Medical Quackery (Handbook of Texas Online)
secondary literature · 1995
LINK
SUMMARY
Reference-encyclopedia entry by Chester R. Burns in the Texas State Historical Association's Handbook of Texas Online. Byline, title, and original publication date (May 1, 1995) read from the page (fetched 2026-06-11). Source for the Texas framing of Radam: 'William Radam, an Austin gardener, was another popular medical huckster in Texas. His solution, first offered in 1887, exploited a popular belief that germs caused all diseases; his mixture supposedly exterminated these germs.' The page carries the verbatim Radam quotation used in this bundle, 'I treated all my patients with the same medicine, just as in my garden I would treat all weeds alike,' and the statement that 'Radam made so much money that he left his Austin gardens for a New York City mansion overlooking Central Park.' The entry's bibliography cites James Harvey Young's The Toadstool Millionaires (1961) and The Medical Messiahs (1967).
NOTES
The Handbook of Texas Online entry “Medical Quackery,” by the medical historian Chester R. Burns, places Radam in the wider Texas patent-medicine trade and supplies several dated facts used here: that the Microbe Killer was first offered in 1887, that it traded on the new public awareness of germs as the cause of disease, and that Radam grew wealthy enough to leave Austin for a New York City mansion overlooking Central Park. It is also the source for Radam’s own gardening analogy, quoted verbatim in the case. As a Texas State Historical Association reference work it is cited for biography and context, and its bibliography points to James Harvey Young’s standard scholarly histories of American patent medicine.