Texas Quackdown

An attractive red-haired housewife named Elsie May Keene walked into the office of K. F. Reynard in Beaumont, Texas, told him a physician had said she was dying of diabetes. Reynard, one of Texas' 400 practicing naturopaths, knew just what to do for her. First he gave her repeated enemas. Next he administered the pendulum test--a piece of steel supported on chains between two rods which he held over Mrs. Keene's heart. "Your heart is beating too fast and the blood pressure is too high," he told her. His diagnosis continued: a large heart lesion which would take a long time to cure; also kidney and bladder trouble. Reynard charged Mrs. Keene $10 for the examination, $4 for some pills.

Elsie May Keene went around to the office of Arvid Lovgren, complained to him of pains in her throat. Naturopath Lovgren took her blood pressure, told her that her heartbeat was too fast, promptly administered a "chiropractic adjustment" with a vibrator. "But how will that stop the pains in my throat?" she asked. Lovgren gave her pills, prescribed a diet, then fitted what he called an electrical heat-ray machine around her neck. It began to burn on the left side. He said that was where the infection was, but he treated the burn with Unguentine and charged only $4.

For Twirling Dials, $40. The tariff was stiffer in Bryan, where Mrs. Keene complained of headache and stomachache. There, Naturopath Charles Moore told her she still had diphtheria toxins in her throat from a childhood attack, that she also had colitis; her spleen, pancreas and liver were not working right; she was anemic and her pulse was too slow. He sold her special foods for $9, and for the examination (done by twiddling the dials of a machine that looked like a short-wave radio) he charged $40.

The fact was that Elsie May Keene was not sick at all. Before she began her rounds as a special investigator working for the State Board of Medical Examiners, she had been checked by physicians from crown to toe, pronounced in excellent health. Last week Attorney General Will Wilson told her stories as he staged a Texas-style roundup, corralled 61 naturopaths in 29 counties. Wilson asked for court injunctions to restrain them from practicing. At his heels in what they called "Operation Quack Quack," district attorneys were proceeding against the 61 on criminal charges (unlawful practice of medicine), possibly graver felony charges because narcotics and barbiturates were found in several offices.

For Nervy Massage, $2. Though Mrs. Keene was the star investigator, other equally healthy agents had called on all the naturopaths picked for investigation and subjected themselves to their treatments. A woman who complained of stomach pains to Naturopath R. W. Frydenlund in Dallas reported that he looked into her eyes with a magnifying glass, promptly diagnosed her trouble as "having eye muscles too far apart." He gave her a red-and-black-striped stick, told her to stare at it cross-eyed for 15 minutes a day. Charge: $5. In Weslaco, "Patient" Ben Laney told Naturopath F. G. Schaus that he thought he had food poisoning. A machine diagnosed a kidney stone. Schaus massaged Laney's hand, saying that it contained the nerve to his kidney. Fee: $2.

Nature healers, who are always only one jump ahead of the sheriff in most states, flocked into Texas after a 1949 law set up easy-to-meet licensing provisions. But the law has just been held unconstitutional on the ground that it was too vague in authorizing naturopaths to practice the "healing arts" while forbidding them to practice medicine. Though one naturopath haled into court had given an investigator a shot of penicillin, it was clear from Attorney General Wilson's case histories that whatever art most of them had been practicing, it was certainly not medicine.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.