METHUSELAH ARCHIVE INTERVENTIONS
Interventions

The products.

The therapies, devices, regimens, and tonics themselves — what was sold, what it claimed, and whether it is still on the market.
regimen · historical
Animal magnetism (mesmerism)
Group treatment around the magnetized baquet apparatus, claimed to restore health and well-being in patients of all conditions through the operator's redirection of a universal magnetic fluid through the body.
injection · historical
Antireticular cytotoxic serum (ACS / ATsS)
A serum prepared by sensitising an animal donor against human spleen and bone marrow tissue, given to humans in small doses to strengthen the reticular connective tissue and prolong life past one hundred, perhaps as long as one hundred and fifty years.
oral · historical
Arsenic slimming and complexion nostrums
Take a small daily wafer and grow slender and clear-skinned. Arsenic stimulates the system, carries off surplus flesh, and refines the complexion, with no effort and (so the advertisements said) no danger.
regimen · historical
Bennett's rejuvenation system (muscular contractions and self-massage)
Contract and massage your muscles each day, mostly while lying in bed, and eat sparingly. Proper exercise of every muscle and organ is, in Bennett's words, the principal secret of health, strength, elasticity of body, and a long life: an old body and face can be made young again.
regimen · historical
Biologic living (the Battle Creek Idea)
Live the Battle Creek way: eat the antitoxic vegetarian diet, keep the bowel clear so the colon's poisons cannot age you, take the baths and the exercise, and you will restore and preserve your health and lengthen your life.
regimen · still sold
Blueprint (Project Blueprint)
A comprehensive, heavily quantified diet-supplement-exercise-sleep regimen, developed and personally tested by tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson and marketed as reducing 'biological age,' now sold as a consumer subscription product line.
graft · historical
Brinkley goat-gland transplantation (goat-to-human gonad implant)
Surgical implant of goat gonad tissue, sold to restore male virility and reverse aging, promoted nationally over Brinkley's own radio station.
oral · historical
Brodum's Restorative Nervous Cordial and Botanical Syrup
A royally-patented Nervous Cordial and Botanical Syrup that brace the human system, give it 'vigour to the functions of life', restore weakly and debilitated constitutions and the effects of the indiscretions of youth, and by which 'the health of thousands' has been 'preserved to extreme old age', protecting the patient 'from the infirmities of old age and a wretched dissolution'.
injection · historical
Brown-Séquard testicular extract (organotherapy)
Subcutaneous injection of aqueous extract from animal testes, claimed to restore physical and mental vigor in older men.
device · historical
Celestial Bed and Temple of Health
An electrified, magnetized, music-driven and perfumed marriage-bed marketed for conception, regeneration and the prolongation of life, embedded in a London show-temple of medical apparatus and branded tonics, hired to married couples of means at fifty pounds the night.
injection · still sold
Cellular therapy (Frischzellentherapie)
Injection of fresh cells from organs of freshly killed lamb fetuses, claimed to restore the corresponding organs in the recipient and slow biological aging.
oral · historical
Cordial Balm of Gilead
A secret balm of the choicest balsams, the discovery of Dr Solomon, that braces and invigorates the nervous system and gives new tone to all the vital functions. It restores impaired vigour and tottering constitutions and relieves a long list of complaints from nervous debility and lowness of spirits to consumptions, at half a guinea the bottle.
regimen · historical
Egyptian physical regeneration and the Wine of Egypt
An 'Egyptian' forty-day regeneration retreat and a set of secret elixirs ('Wine of Egypt', 'Elixir Vitae') sold to the European aristocracy as the means to restore lost youth and prolong life.
device · historical
Electronic Reactions of Abrams (ERA)
A system claiming that every disease has a specific 'electronic vibratory rate' that a sealed box (the Dynamizer) could read from a drop of blood to diagnose any illness, and a second sealed box (the Oscilloclast) could broadcast back to cure it.
regimen · historical
Fletcherism (thorough mastication)
Chew every mouthful until it liquefies and eat only when truly hungry. Fletcherize, and you will eat less, escape disease, and stay strong and young into old age.
injection · still sold
Gerovital H3 (procaine anti-aging therapy)
A course of injected (or oral) buffered procaine, branded Gerovital H3, sold as a systemic treatment to slow aging, treat the diseases of later life, and restore the vitality of youth.
regimen · historical
Grahamism (the Graham system of diet and hygiene)
Stop stimulating your nerves. Abstain from meat, spices, alcohol, coffee, tea, tobacco, and sexual excess; eat only coarse whole-wheat bread and plain vegetables; and you will escape disease, avoid insanity, and live to see extreme old age.
regimen · historical
Hauser's "Wonder Foods" diet (Look Younger, Live Longer)
Eat five 'wonder foods' -- powdered brewers' yeast, powdered skim milk, yoghourt/yogurt, wheat germ, and black treacle/blackstrap molasses -- and add measurable 'youthful years' to your life, under the authority of a diet adviser linked to Hollywood's biggest stars.
oral · still sold
Homeopathy (Hahnemann's system of medicine)
Let likes be cured by likes. A single minute, potentized remedy, matched to the whole picture of your symptoms, acts where the old regimen of purging and bleeding only harmed.
device · historical
I-ON-A-CO
An electro-magnetic belt that, worn around the body and plugged into a light socket, was said to magnetize the iron in the body and increase the oxygen carried to the tissues, purifying the blood and restoring the wearer to perfect health while ridding him of any chronic disorder.
regimen · historical
Immortal Cell Culture (Carrel's Chick-Heart Experiment)
An indefinitely proliferating tissue culture demonstrates that cells are intrinsically immortal and that aging is not inevitable — only a failure of the body's internal fluid environment.
device · historical
J.B.L. ('Joy, Beauty, Life') Cascade internal bath
Flush your colon daily with the J.B.L. Cascade to clear the retained waste that (per the theory) is the single cause of all disease, and you will prevent disease, preserve health, and gain 'Joy, Beauty, Life.'
regimen · historical
Kevin Trudeau Natural Cures infomercial program (2002-2014)
Natural, non-drug cures exist for virtually every disease and for effortless weight loss; the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA, and the FTC are suppressing them; buy the book (and the subscription, and the supplement, and the patch) to learn what "they" don't want you to know.
regimen · still sold
Kneipp Cure (hydrotherapy, herbalism, and the 'five pillars')
Cold-water 'reaction' treatments that a Bavarian priest claimed could cure or prevent an unusually broad range of diseases by stimulating the body's own healing force; today a certified spa-tourism method and a personal-care product brand still trading under his name.
injection · historical
Krebiozen Cancer Treatment
A substance extracted from the blood of Argentinean horses exposed to Actinomyces bovis, said to mobilize the body's own defenses against cancer and produce objective tumor reduction without the toxicity of conventional treatment.
regimen · historical
La vita sobria (Cornaro's sober diet)
Hold to a fixed, spare daily ration and temperate living, and you will throw off disease and reach, as I have, a vigorous old age. The sober life is a divine medicine open to anyone.
regimen · historical
Lahmann's Physiatric Regimen (dietetic blood-dyscrasia cure)
Faulty diet corrupts the blood, and a corrupted blood corrupts every tissue in the body: that single 'dietetic blood dyscrasia' is the root cause of nearly all disease, Lahmann held, and diet, hydrotherapy, air-bathing, and reform clothing that restore the blood's proper composition prevent and cure it.
extract · historical
Liebig's Extractum Carnis (LEMCO)
The concentrated essence of 34 pounds of fresh beef in a single jar; a scientific preparation by the world's greatest chemist that restores the vital nitrogenous principles of meat to the invalid, the soldier, and the overworked professional.
regimen · historical
Macrobiotics (Hufeland's art of prolonging life)
Order your life by the rules of macrobiotics. Husband your vital force through moderation, regular sleep, pure air, exercise, and tranquillity of mind, and you slow its consumption and prolong your life.
regimen · historical
Magnetic somnambulism (artificial somnambulism)
A gentler successor to Mesmer's convulsive crises: a magnetic treatment that put the patient into a lucid 'magnetic sleep' in which they were said to diagnose their own disease and prescribe its cure, propagated through aristocratic magnetic societies.
injection · still sold
Marine plasma (Sérum de Quinton)
Diluted, microfiltered Atlantic seawater maintains the 'original marine milieu' of animal cells; injected isotonically, it can replace blood plasma, reverse fatal dehydration, and cure diseases of wasting and malnutrition.
oral · still sold
Megadose vitamin C ('orthomolecular' ascorbate therapy)
Multi-gram daily doses of vitamin C, far beyond the amount needed to prevent scurvy, promoted by a two-time Nobel laureate as a way to prevent and shorten the common cold, and, given intravenously, to dramatically extend survival in terminal cancer.
oral · historical
Morison's Vegetable Universal Medicine (Hygeian pills)
All disease is one disease: the impurity of the blood. Purge the impurity with the Vegetable Universal Medicine and you cure every complaint, preserve health, and need no physician. The pills are harmless in any quantity; take more for a stronger cure.
regimen · historical
Order-energy raw-food regimen (Bircher-Benner's 'Lebendige Kraft' nutrition)
Eat by the order of nature. Live on raw plant food charged with the sun's energy, the highest 'living force' a food can carry, and you strengthen the body's vitality and prevent and overcome disease, including disease called incurable.
device · historical
Orgone Energy Accumulator
A wooden-and-metal box claimed to collect 'orgone energy' -- an undetectable cosmic life-force Wilhelm Reich said pervaded the atmosphere -- and concentrate it around the body of anyone who sat inside, curing or preventing an open-ended list of diseases from the common cold to cancer.
device · historical
Overbeck's Rejuvenator
A home electrotherapy device claiming that passing tiny electric currents through the body would restore its natural 'balance of electricity,' renewing the vitality and youth of the old and young alike and overcoming almost all illness.
device · historical
Perkins Metallic Tractors
A pair of patented metal tractors, of a special alloy, that draw out the noxious electrical fluid at the root of pain, paralysis, rheumatism, gout, and inflammation when applied lightly to the affected body part.
regimen · historical
Physical Culture (Macfadden's drugless system)
Fast, eat sparingly, exercise hard, and shun doctors and drugs. Nature's remedies will cure chronic and acute disease, rebuild the body, and keep you young and vigorous into old age.
oral · historical
Radithor
A 'mild radium therapy' tonic, sold in bottles of triple-distilled water containing radium-226 and radium-228, claimed to stimulate the endocrine system and cure over 150 conditions including impotence, hypertension, lassitude, and rheumatism.
oral · still sold
Sirtuin-activating compounds (resveratrol, then NMN)
Small molecules proposed to activate the body's own 'longevity genes' (sirtuins) and mimic the life-extending effects of calorie restriction, discovered in David Sinclair's Harvard laboratory and commercialized first as resveratrol-derived pharmaceuticals, then as NMN and other NAD+-boosting dietary supplements.
oral · historical
Soured-milk ('Bulgarian bacillus') longevity therapy
Drink soured milk daily and the lactic-acid bacteria will suppress the putrefactive microbes of your large intestine, the source (per the theory) of the autointoxication that ages you, and you will live longer.
injection · historical
Spermin-Poehl (Sperminum-Poehl) organotherapy
Injected spermin, presented as an oxidation-catalyzing antitoxin that restores vital energy and reverses senile decline.
regimen · historical
St John Long's Corrosive Liniment and Inhalation
A secret corrosive liniment that Long claimed could tell 'sound' from 'unsound' tissue, raising a large discharging sore over the chest or back to let consumption, rheumatism, and other internal disease 'escape' the body, together with a separate secret inhaled preparation for the same complaints.
regimen · historical
Steinach Vasoligation (Steinach Operation)
A brief surgical procedure that shifts the testis from sperm production toward hormone secretion, restoring the biological markers of youth in aging men.
regimen · historical
The cold-water cure (Gräfenberg hydropathy)
Take the cold-water cure at Gräfenberg. Wet sheets, douches, baths, and water taken in quantity, with exercise and open air, draw the morbid matter out of the body through a healing crisis and restore health where the drugs of the physicians have failed.
regimen · historical
The Hay System (food combining / 'food separation')
Stop eating starches and proteins at the same meal and lean your plate toward alkaline vegetables and fruit. Keep your body out of its acid, self-poisoning state and you will shed disease, regain vitality, and live longer.
regimen · historical
The Hazzard Fasting Cure
Stop eating so the body can purge the impurities behind disease, and natural health is restored.
regimen · historical
The Kuhne friction sitz bath and 'New Science of Healing'
There is only one disease, the accumulation of foreign matter in the body, and so only one cure. The friction sitz bath, with a vegetarian saltless diet, draws the foreign matter out and restores health and vitality, without medicines and without operations; and by facial diagnosis the trouble can be foreseen and forestalled before it takes hold.
infusion · still sold
Therapeutic plasma exchange with intravenous immunoglobulin (TPE-IVIG)
Therapeutic plasma exchange combined with intravenous immunoglobulin, marketed as reducing biological age by 2.6 years on average as measured by a panel of 35 epigenetic clocks.
graft · historical
Voronoff testicular xenograft (chimpanzee-to-human)
Surgical graft of chimpanzee testicular tissue into the scrotum of a wealthy human male, claimed to restore youth, virility, and lifespan.
oral · historical
Wm. Radam's Microbe Killer
There is but one disease, caused by microbes, and one cure. Wm. Radam's Microbe Killer destroys the microbes in your body and cures every complaint, from consumption to rheumatism, while remaining pure water permeated with healthful gases, harmless enough for an infant and cheap enough to drink daily.