Smear Campaign: the Dead Drunk Doctor

Vicious rumors about him were being spread, intentionally or not, by the doctor himself.

Dr. Galen E. Bishop, advertising trade card with an albument print (in the style of a carte de visite), ca.1865-1866. Rapoza collection.

DEAR READER: For over 40 years now, I have been reading, researching, and collecting items about the common person’s pursuit of health during past centuries. I’ve seen enough to know when something is really different from just about everything else and the trade card of Dr. Galen E. Bishop is one of those choice pieces – he was definitely marching to the beat of his own drum. I think he’s got a great story to tell. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Is this post-Civil War photo showing another young Harvard Medical School graduate?

Not even close.

This is a small trade card that turns the story of 19th century medical advertising inside out. Throughout the century, advertisements in newspapers, promotional booklets, broadsides, handbills, and trade cards all acknowledged that quackery was rampant, but pointed the accusing finger at the products and promises of their competitors. It was part of the strategy of almost every medical practitioner and medicine maker to elevate the stature of their own services and goods above the rest by claiming their competitors were all money-grubbing quacks pitching worthless medicines. Everyone was a worthless fraud except the advertiser who, of course, alone possessed the secret cure.

But Galen Bishop’s trade card was far different – he wasn’t throwing stones from a lofty perch of medical magnificence like the rest. Instead, he openly admitted he was being victimized by his competitors’ tricks and attacks. He was being assaulted by a swarm of medical locusts who were chewing up and spitting out his reputation. While the competition promoted themselves with humor, hyperbole, and outright lies, Galen Bishop was a straight-shooter; there was no slick spin to his card text. He didn’t mention the medicines he made or the cures he had performed like all the others consistently did; he chose instead to have his card read like a scandal sheet of epic proportions – and the target of all the mudslinging was himself. It was pure genius. No surprise.

DEAD SET

Galen Elliott Bishop had been thinking outside the box since he was a young boy. If he was ever coaxed as a kid to go to a square dance, he was more likely to just walk across the barn floor in a straight line.

From his youngest days, he was precociously single-minded and self-motivated about the path in life he wanted to follow.

Being born in rural Somerset, Kentucky, in 1824 meant his future success in the Appalachian foothills would be limited. He and his brothers were given the names of famous men – Galen, Erasmus, Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson – almost as if each was being gifted a guiding star in their lives. Growing up in an era when young boys were still learning their livelihood through apprenticeship, Galen was groomed in the hot and hard work of his father Jacob, a blacksmith, but stirring the embers under red-hot horseshoes did nothing to stir his soul. A paternal uncle who lived close by his family was a saloonkeeper, but that certainly wasn’t an environment to train a young boy to become a man. Young Galen’s maternal uncle and namesake, Galen Elliott, was a physician who history says inspired him towards the field of medicine. That uncle died when Galen was only 12, and medical apprenticeship under his uncle had never been an option anyway, since his father wanted him to learn blacksmithing, but the seed of inspiration proved to be all that was needed.

The boy who was fascinated by medicine seemed foreordained to the career since his infancy when he was christened with the name of the ancient Greek physician – perhaps his occupation had been in the stars after all. From the time of his uncle Galen’s passing, “any spare moment was devoted to his favorite study” – medicine. In 1843, Jacob Bishop moved his family to Platte County in northwestern Missouri, another lightly populated area dominated by farms. It was perfect for a blacksmith to be surrounded by his customers – horses and oxen – but the smell of manure in the morning did nothing for Galen. Sounding very much like a child prodigy, every moment he could get away from his father’s blacksmith shop he spent reading medical books, preparing himself to become a doctor:

Nights, Sundays, holidays, at odd times, … never losing a moment from his books, spending every dollar and dime he could get hold of to procure them, he made such progress that he was ready for the practice of his profession before he had attained his full growth, or become of age. During all these years … he never had a preceptor, never read an hour under any one’s instructions, and just claims the high honor of being a self-made physician.

In his future, when he had his own “Academy of Medicine” built, he made one of its rooms a large library filled with his extensive collection of medical books, along with works on law, theology, physical science, and general literature. He was a voracious reader.

His relentless, unwavering determination to teach himself to become a physician brought both admiration and discomfort to those around him. He was found to be “a plain, practical, intelligent man,” but multiple descriptions noted his peculiarities: “we had heard much of his eccentricities.”; “Doctor Bishop was noted for his eccentricities.”

He had a youthful appearance and “rather good looks,” was small in stature, wore a long, braided pigtail that had fallen out of fashion for men a few decades earlier, and he was single – a marital status that didn’t change for 30 more years. He was definitely the guy who hovered near the punchbowl at the square dance, awkward in his eccentricities or peccadillos, out of step with the music and uncomfortable with inviting the pretty girl to dance.

The feature that stood out most frequently and prominently in descriptions about him was his native intelligence – certainly a peculiarity in its own right that may have been the source of his eccentricities:

He is said to be a medical genius, possessed of much talent, and can execute almost any kind of work. He ought certainly to succeed in business.

In the spring of 1846, when Galen was 21 (the age of majority in Missouri), he started practicing as a physician, introducing himself as Dr. Galen E. Bishop for the first time. He set up his office in the Platte County village of New Market where his family lived among the farms that separated Kansas City to the southeast from St. Joseph to the north. With just one grocery, two stores, a few manual labor businesses like Jacob Bishop’s blacksmith shop, and Solomon Bishop’s small rooming house, the little hamlet of about 150 people on Bee Creek barely merited a dot on the map.

As small as it was, Dr. Bishop had to compete with seven other doctors in the region round about, including a female doctor and a botanic physician. But the fledgling physician in New Market was undaunted. He had thoroughly investigated the nation’s grab bag of medical systems, which included the botanic, hydropathic, magnetic, and homeopathic methods, but he chose to start his own practice as an allopathic physician, which meant bleeding, blistering, and administering mercury to cause sweating and puking to balance the body’s humors – just like his ancient namesake had taught 1,700 years earlier.

DEAD END

Few across the young nation were better prepared than Galen Bishop to become a doctor – even those who had the benefits of years of medical apprenticeship under a preceptor and a full course of study at one of the country’s few well-established medical schools. What he lacked in classroom education he more than amply made up for in his drive, discipline, and insatiable reading habits sustained over the previous nine years.

Cover of Dr. Galen E. Bishop's Popular Journal of Medicine and Collateral Sciences, November 1853 issue. (Courtesy of Fondren Library, Rice University)

In 1847, the year after Galen’s professional debut, the American Medical Association was formed, gathering together allopathic physicians – bleeders and pukers, just like him. The young physician from New Market, Missouri, may have seemed to be an ideal candidate to those who knew him, but on paper, he just didn’t qualify. He didn’t have the required apprenticeship or schooling. What he knew meant nothing to the admissions committee – how he came to know it was the measure that kept him out of the AMA clubhouse. Three years later, in 1850, the Missouri State Medical Association was formed with the same admission requirements. With his father’s passing in 1851, Galen had lost his link to the past and for a lesser man, exclusion from the medical societies could have meant the loss of his future in the career he cherished.

Galen Bishop just doubled down.

He abandoned his allopathic inclinations and decided to continue the practice of medicine the same way he had learned to become a doctor: he would do it on his own, without the assistance of anyone or devoting himself to any one type of medical thought, and he would never, no never, bow to any medical school graduates as his superiors.  

A true man never acquires after college rules, and we find our curiosity [aroused] concerning the modes of living and thinking of that man whose mind has not been subdued by the drill of school education. [from one of his advertisements, 1868]

… [Dr. Galen E. Bishop’s] practice is not hampered by the restrictive dogmas of any particular system. But he believes that some good and some foundation of truth exists in all systems, of which every physician should avail himself in his practice. [from a biography about him,1881]

In 1853, decades before the state or national medical associations started publishing their members-only professional journals, Dr. Galen E. Bishop was publishing his own. A newspaper reporter visiting New Market in November of that year stopped by its little printshop and watched in awe as Dr. Bishop operated as a one-man publishing staff, producing the newest issue of his own medical and scientific journal, The Popular Journal of Medicine and Collateral Sciences:

In the intervals [between] visiting his patients, he writes, sets type and prints, a rare combination of talents, for a new country. His Journal is printed monthly and contains 32 pages. He is said to be a medical genius, possessed of much talent, and can execute almost any kind of work.

The November issue turned out to be a ponderous tome of 96 pages containing three companion articles: “The Imponderable Substances”; “Electricity”; and “Atmosphere.” Cover to cover, it was filled with Dr. Bishop’s effusions on those heady scientific concepts. This particular issue contained no illustrations, advertisements, or medical content, and no contributions by anyone other than Dr. Bishop; he was smart to a fault and candidly, the issue bored the socks off of this 21st century researcher, but there’s no question the doctor was one very smart guy. Not surprisingly, there were no more issues after those of 1853, allegedly because he found it took too much time from his practice. For 19 years after his start in 1846, Dr. Galen E. Bishop practiced medicine and surgery among the rolling hills and fertile valleys of Platte County; then blood and gun smoke covered the land.

DEAD BODIES

The American Civil War shook Southern homelands with battles, raids, and skirmishes. The hostile acts of an angry nation even reached up into the northwestern corner of Missouri, a Union state. New Market and Platte County were surrounded by pro-Southern sentiment; while 2,000 men from the county north of where Galen Bishop lived had signed up for the Union Army, roughly the same number joined the Confederates. Southern bushwhackers like the infamous “Quantrill’s Raiders”  engaged in guerilla warfare in rural areas, ambushing their enemies and raiding the homes and businesses of Union sympathizers.

Even Dr. Bishop’s quiet Platte County experienced its own share of violence and destruction with fighting, ransacking, and burning. A cluster of rumors reached a newspaper in July 1864 that  bushwhackers were swarming about in great numbers: “For the last three days, facts and rumors have come to us so thick and fast as almost to create bewilderment. Unfortunately the truth is bad enough … Platte City is now in the hands of the guerillas.” Less than a year earlier, Dr. Bishop had signed up in the mandatory Union draft registration; the 38-year-old physician wasn’t called upon to serve, but  reaching his patients by traveling alone through the bushwhacker-infested countryside probably made for many unsettling trips.

In the spring of 1865, as the smoke and gunfire of war cleared, 40-year-old Dr. Bishop was ready for a change; with “threatened lung disease, induced by exposure incident to a rough country practice, and also with a view of securing a more central location, he determined to move to St. Joseph,” 20 miles north of New Market. With over 10,000 residents and at the end of the railroad line, it was an ideal location for a doctor – it had lots of potential patients and the ability to receive more from afar. Dr. Bishop located pretty much at the center of the city, on Francis Street opposite the Pacific House hotel.

DEAD CENTER 

St. Joseph was, indeed, a busy place; one of the busiest in the state, and the large 100-room Pacific House accommodated all sorts of visitors to the city, from heroes to criminals. Generals Grant & Sherman once stood together on its balcony, a vantage point that would have provided a clear view of Dr. Galen Bishop’s new office across the street. In stark contrast to the illustrious generals, two local women arrested on the charge of feeding bushwhackers were confined under guard at the hotel. Frank and Jesse James, two of Quantrill’s Raiders were frequent lodgers at the Pacific as well, in the years before they began robbing banks in nearby towns.  Rogues from the realms of quackery, like Dr. J. J. McBride, “The King of Pain,” and the miracle worker, Dr. Lighthill, worked out of the Pacific House when they were in town. Just how busy the hotel was became clear in April 1867 when a rare and strong

earthquake hit the region and “The Pacific Hotel emptied a stream of affrighted guests into Francis street.” It was indeed a wise, strategic decision for Dr. Galen Bishop to locate his new office across the street from such an establishment of the glorious and notorious – new patients from near and far may not have known where Dr. Bishop was newly located, but they knew the Pacific. From the very start of his post-war advertising, his trade cards and newspaper ads specified, “I am permanently located in Saint Joseph, Mo., near the Pacific House, on Francis street.”

Dr. Bishop used his first wave of newspaper advertising to establish the breadth of his practice. His introductory ad ran in newspapers from mid-August 1865 through June 1866. They described his specialization in treating chronic diseases like tuberculosis, syphilis, cancer, and rheumatism, but unlike most doctors who advertised, he showed restraint by not making reckless promises to always cure those diseases.  The same ad also announced his availability to perform surgeries for hernia, cleft palate, cataracts, club foot, hemorrhoids, and other imperfections and abnormalities . Everything about this first year of newspaper advertising was positive, professional, and full of promise. His message was straightforward and matter-of-fact – no razzle-dazzle or shuck-and-jive – the brilliant, self-taught doctor was just confidently letting people know what he was certain he could do for them.

But then there was his trade card. It was printed and distributed during the same time that his newspaper ad was running but it talked to the reader in an entirely different way:

TO MY FRIENDS.

It has been reported through the country that I am dead, and that I am drunk, and at different times that I had moved to St. Louis or other distant places. Medicine peddlers and humbugs have tried to impose themselves on strangers and distant communities by assuming my name, and even nearer home my patients have been duped by men assuming my name.

HUH? Wait a minute here! If it wasn’t for the fact that he put his full name at the bottom of the card, I wouldn’t have believed this was a trade card about Dr. Galen E. Bishop!

Reverse side of Dr. Galen E. Bishop's advertising trade card, ca.1865-1866. Rapoza collection

Rumors and gossip often found their way into newspapers, but so far, no mention of Dr. Bishop’s alleged death, moral ruin, or relocation have been found in over 120,000 issues of newspapers from Missouri and bordering states during August 1865-June 1866. The small-time country doctor had just set up shop in the big town of St. Joseph – he was a strange choice for character assassination and a smear campaign. It seems incomprehensible that there would be so many rumormongers spreading untruths about him and impostors pretending to be him, let alone all at the same time. Besides, he had just relocated to St. Joseph during the same timeframe that this card was made; it therefore seems far more likely that he was creating his own news story rather than already fighting off critics and impostors. The saying, "All news is good news," had been in play for over a century; I believe this card was a publicity stunt perpetrated by Galen to get attention for his business in St. Joseph.

I use pure and costly medicines; my druggist is accused of charging my patients too much and paying me a per cent for my prescriptions; - a lie, growing out of strong competition in the drug business.

Dr. Bishop continued to unveil the cavalcade of calumnies leveled against him – exorbitant fees, conspiracy, and kickbacks – and these lies were being waged not by nameless gossipers or peddlers but by medicine manufacturers – according to this trade card, his list of enemies was as long as his list of sins.

I issue these Photographs to counteract those falsehoods and let the public know that I am “wide awake and duly sober,” and would advise the sick not to be kept away in the future by any falsehood originated by those noted liars.

Here we see Dr. Bishop beginning to fight back in his classic style: straightforward and no-nonsense. “I am wide awake and duly sober,” he wrote, and then offered his photograph to prove it. Even the photograph reflects his personality: the doctor looks forward, his facial expression lacking any emotion; the canvas behind him is devoid of artificial, painted scenery and there are no other pleasantries of a photographer’s set. His photograph focused on giving the reader only what he had promised – proof of life and sobriety.

Two versions of the Dr. Galen E. Bishop trade card have been located thus far. (LEFT) the 1st version, ca. August 1865-June 1866; Rapoza collection. Note: the photographer who took this photo (Rudolph Uhlman) gained notoriety years later for creating a CDV souvenir card with a post-mortem photograph of the notorious bank robber, Jesse James, who was killed in St. Joseph in 1882. (RIGHT) the 2nd version, June 1866 – December 1872 (Courtesy Dick Sheaff collection), but likely early in that window in that it shared the same message as the first and the issues raised would have been unlikely to have been the same if there was an intervening gap of years between the two cards. Note that in the second photo the doctor has a longer, fuller beard; a deeper vest opening; and the watch chain and T-bar are not being used. His beard fullness and length and possible gray hairs at his temple and over his ear indicate a slightly later photography session. Both cards have been dated by the location histories of the two photographers whose names and addresses appear at the bottom of the card backs. Besides the photographers, the only change in the text was renaming the hotel from Pacific Hotel in the first version to Pacific House in the second.

These malignant reports, originating with my old enemies – the quacks and humbugs, and peddlers of physic – fall harmless on me; and are surely shots fired from the rear, in their last retreat.

In this sentence, Dr. Bishop purposely separated himself from the rabble of unqualified doctors of ill repute, calling them his enemies; even though he hadn’t qualified to be a member of the medical societies, he refused  to be dragged down into the mire of quackery. He saw himself as the exception to the professional vs. quack dichotomy of physicians; the regular vs. the irregular. He was wedged in between – the highly skilled physician who was not a member of the medical societies – a medical Missing Link.     

I am permanently located in Saint Joseph, Mo., near the Pacific House, on Francis street; and my office is open day and night, from year to year, where the sick will always find me alive, and will always find me sober. Believe nothing without first seeing me, as I deputize no one to attend to my business, or to know anything about it, except what each patient should know with regard to his own case.

DR. GALEN E. BISHOP.

From an advertisement in the St. Joseph Standard, 29 September 1873.

Dr. Bishop concluded by telling his friends and prospective patients to trust only him, which really meant to stay clear of the irregulars and the medical society members – he was the only doctor they would need. He promised to be at his post day and night, every day of every year, alive, sober, and ready to bring all his knowledge and skills to bear in their behalf. Don’t listen to rumors, half-truths, or outright lies – “believe nothing without first seeing me.” Whether or not there had really been scandalous rumors and imposters besmirching his good name, the message of his trade card was as strong as his newspaper ads: he was professional, ethical, and capable – the perfect physician.

DEAD SERIOUS 

Within just three years, Dr. Bishop had issued 6,000 prescriptions for those afflicted with chronic diseases and at his “operating theater” he removed kidney stones in five patients, one of which was his own brother; he also operated on over 100 eyes for cataracts, and cut out 35 cancers and tumors, “specimens of which … may be seen in his pathological museum.”  The St. Joseph press praised Dr. Bishop’s “large surgical and chronic practice,” crediting the city’s post-war growth and success to him in no small measure, “The reputation of the city is raised by the professional ability of Dr. Bishop … his practice has become a feature in the material prosperity of St. Joseph,” and reported that he had received over 40 offers of partnership with other doctors who were clamoring to join in the success. 

Three Dr. Galen E. Bishop bottles. (LEFT TO RIGHT) a small, clear pill bottle, an aqua bottle of Therapeia Biothrepteira, and a cylinder bottle with the doctor's monogram: "G E B". (Courtesy of Dan Moser and Rebecca Ann Thacker.)

His practice continued to grow and by 1873 it had been expanded into a new, large facility the doctor called his Academy of Medicine & Clinical Surgery, a three-story brick structure with Mansard roof and statuary perched on the front ledges, “beautiful in [its] architectural design and arranged with every modern convenience.” From the street, a list of about 200 diseases were displayed on the window shades – all of which could be removed or remedied through Dr. Bishop’s surgeries or medicines. He made his own medicines and had barrels of drugs stored in the back of his building.

His proprietary medicine line seemed to cover all needs, from Knownothing for venereal diseases; The Granger for renewing vigor, strength, and appetite; and The Native American for blood diseases; to The Amaranthus or Old Man’s Medicine to prevent, cure, and counteract the physical decline that comes with old age (oh yeah, I’m so ready for some of that!); and many more. Making proprietary medicines and advertising them were two more huge offenses to the medical societies, but their rules had long before prevented his admission, so there was nothing they could do to stop a non-member. Breaking these additional rules probably felt to Dr. Bishop like a bittersweet protest and rebuke of those groups who considered him unworthy to be counted among them; every bottle was a glass finger flipped in the air at them.

In contrast, however, all that he did, from making medicine to performing surgery, the doctor was widely admired by the public and the press for “stand[ing] by his own impressions with good-humored inflexibility, trusting himself ”: 

His rare surgical gift is the result of the cumulative experience of a whole life’s cultivation and an obedience to a secret impulse … of devotion to his profession, [which] so cloistered [him] and constitutionally sequestered [him] from society. … [It] ripened him into the most skillful surgeon in this country. He has his own methods. 

The city’s infatuation with its physician surgeon had blossomed into a full-blown love affair: The St. Joseph Gazette gushed,

Dr. Galen E. Bishop is now one of the most celebrated and distinguished physicians and surgeons known to the annals of the medical profession.

By the time that his Academy of Medicine was established, he was known throughout the West and patients came from many miles around to benefit from the vaunted physician. In March 1876 two little blind girls were brought to him from a small town 100 miles to the east; two more patients came in from Jackson County, Kansas, to the west; and a husband-and-wife couple arrived from Ray County, northeast of Kansas City, Missouri, the wife being afflicted with sore eyes and the husband with a diseased bone in his leg. Even Indians from one of the reservations in Kansas “had faith in the pale face medicine man. Sometimes a dozen could be seen in the doctor’s office taking treatment.” (The  Kickapoo reservation was the closest, at 50 miles west of St. Joseph.)

An older couple from Troy, Kansas, also came to the Academy of Medicine for help, the wife needing her eye treated by Dr. Bishop. Apparently avoiding the cost the Pacific hotel or nearby boarding houses, the 67- and 70-year-old couple had been camping near the Academy for a few weeks in October 1879, sleeping in their wagon and cooking by a camp fire, waiting their turn for the wife to be treated by the doctor.

Yesterday the old man strained himself carrying a sack of corn, and at 2 o’clock this morning he awoke his wife and informed her that he was sick. Upon striking a match it was found that he was bleeding profusely at the mouth. Dr Bishop was sent for, and in two minutes after his arrival, the poor man died. It is believed that he ruptured a blood vessel.

Dr. Bishop ran into some legal difficulties in the 1870s, being served with lawsuits for malpractice and slander. One patient sued the doctor for $20,000 ($586,010 in 2024 USD) for malpractice after multiple surgeries on both eyes resulted in making one eye blind and the other one effectively useless (so he was literally blind in one eye and couldn’t see out of the other). The verdict was in favor of Dr. Bishop, which met “with universal satisfaction.” A woman sued the doctor for slander, demanding $35,000 in damages ($1,025,518 in 2024 USD) for referring to her as a prostitute, but again the verdict found in favor of the popular doctor.

In May 1879, two weeks after the creation of a new St Joseph newspaper called The Evening News, the editor positioned himself squarely against Dr. Bishop, insisting he was an “impostor, swindler, and humbug … chief among ten thousand … corrupt quack and medical shysters.” The newspaper chided that he was perceived by others as a “medical saint (so considered by a few poor, deluded devils” but then insisted, “he lies in his teeth, in his throat, and way down deep in his black, cowardly, craven heart” and claimed they had at their office affidavits of some disillusioned former patients of the doctor to prove it. In the following months, however, the same newspaper mentioned Dr. Bishop’s activities on several occasions but dropped all insinuations that he had a sinister side.

Nothing seems to have come of the newspaper’s earlier assertions, either in court or in competing newspapers, and Doctor Bishop didn’t bother to produce a third revised edition of his trade card to add impostor, swindler, and humbug to the earlier accusations that he was dead, drunk, and disappeared.

DEAD STILL

Dr. Galen E. Bishop finally died in 1902 at 77 years old, after a lifetime of medical and surgical service. No evidence of drunkenness ever showed up, but at least the rumors of his death were no longer exaggerated.

Lynn Massachusetts History - History of Medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century Medicine

The Last Gasp Miracle

Starkey & Palen sold air to the terminally ill – it was Alsina Richards’ last hope.

She was desperate and scared.

Each breath she took felt like it was stolen, scraping up nothing but bloody phlegm from an empty chest with nothing left to give. Cough pains sizzled across her lungs that long ago had filled softly and emptied effortlessly.

With every passing day, she became weaker. The once vibrant woman who did housework, helped her husband, visited friends, and went shopping had dissolved into a fragile, feeble weakling for whom each movement took far more out of her than any benefit she got back.

As the disease set in more aggressively, it seemed to be consuming her from the inside – she was becoming emaciated and skeleton-like, the type that people across the street pointed at, whispered about, and walked away from, quickly.

Her skin became paler, as if the very lifeblood was being drained from her body. In a way, it really was: when she coughed, there was blood spatter in her handkerchief. There was nothing left about her that suggested life, certainly not a future.

Weaker, paler, thinner, sicker. She knew she was dying.

Mrs. Alsina Richards was 33 years old and terminally sick with tuberculosis.

In her day, 1880, the disease was most often called “consumption” because of the hallmark symptom of emaciation. It was, far and away, the leading killer in the 19th century and unlike most diseases that attacked children and old people, it most often struck young adults, like Alsina.

  

Infection

Alsina Richards was just about as unassuming as any other young Victorian woman in rural America. Her most distinctive feature may have been her name – no one seemed to know how to spell it – she appears in records as Elzina, Alcina, Alsina, and Alsona. She lived with her parents at their small farm until she was married. In 1877, at 30 years old, she married Alphronso Richards, three years her junior. Like her parents, he was of modest means, pouring concrete for a living. A scant four months after their wedding, Alsina gave birth to a stillborn daughter; it was the only pregnancy she would ever have.

On 16 June 1880, Alphronso and Alsina were enumerated together for the first time in their own home in East Pepperell, northern Massachusetts; Nashua, New Hampshire was just over the border. Although some neighbors were found to be afflicted with such troubles as rheumatism, measles, and dyspepsia, Alsina was not among those listed as “sick or temporarily disabled” – but she knew there was something very, very wrong with her. About six months before the census she was trying to find a cure for sickness that had come over her so quickly, out of nowhere. It wasn’t a casual concern; it was a deep-seated fear of what was taking over deep in her lungs.

 

Stamped Starkey & Palen advertising envelope, cancelled PHILADELPHIA, PA, 17 DEC [1881], 2AM; addressed to Mrs. A. [Alsina] S. Richards, East Pepperell, Mass. (author's collection)

Consolation

Alsina wrote to several women whom she had read about in promotional materials for a lung remedy. She was curious and guardedly hopeful that the women really existed and whether they truly benefited from the remedy. These questions were the common concerns shared by other sick women all over America; even the manufacturer acknowledged that many cautiously wondered about the testimonials, just like Alsina: 

… they write to know if there really is any such person ... or is it only an advertising dodge? … the simple truth about [the remedy] would be the best credentials it could have; hence we were not tempted to invent testimonials, nor to steal genuine ones, nor to romance on any.

Alsina didn’t have money or time to waste on a bogus medicine, so she was determined to find out if she could really believe the testimonials that appeared for Starkey & Palen’s Compound Oxygen, an unusual product that was grabbing a lot of attention and gaining popularity. To protect the writers’ privacy, the manufacturer rarely included their names, but told readers that “Any one, upon application, will be furnished with the exact address of any … of these cases.” So Alsina had to write to the manufacturer to get the testimonial writers’ addresses, wait for the reply, then write and send letters to the testimonial writers and wait again, hoping they would reply … all while she got sicker and weaker.

The women’s responses to Alsina, dated from 15 February 1880 to 20 November 1881, assured her that they had, indeed, written them and were not distorted or rewritten by the medicine maker. Mrs. A. G. Fourquereau of San Marcos, Texas, began her postcard response to Alsina, “I take pleasure in stating that the testimonial … with my name attached, is genuine, and was sent to [the manufacturer] without solicitation from them.” In her postcard response, Julia Barnes of Carmel, New York, wrote, “Yes, my letters … are just as I write them” and Mrs. E. L. Miller of Beecher City, Illinois, also told Alsina that her statements in the publication were true.

The correspondence of five postcards and two letters saved by Mrs. Alsina S. Richards; their dates range from 15 FEB 1880 - 20 NOV 1881. Their retention as a group implies that Alsina Richards valued them, used them as reference for her reply correspondence, and retained them for the last several years of her life due to the relationships built, even though the remedy was unsuccessful in bringing about her recovery, or perhaps she stuffed them away and forgot about them in the face of the increasingly difficult symptoms of consumption that were overwhelming her. (author's collection)

Each response Alsina received was handwritten, further making them seem very much like personal notes from good friends and all of them asked their new friend Alsina to write back. Sallie R. Fisher of Irvington, Illinois, wrote to Alsina like a dear friend and fellow sufferer, full of empathy:

Your card was received last night. I hasten to reply, I know just how you feel in regard to hearing of others being cured. I thought if I could know of one [who] had benefited as low as I was … it would revive my spirits, [emphasis added]

Sallie had written to another testimonial giver, just like Alsina had done with her; and so the correspondence read like chain mail, the women who were writing to reassure Alsina had once upon a time been in Alsina’s situation, writing to someone else who suffered from a lung disease. Alsina valued the correspondence, keeping five postcards and two letters from the women who responded to her pleas for help. The personal notes validated the printed testimonials, allowing Alsina to trust the promotional stories of the ladies’ harrowing ordeals, use of the remedy, and consequent restoration of health. Several personal descriptions of women who were suffering from consumption must have resonated with Alsina – they really did know just how she felt:

Julia Barnes told her, “I used to think last Winter, oh, if I could only stop coughing one day.” Vienna Douglas of Huntsville, Alabama, knew she had consumption; her testimonial in one of the promotional booklets must have been what triggered Alsina to write to her to verify her existence and her story:

I … was hollow-chested, with deep-seated pain in my lungs and great difficulty breathing. That dread disease, consumption, had been coming on me for more than fifteen years. [I] was so reduced [in strength] that I was unable to attend to my household duties – hardly able to go from room to room – with the expectation of myself and family and friends that I would not live many months. [emphasis in original]

Similarly, another consumption testimonial by the apparently wealthy Texan, Mrs. Anna Givhan Fourquereau, (described as the wife of a “gentleman of elegant nature” in the 1880 census), was the likely reason that Alsina wrote to her,

She had been coughing for two years, with occasional hemorrhage. .. having fever all the time, expectorating profusely, so much so that she could not sleep at night, having night sweats, and reduced so in flesh and strength that she could barely leave her bed. [emphasis in original]

What Alsina did not know was that despite endorsing Starkey & Palen’s Compound Oxygen as “the most wonderful remedy in the world for sick lungs,” Mrs. Fourquereau died at 37, just a little more than a year after responding to her. Consumption was no respecter of wealth or social status. The only protection from the disease would have to be a medical miracle.

Sensation

Alsina Richards had learned about these ladies from the promotional materials of the Starkey & Palen Company of Philadelphia, the makers of Compound Oxygen, the product that all the women she heard back from were swearing performed miracles on their medical miseries. Despite the fact that naysayers from the medical fraternity called magnetized oxygen compounds “the quintessence of bosh,” the fairly new product was in high demand by the time Alsina Richardson was in desperate need of a miracle.

Emaciated by the consumption, Sallie Fisher and Julia Barnes happily regained weight after using Compound Oxygen; Sallie went up to 172 pounds and Julia to 150; plus, she noted, the pain in her lower left lung left her after just a half hour after her first treatment with the Oxygen, “and I have not felt it since.” Vienna Douglass called the stuff her “life preserver.” By using it regularly, she was once again able to walk to and from town “and is in a great many respects vastly superior to a dead woman.” [emphasis added. Although this phrase was clearly meant to be tongue-in-cheek, it reads as one of the strangest endorsements in my forty-plus years of research on 19th century medicines!]

As was the case with many patent medicine success stories, Compound Oxygen was not the invention of those who made it a big seller. It was invented by a Dr. Harrison J. Hartwell of Philadelphia in 1867, but he transferred his entire interest in the business to George R. Starkey, A.M., M.D., in 1870. By that time, others in New York City, Chicago, and Omaha were advertising their own therapeutic products also named Compound Oxygen, but only the version sold by Dr. Starkey was successfully promoted and sold across the country.

Prior to building their oxygen empire, Starkey and Palen had been non-practicing physicians. George Rogers Starkey had been teaching in a homeopathic medicine school until poor health forced him to stop, and Gilbert Ezekiel Palen worked as a chemist in a tannery before the two men became partners in the Compound Oxygen venture. The principles of using air medicinally fit perfectly into Dr. Starkey’s homeopathic mindset; homeopathy favored only the smallest, most diluted doses of medicine until it seemed to many like there was nothing there – just like air.

Dr. Starkey considered it strategically critical for the public to believe his remedy was just full of air; even the trademark he registered adamantly insisted in big, bold letters: “NOT A DRUG”. It was only oxygen and nitrogen infused in water, he explained, “the two elements which make up common or atmospheric air, in such proportion as to render it much richer in the vital or life-giving element”; then he somehow magnetized the air then infused it in water and bottled it. When inhaled, the Compound Oxygen supposedly stimulated the nerves, “giving energy to the body.” This magnetized air was said to be so energizing that a certain clairvoyant was unable to slip into a clairvoyant trance because she was too stimulated. Like coffee and cocaine, Compound Oxygen kept its users invigorated and all aflutter.

Trademark for Starkey & Palen's Compound Oxygen and Inhaler, No. 10,449; registered 17 JUL 1883

“The cases of consumption – confirmed phthisis – which the Compound Oxygen has cured can be counted by scores,“ Starkey & Palen’s literature promised, and Alsina’s postcard friends urged her to join their pilgrimage of converts to the miraculous compound:

“I hope you will not delay …” – Sallie R. Fisher

“Hoping you will give it a fair trial” – Grace Davis

“I hope you will get it and take it.” – Julia Barnes

“I do hope you will feel safe in using it as it is the onley [sic] thing that will restore the Lungs.” – Vienna T. Douglass

Every day was getting incrementally worse than the previous day for Alsina. As she exchanged letters and postcards about Starkey & Palen’s Compound Oxygen  and studied its literature, she was trying to make the wisest, most conscientious decision possible, but like so many others in her situation, she really just hoped for a miracle.

Decision

Dr. Starkey knew there were many, like Alsina, in poor health, desperate for a miracle in his bottles, so he tried to temper their wild-eyed expectations and even admitted that sometimes his product would not work:

Do not expect a miracle to be wrought in your case. Although some cases here reported are marvelous in the rapidity with which they have marched health-ward; still many of the most satisfactory and even brilliant cases have been slower paced.

… more than eighty percent of these victims could have been well people to-day had they made TIMELY USE of the Compound Oxygen. Note the emphasis laid upon the phrase, timely use. … Not in all cases would we recommend it, with the idea of holding out a promise of cure. [emphases added]

Dr. Starkey’s pragmatism and cautious confession about his remedy’s limitations might have been the sign of an honest medicine maker, but it also gave him plausible deniability if things didn’t work for a customer, even to the point of death.

Alsina was very sick but her postcard friends urged her to try the Compound Oxygen. It’s also possible that her own doctors had told her she had a chance if she took their own prescriptions to cure consumption, but she took the leap of faith and chose Starkey & Palen’s Oxygen Compound. It was her last gasp of hope.

Sick of sickness and scared of dying, Alsina Richards made the hefty $15 investment in a two-month supply of Compound Oxygen home treatment and hoped for her own miracle, despite Dr. Starkey’s public disclaimer.

Invention

At first Dr. Starkey made the oxygen treatment available for those visiting his Philadelphia office, but soon after buying out Dr. Hartwell's business, he realized the Compound Oxygen could go national if he also sold it as a kit for home treatment.

Compound Oxygen bottle (label missing). Embossed: STARKEY & PALEN / PHILADELPHIA, PA. (courtesy of b-toast online auction; see link)

Unlike most other medicine makers, his whole business focused on lung disease and his medicinal repertoire consisted only of his two lung remedies, Compound Oxygen and Oxygenaqua (a liquid form of the magnetized oxygen compound that could be swallowed rather than inhaled). Sure, he threw in claims that the magnetized oxygen products cured other parts of the body of other things – dyspepsia (indigestion), diabetes, headaches, sometimes paralysis, rheumatism, and kidney disease, and perhaps most obscurely, spermatorrhea (involuntarily ejaculation). “We have proved that a number of diseases which … have been assigned to the category of ‘incurables’ no longer belong there,” the Starkey & Palen literature crowed, but virtually all of their advertising focused on the benefits of the magnetized oxygen for diseased lungs.

Paper-covered wooden box that held one Oxygen Compound (cobalt blue glass) and one Oxygenaqua bottle (clear glass). About 1890. (Photo courtesy of Morphy Auctions, morphyauctions.com)

Dr. Starkey saw a nation full of potential customers with corset-constricted lungs and inescapable sickness forming in the stagnant, smoky air of factories and homes. He told the consumptives, asthmatics, and victims of pneumonia, bronchitis, or other lung diseases his Compound Oxygen was a three-pronged remedy that: (1) increased oxygen in the lungs; (2) purified the blood of poisons that collected there from disease and pollution; and (3) energized the nerves and nerve centers (he liked to compare the nervous system to a galvanic battery with electricity sparking through it), bringing vitality to the person.

When someone at home received their two-month supply, they received two boxes: a larger one containing a cobalt blue bottle of Compound Oxygen and a clear glass bottle (Dr. Starkey referred to it as “the white bottle”) with Oxygenaqua. A paper cover, illustrated with the two medicine bottles and either images of Drs. Starkey and Palen or a woman using the inhaler, was glued to the wooden box. The box was hinged for the bottles’ storage and reuse.

The smaller box was constructed in the same way and contained what looked like a little laboratory. There was a clear glass inhaler bottle with a rubber stopper and two rubber corks in the top, and a set of attachments: two glass elbow straws, two nasal tubes, a tiny bottle, a vial, and a few other glass fittings. The whole lot must have made the user feel something like a pharmacist, preparing the medicine for their own cure. The label covering the box showed the inhaler bottle sitting in a tin cup filled with hot water, per the directions – tin cup not included – the customer had to get their own. This inhaler kit only needed to be purchased once since it could be used over and over, so the Compound Oxygen was sold separately.

Starkey & Palen Inhaler kit; paper label over wood; hinged cover with locking mechanism on the front. Side panels: instructions for use of the inhaler. Back panel: nasal spray instructions; top panel: nasal tube instructions. (about 1880; author's collection)

The instructions for use were pretty basic but important to be followed exactly since any misstep by the junior pharmacist could mean their own demise. Water was to be poured into the inhaler bottle up to the line embossed on the glass, then the measured dose of Compound Oxygen was added, the chosen breathing attachments inserted into the rubber stopper, and the whole unit immersed in the tin cup full of hot water “as hot as a cook can bear her finger in it”. Then the pharmacist became the patient and inhaled the vapors created by the heated mixture of water, magnetized oxygen, and nitrogen - it operated on the same principle as a hookah pipe. Inhalation treatments were done twice a day and increased in one-minute increments every other day from a starting treatment of two minutes to a maximum of six minutes after several days. Each subsequent dose would be stronger because more Compound Oxygen would be poured in to replace the liquid that had been inhaled and otherwise evaporated.

Alsina followed every step precisely and she inhaled.

Over and over.

 

Starkey & Palen Inhaler kit. The clear glass bottle sits in a tin cup (not included with the kit) per the instructions and the box illustration. During actual use, the tin cup would contain very hot water into which the bottle (partially filled with the Compound Oxygen) would be immersed. The glass of the bottle is spattered with chemical residue, indicating extensive use of the inhaler at some point in time. Embossed around the bottle's shoulder: STARKEY & PALEN / PHILADELPHIA PA. The bottle also has an embossed line around the circumference, about half way down the bottle, above which reads: WATER LINE. The kit also contains 7 attachments: 2 glass nasal tubes (in box and on table foreground with white rubber tube attached); 2 glass elbow straws (in box and in bottle); 1 straight tube, corked (in box); 1 measuring tube (in foreground); 1 small vial (in foreground); about 1880. (author's collection)

Devastation

It wasn’t working – she continued to spiral towards her death and she knew it. Panicked, she wrote to Starkey and Palen. She told them how sick she was with consumption and apparently pleaded for

Letter Starkey & Palen to Mrs. A. S. Richards, East Pepperell, Mass., 13 DEC 1881. (author's collection.)

hope – perhaps there was something she was doing wrong or something else she could do. What she received in return, twelve days before Christmas, was the hardest letter she had ever had to read:

 

Philadelphia, Pa. 12 Mo 13 1881

Mrs A. S. Richards

Dear Madam,

Yours of 12-9 is received and its contents are carefully noted. We are sorry to be obliged to say that we cannot recommend the Compound Oxygen as being able to do anything more than to make you comfortable. You have indeed been a victim to wicked charlatanry. The disease has made too great progress to be checked.

We remain

Very Respectfully,

     Starkey & Palen

 

Starkey & Palen confirmed her worst fear – she was doomed – their medicine would not cure her. What “wicked charlatanry” she had been subjected to is not clear without seeing what Alsina had written to them. Perhaps she had explained that local doctors had wasted valuable time earlier in her illness, prescribing other medicines or instructions of no remedial value. Possibly, but unlikely, the phrase might have been referring to the zealous testimonial writers she corresponded with who overpromised a cure from the Compound Oxygen that never came. The somber letter was accompanied by two gratuitous pamphlets containing more information and advice that would never help her.

There is one more piece of correspondence in the Alsina Richards collection. One year after the heartbreaking response from Starkey & Palen, she received another letter  from them in response to her request for their charity. She apparently told them that she and her husband were financially on hard times and could not afford their medicine, which she had apparently continued to take because it provided some measure of relief even as the disease continued its destruction. Starkey & Palen responded, “From your representations of pecuniary disability we will send you a 2 [month] Home Treatment for the Ten Dollars.” [emphasis added; it implies that she requested they discount the cost to ten dollars and they were agreeing to her terms. Saving five bucks may not seem like a lot today, but $15 in 1882 would be $461 in 2024 USD and $10 back then would be $307 now; when’s the last time your pharmacist agreed to a $154 discount on your medicine?] Ironically, it came with another booklet, “Unsolicited Testimonials,” but the time for striking up a correspondence with them was past.

Small, envelope-sized pamphlets included in the Starkey & Palen correspondence to Mrs. A. S. Richards; "Unsolicited Testimonials" (left) was included with the 1881 letter; the other two (center & right) were included with the 1882 letter. (author's collection)

Alsina S. Richards died 22 January 1884 of pulmonary tuberculosis (the death certificate called it phthisis); she was buried in the Pepperell Cemetery and her husband joined her in death 22 years later – he also died of “pulmonary phthisis” after being afflicted with it for just eight months.

 

Conclusion

Alsina and other users of Starkey & Palen’s Compound Oxygen died sad, shortened lives despite their desperate hopes for recovery, but ironically, the medicine enjoyed healthy sales, growth in distribution, energetic advertising, and four more decades of life.  A few years after Alsina’s death, Starkey & Palen put out a series of four trade cards featuring four people from very different corners of life with Compound Oxygen the one ingredient that tied them together. There was one card of an accomplished businessman, apparently a railroad tycoon, who was taking a break during his busy day to take his inhalation treatment of the Compound Oxygen; a second card showed an old woman relaxing at home, happily taking her Compound Oxygen treatment as well, while her cat played with a ball of yarn on the floor; both of these older people were healthy, at ease, and capably managing their health by using the Starkey & Palen products. In contrast, the third card was a close-up of an athletic, muscular young man sailing his boat while holding up a bottle of Starkey & Palen’s Oxygenaqua, implying that just a sip of the stuff was easy treatment for a man on the ocean.

The last card would likely have been the one Alsina would have stared at the longest, comparing her own decrepit health to the subject of this fourth card: the young, wasp-waisted woman was promoting the Compound Oxygen along with the inhaler bottle on the table, ready for use. She was stunningly attractive, vivaciously healthy and self-assured, dressed in daring clothing, reclining seductively, and smiling coyly – it was the perfect “painted lady” portrait, worthy of hanging over the back bar of any saloon. The unquestionably healthy young lady seemed to be taunting consumption, tightly corseted and looking like she would be more comfortable in a dance hall than a sanatorium for consumptives. Oh, to be young, healthy, and full of life – but Alsina Richards was only able to dream of such things before she died at 37 years old, miserably sick for at least her last four years, robbed of life and joy. She never had a chance; there was no miracle for Alsina.

Adverising Trade Card for Starkey & Palen's Compound Oxygen (author's collection)

Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine

The Clairvoyant Healer's Secret

From the Civil War until the end of the 19th century, he was a mystical clairvoyant healer, performing surgery in the dark or with his eyes closed. Many sought him out to remove cancers and other things that regular doctors couldn’t fix – and it made him lots of money. Looking down our 21st century noses it would be easy to just dismiss him as a scheming fraud and laugh at his patients as ignorant fools. But that’s not history. Come walk in his world and find out what really happened.

This is the story of Orrin Fitzgerald, born in March 1842. His father was a carpenter of modest means and the family lived in the quiet town of Dexter, deep in the woodland interior of central Maine, along the banks of Lake Wassookeag and far from any major town or city – hardly the classic setting for fame and fortune.

News and entertainment took time to reach Dexter in the 1840s and 50s. A slow stream of itinerant preachers, professors, and healers trickled through Maine’s tiny towns and villages like Dexter with their sermons, lectures, and cures, and catch-penny menageries and magicians occasionally stopped by to entertain with their oddities and tricks. Newspapers from Maine’s distant cities revealed the lives and doings of people all over the country and the world whom they had never seen but who were out there, nonetheless. Articles also shared that some scientists claimed their telescopes had found life on the moon and Mars and their microscopes had discovered another whole universe of creatures living in their water, food and bodies.

The newspapers also reported the rising tensions before the war and displayed advertisements of messengers from calmer realms – spiritualists and clairvoyants. The Fox Sisters of Rochester, New York, had begun the modern era of spiritualism in the late 1840s, allegedly communicating with the spirits of the dead, yet another level of life invisible to the naked eye. Fascination with the invisibles had even entered the White House, with the First Lady, Mary Todd Lincoln, conducting seances. Life was so much bigger than the small world of Dexter; so much more complex, exciting, and mystifying. Knowledge was being tested and remeasured every day.

Maine newspapers in the 1850s included ads for a clairvoyant Indian doctress, a husband-and-wife team of clairvoyant healers, one that combined their mystical skill with electricity, and others offering a host of clairvoyant medicines that “produce the most wonderful and cheering effects.” When you’re sick, fevered, and in awful pain, it’s hard to resist the promise of a remedy that’s “wonderful and cheering,” regardless of the science behind it.

One physician employed a clairvoyant woman for her unusual diagnostic ability: she had the power to mentally “enter the interior part of the body, tell the most minute disorder, what and where the complaint is seated, and prescribe a remedy, and where the medicine can be found.” In a similar case, a woman in Falmouth, Maine, gratefully gave her testimonial for a clairvoyant physician who cured her. The sick woman had told disbelieving physicians for years that she felt “as though something was eating me up inside, but they all laughed at the idea of anything of the kind, and said I was nervous.” The clairvoyant, however, confirmed her suspicion; with her sixth sense she could see something brown inside the sick lady, looking “like a caterpillar as much as anything.” The healer then warned the sickly woman that she would be very sick when she took the medicine, and her prediction was as spot-on as her diagnosis, “I vomited for three days, and the third day I threw up something that resembled a lizard, and a horrible looking thing, about three inches long, about as large [a]round as my finger, and I think I owe my life to Mrs. Manchester” [the clairvoyant physician]. One ad estimated that “more than half of the towns and villages of New England” had people who had been cured by clairvoyant healing, “monuments of its mysterious skill.”

Dr. Fitzgerald's Clairvoyant Discovery, ca. 1873. (Collection of Wyatt E. Brumfield II)

Insanity or Clairvoyant Genius?

Like the magicians, spiritualists, and travelling patent medicine showmen, clairvoyants had three audiences: the absolute believers, the equally adamant disbelievers, and the curious – probably the largest group – who balanced their wary skepticism with hope that there might be something to it after all. The Fitzgeralds had the debate thrust into their own home: as a teenager, young Orrin showed signs of “unusual healing power.” It was unnerving for his family who were “embarrassed by him as he walked along and suddenly went into a trance.” On some of these occasions his language became a halting, garbled form of Pidgin English, mixed with Indian words. Maybe it was all just teenage dramatic hijinks or the delusions of a daydreamer, or even a condition now called Dissociative Trance Disorder (DTD). But when it was happening, 150 years ago, it was unnerving and embarrassing and his family didn’t know how to deal with their oddball son. His father, “thinking his son insane,” sent his teenage son six miles away in “the wilds of” Garland to “refine his ability” with the help of a farmer there who also had a reputation for being able to reach into the invisible world. Orrin’s first experiences of applying clairvoyance to doctoring occurred in Garland when he was 17, “and the excitement caused by his cures at that time was most intense.” It was said he felt compelled to walk long distances to visit sick people who hadn’t even sent for him.

By 1860, 18-year-old Orrin was back to living in his father’s home, picking up odd jobs as a day laborer, but things changed quickly over the next few years. Orrin channeled his clairvoyant abilities into healing and had significant success. By 1863, the 21-year-old Orrin was a prime candidate for the wartime draft, but he paid the $300 commutation fee ($7,465 in 2024 USD), buying his way out of military service. His father’s entire real and personal property had amounted to only $900, so it’s unlikely he could pay the bill. In three years, Orrin had ascended from day laborer to clairvoyant physician and avoided the risk of war. For the next three years he paid the additional wartime taxes levied upon his occupation as a physician and in the year after the war was over, his tax payment also covered the piano he had purchased.

In an 1869 newspaper ad he was promoting himself as “THE GREATEST WONDER OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY!! Acknowledged by all to be the GREATEST LIVING CLAIRVOYANT, PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON.” It was improbable that he could establish a large enough clientele to match his ambition along the backroads of Dexter and the wilds of Garland, so he joined in the traveling life of so many other irregular healers, but his ad spun that negative into a positive: “It was with the greatest reluctance that the Dr. was induced to leave his extensive home practice and travel; knowing that a prejudice exists against traveling Physicians.”  By 1870 he had accumulated an estate of $6,000 ($143,595 in 2024 USD); he was, indeed, doing very well.

Carte-de-visite of a very young Dr. Orrin Fitzgerald, ca. 1864, set in a photo album page. (Collection of Elton Brumfield.)

Orrin’s healing methods were the quintessential repertoire of a clairvoyant physician: he kept his eyes closed when examining patients or preparing medicine and performed surgery in the dark or sometimes when blindfolded; it was even rumored that he picked his medicinal plants at night. Darkness was the clairvoyant’s friend;  it was said they could see into bodies, the future, and other mysterious realms – all places where the normal-sighted were hopelessly blind.

Young Dr Fitzgerald had quickly honed his clairvoyant diagnostic skills into a dramatically simple procedure; he could learn all he needed to know with the touch of a finger and a listening ear:

Dr. Fitzgerald always touched the forehead with his finger and a report would be heard that sounded almost like a pistol. (… one touch on the forehead and you could hear the snap of an electric shock all over the room.) Then, placing his ear over the heart, he would locate the trouble in an instant. With this diagnosis he never failed, and although all sorts of traps were placed for him he was never caught.

His reputation for performing wonderful cures followed him in his travels like a king’s royal mantle elegantly shuffling behind in his wake. He had quickly mastered the clairvoyant’s craft and finessed how to convert onlookers into disciples:

… a woman in Nashua [New Hampshire]… was a severe sufferer from some internal trouble. The doctors of that city failed to discover the nature of the disease and then Fitzgerald happened along and was called into consultation. Instantly he declared that she had a hard substance in her lung. Ordering everybody from the room and darkening the windows he performed a surgical operation and drew from the woman’s lung a bone nearly four inches in length. This wonderful operation was performed in the dark and without any assistance or pain to the patient. Although with no training as a surgeon he performed many marvelous operations and always in the dark or with his eyes closed.

     In the town of Canaan, Maine, a man had his toe cut off and the doctors threw it away. When it came to Dr. Fitzgerald’s attention the next day, he ordered the discarded toe to be found. He then called for a needle and thread and then instructed to have all the gas lamps extinguished. When they were lit again, “perhaps three minutes later, … the toe was discovered neatly sewed in place, and the doctor was putting on his overcoat ready to depart.” 

Appointments with the clairvoyant doctor were executed in rapid-fire succession, taking only moments for him to psychically diagnose and resolve, either by surgery or some of his medicine. In June 1873 he introduced his first bottled medicine, Dr. Fitzgerald’s Life Invigorator (the name appeared on the bottle label and the subtitle, Clairvoyant Discovery was embossed on the glass, along with the doctor’s name and his residence, Dexter, Maine) and his advertisement for the stuff was as enthusiastic as his claims for the medicine itself,

“YOUNG AGAIN. The “LIFE INVIGORATOR” that is now being introduced by me … Gives Youth and Buoyancy to the Body and Mind, Restores your Memory, … Gives Elasticity to the Step, and, in fact, makes the sufferer. HAPPY! COURAGEOUS!! SOUND!!! … I do claim to have discovered the secret of Renewing Health, Cheerfulness and Strength … [emphasis added]

There were certainly those disbelievers who tried to expose him through various acts of trickery, but he could apparently detect chicanery as clearly as cancer. An observer noted that in a village hotel where he was receiving patients for the day, a man came to his office appearing very much like a hopeless cripple. His legs were bandaged and he hobbled in on crutches. “No sooner had he crossed the threshold of the room than the doctor caught him by the neck, whirled him around and kicked him clear into the street …saying, ‘There, damn you, don’t ever attempt any of your tricks on me again!’”

The very next patient who came to the room was just the opposite – the very picture of health and strength. The doctor touched his forehead with a snap of his finger, then placed his ear on the man’s breast and stated somberly: “I am sorry, but it is too late. I can do nothing for you.” The unfortunate man was later reported to have heart disease and died shortly thereafter.

A Dandy Doctor

Aqua, square-based DR. FITZGERALD'S // CLAIRVOYANT DISCOVERY // DEXTER, MAINE, ca.1871. (author's collection; photo by Daniel G. Lakatos)

If he had just settled in on being a clairvoyant physician, Orrin Fitzgerald would have slipped off into history as nothing more than another colorful footnote like the rest – one of the many traveling clairvoyants who made a few dollars at the local village hotel before moving on to the next town. But he was a savvy, multi-dimensional businessman. He had two inventions patented in his career, the first being a wooden capsule to protect the necks of bottles during shipment and handling. He also established two very impressive business ventures in Massachusetts and a third in Waterville, Maine. But what really set him apart in the eyes of the public was his flair for showmanship. Panache, not inventiveness, business acumen, or even clairvoyance, was what set him apart from all the other clairvoyant healers.

Dr. Fitzgerald made every effort to stand out and to be remembered; for example, he dressed ostentatiously, somewhere between a dandy and peacock. When he was called to the governor’s mansion to treat his housekeeper (whom the governor’s own physician had failed to heal), he wore a magnificent sealskin coat, brightly colored silk stockings and patent leather shoes. Governor Coburn was well-known for dressing plainly and made a “subtle but rather caustic comment” about Fitzgerald’s outfit, but the clairvoyant doctor replied with a bill of $1,500 for his visit.

He had the best carriages and horses  that money could buy – a stable of 20 horses with impeccable bloodlines, faultless form, and high spirits; one was a prize racehorse  that he purchased for $7,000 ($261,000 in 2024 USD). An 1869 visit to a sleigh factory caused a newspaper reporter to froth in envy over the new sleigh being built for Dr. Fitzgerald: it was painted imperial green with white runners and gold and carmine pinstriping and trimmed with brown silk and velvet. The reporter declared it was “rich and elegant in the extreme” and excelled in beauty the famous sleigh that had been exhibited at the state fair. “We feel very sure he will have by all odds, the finest turnout in the Pine Tree State.” 

Orrin Fitzgerald's 1873 patent for a bottle protector, a wooden block bored in the center to protect the neck from damage. INSET: Photo of the square-based CLAIRVOYANT DISCOVERY bottle, ca.1871, the shape of which was the pattern used for for the wooden collar patent. [Note: The fourth panel was unembossed for placement of the label, which bore the main product name, Dr. Fitzgerald's Invigorator.] (author's collection; photo by Daniel G. Lakatos.)

Rare, original medicine banner for Fitzgerald’s Improved Invigorator, ca.1880. Oil-cloth and linen banner, 3ft x 6ft. (Photo courtesy of McMurray Antiques and Auctions)

Dr. Fitzgerald usually drove a four-horse team in single file with harnesses that matched their coloring so closely they looked almost unconnected to each other and the carriage: the black horse had a black harness; the spotted horse had a harness with spots that match the horse’s coat perfectly, and so on with the white horse and the chestnut-colored sorrel horse. Other times he had his uniformed Black coachman drove a team of four white or four black horses with gold-embellished harnesses. He also owned a splendid carriage with a calliope installed, making music as the horses moved along, “and such a spectacle was certain to attract the whole community. As an advertising genius the State of Maine has never seen his equal.” In 1871 an advance team for President Ulysees Grant scouted out the best hotels and restaurants to accommodate the nation’s leader when he was scheduled to tour the state and the came to Orrin Fitzgerald to ask for the use of his carriage and horse team. The doctor’s treasured carriage and team were polished and groomed for the president’s arrival. Cannons were fired when President Grant’s train arrived at the Bangor, Maine, train station. In ceremonial fashion, the doctor stepped out of his magnificent carriage as the war hero approached it, walking between rows of uniformed soldiers. A newspaper poignantly observed, “Aesculapius evacuated and Mars occupied. All the time of the Presidential stay did the high official ride in state, [while] the owner of all the elegance, on foot and undisguised, mingled with the common herd.”

DR. FITZGERALD'S // IMPROVED // INVIGORATOR, ca. 1880. [Note that the "Z" in the doctor's name is reversed.] (Collection of Wyatt E. Brumfield II)

People were thrilled when Dr. Fitzgerald arrived in town; word spread quickly. He was an empresario of flash and brass, shining brightest in the spotlight; a one-man traveling sensation. A Belfast, Maine, newspaper reported, “When the doctor drives out in his elegant barouche … all the town is agog with excitement, admiration, and wonder.”

The Face of Success

His advertising was as pretentiously unique and memorable as his clothing and transportation. Several of his newspaper ads were big and bold with his face prominently featured; it was his trademark, for all intents and purposes. One newspaper reporter called him “one of the best-looking men in the State.” He kept his face in the public eye everywhere – in his product packaging, newspaper ads, trade cards, and handbills:

His handbills are scattered as the snowflakes, and his strikingly handsome portraiture which adorns them has thus become as familiar as household words through the paper proclamations which bear healing on their wings. Printing ink has done much for the doctor …

Two of the doctor’s advertising trade cards still exist in quantities that hint at their prolific distribution. An octagonal trade card with his face imprinted in the center was used to promote his arrival in town in about 1892. Surviving examples of the card are always printed on brightly colored stock – yellow or orange. Among the vast array of rectangular cards with bucolic scenes and childlike humor, these octagonal placards were startling and arresting to the public and the army of picture-card collectors. Dr. Fitzgerald was ahead of his time: in the 1920s, brightly colored octagonal road signs stopped travelers in their tracks; just like these cards had been designed to do to potential customers some thirty years earlier.

Advertising trade card, front side, for Dr. O. Fitzgerald, ca.1892. (author's collection.)

The other surviving trade card, from 1880, was equally notable and unique in its own way. Its purpose was to announce Dr. Fitzgerald’s Improved Invigorator. It was executed in cartoon format with speech balloons, the front side showing the classic before-and-after images of an emaciated sick man, leaning on his cane, envying the robust, healthy man to his right who is enjoying a stroll with his lovely lady; his walking stick is held as a social marker rather than a crutch. The sick man asks the healthy one how he came to be so healthy, to which the healthy man tells him to go see his friend, Dr. Fitzgerald and get his Improved Invigorator. His lady friend chimes in, telling the reader to turn the card over to find Dr. Fitzgerald. (Ironically, behind the sidewalk banter there is a subliminal scene of a four-horse chaise being ridden by the doctor and driven by his driver, with spectators on the far side erupting in cheers for the vaunted clairvoyant healer.)

Dr. Fitzgerald's Improved Invigorator trade card, front side, ca.1880. (author's collection.)

The reader is now irresistibly drawn to the other side of the card to find out the rest of Dr. Fitzgerald’s story. Here we see the mustached doctor under a tree, standing next to an emaciated, sickly man who is seated at the edge of his friend’s grave. His own coffin, labeled “WAITING,” lies nearby, but he won’t be needing it because he avoided death by half an hour! His friend died on June 2nd, 1880, at 11:45 PM, but the health of the seated man began to improve just minutes after his friend’s death, on June 3rd, 1880, at 12:15 AM. Seems that the clairvoyant doctor had improved his invigorator in time to save the seated man, but too late for the dead one – even the clairvoyant healer, with all his supernatural skills, couldn’t bring the dead back to life. This specific date and time may mark the actual moment that Orrin Fitzgerald finished improving his invigorator; if so, it may be the most specific record of a product’s creation in patent medicine history.

Dr. Fitzgerald's Improved Invigorator trade card, back side, ca.1880. (author's collection.)

Fitzgerald House still stands in Dexter Maine. [Note: home is privately owned.] (Photo from Google Maps.)

In an amusing display of gallows humor, the dead man is reanimated, poking his head out of his coffin and saying to the gravedigger, “Say old sexton, I wish Fitzgerald had improved his invigorator half an hour sooner.” The gravedigger, looking tired of digging graves, replies unsympathetically, “Oh! Close the box.”

Once again the background paints a subliminal scene, first of the doctor’s fine carriage, horse team, and driver (without the doctor, who is now under the tree consulting with his patient); then up the hill are his mansion and the stables beyond. It is clearly identified as the “RESIDENCE OF DR. O. FITGERALD, DEXTER, ME.,” but the subliminal message was about the grandeur and success that his estate displays. The foreground scene of the doctor, patient, and cadaver were all about announcing his Improved Invigorator, but the addition of his estate and riding team in the background was all about his greatness. Pure pomposity. And he wasn’t close to done.

Nothing But the Best

When the traveling healers and clairvoyants arrived in town, they took up lodgings they could afford, which often meant seedy rooms in dodgy hotels, but not so for Orrin Fitzgerald. He booked himself in some of the best hotels the host towns offered; not only did he enjoy its creature comforts, but as the rooms he rented served as both his lodging and his place of business while in town, it was important to him that his clientele were suitably impressed that the handsome, popular, well-dressed doctor was staying in the kind of place befitting his public image.

On his frequent visits to Skowhegan, Maine,  he stayed at the Hotel Heselton, one of its finest hotels. On his visits to Lynn, Massachusetts, he would be found at its popular Sagamore House, and in Bangor, he frequented the Bangor House where President Grant stayed during his visit. When in Boston he was a guest at the landmark Revere House, where the cream of society floated, like author Charles Dickens, poet Walt Whitman, singer Jenny Lind, four U.S. Presidents, the king of England, the emperor of Brazil, and the grand duke of Russia. And he was so enamored of the Elmwood Hotel in Waterville, Maine, he became its proprietor.

Advertising trade card of the Elmwood Hotel, Waterville, Maine, Orrin Fitzgerald, Proprietor, ca.1880. (Photo courtesy of Dave Cheadle Card Store on Ebay.)

Header of a sheet of letterhead for The Medical Home, Dr. Orrin Fitzgerald, Proprietor, Chief Examining and Consulting Physician. [Note: Handwritten letter below this header is signed by Orrin Fitzgerald and dated 29 August 1888 .] (author's collection)

The fashionable, comfortable, powerful life of Dr. Fitzgerald was made possible by a combination of many sales of his one-dollar medicines and his doctoring and surgical fees. “His fees in many cases have been enormous,” reported his obituary, like those paid him by the governor, “and scores of other rich men paid equally as well,” but he was generous to the poor and many patients receive free treatment along with a ten-dollar bill slipped into their hand as they left the doctor. He had also sold a half-interest in his original Life Invigorator medicine back in 1873 to Noyes P. Whittemore, an ambitious livery stable owner in Nashua, New Hampshire and in 1891 he put out his third medicine, Fitzgerald’s Membrane Cure for lung disease, hay fever, and deafness. But “had he the disposition to save,” his obituary continued, “he might have been a multimillionaire long ago.” Instead, he embellished his image and empire by elegantly finishing his home estate and buying and updating other impressive properties with fine furnishings, as well as tip generously and quietly donate to impoverished patients.

The doctor’s house in Dexter was often referred to as a mansion and one of the finest homes in the state. It had two sets of ornately carved mahogany front entrance doors with exquisitely etched glass windows; murals were painted on interior walls and chandeliers hung from 12-foot-high ceilings of copper and steel. A half-dozen marble fireplaces and mahogany woodwork spread throughout the house and elaborate gingerbread laced the exterior. Even the stable was grand and beautiful, exceeding the craftsmanship of most houses. A small army of Black servants maintained his house, stables, and prize horses.

He also owned a newspaper, the Eastern State, which he used largely for self-promotion, printed in yet another of his buildings, the Fitzgerald Building in Dexter. One of its advertisements featured another of his new enterprises, a building in Allston, west of Boston, that he named the Massachusetts Medical Home. It was a sanitorium for the wealthy, complete with elegant rooms, hot and cold water, electric bells, baths, modern appliances, and expansive lawns. 

His last purchase was the estate along the Merrimack River in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts that he named Colonial Hall. The place cost him  $80,000 ($2.75 million in 2024 USD), then he spent much more to beautify the grounds, build structures, create a trotting racecourse and generally turn the place into one of the finest estates in eastern Massachusetts.

Taking the Blindfold Off

Understanding Orrin Fitzgerald’s success seems an impossible task. He made a lot of money on the basis of his alleged clairvoyance and he spent it with the swagger of someone who was certain the money would continue to flow in – he was either truly psychic, a business genius, or very lucky – maybe it was a little of all three. He was definitely more complicated than just another blindfolded healer wowing onlookers by peeling away a tumor as if it was a banana. His inventive turn of mind had him devising a protective device for bottles, a capsulized form of anesthetic; and of all things, an invention to protect train passengers from smoke inhalation and accompanying cinders and sparks from coming into their cabins.

The smoke and spark conveyer invention, patented in 1887, was extraordinary, in some ways, far ahead of his time. Fitzgerald’s redesigned locomotive looked every inch like a futuristic invention from a Jules Verne novel. He bent the engine’s smokestack backwards at a rakish 45-degree angle and extended it by a series of pipes, clamps, and braces that predicted the automobile exhaust engine of the 20th century. While the invention’s design came from a mechanically-oriented engineering mind, the reason for its creation clearly came from the health-conscious heart of a doctor:

The great discomfort and inconvenience in traveling by rail arises from the smoke and cinders which come from the locomotive. The vast cloud of smoke which is always pouring from the smokestack often obscures the landscape, and the cinders, from the same source, enter the cars at every crevice, and almost fill the eyes, ears and mouths of the passengers. The cars must be closed even on the hottest and most sultry days, on account of this nuisance.

As far away as Tahlequah, Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, the newspaper Cherokee Advocate bubbled over with enthusiasm about Dr. Fitzgerald’s train exhaust improvement:

Railroad men all over the country have evinced great interest in the matter, and Dr. Fitgerald has received many offers for an interest in his great invention. There can be no doubt that in a short time it will be applied to every passenger train in the civilized world, and travel upon the railroad will be shorn of its greatest inconvenience and discomfort.

Theoretically, redesigning a train’s exhaust system was no more complicated than removing a cancerous tumor or reattaching a toe, but I just have the feeling that while the healer worked in the dark, the inventor wasn’t wearing a blindfold.

The Secret of Health

The back of Fitzgerald’s unusual octagonal trade card proclaimed “THE SECRET of Health is in Fitzgerald! Who is Fitzgerald?” It was both a great philosophical and practical question. Was he truly a clairvoyant or a charlatan? Did he perform baffling cures or skillful tricks?

Fitzgerald himself admitted he was not a qualified physician in the traditional sense, but insisted that his clairvoyance was even more valuable the regular doctor’s tools:

The Dr. has never graduated at any Medical School, neither has he diplomas from any institution of Science, yet in the SUPERIOR CONDITION [in the clairvoyant state] – the human system is transparent as Glass. … by the peculiar gift bestowed upon me … I am enabled to discover the source of diseases hidden from the eye of the common practitioner.

  

The debate between believers and non-believers continued to rage throughout his life and likely upon the completion of each surgery or performance, as the case may be. An adamant believer insisted he was cured by the clairvoyance of Dr. Fitzgerald and tried his best to convince others that Fitzgerald presented himself to be.

Now, readers, what can I say of Dr. Orrin Fitzgerald? Is he a fraud? Is he a quack? Or has he ability? Some of my friends advise me not to see him! [But] where would I have been, had I not seen him? I consider myself free from this terrible cancer and am a living witness of the most wonderful and successful physician living.

A newspaper reporter who knew Fitzgerald well and followed him closely shared a rare personal glimpse of the man behind the blindfold after his death:

At heart, the doctor was an entirely different man than what the casual observer judged him. His outward appearance was rather a game of bluff while he read the emotions of those with whom he came in contact and admired or despised them according to his standard of measurement. Those who knew him well realized this fully. [emphasis added]

As the newspapers told the story, wherever he went, the people came, crowding his hotel room and parlors, sometimes waiting all day without getting to see the popular doctor. They followed the clairvoyant healer like devoted disciples following their biblical savior. And why not? He really seemed to be performing miracles.

He gave me a singular-tasting medicine and made an application to the cancer for ten days which entirely separated it from the flesh and left the leg in a perfectly healthy condition. After enduring what I had, this process and result was marvelous to me. It seemed as natural as the separating of the banana from its peeling. I can describe it in no other way.

He performed another medical miracle, so the story goes, in front of everyone at a busy train station … in just two minutes … with his eyes closed:

The doctor was about to depart when a team drove up frantically conveying a  lady who had not time to consult him during his stay in town. It was a case of a tumor on the eyelid or the eye itself, tradition in this instance not being fully explicit. The doctor asked for the train to be held two minutes, got out a knife, SHUT HIS EYES, and proceeded to operate. The growth was removed and the patient afterwards stated she felt little pain during the operation. [emphasis in original]

It was either a breathtaking demonstration of courage, clairvoyance, and skill or a fabulously staged hoax to increase his legend – you be the judge.

Orrin Fitzgerald, clairvoyant healer of thousands, died of cancer at age 55, in 1897. Even after his death, non-believers criticized the clairvoyant for his inability to detect his own illness or to get cured by his Clairvoyant Discovery, the Improved Invigorator ...

But then again, maybe he did see the prophetic writing on the wall about his impending end. His advertising always stated, “He will undertake no cases that he cannot cure.” – perhaps he applied that rule to himself as well – "THE SECRET of Health" in Orrin Fitzgerald may actually have been that he didn't have it - he was dying of cancer and he chose not to let anyone know until the end. Instead he decided to spend every dollar as soon as he earned it and enjoy every moment of life he had left. After all, life is short, even for a clairvoyant healer.

Advertising trade card, back side, for Dr. O. Fitzgerald, ca.1892. (author's collection.)

Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine