I Can’t Sleep - Curtis Howe Springer | Calm Bedtime Reading for Sleep

Episode Date: April 21, 2019

Ease into rest with calm bedtime reading about Curtis Howe Springer to help with insomnia and sleepless nights. This soothing episode explores the life of the self-proclaimed medical evangelist, radio preacher, and health resort promoter who became known as America’s last great quack. Benjamin’s gentle cadence turns Springer’s unusual career and colorful history into a peaceful journey of learning. With no whispering or hypnosis—just calm, fact-filled storytelling—you’ll find your mind settling, stress easing, and rest arriving naturally. Press play, relax, and drift into sleep. Want More? Request a Topic: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/request-a-topic Ad-Free Episodes: https://icantsleep.supportingcast.fm/ Shop Sleep-Friendly Products: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/sponsors Join the Discussion on Discord: https://discord.gg/myhGhVUhn7 This content is derived from the Wikipedia article on Curtis Howe Springer, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license. Read the full article: Wikipedia – Curtis Howe Springer. Happy sleeping! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to a Glassbox media podcast. What if I told you that most of the modern day self-help advice you've been hearing could actually make you worse? The key to a better life isn't about feel-good gimmicks that sound catchy. The Mentally Stronger Podcast gives you access to a licensed therapist who shares science-backed tools that will actually change your life. Hi, I'm Amy Morin, psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and international best-selling author. In each episode, we cover research-back strategies, like how to stop relying on willpower and start creating habits for lasting change. And the five mental strength-building exercises you can do from your couch. I also speak to world-class experts like Dr. Nicole Kane, who shares how to permanently heal anxiety by addressing the root cause.

With over 200 episodes in our catalog, this podcast is for you if you're ready to crush self-doubt, conquer challenges, and become stronger than ever with therapist-approved strategies that can change your life. Listen to Mentally Stronger with Therapist Amy Morin, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast, where I read random articles to pour you to sleep with my soothing voice. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster. Thank you to all who have subscribed to the podcast, and a special thanks to those who have become patrons to the podcast by donating money on the website to support us. If you find value in the podcast and would like to support us beyond listening as often as you do,

go to anchor.fm forward slash I-c-can't-sleep and click the Support This Podcast button. Now let's get on to today's episode. This episode is from a Wikipedia article titled Curtis How Springer. Curtis Howe Springer, December 2, 1896 to August 19, 1985. Was an American radio evangelist, self-proclaimed medical doctor, and Methodist minister best known for founding the Zizik's Mineral Springs Resort located within Southern California? Mojana's Mojave Desert. He was also the host of well-known evangelical syndicated radio programs that were broadcast throughout the United States for several decades. Springer was, in actuality, neither a doctor nor a minister, and he described himself as the

last of the old-time medicine men. In 1969, the American Medical Association labeled him the King of Quacks. In the early 1970s, the federal government discovered that Springer held no legal rights to the land where Zizzix stood. Consequently, he was evicted from the space and briefly imprisoned. Biography. Personal Life Curtis Howe Springer was born December 2nd, 1896, and hailed from Wheeling, West Virginia. He was married to Mary Louise Burkabile.

They separated at some point, and he married a woman named Helen. Springer had several children, including a daughter, Mary Lou, and a son, Curtis Jr., who later became a judge in Montgomery, Alabama. Early Career He claimed to have been a private in the United States Army, where he taught boxing. In Springer's early life, he drummed up crowds for William Jennings' brian's tirades against demon rum and was a sheet music vendor at Billy Sunday's evangelical services. Following World War I, Springer worked at a school in Florida. In the late 1920s, Springer moved to Chicago, where he became involved with an automotive technical school called Greer

College. Springer was fired by 1930 and the school was forced into bankruptcy shortly afterward. Throughout the 1930s, Curtis Springer gave lectures throughout the Midwestern United States, claiming to either be the Dean of Greer College or that he represented, attended the fictional institutions of the National Academy, the Springer School of Humanism, the American College of doctors and surgeons, the West Lake West Virginia College, and two non-existent esturopathy schools in Myersdale, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Although his lectures were free, Springer would ask for donations partway through his speech and often attempt to sell audience members' private courses and psychoanalysis for $25 per session.

In advertisements for his appearances, he would often follow his name with MD, ND, D, O, or Ph.D. Chicago was largely Springer's home base until the summer of 1934. After he applied for airtime on WGN Radio, the station contacted American Medical Association's Bureau of Investigations for information regarding Springer. The AMA and Better Business Bureau quickly began to take note of his completely falsified education record. Before long, Springer had been labeled as a notorious fraud and doctor-impersonator by the medical community. An extensive article in the September 14th, 1936 edition of Journal of the American Medical Association, titled Curtis Howe Springer, a quack in his nostrums, detailed his exploits and lack of education.

The book concluded that a most thorough search fails to show that Springer was ever graduated by any reputable college or university, medical or otherwise. Radio Career Although denied airtime on WGN, he was successful in obtaining a twice-daily slot as a radio evangelist on Chicago's WCFL. He began broadcasting on the station in 1934. His programs were often an outlet for his support of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. In addition, he would often use the radio show to sell his medicines, including the antacid rehab confirmed by the American Medical Association to be mostly baking soda and antediluvian tea, a crude mixture of laxative herbs.

Around 1935, Springer left Chicago and began preaching on KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. Health spas and Zizzix. Springer's wife Mary encouraged him to try to launch a health spa, and in 1931, he launched a resort called Haven of Rest in Fort Hill, Pennsylvania. Only six years after it first opened, he lost Haven of Rest due to non-payment of taxes. He attempted to set up other resorts and gatherings in Wilkes-Barre-Johnstown and Mount Davis in Pennsylvania, Cumberland, Maryland, and Davenport, Iowa. In 1944, Springer and his new fiancé, Helen,

filed a mining claim on federal land to 12,800 acres, 51.8 kilometers squared, in California's Mojave Desert, claiming a tract about 8 miles, 13 kilometers long, and 3 miles, 4.8 kilometers wide. The land contained the remains of an 1860 Army post and a railroad station on the defunct Tonapah and Tidewater Railroad. He named the settlement Zizzix as a gimmick to ensure that it would be the last word in health. Zizix's original encampment consisted of 20 tents, and he recruited homeless men from Los Angeles Skid Row to build simple concrete buildings. Springer created an imitation hot springs, which he attempted to pass off as genuine, by using a boiler to heat several pools.

In time, Springer erected a 60-room hotel, a church, a cross-shaped health spa with mineral baths, a radio broadcast studio, a private air-stripped dubbed Zipport, and several other buildings which included a castle. The Boulevard of Dreams was a divided parkway leading to an oasis on Lake Tuende, later identified as the habitat of the endangered Mojave Cheb. While building his retreat, he spent half the week in Los Angeles, still recording his radio program, and rounding up workers to build his new resort by offering room and board at Zizzix in exchange for labor. From Zizik's, Springer continued his syndicated radio program,

at one point carried by 221 stations in the United States and 102 more abroad, mixing religious music and his own radio evangelism. Along with this came his requests that listeners send him donations to get his special cures for everything from hair loss to cancer. The potions were actually little more than a blend of celery, carrot, and parsley juices. The Zizek's Springs experience, itself included goat milk, allegedly life-pronging antediluvian tea, a $25 self-administered hemorrhoid cure, more solicitations for donations, and a twice-daily sermon over the loudspeakers.

Legal challenges and imprisonment By the late 1960s, Springer had begun marking off lots on the land and allowing donors of large sums of money to his ministry to build homes on the lots. This caught the attention. This caught the attention of federal officials. While Springer had posted mining claims in the area under the general mining law of 1872, it was still public land until such time that he validated the claims for patent by proving to federal government geologists that the claim contained minerals that could be extracted at a profit. The federal government took Springer to court claiming he was squatting on federal land. In 1974, he was found guilty of the charge. He offered to pay $34,187.00,000, and $34,187,000,

and back rent on the land to the Bureau of Land Management, but the government refused the payment and evicted him and his few hundred local followers. Springer was also convicted for making false claims that the health foods he sold would cure everything from sore toes to cancer. He was represented in court by criminal attorney Gladys Towell's route, and the trial Springer was convicted of false advertising. He filed several appears on this conviction, and two years later ended up serving 49 days,

of a 60-day sentence. Following the eviction in 1976, the Bureau of Land Management allowed the California State University to manage the facilities and land in and around Zizzix. A consortium of colleges combined funds and resources to convert the former resort into a research station called the Desert Studies Center. Schools contributing to the center included California State Universities at Dominguez Hills, Fullerton, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Pomona, and Northridge. After his release from prison, Springer and his wife relocated to Las Vegas, Nevada, where he spent the remainder of his life.

For more information on Curtis Howspringer, go to Wikipedia.org.