Cure-Alls

So long as foolish people with pains have hopes of feeling better, quacks and charlatans will flourish. Last week Associate Commissioner Charles W. Crawford described some of the cure-alls that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration has found on the U.S. market in the past year. Among them:

P: A vapor-bath system which sprays the bather with various chemicals. Price: $2,200. It was represented as effective for diabetes, abscess of the lung, decay of the jawbones, blood poisoning, a long list of other ailments,

P: An apparatus for administering electric shock at home. Heart disease, paralysis, cancer, tuberculosis and polio were among the diseases it was alleged to "cure." It might, at that: its voltages could easily cause death.

P: A battery-operated device called the "Electreat" for giving a harmless electric shock. Before the manufacturer was enjoined by the Food & Drug Administration, "Electreat" was represented as helpful for goiter, kidney trouble, heart pain, broken bones, childbirth paralysis and deafness. Price: $19.50. Sales: 4,000 a year.

P: A mechanical enema machine. Price: $1,190.

P: A device called the "Spectro-Chrome" that constantly changes its garish-colored lights, jukebox fashion. With head pointing north, the patient receives "tonations" at favorable times of the day, with a "Favorscope," which is supposed to correct unfavorable "solar, lunar, terrestrial radiant, and gravitational influences." Appropriately colored lights, said Inventor Dinshah P. Ghadiali, are wonderfully effective against diabetes, cancer, tuberculosis, appendicitis, syphilis and hundreds of lesser ills. The lamp was not for sale; to be treated, a patient had to join Ghadiali's "institute" at a fee of $90.

To prosecute the charlatans who "invent" such gadgets, Food & Drug has to get legal evidence--from clinical tests, from physicians, or from the families of patients who have been harmed or killed. Prosecution is rarely easy. Inventor Ghadiali, for one, escaped with a $20,000 fine and an injunction to get out of business.

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