The Quack Doctor

From The Oakland Tribune 22 February 1925

If you think a chlorine bomb sounds more like something from the battlefield than the medicine cabinet, then you’d be right about the origins of this 1920s remedy. The product, and a brief trend among physicians for treating colds with chlorine, arose from experiments made by the US Chemical Warfare Service after the First World War.

Thomas Faith, in his article ‘“As Is Proper in Republican Form of Government”: Selling Chemical Warfare to Americans in the 1920s’ (Federal History, 2010) places these experiments in the context of a public relations campaign to improve the CWS’s unsurprisingly poor image. The Service needed to contribute positively to life in peacetime, and what better way to appeal to the public than to announce a cure for the common cold?

While the influenza pandemic was claiming millions of lives, doctors at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland, noticed that flu was less common among workers in the chlorine gas manufacturing plant than elsewhere. Intrigued by this anecdotal evidence, Lieutenant Colonel Edward B Vedder and Captain Harold P. Sawyer of the Army Medical Corps spent a year experimenting with chlorine gas on patients with ordinary colds. Reporting their findings in March 1925, Vedder revealed that of 440 cases, 261 were ‘cured’ and 149 were ‘improved’ by the treatment. Such an improvement might have been vague and unquantifiable, but the researchers also sent out questionnaires to physicians using the treatment. They got an overall favourable response, and took that as proof that it worked.

Finding a cold cure might be impressive enough, but Vedder and Sawyer had gone a step further and claimed to cure the cold of the President of the United States. In May 1924, Calvin Coolidge spent 45 minutes in a sealed chamber, breathing in a low concentration of chlorine gas. By the next day, his cold had become so bad that he had to cancel his official engagements, but after two more treatments he was well again. A cold getting better after three days? Who would have thought it?

In 1925 the University of Minnesota demonstrated via a controlled experiment that patients with colds recovered in the same amount of time with or without chlorine, but by then the idea had entered the commercial world and sufferers were being exhorted to ‘Bomb the first sneeze’ with Kilacold.

Kilacold Chlorine Bomb. Photo via Worthpoint.com

The Kilacold chlorine bomb was a teardrop-shaped glass ampoule containing 0.35g of chlorine gas. The patient had to break the end off to allow the gas to permeate the air of a closed room and, according to the advertising, their cold would disappear within an hour. The treatment was also promoted for flu, whooping cough, croup, bronchitis and for diphtheria carriers, but was not recommended for people with asthma. The bombs cost 29c each at Walgreens in 1925.

A few years later, 11 cartons of the bombs were seized at Portland, Oregon, and condemned as misbranded because the packaging stated that the contents were ‘Absolutely harmless’ and ‘positively not poisonous in any way to the human system.’

Although a 1927 Kilacold advert spoke of chlorine as an agent of death and destruction in war, it continued by using a rather tasteless statement to assure punters that the medical form was different.

‘Chlorine bombs are safe and sane,’ the advertising asserted. ‘Thousands of doctors declare the late war worthwhile because it gave the world the chlorine treatment.’

I had this post all specially planned for 21 May 2011 and now you tell me today has nothing to do with ruptures? Honestly, I don’t know why I bother.

Well, I might as well post it anyway – I get the feeling not many Quack Doctor readers will be going to heaven any time soon, so you’ll need something to peruse as you while away the Tribulation.

From The Penny Illustrated Paper, 16 July 1904

When the W. S. Rice Rupture Cure arrived on the market in the late Victorian period, traditional rupture trusses had been around for centuries, and were constantly being re-invented in the hope of improving them. Many severe-looking designs – like the American one pictured below – jostled for supremacy, so to stand out from the crowd, new products had to offer something different.

Truss by Levi Westinghouse, St Louis, Missouri, 1877. I assume this is supposed to be a woman, otherwise that's a damningly small leaf.

The Rice Method offered to cure, rather than simply support, ruptures. And if you had a hernia, I would imagine absolutely anything that might get rid of it would have been worth a go. Although the Rice method included an ‘appliance’ for temporary use, the lasting cure would be performed by a liniment called Developing Lymphol. Twice a day the patient had to remove the appliance, sprinkle some Lymphol onto the rupture and rub it in thoroughly. This must have been pretty empowering for people otherwise faced with the grim prospect of indefinite truss-wearing.

The Lymphol comprised essential oils of origanum, spearmint and peppermint, with tincture of capsicum and red dye, all padded out by rectified spirit. Its accompanying appliance was described by the BMJ in 1908 as ‘an elastic band to go round the body, fitted with an adjustable pad and an understrap.’

Rice was London-based but advertised the product widely in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Representatives travelled around offering free trials where sufferers could have the method ‘demonstrated to you right on your own rupture.’

‘Are you tired of that binding, hampering, uncomfortable old truss?’ asked one of Rice’s 1920s advertisements before exhorting the reader to come along to a demo. ‘[The Rice Method] is modern, up-to-the-minute, abreast of the latest scientific developments. It is the one Rupture Method you are not asked to take on faith alone—’

San Jose News, 23 May 1928

Regular readers might remember Cornelius Bennett Harness, who carried on a lucrative business in electro-magnetic products in London in the 1880s and 1890s. I have blogged about his Electric Corsets and the Ammoniaphone, an inhaler promising artificial Italian air to singers and public speakers. Harness’s showrooms, known as the Electropathic and Zander Institute, were on the corner of Rathbone Place and Oxford Street, and while I was in London the other day I went to have a look – it was interesting to see how little the place has changed.

1892

2011

Source: Popular Mechanics December 1909

When a bald fellow had got fed up with rubbing lotions on his scalp or taking bullocks’ blood supplements, it was time to go for something more drastic – a vacuum cap.

An early form of this device was invented in New York in 1898 by Claude O. Rosell. The cap, which he dubbed the ‘Capillary Chalice’, took its inspiration from the ancient surgical practice of cupping. By using suction to draw blood into the scalp, the rubber device was intended to stimulate the circulation of blood and to loosen the scalp from the skull.

‘When the scalp has thus been loosened,’ read the patent, ‘it ceases to impede the normal circulation of the blood among the roots of the hair, and as a consequence there is a proliferation of cells and a new formation of blood vessels.’

It reminds me of one of those hopper popper toys from the 80s, and I imagine it coming unstuck and pinging off into the atmosphere, to the wearer’s disgruntlement. To prevent air getting in around the edges, the cap had to be coated with a suitable substance such as cold cream, petroleum jelly or beeswax, and Rosell also suggested that if desired, the patient could first apply diluted formaldehyde to the scalp as an antiseptic. The invention was versatile and could be used to provide a cupping action to other parts of the body – the biggest size available (6”) was also recommended as a breast enlarger.

A year later, another inventor, Frederick Watkins Evans, had improved upon the idea by incorporating a tube that the user could either connect up to a vacuum pump or simply put in his mouth and suck.

The inventions proliferated and within a few years had become solid bell-like structures with a rubber seal around the base.

In 1904, Napoleon W. Dible recognised that there was a problem with the devices then on the market – the patient’s whole head tended to get sucked up into the cap, uncomfortably stretching his neck. To alleviate this objectionable feature, Dible’s invention contained an internal support that pressed on the scalp, keeping the patient down. Dible’s cap had a greater volume inside than the earlier versions, and the tube shown on the left was to be attached to a pump.

As to their efficacy, it is interesting to note that these devices frequently cropped up for sale second-hand in the classified ads of early 20th-century US newspapers. Either they worked so wonderfully that their owners didn’t need them any more, or – perhaps more likely – they simply sucked.

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From The Standard (London) 10 April 1897

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Perhaps this is not strictly medical, but I noticed this ad while researching something else, and was intrigued enough to find out more.

The invisible elevators, I discovered, were cork wedges about 1 inch thick, designed to be worn inside your shoes. The image below is of a US version patented in 1896 and exactly matches the description of those sold in the UK by a young entrepreneur called Arthur Lewis Pointing.

The product retailed at 3s 9d per pair, or 5s 6d for a superior version. You had a job to get hold of the cheaper set, however – if you sent in 3s 9d, you would receive a letter saying that they were out of stock but that you could have the higher quality ones if you sent the balance.

The grand-sounding Oriental Toilet Company, 87 Strand, was simply a room hired by Pointing as a place to receive letters, which were collected each day and taken to his other premises where a staff of thirteen young women sent out the replies. Pointing also promoted a wealth of other products under various names and addresses, for example this bust improver ostensibly sold by ‘Madame E. P.’

In 1897, Pointing, 29, was arrested for fraud and brought to trial at Bow Street Police Court. Dissatisfied customers told of the pain occasioned by trying to walk in the elevators, and their futile attempts to get their money back. One of the witnesses was described in various newspaper reports as a ‘diminutive girl’ and ‘a pleasant-looking little domestic servant’ – which can’t have done much for her sensitivity about her height!

To be fair, two witnesses also appeared for the defence, suggesting that the elevators were comfortable and effective, but one of them worked for Pointing and said she had tried the product out of curiosity since the trial began.

Less loyal to her boss was the Oriental Toilet Company’s head clerk, Charlotte Smith, who said that there was no difference between the 3s 9d and the 5s 6d products. She explained how the business worked.

When anyone enquired about the elevators, they would receive a circular sympathising with the plight of short people, who inevitably found themselves ‘decried and treated with a certain amount of contempt and pity.’

‘Many,’ it said, ‘will certainly speak in praise of little women, but few of little men.’ This did not, however, mean that women didn’t need the product:

Little women, provided they are beautifully proportioned and know how to dress daintily, can be, and are, very attractive; but when these little women get past their fresh beauty and become fat or thin their trials begin. We all know how ridiculous it is to see a little fat woman waddling along like a motherly old duck, whereas a tall, stout, middle-aged woman does not look ridiculous at all.

When an order was placed, the customer would receive the out-of-stock letter, and more often than not this resulted in the remittance of the extra 1s 9d. If the customer asked for their money back instead, they would be sent the elevators anyway in the hope that they wouldn’t bother taking the matter further. Persistent complainants were offered a selection of toiletries, or – rather randomly – some liver pills, in exchange for the elevators. If you wanted your 3s 9d back that much, you really had to work for it.

These money-making ploys, however, were not actually illegal. Arthur Pointing might have been dodgy, but the court ruled that he hadn’t committed a criminal offence, and acquitted him.

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My Scottish grandma could be rather forthright at times and was wont to sum up the appearance of passers-by with the succinct phrase ‘She’s no stranger to a fish supper.’

Had grandma been around in the early 20^th century, however, perhaps she wouldn’t have had as much opportunity to make this pronouncement. Help was at hand for those who wanted to lose weight.

Source: The Theatre Magazine, January 1911

Jeanne Walter patented a rubber bandage in 1904. The following year she invented a two-piece rubber suit of undergarments designed to retain perspiration and heat for therapeutic purposes. By 1909 this had developed into a severe-looking full-body garment that was supposed to compress all your extra flesh down into a svelte figure – and, according to this drawing from the patent, make one arm shorter than the other.

Walter’s range grew to include specialised garments for different parts of the body – a brassiere to reduce large busts, leg wraps to create slender ankles and a beer-gut minimiser for men. Those with a double chin could try the Chin and Neck Reducer, to be worn for a few hours daily in the privacy of one’s own home. Pictured in the advert shown above, this also appears in the following image from 1915:

Walter’s 1909 patent presented the garments simply as foundation wear for holding in the flesh, but later advertising also capitalised on the sweatiness of the rubber and claimed that this would actively result in weight loss. One Canadian stockist used the slogan: Perspire and grow thin.

Taking rubber to your blubber was just one of many ways to try and lose weight in the early 20th century – pills, supplements and fat-reducing soaps were widely advertised as a quick and easy fix. But then, as now, there was no overnight solution.

A correspondent to the Washington Herald’s beauty column in 1910 received the following perennial weight loss advice from agony aunt Mrs Symes:

If you wish to reduce flesh, you should live on a diet and exercise.

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Unlike the La Vida Electric Vibrator, this one was hand-operated. Snyder explained its action in his patent application as follows:

In a general sense my present invention comprises a main staff and a vibrator-head, the latter mounted for movement longitudinally on the staff in such manner that said movement will give a series of shocks to the staff, which may be communicated to the body of a user.

The accompanying drawings suggest it was a bit like a woodpecker toy:

In 1904, a similar invention called the Marvel Vibrator went on the market. Even though it was advertised before Snyder’s patent was granted, he took the Marvel company to court in 1906 for infringement. In their defence, Marvel presented patents for mechanical toys, suggesting that the general idea had been around for ages, but the judge wasn’t buying it and granted Lambert Snyder an injunction.

Boston Daily Globe, 11 August 1904

Source: The Sporting Times, 28 January 1899.

Although this product isn’t solely medical, its advertising did claim that it could prevent chills, colds, rheumatism and lumbago, and alleviate toothache, neuralgia and sciatica.

Whether or not it could effectively combat these ailments is doubtful, but it nevertheless sounds like a useful gadget for the depths of winter.

The 12th Earl of Dundonald patented the Instra warmer in 1896, and soon developed a whole range of products under the motto ‘Warmth is Life’. The standard version was the pocket warmer, a slim contraption available in embossed German silver at 12s 6d or without the decoration for 7s 6d. Plebs need not miss out as there was a tin alternative at a bargain 3s 6d.

The Instra came with refills that you had to light with a match and place into the outer casing. They had to be put in non-burning end first, which sounds tricky. I don’t know what the fuel was, but the makers claimed it was lightweight and slow-burning. A single cartridge weighed only one seventh of an ounce and would give out heat for three to four hours. Surrounding the cartridge were layers of gauze padding to stop sparks getting through. The device could then be used in various ways:

To be warm, put in side pocket; to be warmer, hook up just behind and below the hip bone underneath the coat; if very chill, hook up on one or other side of the back bone between the shoulders; for railway travelling, get the anklet strap; to air a damp bed quickly, put a chair in the bed and the Instra inside.

The pocket warmer was only one part of the range – there was also an Instra Chest Stove to wear strapped to one’s bosom. Supposedly contoured to the shape of the chest, in pictures it looks decidedly uncomfortable, and not very accommodating for ladies of Rubenesque stature.

For cyclists, however, the Instra range was a boon. The pocket warmers could be strapped to the ankles on chilly days, and Instra Bicycle Handles were the ideal way of keeping the rider’s hands warm. For equestrians there was the Instra Horse Stove, a large rectangular warmer costing over a pound. It’s not clear whether this was for the horse’s or the rider’s benefit, but it looks like it could be worn on the rider’s back and would certainly prevent slouching.

Happy customers testified to the Instra’s usefulness. Mrs Stone from the Isle of Wight said:

Thanks for the Instra warmer, which I place in my muff and thus save my fingers from being half frozen.

while The Rev E.R. Burroughs commented on the product’s versatility:

I am much pleased with the pocket ‘Instra.’ Another use to which it can be put is that of drying clothes in a drawer, and airing them if they are likely to be damp.

All in all, an admirable product that would of great service in 21st-century winters. The health and safety concerns of carrying lit fuel in one’s clothing are put to rest by the advertising pamphlet:

To show their safety, INSTRAs have been habitually carried in the same pocket mixed up with gunpowder cartridges.

Lord Dundonald (right) also invented the Constra bicycle saddle, a design that departed from the solid bone-shaking norm and consisted of leather straps stretched over a frame. This met with a mixed reception – Cycling magazine was dismissive, while The Nursing Record and Hospital World approved, saying that:

There is no tendency to jerk off, as with some saddles, and there is no injurious vibration when riding over rough roads.

They did admit they hadn’t actually tried it though.

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Source: Country Life Illustrated, 8 Jan 1897 (this image from a later facsimile edition)

Unusually for anything involving exercise, this contraption looks almost fun. Although perhaps not completely  ‘a perfect substitute for a live horse’ – at least, not if you wanted to travel somewhere – it was well-received as an aid to fitness. The medical profession increasingly advocated taking exercise on purpose to improve the health, and this product (also called the Hercules Horse-Action Saddle) appears to have given a pretty good workout.

The machine was 4 ft high and about 30 inches square. The advert’s claims that it could trot, canter and gallop make it sound as though it moved independently like one of those fairground buckaroo things, but this wasn’t the case – the different paces were powered by the rider’s own exertions.

Within the mahogany frame was a mechanism that consisted of four platforms separated by springs. By turning the control on the front, one could adjust the distance between the platforms so that the more adventurous could experience a ‘bone-shaker’ feel, while a smoother ride was available for invalids. Ladies could buy a side-saddle version.

At 7 guineas for the cheapest one and 21 guineas if you went top-of-the-range, these were quite an investment – which can’t have paid off if they met the fate of every exercise machine ever bought and were consigned to a shed to gather dust.

Vigor also sold a rowing machine at 4 guineas, but this one looks a bit too much like hard work to me:

Source: Black and White, 14 March 1896

And now for something completely different…

We leap forward into the 1950s today with this Public Service Announcement from the US Food and Drug Administration. The presenter is actor Raymond Massey and his advice is all too relevant today.

‘There are no Z-rays’ is undoubtedly the best line of the film, but it’s quite difficult to catch the name of the device. It was called a Zerret Applicator, was made of plastic, and though you can’t tell from the video, the stripes were blue and white.

The applicator was supposed to contain a mysterious Z-ray-emitting fluid called Zerret water. It would set you back $50, and to use it you had to hold it in both hands, making sure all your fingers were in contact with it and that your legs were uncrossed. This must be done three times a day for 15 minutes and would help arthritis, rheumatism, diarrhoea, constipation, excess weight and abnormal thinness, as well as a variety of other conditions.

Z-Rays were ‘a force unknown to science’ (this at least was true) and worked by expanding the hydrogen atoms of the body. The instruction booklet went into further detail:

When you hold the Applicator, it works on your life current, expanding the atoms of the same. As this takes place, it expands all atoms of your being. Expansion of your atoms produces what is commonly called relaxation.

The manufacturer, William Ferguson, also claimed that life rays from the body flowed into the Zerret, were rejuvenated and invigorated, then flowed back into the body. The police weren’t convinced, and arrested him and his sales director, Mary Stanakis, together with saleswoman Elay Smith, in September 1948. They were charged with operating a confidence game and conspiracy to defraud. In court, they were supported by a number of satisfied customers, who insisted that the Zerret had cured them. Some admitted, however, that after purchasing the device they, like Smith, had signed up as agents, earning $25 commission on each sale.

Judge Charles Dougherty said: ‘I think you’re all suckers, but I’ll keep an open mind.’ He adjourned the case while the Zerret was analysed. The composition of the devices varied – of three samples investigated, one contained paraffin-soaked cotton, another dry cotton, and the third contained water.

The case continued for over a year, but in May 1950, Ferguson and Stanakis were convicted. Ferguson was sentenced to two years in jail, Stanakis to one year. Most of the devices were destroyed, with a couple being retained for museum display and for starring in PSAs.