Pulmonary consumption (tuberculosis) -- then afflicting tens of thousands of Americans, most never cured by ordinary drug medication -- was curable under Jackson's Psycho Hygienic method, without any medicine.
Advertising back matter bound into Jackson’s 1870 book The Gluttony Plague names pulmonary consumption specifically among the diseases claimed curable under his Psycho Hygienic system, arguing that drug medication had failed to cure it while his method had not, and pointing to the large population of consumptive Americans as a prospective market for the claim. No controlled evidence supported it. A 2020 peer-reviewed history-of-medicine assessment (Armocida & Martini, Journal of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene) establishes that the infectious cause of tuberculosis was not even identified until Robert Koch’s 1882 announcement — during Jackson’s own operating period — and that the hygiene-diet-rest regimen general medicine itself used against tuberculosis for decades afterward offered symptomatic support, not cure, for serious cases, with no effective drug treatment existing before streptomycin’s introduction in 1943-44. The claim is recorded here as refuted: no diet-and-water regimen without antimicrobial treatment cured tuberculosis in Jackson’s era or for nearly three-quarters of a century afterward.
Appears in
Sources
- The Gluttony Plague; or, How Persons Kill Themselves by Eating — Jackson, James C. The Gluttony Plague; or, How Persons Kill Themselves by Eating. Dansville, N.Y.: Austin, Jackson & Co., 1870.
- Tuberculosis: a timeless challenge for medicine — Armocida, Emanuele; Martini, Mariano. "Tuberculosis: a timeless challenge for medicine." Journal of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene 61, no. 2 (2020): E143-E147. PMID: 32802997. PMCID: PMC7419119.