Crackpots, visionaries and women: two books about medicine.

Watching the increasingly delusional anti-science slant of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his acolytes put me in mind of a book I read. Sure enough, rereading THE GREAT AMERICAN MEDICINE SHOW: Being an Illustrated History of Hucksters, Healers, Health Evangelists and Heroes from Plymouth Rock to the Present by David Armstrong and Elizabeth Metzger Armstrong shows medical crackpots have been around for most of our history.

The book starts in the colonial era when medicine itself was crackpottery — bleeding was the solution to everything — and anesthetics other than booze were nonexistent. Small wonder Americans were happy to embrace anyone who offered a sure-fire cure; even as medical science got its shit together, there were still people who preferred alternatives. The book lists the radical ideas that went mainstream such as exercise, vitamins and chiropracty; faith healing; once enthusiastic ideas that faded (hydropathy, mesmerism, phrenology and patent medicine shows) and legends that faded to obscurity such as Thomsonian herbalists and “great masticator” Thomas Fletcher (chew every mouthful of food 120 times and you’ll have perfect health!)

Common themes among most of these schools include an interest in diet (vegetarian, simple, no booze), women’s dress (no corsets!) and women’s rights generally, and a horror of masturbation (self-abuse will destroy your mind!). A common misperception is that whatever they’re pushing is not only healthy but the key to health: this one simple trick will fix everything that’s wrong with you. And that if you live right and do the right magic health things, nothing bad can happen.

Back in 1970, WOMEN AND THEIR BODIES — later editions were titled Our Bodies, Ourselves — was a booklet put out by the Boston Women’s Collective. Given that it shares the crackpots’ distrust of professional medicine (capitalist medicine is about profits, not people! Male doctors don’t respect women’s patients! The medical industry has zero interest in preventive medicine) I’m fascinated that the authors don’t go sliding off into a world of “woo.” Instead it’s a thoughtful look at women’s health including the clitoris and sex, pregnancy, post-partum depression, STDs and some (justifiably) angry feminist ranting. I’m sure some of the information is outdated but that’s not their fault; I’m not at all sure the book’s basic data isn’t still needed. Quite fascinating.

Cover by Frank Brunner (top) and Howard Sherman (bottom). All rights to images remain with current holders.