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 performance -- carnivals, vaudeville, night clubs -- each
of these charismatic con men used the emerging power of radio to
hawk alternative cures in the Midwest beginning 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.
Juhnke first examines the career of each man, revealing their
flair as businessmen and propagandists -- with such success that
Brinkley and Baker ran for governor of their states and Hoxsey had
thousands of supportersprotest 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, antiCommunist,
anti-intellectual -- to attract their clients, and then how their
particular brand of populism sometimes mutated to anti-Semitism 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 Tijuana 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 persistence of quackery -- and
gullibility -- in American culture.
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