GIZMOS, GADGETS, PILLS and POTIONS

(Investigator 207, 2022 November)

A particularly fertile field for charlatans, quacks, snake-oil salesmen and others who would exploit the vulnerable, is the promotion of useless and unproven medical devices and elixirs for the diagnosis and treatment of just about everything from dandruff to terminal illnesses. In the U.S., an estimated $15 billion is spent yearly on products and services that are falsely claimed to prevent or alleviate health problems. Some experts say this figure is too conservative, but no precise data are available. Often the promoters use scientific terminology which, to the nonscientific literate consumer, is persuasive. If a description of something, whether it be medical, electrical, or technical, is beyond the ken of the average person, then credence is usually given rather than admitting one’s ignorance. As a consequence, the efficacy of pseudoscientific devices is rarely questioned by the average consumer — particularly if that consumer happens to be suffering from a serious complaint and is desperate enough to try anything.

For centuries, folk medicine, some good and some bad, ruled the day. Primitive shamans used deliberate fakery and sleight of hand. The Roman “market healers” combined their practice with magic, fortune-telling and peddling of exotic wares. And in the Middle Ages, medicine remained in a domain in which physicians, priests, village wise women and itinerate nostrum peddlers all practised freely. Although regulation emerged slowly with the growth of universities enhancing the standing of orthodox physicians, quacks continued to flourish.
 
Patent medicines began to make their appearance in the 17th century, some quacks becoming licensed salesmen of mass-produced elixirs. Charles II of England was a pioneer in the new field and operated his own medical laboratory in the palace at Whitehall.

Other remarkable charlatans of the day were Comte de Saint-Germain, one of the last alchemists who claimed to have found the elixir of life and Alesandro, Comte di Cagliostro who, in addition to making the same claim, also claimed to be able to make himself invisible. His devices included a magic chair that healed rheumatism, a bed that afforded painless childbirth, and a potent collection of Egyptian pills. Apart from being able to cure all diseases, he also claimed to be able to raise the dead. One of the first to appreciate the psychosomatic factor in treatment was Giovanni Casanova de Seingalt who compounded medicines to please court patrons. He once treated a count’s sciatica by rubbing the thigh with a concoction of saltpetre, sulphur, mercury and the patient’s own urine. He observed cynically that his methods fooled even him. Said Casanova: “If one repeats a lie often enough, one ends up believing it to be the truth”.

Patent medicines proliferated and by the end of the 19th century in the United States, more than 3000 firms were engaged in the business selling an estimated $75 million worth of remedies a year. Most of the medicines were heavily laced with opium or alcohol. One medical investigator concluded that people were drinking more liquor from medicine bottles than was dispensed across saloon counters.
 
A famed patent medicine brewed in a kitchen by one Lydia E. Pinkham about 1850, was concocted from various roots and 22 per cent alcohol.


With the development of electricity generation in the nineteenth century both it and magnetism became the fundamental components in an ongoing pseudoscientific exploitation of the unwary public.
 
Looking back, it is hard to understand how people could be fooled by some of the theories and gadgets. Yet even in this century’s sophisticated and technological world, with its exponential progress in every scientific sphere, some people still believe in such things as the supposed healing properties of crystals and magnetic beads. Little wonder some of them become easy prey for the quacks and charlatans.
 
The modem forerunner of magnetic healing was Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), who believed that there was a healing and magnetic power emanating from his own hands. His methods included having patients sit in a tub of iron filings and water while he pointed magnetic rods at various parts of the anatomy. Although Mesmer had striking successes with hysterical patients, he failed to grasp the psychological and physiological implications, and the therapeutical benefits to be derived by later generations from suggestion or hypnosis. Medical men in Vienna accused him of practising magic, and an unsympathetic commission appointed by the French government in 1784 to investigate Mesmer’s activities resulted in him losing his practice and retiring to seclusion in Versailles.

 Around the same period, while experimenting on frogs, Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) discovered that two dissimilar metals, when connected with a frog’s nerve and a muscle, would cause a contraction. While Galvani concluded that it was “animal electricity”, he had in fact produced an electric current sufficient to cause muscular contraction. The idea was adopted by Dr. Elisha Perkins of Connecticut who obtained a U.S. patent for his “Metallic Tractors”. These consisted of separate brass and iron rods which alleged to treat disease by “Galvanism” or “Animal Electricity”. The theory was put to the test by Dr. John Haygarth in 1799, when he designed a controlled test in which he treated five patients with wooden tractors designed to resemble the metallic versions. Four of the five experienced relief with the fictitious tractors. The next day the same five were treated with metallic tractors — the results were identical. As a result of this early experiment demonstrating the placebo effect, Haygarth stated:
 

Incidentally, the doctor died of yellow fever unable to save himself with his own gadgets.
 
The popularity of magnetism as a therapeutic medium led to the entrepreneurial introduction of some remarkable and often bizarre inventions, among them, the Electropathic Belt, designed to give vitality to the internal organs, relax morbid contractions and renew nerve force, and those previously mentioned in the chapter on Hypnotherapy — Dr Scott’s Electric Hairbrush, the Patent Electric Eye Battery, and “Dr” James Graham’s Electro-magnetico Celestial Bed. There appears to be no limit to what some of these electromagnetic devices could cure — at least according to the advertising spiels. The “Theronoid” for example, (circa 1930), a solenoid as large as and resembling a motor vehicle tyre, could be worn around the waist, shoulders, hips or wherever, and would supposedly cure everything from asthma to constipation, dropsy to haemorrhoids and heart trouble to tumours.

Belief in the “healing” properties of magnets continues even as we approach the 21st century and never ceases to find a ready market. Medical research is ongoing on both the potential benefits and possible harmful effects of electromagnetism, and among the former are those well established — Magnetic Resonance Imaging diagnostic x-rays, Diathermy and proton beam therapy. Many unproven commercial products however, have been associated with dubious claims such as being able to cure rheumatism, arthritis and cancer.

Magnetic devices promoted as medical devices come under the jurisdiction of various State and Federal laws designed to protect the consumer. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has prosecuted a number of marketers of magnetic devices promoted for the relief of pain, including a tiny permanent magnet on a band-aid called Acu-Dot; the Inductoscope; the Magnetic Ray Belt, the Vitalator — a gadget placed under one’s mattress at night supposedly to emit “free electrons” to rejuvenate the body, and magnetic bracelets alleged to provide a longer and more active life and the relief of pain.

One, the widely advertised Neomax supermagnet, to be hung around the neck like a pendant was touted to cure cancer. In 1991, the International Medical Research Center, Inc. of Murrieta, California, agreed to pay $40,000 in fines and court costs and to stop selling the permanent magnet devices as medical aids. The promotional material for the IMRC Supermagnet had claimed that a cancer patient, Sandy Morgenstern, had “experienced recovery and remission from her cancer with the supermagnet”. Mrs. Morgenstern had in fact died of her disease. Likewise, the “Polorator”, an electric heart-shocking machine, a variety of vibrators and whirlpool baths do not stand up to the claims made on their behalf.

The discovery at the turn of the [20th] century that communication was possible without the need for connecting wires (wireless), provided a whole new potential for pseudoscientific diagnostic and therapeutic devices. Curiously enough though, some were not based on scientifically verifiable natural phenomena, but on the notion that another invisible medium —“orgone energy” existed.
 
According to Wilhelm Reich, its discoverer, orgone energy or “life energy” is a non-electro-magnetic force which permeates all of nature. Allegedly blue in colour, orgone is the basis of sexual energy according to Reich.

 In 1940, Reich invented the Orgone Energy Accumulator, a phone booth-like structure, made of sheet iron on the inside and organic material on the outside. The theory being, that orgone energy is attracted by the organic substance on the outside, and is passed on to the metal which then radiates it inwards. Since the metal reflects orgone, the box soon acquires an abnormally high concentration of the energy. Sitting in the box supposedly charges your body with orgone energy. This treatment it is alleged, will benefit those suffering from numerous ailments. As a result of sitting in the accumulator, one feels a warm sensation, reddening of the face and a rise in body temperature. These, and the side effects after a prolonged session, include dizziness and nausea — all symptoms one would expect from sitting in an insulated metal lined confined space breathing in one’s own carbon dioxide.
 
Reich also developed an “orgone energy accumulator blanket” for bed-ridden patients, and “shooters”— tiny orgone boxes for applying orgone energy via an iron tube to local areas of the body.

Although there is no scientific basis for Reich’s claims and all attempts to replicate his experiments have failed, this and other theoretical “mysterious energies” are still utilised in radionics, organic farming and sundry medical devices.
 
Dubbed by the American Medical Association as “the dean of twentieth century charlatans”, Dr. Albert Abrams made a fortune selling and hiring out his pseudoscientific apparatus in the early 1920s. An illustration of an examining doctor using Dr. Abrams’ “electronic diagnostic” machine in the October 1923 issue of Science and Invention, was accompanied by the following description.
 
 
A strange amplifier this — having but two terminals and connected into the circuit in series.

 
Also illustrated were Dr. Abrams’ “oscilloclast”, a cure-all treating machine, and a “brain-wave short circuiting device”. The former, rather than a generator of electronic oscillations, was in fact an over-sized buzzer which produced only sound (noise). The short circuiting device was simply a piece of wire clipped to hair on opposite sides of the head.

When Abrams died in 1924, he willed his considerable fortune to the Electronic Medical Foundation for the perpetuation of his fake machines. Despite the fact that these useless pseudoscientific devices were exposed by physicists and radio engineers for what they were, other entrepreneurs were quick to exploit the infant electronics market. Mrs. Ruth B. Drown of Los Angeles (previously mentioned in the chapter on Radionics) claimed to be able to diagnose and treat disease with devices such as “Drown Radio Therapy” and “Drown Radio Vision”, instruments which were said to be “based on the laws of energy and adjusted to tune into the most delicate vibrations”. In a test done by the University of Chicago, one of her diagnoses of a healthy young man was an ischiorectal abscess, serious prostate trouble, probable carcinoma, and non function of the left testicle.
 
Other “electrodiagnostic” devices are still used by homoeopaths to select the remedies they prescribe. They are simple galvanometers which measure changes in the skin’s electrical resistance. One procedure developed in the 1950s by a German physician named Reinhold Voll, sometimes called electroacupuncture (EAV) according to Voll, consists of a moist gauze covered brass cylinder which is held in one hand and a probe which is used to touch “acupuncture points” along the meridians. Depending on the reading, low-voltage currents are applied until “electromagnetic energy balance” is achieved or homoeopathic remedies are achieved. Variations include the Intero, the Dermatron and the Acupath 1000. The “E-meter” used by Scientologists is also a galvanometer.

For the desperate, or those seeking alleged simple cures, advertising can be all persuasive when promoting useless gizmos, particularly when couched in pseudoscientific terminology and dealing with subjects of which only a few consumers would have even a rudimentary knowledge. Impressive are the pseudoscientific names chosen to describe some of the “miraculous” devices, machines and apparatus used to medically diagnose and treat illnesses.
 
Many of these machines and cure-all gadgets were bizarre to say the least. A wonderful collection reposes with the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They include: Dr. Abrams’ Dynamizer, Osciloclast, Pathoclast, Electrobioscope and Biodynamometer that earned him a fortune. Likewise, Dr Hercules Sanche’s Electropoise — a simple metal pipe strapped to the body to supply electrical force to the body. Less verbally obfuscated for the layman, albeit as useless, were Dr Ruth Drowns’ Radio Vision Instruments that diagnosed ailments from the ‘vibrations’ of blood samples. Not so in the case of a Florida naturopath, Dr Fred Urbuteit, who allegedly performs miraculous cures by shooting a mild electrical current into the body with his Sinuothermic machine.
 
When it comes to names, the granddaddy of them all must be B. J. Palmer’s 1935 research project, a crude EEG (electroencephalograph) machine that went under the impressive name of Electroencephaloneuromentimpograph! Its remains can be seen in the Palmer College Museum in the USA.

Other weird and wonderful ‘medical’ contraptions that have appeared this century include Dinshah Ghadiali’s 1920 Spectro-Chrome machine which could supposedly cure various illnesses and diseases by projecting coloured lights on the infected part, and the Favoroscope to determine the best time of the day to use the machine. Other shining lights, or should we say light shiners, were Dr. George Starr White, a Los Angeles homoeopath, who recommended Rithmo-Duo-Color Therapy and biodynamochromatic diagnosis, and the Rainbow Lamps of Dr. Charles Littlefield.

Another, the Color-Therm, was said to retard the aging process and increase the life span.
 
Some of the devices were as bizarre looking, as their names. The “Psychograph Machine” for example, manufactured in the 1930s by the Phrenology Company of Minneapolis, has a diabolical-looking dome that fits over the head, somewhat resembling a cross between a hair curling machine and a hair-dryer. This device, connected to apparatus in a walnut cabinet, measures the head shape and, according to the principles of phrenology, analyses one’s personality. The Crosley-Xervac was supposed to make your hair grow with alternating air pressure and vacuum suction.
 
Another vacuum device, the Vital Power Vacuum Massager, a penis-building pump, is still available in sex-aid shops today. Yet another, the Breast Enlarger pump, was sold to 4 million American women at $9.95 plus postage.
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The prostate gland warmer however, appears to have gone out of favour. Marketed in 1918, one end plugged into a power outlet, the other end was inserted into one’s rectum. It was said to invigorate sex drive.

The list is almost endless — The Polizer, alleged to “polize” the oxygen in drinking water; an Ultraviolet Ray Device for a myriad of uses; the Toftness Radiation Detector for “drawing out noxious energy from the body”, the Zarett Applicator to expand the atoms in the body and cure disease; the “cool pate”, a sort of heavy-metal headband, designed to chill down an overworked brain; the Radi-endo-cri-nator to rejuvenate the endocrine glands; the White Cross Electric Vibrator Chair to cure all and every affliction; the Nemectron — effective in “overcoming damage and ravages of age, acne and fallen arches” not to mention “rejuvenating the brain”; the Napa-Night machine for inducing sleep; and the Micro-Dynameter, touted as a super all-purpose diagnostic machine which, when tested, couldn’t diagnose death in a corpse. And so on ad nauseum.

The pills, potions, patent medicines and nostrums of yesteryear were usually sugar pills or distilled water with a dash of alcohol. Although in themselves most were not dangerous, any beneficial effects could only be attributed to a placebo. Some however, were decidedly deadly, and reflect the ignorance of the age and lack of consumer protection legislation. The use of radium is a prime example.
 
In the mid 1920s, radium was being sold in tablets, ointments, suppositories and bougies (a suppository) for sex weakness and low vitality, prostatic disorder and urethral soreness, irritation and inflammation. The effects of this ‘tonic’ was documented in the Journal of the American Medical Association and was recounted in an article in the Wall Street Journal (Winslow. August 1, 1990).

A prominent socialite named Eben MacBurney Byers, chairman of A.M. Byers Steel Co. and a director of Westinghouse & Manufacturing, had been drinking, over a four and one half year period, a patent medicine called Radithor — a health drink sold as an aphrodisiac. The potion consisted of distilled water with one microcurie each of two isotopes of radium. While the entrepreneur named William J. A. Bailey promised it would cure more than 150 maladies and sold more than 400,000 bottles for $1 each, the ultimate cost to Mr Byers cannot be quantified in monetary terms. Dying slowly of radium poisoning, Mr Byer lost the whole of his upper jaw excepting two front teeth, and most of his lower jaw, all the remaining bone tissue of his body was disintegrating, and holes were actually forming in his skull. He died at the age of 51 on March 31, 1932.

His sacrifice was not in vain however, as his death caused the collapse of the radioactive patent medicine industry.
 
Another cashing in on radioactive healing powers was the “Vrilium Tube”, a useless gadget consisting of a brass tube about 50mm long containing barium chloride. Although costing a few cents to manufacture, they sold for hundreds of dollars.

While the foregoing may be viewed alternatively with amusement and horror, quacks and charlatans continue to prey on the uninformed and vulnerable to this day.
 
Their advertisements usually appear in women’s magazines, noncritical pseudoscientific literature and New Age health publications. An advertisement in 1997 extolling the virtues of the “Zapper” drew my attention, and the following is an article I wrote on this particular gizmo for the Skeptic journal.



I sometimes wonder why thousands of millions of dollars are spent each year around the world training doctors, building hospitals and investing in sophisticated medical technology when there are so many simple alternatives — at least if ‘New Age’ alternative practitioners can be believed.

Take for example, the time and money that goes into the researching and testing of new antibiotic drugs. Why go to all that expense when a simple piece of electrical apparatus that needs no training to use can do the same job quickly and efficiently? New on the Australian market is the ‘Zapper’ ($99 + $6 p & h) which it is claimed, “will free your body from viruses, bacteria and parasites in seven minutes”.

 I wrote to the advertiser expressing interest in buying a Zapper, but that “1 was scared of electrical stuff ever since my toaster blew up” and that “I have two cats and a dog who might have worms I may catch.” The letter of course, was simply a ‘fishing’ expedition. By return mail I received sufficient information to make an assessment.
 
The Zapper is described as a frequency generator set at 5-10 volts and adjusted to a frequency of 33Khz. It operates on a 9 volt battery and consists of a small plastic box, an on-off switch, a light (to indicate when the battery has run down), two copper rods and alligator clips. To use the device, the copper rods are wrapped in wet paper toweling and held in the hands or under the feet three times for seven minutes, with a break of twenty minutes in between. This application is claimed to kill a variety of worms, fungi, bacteria, viruses, moulds, mites and parasites, and can also be used as a preventative of cold and flu viruses. A close examination of the circuitry confirmed that the device is a standard squarewave oscillator set to produce oscillation at around 40kHz. The output is fed to a LED and to the output electrodes. The current output would be in the order of one milliamp — not likely to do any harm, but would it do you any good?

The usual glowing anecdotal testimonials included a lady who was cured of arthritis; a man cured of stomach cramps caused by pigeon tapeworms; and others suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Plantar warts, helilobacter pylori and schizophrenia.
 
According to the blurb, the device corresponds to information received from the book “The Cure for all Diseases” by Dr. Hulda Clark Ph.D. Therefore, DENTAH (the proprietor), “takes no liability and/or responsibility for any undue effects, if any”. It also relieves them of any come-back if it doesn’t do what it is supposed to do, and, realistically, how would you know whether it had done anything anyway? Furthermore, the human body is host to a multitude of different bacteria and when they misbehave, the body’s immune system’s white cells take care of the miscreants. It’s only when the bacteria give rise to pathological lesions that treatment is called for.
 
To ‘zap’ therefore is rather like taking vitamin supplements when you don’t really need them.
 
The theory on which this pseudoscientific gizmo is based is Dr Hulda Clark’s postulation that ‘all diseases are primarily caused by parasites and pollutants’— and is the result of six years of her research in the U.S.A. No details are given of any clinical or double blind tests — not even the book publisher ‘s name. Dr. Clark claims that “all things emit electrical impulses at specific frequencies” and that “all pathogens exist at a much lower frequency bandwidth than human beings”. Therefore, by running an extremely low voltage through the pathogen bandwidth, she claims it will eradicate all parasites completely.

Incidentally, subsequent enquiries revealed that Hulda Reghr Clark, PhD., Doctor of Naturopathy, self-publishes her books which her son sells to health food stores up and down the west coast of the U.S.A. from the boot of his car. She is now operating a clinic in the facility once used by Harold W. Manner, Ph.D., who, in 1977, achieved considerable notoriety by claiming to have cured cancer in mice with injections of laetrile, enzymes and vitamin A.
 
I managed to inveigle the advertiser into some further correspondence and was informed that all I would feel (if anything) would be a slight pulsation — the same as if I put my fingers across two AA batteries. The letter also contained this gem. “The voltage is so small that your own body resists it. The current is D.C. which is different from A.C. which is what your toaster runs off or use too”. (Sic) The writer also offered to put me in contact with a local resident so that I could try a Zapper for myself. However, what would be the point when I don’t know whether or not I’m infested with nasty bugs, and even if I were, how would I know if the Zapper worked? For the sake of argument, let’s assume that some of the statements have some validity. Bacteria vary in shape, size and structure from less than a micron (one thousandth of a millimetre) in size to 20 microns or more. They are modelled on four main cell types, the spherical or coccus form, the rod or bacillus type, the spirally twisted spirillum, and a long filamentous type mycelium. It would be logical to assume therefore, that given the variations in shape and bulk their “specific frequencies” would also vary. At the frequencies mentioned, electricity does not pass through the body at all, but is confined in a narrow band around the skin. It is unlikely therefore, to reach internal organs where bacteria or parasites may be living. Further, some bacteria are in fact useful as in the case of those that aid digestion. How does the Zapper differentiate between the good and the bad bugs? As there are no controls on the device other than an on/off switch and battery condition indicator, it appears that the Zapper only operates on one fixed frequency — not a bandwidth. If Clark’s theory was correct, and if it worked at all, it would only be effective on a bacterium or parasite of the same frequency.

One dangerous aspect of the Zapper is the implied cure for cancer, diabetes and asthma contained in the following extract from the advertisement,


Cancer is a disease involving uncontrolled replication of the body’s own cells. If the Zapper can reverse this situation, how does it indicate that the required balance has been reached?
 
And finally, as the Zapper is claimed to be a device for ridding one of all these divers nasties, it is ipso facto, claiming to be a preventative, if not a cure for cancer, diabetes and asthma.
 
Really — it's enough to give one a dose of Shigella dysenteriae!
 
Other products based on Hulda Clark’s research are also advertised in Nexus magazine — including the ‘Synchronometre’, the “Syncozap” and the “Colloidal Silver Generator”, whatever they may be. Clark’s books, The Cure for all Diseases and The Cure for all Cancers were also advertised at $37 + $5 p&h each.
 
The moral of the story is: If it sounds too good to be true then it probably is. Even if you can’t see through the seemingly plausible spiel, and are unfamiliar with the terminology, ask questions of those who can before you part with your money. In the case of the Zapper, my information was obtained from a medical encyclopaedia and by asking a few questions of those better informed than I.


[From: Edwards, H. 1999 Alternative, Complementary, Holistic & Spiritual Healing, Australian Skeptics Inc.]