cancer? Sante Fe, N.Mex.: Realidad Productions, 1987. Kendall, David, producer. Goat Gland Doctor. Topeka, Kans.: Washburn

University, 1986.

UNPUBLISHED SOURCES Hofer, Thomas. “Norman Baker and American Broadcasting.” Master’s thesis. University of Wisconsin, 1974.

Juhnke, James. “William and Meta Juhnke Family History.” 1994.

Prostak, Elaine J. “Up in the Air’: The Debate Over Radio Use During the 1920s.” Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1983.

Reinhardt, Douglas E. “Faith Healing: Where Science Meets Religion in the Body of Believers.” Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1982. Resler, Ansel Harlan. “The Impact of John R. Brinkley on Broadcasting in the United States.” Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1958. Schruben, Francis. “Dr. John R. Brinkley, Candidate for Governor.” Mas-

ter’s thesis. Municipal University of Wichita, 1953. Sindell, Gail. “Gerald B. Winrod and the Defender: A Case Study of the

Radical Right.” Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1973.

205

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

Slechta, Don B. “Dr. John R. Brinkley: A Kansas Phenomenon.” Master’s thesis. Kansas State Teachers College, 1952. Taylor, Anita Grimm. “Persuasive Techniques in Selected Speeches and

Writings of John R. Brinkley.” Master’s thesis. Kansas State University, 1959.

COURT CASES

KFKB Broadcasters Association, Inc. v. Federal Radio Commission. Court of Appeals of District of Columbia. Case no. 5240, 2 February 1931. People of the State of Illinois v. Harry M. Hoxsey. Circuit Court of Montgomery County, Illinois. Case no. 6407, 29 November 1927. State of Iowa v. Norman Baker, Harry Hoxsey et al. District Court of Muscatine County, lowa. Case no. 2403, 30 October 1930.

INTERVIEWS

Baker, Stanley. 25 March 1988. Muscatine Heritage Association, Musser Library, Muscatine, Iowa. Churchill, Max. Interview by author. Muscatine, lowa. 20 March 1994.

Goldhammer, Gilbert. Interview by James Harvey Young. 26 August 1968. National Library of Medicine, Washington, D.C. Kroemer, Raymond. Interview by author. West Branch, lowa. 27 March 1992: Mannhardt, Fred. Interview by Max Churchill. 7 June 1974. Norman Baker Collection, Muscatine Art Center, Muscatine, Iowa.

Reinemund, Adam. Interview by Stanley Yates. 7 December 1971. Norman Baker Collection, Muscatine Art Center, Muscatine, Iowa.

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Baker, Norman. Collection. Eureka Springs Historical Museum. Eureka Springs, Ark. Baker, Norman. Collection. Historical Health Fraud and Alternative Med-

icine Collection. American Medical Association Archives, Chicago. Baker, Norman. Collection. Musser Art Museum. Muscatine, lowa. Brinkley, John R. Collection. Historical Health Fraud and Alternative Medicine Collection. American Medical Association Archives,

206

Chicago. Brinkley, John R. Papers. Kansas Topeka.

State Historical

Society Archives,

SELECTED

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carson, Gerald. Papers. Kansas State Historical Society Archives. Topeka. Hoover, Herbert. Presidential Papers, General Correspondence, Walter Newton Papers, and Secretary of Commerce Papers. Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa. Hoxsey, Harry. Collection. Historical Health Fraud and Alternative Medicine Collection. American Medical Association Archives, Chicago. Hoxsey, Harry. Collection. Food and Drug Administration Archives. Accession nos. 63A292 and 66A1030. Rockville, Md.

Hoxsey, Harry. Papers. Food and Drug Administration. Record Group 88, National Archives, College Park, Md. KTNT File. Federal Radio Commission. Record Archives, College Park, Md.

Group

173, National

Langer, William. Papers. Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections. Chester Fritz Library, University of North

Dakota, Grand

Forks. Thomas, Elmer. Collection. Carl Albert Center, University of Oklahoma,

Norman. Wilcox Collection. Lawrence.

Spencer Research

Library, University of Kansas,

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Index

Alger, Bruce, 77 Allison, Kathy, 86, 89 Alternative medicine, xv

political left and, 151-52 political right and, 150-52 Aluminum poisoning, 45 Alvarez, Walter, 64, 142 American Cancer Society, 66

Baker, Norman alternative medicine and, 45-48, 53-54, 62 AMA libel suit, 57-58 anti-intellectualism, 51-52 anti-Semitism, xiii, 52, 72, 133, 154, 189n68 appearance, 36, 37, 59, 61-62

American Council Against Nazi Propaganda, 31

Brinkley, correspondence with,

American Medical Association

business operations, 43, 45,

(AMA) Baker and, 92, 99, 113-14, 117, 118 Brinkley and, 117, 163n70 Hoxsey and, 65-66, 80-81, 113-14, 117 medical orthodoxy, xv, 50-51,

153

monopoly and, 97, 98, 100 quackery, campaign against, 49, 57, 93, 97, 138, 149 United Mine Workers of America and, 107 American Nationalist, 136 American Rally, 84-85, 139-42

170n43 122-23

campaign for lowa governor, 58-59, 144

campaign for U.S. Senate, 59 childhood, 38

criticisms of organized medicine, 36-38, 44, 49-53, 98 death of, 62 Eureka Springs and, 59-61,

104-5, 106, 122-23

Hoxsey partnership with, 46,

American Weekly, 78

49, 70-72, 92 KTNT and, xvi, 37, 39-45, 49-50, 57, 63, 95, 119, 125, 7, eo) mail fraud trial, 61-62

Andrews, William, 108 Anti-Semitism, xiii

marriage, 39, 169n11 Muscatine and, 36-42, 45-46,

Arsens, Lydia, 87-88 Atwell, William, 78-79, 88, 148 Ausubel, Ken, 148

49, 74, 122, 125 notoriety, xiv, 62 Nuevo Laredo, move to, 58

209

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

Baker, Norman, continued patients of, 49, 57, 92, 98,

campaign for Texas governor

100-104, 108-9, 113-18 populism and, 38, 60, 62-63, 128-29 rural ethos, 39-40, 41, 46, 51, 52, 120, 129 speaking ability, 41, 95-96 supporters of, 120, 122-24, 125, 127, 128-29, 130, 131, 133, 143, 144-46, 148, 154 trust busting, 98, 130 vaudeville and, 38-39, 40 wealth of, xiv, 62, 124 Baker, Stanley, 122 Baker Institute, 46, 47, 49, 52, 56-57, 73, 92 Barney, L. F., 14

celebrity, xiv, 126-27

Barrett, Stephen, 150 Battle Creek, Michigan, 62 Bealle, Morris, 98 Bellows, R. A., 46 Bennet Medical College, 4 Bernard, Viola, 108 Bio-Medical Center, 148, 152-53

Blue Book of the John Birch Society, 136 Boepple, J. F., 38 Brinkley, Alan, 120

Brinkley, John advertising and, 7, 12, 25-28

African Americans and, 132-33 AMA, criticism of, 14, 120 anti-Semitism, 30-31, 133, 134,

154, 189n68 anti-intellectualism, 26

army record, 5-6 and Baker, correspondence

210

with, 170n43 campaign for Kansas governor (1930), 16-19, 35, 121, 130-33, 144, 164nn91,92, 188n57 campaign for Kansas governor (1932), 19-23, 119, 130-33, 144

(1941), 32 childhood, 3 Del Rio and, 20, 24-25, 121, 143, 147 demise of, 34-35 education, 3-5 farmers and, 3, 25-26, 28, 183n68 far right and, 31-32, 133-35, 145 financial difficulties, 32-33

first marriage, 3-4 goat-gland origins, 6 hospital facilities, 8, 9, 104-5 isolationism, 29, 32, 134, 135

KFKB license hearing, 1, 44 litigation and, 4, 33-35, 163n67

loss of KTNT license, 1, 14-15 medical doctors, criticisms of, 27 medical license hearing, 1-2, 15-16 Medical Question Box and, 11 Milford and, 1, 121, 125-26, 144

Minnie and, 4, 6, 17, 27, 29, 104, ay

patients of, 92-93, 96-98, 100-104, 108-10, 113-18 pharmaceutical association and,

11-12

populism, 2-3, 35, 128-29, 131 presidential aspirations, 31 prostate operation and, 24-25 religion and, 18-19, 28-29, 121,

127-28 rural ethos, 6-10, 25, 120, 125, 129 speaking ability, 10-11, 96, 126

supporters of, 119, 120-21, 123, 124, 125-28, 130-34, 135, 143, 144, 14546, 147, 183n68 wealth of, 12, 26, 27, 124 XER (XERA) and, 19-20, 34, 165n116

INDEX

Brinkley, Johnny Boy, 6, 22, 29,

104, 132

Brinkley, Minnie Brinkley and, 4, 17, 27, 29, 104,

12 7rAy celebrity, 127, 131-32 radio broadcasts, 10, 29, 127, 135 Brookhardt, Smith, 130 Brown Scare, 32, 135 Burke, James, 82, 84

Burlington Hawkeye Gazette, xii

Davenport, Lowa, 73

Defender Magazine, 85-86, 111, 139 Del Rio, Texas, 20, 24, 26, 105, 119, 121-22, 143, 147 Denver, D. D., 10

Department of Health Education and Welfare, 93-94 Dericks, Donald, 48 Des Moines Register, 42, 49 Detroit, 74 Dies, Martin, 30-31

Bush, A. G., 61

Dingell, John, 89 Dismuke, Harlan, 149

Calliaphone, 39

Durkee, J. B., 65 Dutcher, Charles, 57

Carson, Gerald, 31, 119 Catlett, Leon, 61

Cedar County Cow War, 53-55, 172n103

Cedar Rapids Gazette and Republi-

Eclectic Medical School of Kansas City, 4-5 Eddy, Mary Baker, 110, 137 Ely, C. L., 74

can, 49 Chase, Francis, 12 Chicago, 4, 69

Emporia Gazette, 21 Engle, William, 78

Chicago Tribune, 54

Estes, Joe, 91

Christian Medical Research League, 138 Christian Science, 110 Churchill, Max, 147-48

Eureka Springs, 59-61, 104—5, 106,

Clayton, Powell, 61

Everhard, Lucious, 69

Close, Upton, 138 Clugston, W. C., 18 Committee for Freedom of Choice in Medicine, 150 Common Sense, 85, 137

Congressional Record, 84 Conybeare, R. C., 44

Coughlin, Charles, 31, 120 Cramp, Arthur, 75

Crawford, James, 4 Criswell, W. A., 77 Curtis, Charles, 130, 188n52 Dallas, William, 55

Das Adhikery, Mukundah, 151

Esquire Magazine, 82

122-23

Eureka Springs Daily Times-Echo, 123

Farm-Labor Party, 58, 173n124 Faulkner, Roy, 10 Federal Radio Commission, 1, 14-15, 42, 44,95 Field, Henry, 39, 80 Field, Oliver, xiv, 109, 113, 114 Findlay, Park A., 55 Fishbein, Morris, 98 Baker, campaign against, 44 Brinkley, campaign against, 2, 4, 13-15, 38, 44, 163n67

Hoxsey, campaign against, 78-79, 81, 101 Hoxsey v. Fishbein, 79

2

QUACKS

AND CRUSADERS

Fishbein, Morris, continued Lewis, comparison with, 107 quackery and, 51, 93 Fitzgerald, Benedict, 84

Food and Drug Administration (FDA), xi-xii, 65-66, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93-94, 108, 110, 113-14, 116-17, 138, 149, 153, 179n127 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, 88 Fulton, Kansas, 5 Garner, Elmer, 22-23, 30, 31, 32,

134 German-American Bund, 31, 85 Ginsberg, Allen, 151 Girard, Illinois, 68, 71, 123 Girard Gazette, 71, 123

Goat-gland transplants origins, 6 women and, 8 Goldhammer, Gilbert, 88 Goldstein, Michael, 151-52

Hour, 31

Hoxsey, Harry African Americans and, 107-8 American Rally and, 84-85,

139-42 anticommunism, 82, 137, 154 anti-intellectualism, 81-82

appearance, 76, 83, 125 Baker, partnership with, xii, 72-74 cancer treatments and, 65, 174n19 childhood, 67-68 coal miners and, 107, 124 Dallas clinic and, 64, 81, 91, 136 death, 91

family background, 66-67 family squabble, 70-71, 87-88 far right and, 77, 136-42, 145 FDA poster, reaction to, xi Fishbein and, 72, 78-79 hospital ventures, 75-76 libel suits and, 77-79

Gould, Jay, 62 Graham, Billy, 145 Greenville, South Carolina, 4

marital problems, 76 organized medicine and, 69, 74,

Gulledge, Euclid, 87

patients of, 93, 98, 100-104,

Haluska, John, 86-87, 89, 91 Hammil, John, 130 Hare Krishna, 151 Harkin, Tom, 152, 154 Harvard Division of Research and

populism and, 66, 128-29 religion and, 67, 138-39 supporters of, xii, 119-20,

91, 102, 120 107-11, 112-18

Education in Comparative and Integrative Medical Therapies, 153 Hassig, Robert, 14 Hatch, Orin, 152 Haucke, Frank, 18 Hawley, Paul, 98-99

123-25, 129-30, 136-43, 144, 14546 Taylorville and, 123 Texas arrival, 76-77 Hoxsey, John, 67 HUAC, 30-31 Human Be In, 151 lihotaue til, Ip tea, aA

Hygeia, 33, 93, 95

Hmura, Anthony, 139 Hofstadter, Richard, xiii, 133,

157n10

pats

Hoover, Herbert, 15, 40-42, 44

Illinois Medical Society, 69 lowa Farmers’ Union, 54 Iowa State Board of Health, 46

INDEX

Ivy, Andrew, 86 Jacobs, Joseph, 152 JAMA, 2, 13, 44, 49-50, 56, 70, 74, 78, 93, 95, 97, 143 Jehovah Witnesses, 110

Landon, Alf, 23 Langer, William, 84, 140-42, 145 Larrick, George, xi, 89 Leland, R. G., 105 Lenker, Jacob, 53, 171n87 Lewis, John, 107

John Birch Society, 136, 150 Johnson, Mandus, 36

Lincoln, Abraham, 68

Journal of the United States Psy-

Little Rock, 5, 32, 61, 105, 122

chotronics Association, 151

Life of a Man, 4

Long, Huey, 120, 137 Ludlow amendment, 29

Kansas Board of Medical Examiners, 1

Kansas City Journal-Post, 2 Kansas City Star, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19,

21, 144, 149 Kansas Farmers’ Insurance Com-

pany, 15

Manchester Press, 144-45 Man's Magazine, 82 Maross, Ernest, 74 Marquis, Alice, 94 Martin, Eric, 87 Mayo Clinic, 64, 142

Kansas State Medical Society, 14

McCarthy, Joseph, 145

Karnofsky, David, 80

McCloskey, Burr, 142 McDonald, A. B., 13-15 McGuire, Meredith, 150 McMillan, R. J., 33 Meadors, Gilcin, 80 Medical Mussolini, 98 Medical Trust Unmasked, 97 Mellon, Andrew, 45, 130 Memphis, 4 Mennonites, 111-12, 149 Michigan Board of Registration, 5)

Kazin, Michael, xii, 95

KDKA, 94

Kellogg, W. K., 112 KFKB advertising and, 12 Federal Radio Commission

hearing, 44, 95 Medical Question Box, 11 origins of, 9-10 programming, 10-11, 125, 127-28 Koch, William, 86, 137, 138, 140 Kordel v. the United States, 88, 178n119 KTNT, xvi, 37, 63

advertising, 57 attack, alleged of, 49-50 federal radio commission hear-

ing, 44-45, 95

origins of, 39-40 political advertising and, 41-42, 130, 169 popularity of, 42-43, 119, 125

programming, 43, 127

Michigan State Medical Society, 74

Midwestern Druggist, 12 Midwest Free Press, 48, 56 Milford, Kansas, 1, 121, 125-26,

144 Miller, Bruce, 69 Moody, Clarence, xii Moore, Milo, 71-72 Morphy, Hurbert P., 69-70, 124 Muscatine, 36-42, 45-46, 49, 74,

1X, MS), MANS: Muscatine Journal, 43

Z19

QUACKS AND CRUSADERS

Nation, 21

National Association of Colored Women, 108 National Cancer Institute, 65, 80 National Cancer Research Institute and Clinic, 69

National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (Ofice of Alternative Medicine), 152-53, 154 National Christian Crusader, 84, 85, 138 National Health Federation, 150 National Health Freedom Bulletin, 85, 150 National Institutes of Health, 152

National Institute on Aging, 149 Nature’s Path, 82 Nelson, Mildred, 148, 152-53

Netts, J. C., 121 Newsweek, 107

Nixon, Eugene, 95 Norbye, Gunnar, 58

O’Daniels, Lee, 32 Office of Alternative Medicine

Quackery definition, xv, 160 radio and, 12, 94-96 recent trends, 149-55 Quakers, 67 Rainey, Bonnie, 139 Randall, W. D., 40

Reinemund, Adam, 40-41, 143 Rennels, W. H., 133 Reno, Milo, 54, 172n103 Review and the Herald, 112-13 Richardson, John A., 150 Richardson, Mary Ann, 152-53 Ritzhaput, Louis H., 84 RKO Radio Pictures, 59 Roberts, Oral, 111

(National Center for Complementary and Alternative

Ropes, Wayne, 62

Medicine), 152-53, 154

San Antonio, 78 San Fernando, 64

Oracle, 151 Ozias Cancer Clinic, 45-46, 72

Parker, Merle, 138 Pelly, William Dudley, 31, 32, 133,

134, 135, 137-38, 189n73 Penny,J.G,31 People’s Protective Association, 50, 120 Physical Culture, 82 Pink Rag, 22 Pioneer Party, 142 Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 87, 129 Plum, Jerry, 130

214

120-21, 128-29, 130, 131, 154, 157n10 Populist Party, 21, 22-23, 38, 130-31, 132 Portage, 86, 91, 143 Psychosomatic medicine, 113, 115, 154, 185n115 Publicity, 23, 30, 31, 134

Populism, xii—xvi, 2-3, 38, 66,

Seventh Day Adventists, 110-11, 16 Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 97 Shreffler, Mandi, 21 Skilling, Ed, 150-51 Slechta, Don, 13

Sloan-Kettering Institute, 80 Smith, Alfred, 41 Smith, Gerald L. K., 120, 136-38 Smith, William, 15

Smythe, Edward J., 31, 32, 133-34, 135 Spirit of 1776, 139 Spivak, John, 97

INDEX

Staley, Wesley, 108 Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention, 153 State University of lowa, 44, 45, 74 Stewart, Donna, 115

Straus, Stephen, 153 Swain, Sam, 138

Syndergaard, Mary, 54, 172n92 Tammany Hall, 41 Taylor, Eugene, 113 Taylorville, 69-70, 123-24, 143 Templeton, Al, 77

Texas Medical Society, 26 Texas State Board of Naturopathic Examiners, 77 Thomas, Elmer, 31, 82-84, 89, 91 Thornton, W. L., 79

Tirrell, Arthur, 64 TNT, 4546, 57, 130, 154-55 Topeka Daily Capital, 32 Topeka Plain Dealer, 133 Townsend, Francis, 31-32,

167n170 Trapp, Charles, 22 Trimble, T. G., 61 Turner, Dan, 53, 59, 75

U.S. Public Health Service, 80 Van Hyning, Homer, 74

Washington, D.C., 14 Welch, Robert, 136 White, Ellen G., 112 White, Grant, 55 White, William Allen, 21 Wichita Eagle, 19, 132

Winfield, 55 Winrod, Gerald, 31, 32, 85-86, 89,

ODS alsa reho4 ala, 137-39, 145, 178n, 181n47 Winrod, John W., 85 Winston, Alvin, 38 Wood, Clement, 4 Woodring, Harry, 18, 21, 22, 23 World Health Association, 151 Wright, Lawrence, 77 Wyden, Ron, 149

XENT, 58 XER (XERA), 19-20, 24, 134, 165n116

You Don’t Have to Die, 68 Young, James Harvey, 93-94

United Farm Federation of Amer-

ica (UFFA), 56, 144

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Juhnke first examines the career of each man, revealing their geniuses as businessmen and propagandists—with such success that Brinkley and Baker ran for governor of their states and Hoxsey had thousands of supporters protest his “persecution” by the

FDA. Juhnke then investigates the identity, motives, and willingness to believe of their many patients and followers. He shows how all three men used populist rhetoric—evangelical, anti-Communist, antiintellectual—to attract their clients, and

then how their particular brand of populism sometimes mutated to antiSemitism and other sentiments of the radical right.

By treating the incurable, Brinkley, Baker, and Hoxsey took on the mantles of common folk crusaders. Brinkley was idolized for his goat gland cures until his death, and Hoxsey’s former head nurse continued his work from Tiyuana until her death in 1999. In considering who visits quacks and why,

Juhnke has shed new light not only on the ongoing battle between alternative and organized medicine, but also on the persist-

ence of quackery—and gullibility—in American culture.

ERIC

S. JUHNKE is assistant professor of

history at Briar Cliff University.

University Press of Kansas 2501 West 15th Street Lawrence KS 66049 www.kansaspress.ku.edu

“Based on prodigious research, Juhnke’s book makes a major contribution to the study of health quackery in America... . Readers will be gripped by his narrative and enlightened by his insights into a major, continuing problem in the nation’s health marketplace.” James Harvey Young, author of hie Health Quackery

“A readable account of why three of America’s best known medical frauds succeeded, and what their success indicates

about the context of our health care system.” Michael S. Goldstein, author of A/ternative Health Care: Medicine, Miracle, or Mirage?

“Vividly describes the sales pitches and political maneuvering that enabled Brinkley, Baker, and Hoxsey to ‘succeed.’ Astute readers will recognize that today’s quacks use many of the same techniques.” Stephen Barrett, M.D., Quackwatch.com

‘

:

University Press of Kansas Lawrence KS 66049 www.kansaspress.ku.edu

ISBN

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O-?00b-1203-3

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|MH |

9780700612031