5. William J.A. Bailey
1884 – 1949
4. John Harvey Kellogg
1852-1943
Immortalized in T. Coraghessan Boyle’s book “The Road to Wellville”, which was later made into a move starring Anthony Hopkins as Kellogg, and the brother of cereal magnate Will Kellogg, J.H. Kellogg, one of the few licensed medical doctors on this list, is well-known as an eccentric and monomaniacal leader of the “health movement”. His sanitarium in Battle Creek drew large numbers of “patients” who apparently volunteered for such masochistic treatments as: complete abstinence from any sexual activity, since it was the source of most illness; yogurt enemas to cleanse the body; marching while eating meals to help digestion; carbolic acid applications to the clitoris to prevent female masturbation; and immersion in freezing water laced with radium. Apparently, he, not Will, was the original Frosted Flake.
3. John R. Brinkley
1885-1942
The “goat gland” doctor, Brinkley performed hundreds of surgeries on men who feared that their most virile days were behind them by opening up their scrotal sacs and nestling goat’s testicles alongside the men’s. There was no arterial conjoining, no grafting, no fusion – the goat gland and human testicle merely occupied the same sac, but Brinkley claimed that the extra flow of testosterone would revitalize a male patient’s sex life. Legend has it that his hypothesis turned into implementation while working for a meatpacking company, Brinkley was astounded by the sexual voracity of the goats, thus prompting him to half-jokingly suggest to his undersexed patient that he should try goat glands; to this suggestion his desperate patient responded, “So doc, put ‘em in. Transplant ‘em!” Brinkley went on to perform over 16,000 goat gland transplants. He also arguably established the first radio advice talk show in order to advertise himself and his services to as many potential patients as possible. The book “Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster”, by Pope Brock, is an excellent starting point to learn more about this irrepressible lunatic.
2. Walter Freeman
1895 – 1972
A prominent neurologist and psychiatrist, he popularized the lobotomy by making it easy and convenient: “perfecting” the transorbital lobotomy, where a sharp implement (the first was an icepick from his own kitchen) was inserted through the inside corner of the eye, tapped with a small hammer until it broke through the skull bone and entered the frontal lobe of the patient’s brain, then wiggled around like a stir-stick to cut neural connections. These “surgeries” were performed outside of the operating room, without anesthetic, and after the patient was incapacitated by electroshock therapy. Freeman eventually developed his own instrument for performing the lobotomies called the “leucotome”. He decided to refine his instrument further when one broke off inside a patient’s orbital socket. Even after his medical license was revoked for killing a patient with his technique, he would travel the country in his “Lobotomobile” to service the needy and the isolated. He performed 3,439 lobotomies during his career, though the psychological and physical damage caused by his practice of psychiatry is unquantifiable. For an amazing and heartbreaking first-person account of an 11-year-old victim’s lobotomy by Freeman, “My Lobotomy” by Howard Dully is a must-read.
1. Josef Mengele
1911 – 1979
No list about quacks would be complete without mentioning this undisputed king of cruel and inhuman “research experiments”. The “Angel of Death” at Auschwitz, Mengele’s crimes against humanity during World War II at the concentration camp are well-documented and well-known. Some of the more notable and horrendous “experiments” he carried out were: injecting dyes into children’s eyes to see if eye color could be changed; attempting to measure how much force would be needed to break a human being’s skull (while living, of course); putting Jewish prisoners in a gigantic oven and testing how long it would take for human flesh to sustain first-, second-, and third-degree burns; sewing twins together to see if he could create conjoined twins; and rubbed ground glass into injuries to see what the effect would be. The damage Mengele did to an entire race of people, to the human spirit, and to our perception of the depravity the human mind can invent is still unsurpassed.
Source
1884 – 1949
President of “Radium Company” of New York and a self-proclaimed doctor who never received his medical degree, he prescribed to his patients “Radithor”, essentially a solution of radium in regular water, which he asserted would help invigorate tired patients. His most notable patient was Eben Byers, a wealthy industrialist, who drank 1400 bottles of Radithor before having his jaw fall off and subsequently dying from radiation poisoning. Upon Byers’ death, it was discovered that the radium had eaten massive holes in his brain and skull. Bailey also marketed a radioactive belt-clip (for portable “energy”) and a radioactive paperweight (presumably to perk up lethargic businessmen).
1852-1943
Immortalized in T. Coraghessan Boyle’s book “The Road to Wellville”, which was later made into a move starring Anthony Hopkins as Kellogg, and the brother of cereal magnate Will Kellogg, J.H. Kellogg, one of the few licensed medical doctors on this list, is well-known as an eccentric and monomaniacal leader of the “health movement”. His sanitarium in Battle Creek drew large numbers of “patients” who apparently volunteered for such masochistic treatments as: complete abstinence from any sexual activity, since it was the source of most illness; yogurt enemas to cleanse the body; marching while eating meals to help digestion; carbolic acid applications to the clitoris to prevent female masturbation; and immersion in freezing water laced with radium. Apparently, he, not Will, was the original Frosted Flake.
3. John R. Brinkley
1885-1942
The “goat gland” doctor, Brinkley performed hundreds of surgeries on men who feared that their most virile days were behind them by opening up their scrotal sacs and nestling goat’s testicles alongside the men’s. There was no arterial conjoining, no grafting, no fusion – the goat gland and human testicle merely occupied the same sac, but Brinkley claimed that the extra flow of testosterone would revitalize a male patient’s sex life. Legend has it that his hypothesis turned into implementation while working for a meatpacking company, Brinkley was astounded by the sexual voracity of the goats, thus prompting him to half-jokingly suggest to his undersexed patient that he should try goat glands; to this suggestion his desperate patient responded, “So doc, put ‘em in. Transplant ‘em!” Brinkley went on to perform over 16,000 goat gland transplants. He also arguably established the first radio advice talk show in order to advertise himself and his services to as many potential patients as possible. The book “Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster”, by Pope Brock, is an excellent starting point to learn more about this irrepressible lunatic.
2. Walter Freeman
1895 – 1972
A prominent neurologist and psychiatrist, he popularized the lobotomy by making it easy and convenient: “perfecting” the transorbital lobotomy, where a sharp implement (the first was an icepick from his own kitchen) was inserted through the inside corner of the eye, tapped with a small hammer until it broke through the skull bone and entered the frontal lobe of the patient’s brain, then wiggled around like a stir-stick to cut neural connections. These “surgeries” were performed outside of the operating room, without anesthetic, and after the patient was incapacitated by electroshock therapy. Freeman eventually developed his own instrument for performing the lobotomies called the “leucotome”. He decided to refine his instrument further when one broke off inside a patient’s orbital socket. Even after his medical license was revoked for killing a patient with his technique, he would travel the country in his “Lobotomobile” to service the needy and the isolated. He performed 3,439 lobotomies during his career, though the psychological and physical damage caused by his practice of psychiatry is unquantifiable. For an amazing and heartbreaking first-person account of an 11-year-old victim’s lobotomy by Freeman, “My Lobotomy” by Howard Dully is a must-read.
1. Josef Mengele
1911 – 1979
No list about quacks would be complete without mentioning this undisputed king of cruel and inhuman “research experiments”. The “Angel of Death” at Auschwitz, Mengele’s crimes against humanity during World War II at the concentration camp are well-documented and well-known. Some of the more notable and horrendous “experiments” he carried out were: injecting dyes into children’s eyes to see if eye color could be changed; attempting to measure how much force would be needed to break a human being’s skull (while living, of course); putting Jewish prisoners in a gigantic oven and testing how long it would take for human flesh to sustain first-, second-, and third-degree burns; sewing twins together to see if he could create conjoined twins; and rubbed ground glass into injuries to see what the effect would be. The damage Mengele did to an entire race of people, to the human spirit, and to our perception of the depravity the human mind can invent is still unsurpassed.
Source
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