Mind, Body & Mines

Suffering man's infinite capacity for self-deception was demonstrated last week, with radioactive trimmings appropriate to the atomic age, in the little Montana mining towns of Boulder (pop. 1,017) and Basin (pop. 250). From far & near came hundreds of bent, gnarled and crippled men & women, mostly victims of some variety of arthritis, all pathetically seeking a magical cure. Many thought they were benefited. Undoubtedly benefited were the owners of two abandoned silver mines, hotel and motel keepers, beanery proprietors and taxi drivers. Boulder and Basin had not seen the like since the bonanza days of the 1890s.

The rush began last summer, after a visiting mining engineer took his wife down to look over the Free Enterprise Mine, near Boulder. She had such a severe case of bursitis that she could not lift her arm. But two days after the half-hour trip down the mine, she felt better and proclaimed herself "cured." Her husband figured that radiation from uranium ores was responsible. Soon they were back, with a friend who suffered from arthritis. After an hour at the mine's 85-ft. level, she too felt better.

Invalids Assay High. The word spread through the mining country, and so many visitors arrived at the Free Enterprise that they got in the way of the miners who were trying to find out whether its uranium veins were worth working. Wade V. Lewis, an experienced hard-rock miner and president of the company that owns the Free Enterprise, soon discovered that the visiting invalids assayed higher than anything in the mine: every carload was a pay-lode.

Lewis asked medical authorities to check whether there was anything in the mine that could do anybody any harm--or any good. Assured that a trip down the mine should not actually hurt anybody, but without waiting for a verdict on the reported cures--no serious investigation has begun yet--the owners of the Free Enterprise floated $100,000 worth of stock and closed the mine for improvements.

A new shaft was sunk, and into it was built an Otis elevator big enough to hold stretcher and wheelchair cases. This cost $50,000. Airlocks were installed in the mine to seal in "curative" gases. To keep the procession of health-seekers in order, there is a flossy reception room where each visitor gets a number assigning him to a seat in the 85-ft. lateral. Downtown, a cashier handles the payoff: $100 for each visitor, which entitles him to four one-hour sessions underground.

To the Merry Widow. Proprietor Lewis, flanked by a lawyer, is careful never to use such words as "treatment" or "patients." "Hell," says Lewis, "we're mining men, developing a uranium-bearing deposit. We're not doctors and don't pretend to be." But even with a daily limit of 30 new visitors, the mine takes in as much as $3,000 a day, and nobody has seen any trucks of uranium ore coming out.

From the start, the Free Enterprise got the carriage trade. The overflow and those who cannot afford its rates go to the Merry Widow Mine in Basin, nine miles away, where the crowds are even bigger. The Merry Widow's owners need no elevator, because theirs is a lateral shaft. They leave their visitors a steep climb up a rocky trail to get to the tunnel entrance, and levy no fixed charge. But they were quick to reincorporate as Miracle Mines, Inc.; and they accept "donations," which average $1 to $2 a head.

There is nothing in medical or nuclear science to suggest that the tiny, harmless doses of radiation absorbed by visitors can affect joint diseases. Nevertheless, a lot of people who go down the mines feel better afterward. It is also true that some people with pains in their joints (from either disease or a state of mind) feel better after carrying potatoes in their pockets. There is no reason to believe that sitting in a mine is any less effective for such cases than carrying a potato. But in Boulder and Basin it is more expensive.

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