The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

IPUBLI5ME-D BY TM^ noR.TA CAI^OLIMA 5TATL BOAgP °^MEALTMJ. Howell Wat, M.D., President, WaynesvilleRichard H. Lewis, M.D., Raleigh.J. L. Ludlow, C.E., Winston-Salem.W. O. Spencer, M.D., Winston-Salem.Thoma.s E. Anderson, M.D., Statesville.Charles O'H. Laughinghodse ,M.D.Greenville.Edward J. Wood, M.D., Wilmington.A. A. Kent, M.D., Lenoir.Cyrus Thomp.son, M.D., Jacksonville.W. S. Rankin, M.D., Secretary and Treasurer, Raleigh.Vol. XXVIII. NOVEMBER, 1913. No. 8."MECHANICAL FAKES *'The Electropoise -- Oxydonor -- Oxygenor -- OxygenatorOxypathor -- Oxytonor."It is sometimes hard to decidewtiich. is the greater—the impudenceof the quack or the credulity of hisvictims. The comparative ease withwhich the medical faker is able, bythe most preposterous claims, to separatethe trusting from their moneyindicates the enormous potentialitiesin advertising. It might be supposedthat an individual who set out tosell,as a panacea for all the ills of the flesh,a piece of brass pipe with one or twowires attached to it, would, commerciallyspeaking, have a hard and rockyroad before him. But such a suppositionwould be incorrect. Not onlywould the enterprising faker find customersfor his gas pipe, but therewould be such a demand for this mostinane of 'therapeutic' devices that twoor three imitators would immediatelyenter the market."Sanche's Inventions.The American Medical Association'sexpose tells how one Hercules Sanche,self-styled "Discoverer of the Laws ofSpontaneous Cure of Disease," becamethe original exploiter of mechanicalfakes. "Sanche's first and simplestgas pipe cure device he called the Electropoise."The shrewd Sanche realized that, inorder to patent his device and at thesame time prevent physicists andchemists and other scientists applyinglaboratory tests to the device andexposing it as without any knownphysical, chemical or other influence,it would be necessary for him to"discover" and attribute to his gas pipecure some hitherto and thereafter unrecognizablepower; so he said thatthe instrument rendered the body oxygenpositive; that is, that it made thebody absorb larger quantities of oxygen.He later named this newly "discovered"power "Diaduction." Oh,you needn't look in the dictionary;the word isn't in it. No one, Sancheargued, "had ever realized before thatby attaching a piece of nickel-platedbrass tubing to the body by means of aflexible cord the system could be madeto absorb oxygen."Of Diaduction Mr. Justice Shiras, ofthe United States Supreme Court, says:"I am entirely certain that I do notunderstand the working of this socalledforce, if any such exists, and I