The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America (Paperback)

by James Harvey Young (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
James Harvey Young describes the development of patent medicines in the USA, from the enactment in 1906 of the Pure Food and Drugs Act through the mid-1960s. Many predicted that the Pure Food and Drugs Act would be the end of harmful nostrums, but Young describes post-Act cases involving manufacturers and promoters of such products as Cuforhedake Brane-Fude, a "tuberculosis-curing" liniment and the dangerous weight-reducing pill Marmola. The book describes the brothers Charles Frederick and Peter Kaadt, who treated diabetic patients with a mixture of vinegar and saltpeter; Louisiana state senator Dudley J. LeBlanc, who put on fabulous medicine shows as late as the 1950s promoting Hadacol and his own political career, and Adlophus Hohensee, whose lectures on nutrition provide a classic example of the continuing appeal of food faddism.

Product Details

• Paperback: 476 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr (June 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691005796
• ISBN-13: 978-0691005799
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,801,279 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Fun, but very biased, July 23, 2007

By	Dalton C. Rocha (Fortaleza, CE, Brazil.) - See all my reviews

I read many parts of this book.They are available, for free reading on internet.This book has many parts who are fun.The subject of this book are cases of american quacks.
This isn't a book for doctors, but for general public.Many chapters of this book can be transformed into comedies.
Even having so many fun parts, this book is also biased.
The worst quackeries of american medicine aren't, on this book.
Things such as eugenics, racism,etc. don't have any space on this book.This bias calling "quackery" only absurds who had low quantity of followers and "forgeting" to call "quackery" frauds who fooled tens of millions of americans, is the main problem of this book.