Fads and Quackery in Healing (Wilshire's Ionaco, pp. 153-154)
book · 1932
LINK
SUMMARY
The anchor critical source for this case. Morris Fishbein (1889-1976), then editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, devotes a passage (pp. 153-154, indexed under 'Wilshire, Gaylord, 153, 154') to the I-ON-A-CO. The full text was fetched from the Internet Archive djvu transcription on 2026-06-13. Facts copied from the source and paraphrased in this bundle: that Gaylord Wilshire of Los Angeles brought the 'Ionaco' to public attention through extensive press announcements; that Arthur J. Cramp, director of the American Medical Association's Bureau of Investigation, rechristened it the 'magic horse collar'; that the device was a coil of wire inside a second coil connected to the house current, sometimes fitted with a small light to fix attention; that the wearer was told he might be rid of any chronic disorder by placing it around the neck and turning on the current, on the theory that a magnetic field 'controlled all disease by magnetizing the iron in the blood'; that the blood's iron is organically combined and not magnetizable; that Wilshire sold the devices for $55 cash or $65 on time payments and that thousands were sold; that Wilshire was, in Fishbein's characterization, a charlatan who had earlier sold gold mines to socialists on time payments; that he died of kidney disease in a New York hospital 'no doubt without the benefit of his own invention'; and that imitators (the Theronoid and others) followed his death. The verbatim phrase used in the bundle ('magic horse collar') is recorded in the case grounding log's verify-quotes block against this Archive text. No DOI/PMID/ISBN; cited by archive item URL with copied page reference.
NOTES
Morris Fishbein’s 1932 Fads and Quackery in Healing is a contemporary survey of American healing cults and quack devices by the long-serving editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Its treatment of the I-ON-A-CO appears in the chapter on the spread of Albert Abrams’s electronic ideas and is the principal narrative source for this case: it documents Wilshire’s promotion of the device, its construction as a coil of wire on the house current, the magnetic-cure pitch, the pricing ($55 cash or $65 on time payments) and scale of sales, the American Medical Association’s dismissal of it through Arthur J. Cramp (‘magic horse collar’), and Wilshire’s death of kidney disease shortly after launching the appliance. The text was read directly from the Internet Archive transcription; all facts attributed to Fishbein in this bundle are paraphrased from pages 153-154, and the two short verbatim quotations used are verified in the grounding log.