Cases
Every case in the archive.
74 commercial health-extension and mortality-facing cure systems. Each case
documents the marketed promise, promoter, mechanism, financial conflict, access and
distribution, and what the evidence ultimately showed. Ordered by era.
La vita sobria (Cornaro's sober diet)
A wrecked Venetian nobleman cut his daily ration to twelve ounces of food and fourteen of wine, recovered, and sold the story as a "divine…
The Stroking Cure
In 1662 Valentine Greatrakes, an Irish Protestant gentleman, announced that God had given his bare hands the power to cure the king's…
Ward's Pill and Drop
In 1734, Joshua Ward returned from French exile selling his pill and drop against any human ailment. He reset George II's dislocated thumb…
Joanna Stephens's Medicine for the Stone
Joanna Stephens's medicine promised to dissolve the stone -- bladder calculi -- without surgery -- and in 1739 Parliament paid her 5,000…
Turlington's Balsam of Life
In 1743/44, Robert Turlington -- a London weaver with no medical training -- patented a 27-ingredient balsam he claimed cured the stone,…
Animal magnetism (mesmerism)
From 1778 Mesmer treated the Paris court around his baquet, a tub of magnetized water whose iron rods, he claimed, channelled an invisible…
Egyptian physical regeneration and the Wine of Egypt
Count Cagliostro sold the 1780s aristocracy a forty-day "Egyptian regeneration" and secret elixirs, a vial of "Wine of Egypt" supposedly…
Celestial Bed and Temple of Health
In 1781 James Graham, a Scot who left Edinburgh medical school without a degree, installed a fifty-pound-a-night Celestial Bed at his Pall…
Magnetic somnambulism (artificial somnambulism)
In 1784 the Marquis de Puysegur, a Mesmer initiate, magnetized a young man named Victor Race and watched him sink into a calm, lucid sleep…
Brodum's Restorative Nervous Cordial and Botanical Syrup
In 1802 a masquerade attended by the Prince of Wales staged a mock shop labelled "Doctor Brodum's shop." William Brodum, an itinerant who…
Homeopathy (Hahnemann's system of medicine)
Samuel Hahnemann swallowed cinchona bark while healthy, felt fever-like symptoms, and built a medicine on it: like cures like, and a dose…
Perkins Metallic Tractors
In 1796 the Connecticut physician Elisha Perkins patented two small metal rods of a secret alloy that, drawn across the skin, were said to…
Cordial Balm of Gilead
In 1796 a failed Liverpool tradesman restyled himself "Dr Solomon, M.D." and swore an affidavit that he alone knew the recipe of the…
Macrobiotics (Hufeland's art of prolonging life)
In 1797 Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, royal physician in Berlin and the foremost German doctor of his generation, gave longevity medicine…
Thomsonian Botanic System
Samuel Thomson, an unschooled New Hampshire farmer, patented in 1813 a one-cause theory of disease and sold $20 'family rights' to a…
Swaim's Panacea
William Swaim swore in signed print that his Panacea, sold from Philadelphia after 1820, was purely vegetable and free of mercury, safe…
Morison's Vegetable Universal Medicine (Hygeian pills)
James Morison, a merchant with no medical training, declared that all disease was impure blood, that purging it cured everything, and that…
The cold-water cure (Gräfenberg hydropathy)
A Silesian farmer's son with no medical training, Vincenz Priessnitz turned cold water into a cure that drew an archduchess, ten princes…
St John Long's Corrosive Liniment and Inhalation
John St John Long, a failed Irish portrait painter, opened a Harley Street practice in 1827 promising to cure consumption by rubbing a…
Grahamism (the Graham system of diet and hygiene)
Sylvester Graham, a Presbyterian minister with no medical training, told 1830s America that meat, spices, alcohol, and even marital sex…
Brandreth's Vegetable Universal Pills
Benjamin Brandreth arrived in New York in 1835 and built a large pill business. A congressional committee in 1849 predicted his fame would…
Holloway's Pills and Ointment
Thomas Holloway, a former Penzance grocer with no medical training, spent up to 50,000 pounds a year advertising his Pills and Ointment as…
Gully's Water Cure (Malvern hydropathy)
A Jamaica-born physician turned drugs into the enemy and cold water into the cure, drawing Tennyson, Darwin, and Carlyle to his Malvern…
Jackson's Psycho Hygienic Method (Our Home on the Hillside water cure)
James Caleb Jackson turned a failing New York spa into a national health brand, invented the cereal credited as the first cold breakfast…
Liebig's Extractum Carnis (LEMCO)
Every jar of Liebig's Extract of Meat carried the signature of the man called the greatest chemist alive, sold as 34 pounds of beef…
Mattei's Electro-Homeopathy (electrohomeopathic remedies)
Cesare Mattei, an Italian count turned homeopath, sold secret 'electricities' -- five unlabeled colors of plant liquid distributed only…
Biologic living (the Battle Creek Idea)
John Harvey Kellogg told paying guests at his Battle Creek Sanitarium that the colon was a "seething mass of putrefying food residues"…
Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root
In 1878 a Binghamton doctor bottled 'Swamp Root' as a cure for kidney, liver, and bladder disease, Bright's disease, and diabetes; by 1892…
Arsenic slimming and complexion nostrums
From roughly 1880 to 1920, arsenic was sold as a beauty aid: a cheap daily wafer, sworn safe, that would melt off surplus flesh and whiten…
The Kuhne friction sitz bath and 'New Science of Healing'
Louis Kuhne, a Leipzig lay healer with no medical degree, taught that all disease is accumulated "foreign matter," cured by sitting in…
Kneipp Cure (hydrotherapy, herbalism, and the 'five pillars')
In 1886, a Bavarian priest published a book claiming that brief cold-water 'shocks' cured or prevented an enormous range of unrelated…
Wm. Radam's Microbe Killer
On jugs lettered "CURES ALL DISEASES," William Radam, an Austin gardener with no medical training, sold a liquid he said killed the…
Lahmann's Physiatric Regimen (dietetic blood-dyscrasia cure)
From 1888 the Dresden physician Heinrich Lahmann sold well-to-do Europeans a single diagnosis for nearly every ailment: a wrong diet…
Brown-Séquard testicular extract (organotherapy)
In June 1889 Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard, 72 and professor of experimental medicine at the Collège de France, told the Société de…
Peruna
Dr. S. B. Hartman's Peruna promised to cure catarrh -- a diagnosis he stretched to cover pneumonia, appendicitis, Bright's disease, and…
Spermin-Poehl (Sperminum-Poehl) organotherapy
St. Petersburg court pharmacist Alexander von Poehl isolated a base from semen and bull testes, named it spermin, and sold it in sealed…
J.B.L. ('Joy, Beauty, Life') Cascade internal bath
Charles Alfred Tyrrell sold a rubber bag shaped like a hot-water bottle as the cure for all disease: J.B.L., for "Joy, Beauty, Life,"…
Marine plasma (Sérum de Quinton)
In 1897 René Quinton drained a dog's blood and refilled its veins with diluted seawater; the dog lived, and he declared seawater the…
Fletcherism (thorough mastication)
Horace Fletcher, a wealthy businessman with no medical training, told the world that chewing each mouthful until it liquefied would make…
Physical Culture (Macfadden's drugless system)
Bernarr Macfadden, a publisher with no medical training, sold fasting and drugless living as the cure for every disease, preaching it to…
Order-energy raw-food regimen (Bircher-Benner's 'Lebendige Kraft' nutrition)
From 1904 the Zurich physician Maximilian Bircher-Benner ran a private sanatorium for the King of Siam, the Tsars of Russia, Hermann Hesse…
Bennett's rejuvenation system (muscular contractions and self-massage)
A San Francisco businessman who called himself "the man who grew young at seventy" sold a free regimen of in-bed muscular contractions and…
Soured-milk ('Bulgarian bacillus') longevity therapy
In 1907 the Nobel laureate Elie Metchnikoff told the world the secret of long life was a bowl of soured milk: lactic-acid bacteria would…
The Hazzard Fasting Cure
Linda Burfield Hazzard held a Washington "Fasting Specialist" license with no medical degree, called herself Doctor, and promised that…
Immortal Cell Culture (Carrel's Chick-Heart Experiment)
In 1912 the Nobel laureate Alexis Carrel placed a chick-heart fragment in a flask and declared it proof that cells never die. The press…
Electronic Reactions of Abrams (ERA)
Albert Abrams, a Heidelberg-trained San Francisco physician, claimed a sealed box could diagnose any disease from a drop of dried blood…
Brinkley goat-gland transplantation (goat-to-human gonad implant)
For $750 John R. Brinkley surgically implanted fresh goat gonad tissue into men as a cure for impotence and aging, driving demand through…
Spectro-Chrome
In 1920, Bombay-born drugless practitioner Dinshah P. Ghadiali began selling the Spectro-Chrome, a lightbulb-and-colored-glass box he said…
The Hay System (food combining / 'food separation')
A surgeon who said medicine could not cure his Bright's disease cured himself by diet, then made that one recovery a single law of all…
Laetrile (Amygdalin, marketed as "Vitamin B17")
In 1952 biochemist Ernst T. Krebs Jr. proposed Laetrile as an anticancer drug. He marketed it as 'Vitamin B17.' California convicted him…
Steinach Vasoligation (Steinach Operation)
Eugen Steinach, a Vienna physiologist nominated for the Nobel Prize at least nine times, claimed that tying off one vas deferens would…
Voronoff testicular xenograft (chimpanzee-to-human)
On 12 June 1920 Serge Voronoff sewed slices of chimpanzee testicle under a man's scrotal skin and sold it across Europe as a cure for old…
Essiac (herbal cancer tea)
In 1922 a patient told a Canadian nurse that an Ojibwa medicine man's recipe had cured the patient's breast cancer; the nurse spent five…
Hoxsey herbal tonic and escharotic paste
In 1924 Harry Hoxsey began selling a family tonic and caustic paste as a cure for cancer, no surgery required. The National Cancer…
Overbeck's Rejuvenator
A chemist and brewer with no medical degree, Otto Overbeck patented a battery-and-comb set in 1924, declared that life is electricity you…
The Brandt Grape Cure
In 1928, Johanna Brandt — a Boer War intelligence courier turned naturopath — published The Grape Cure, claiming a grapes-only diet…
I-ON-A-CO
The man who gave Wilshire Boulevard its name sold a coil of wire you plugged into a light socket and wore around your neck. Gaylord…
Radithor
Radithor was distilled water laced with radium, sold by the bottle as "mild radium therapy" to stimulate the glands and cure 150 ailments.…
Baker's Cancer Cure (tea and injections)
By 1930 Iowa radio-station owner Norman Baker was advertising, on his own station and in his own magazine, a secret cancer cure…
Hauser's "Wonder Foods" diet (Look Younger, Live Longer)
Gayelord Hauser had no medical degree, yet told his readers his five 'wonder foods' would add measurable youthful years to their lives.…
Cellular therapy (Frischzellentherapie)
In 1931 the Swiss surgeon Paul Niehans injected a dying patient with cells from a freshly killed calf, reported recovery, and opened…
Antireticular cytotoxic serum (ACS / ATsS)
Aleksandr Bogomolets promised his antireticular cytotoxic serum could carry people past a hundred, perhaps to 150. As President of the…
Orgone Energy Accumulator
Wilhelm Reich, a Freud-trained Viennese psychoanalyst, told patients a wooden box lined with steel wool and organic fiber could…
Hadacol
Louisiana State Senator Dudley LeBlanc mixed his first batch of Hadacol in wine barrels in 1943 and sold it as relief for hidden vitamin…
Krebiozen Cancer Treatment
In 1951 Andrew Ivy, a Nuremberg Code co-author and by his own account probably the most famous doctor in the country, announced a secret…
Gerovital H3 (procaine anti-aging therapy)
Ana Aslan took Novocain, a dental anesthetic, and sold it from a Bucharest institute as a cure for aging; foreigners flew in for the…
Megadose vitamin C ('orthomolecular' ascorbate therapy)
In 1970, Nobel laureate Linus Pauling declared that gram-scale doses of vitamin C could stop the common cold; six years later, with a…
Sirtuin-activating compounds (resveratrol, then NMN)
In 2003, Harvard geneticist David Sinclair reported that resveratrol activates a 'longevity gene,' SIRT1 — a finding that became a $720…
Kevin Trudeau Natural Cures infomercial program (2002-2014)
Kevin Trudeau built a television-infomercial empire on the claim that natural, non-drug cures existed for virtually every disease. The FTC…
Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS) / chlorine dioxide protocol
In 2006 a former Scientologist who claimed to be a billion-year-old alien god began marketing drops of activated industrial bleach as a…
DNP (2,4-Dinitrophenol) as a weight-loss drug
DNP was marketed from 1933 as a fat-melting weight-loss pill that worked by revving the metabolism. It was banned by the FDA in 1938 as…
Tesla BioHealing Biophoton Generators (BioHealer / Tesla MedBed Generator)
Since 2019 Tesla BioHealing has sold sealed canisters it calls Biophoton Generators, claiming they emit 'Life Force Energy' that treats…
Blueprint (Project Blueprint)
Bryan Johnson sold his payments company for $800 million, then spent $2 million a year measuring himself, announcing in 2021 a biological…
Therapeutic plasma exchange with intravenous immunoglobulin (TPE-IVIG)
For a fee, a clinic drains and replaces a client's plasma and says it cut their biological age by 2.61 years. The figure comes from one…