Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: The King of Quacks

Episode Date: February 25, 2016

This week on Sawbones, Justin and Sydnee return to the fertile land of patent medicine quacks to introduce you to Curtis Howe Springer, the King of Quacks. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, what's wrong with these about? Some books! One, two, one, not a sense, the escalant macaque for the mouth.

Hello everybody and welcome to Sobhones bones a mental tour of misguided medicine. I'm your coach Justin Maccalaute. I'm Sydney Maccalaute Justin, I'm kind of upset. I'm kind of in a bad mood. Yeah, why I don't I just I'm really disappointed in myself Sweetheart why yeah, because I mean, you know, I like to get things right. Yep. I don't like to, one quality about me is that I don't like to do things that I can't kind of be the best at or do perfectly. Sure. Yes, yes. And it has been brought to my attention that we, you know, we did that series on patent

medicines. Yeah, right. Do you remember? It was a three-parter when we were on tour. Yes. It was our live shows. We covered all the patent medicine men and women, mostly men, but also women who tried to sell people fake medicine before we had laws to prevent, just like lying rampantly about anything you wanted to about medicine.

And when you actually had to start telling people what was in it, we apparently left somebody out. Well, was it a big one or? Yeah, I think you could say it was a big one since this was a guy who was known as the King of Quacks by the AMA, the American Medical Association. And he also referred to himself as the King of Quacks by the AMA, the American Medical Association, and he also referred to himself as the last of the old-time medicine men. Yeah, it seems like a notable emission from our, from our repertoire.

Yeah, I'm really, I don't know how I missed this guy. Um, well, I- But I did, and I'm just really disappointed in myself because now I think all of our listeners' knowledge of old-timey Pat and Madison salesmen is incomplete. I would tend to blame Sam Beckett. If I make a mistake like that, I tend to think that he changed something in history that had a reverberating effect down through the years

to this guy. So this guy maybe was just a shrub before Sam Beckett inhabited his body or his dad's body or his dad's dad's body or his dad's mom's dad's body and changed history somehow. And now he's a big deal and he wasn't when we did the shows initially. Why do you think there's not a show about that?

Like quantum. Quantum Sam Beckett, quantum leaping. Quantum leaping. Quantum leaping. Quantum leap. There is. It's called quantum leap. No, no. I mean, like the oops,, quantum leaping in this chemistry for everybody. Oops. There is, it's called quantum leap. No, no, I mean like the oops, like, quantum leap, oops, like all the stuff that happens after he leaps, like the oops.

That looked good, but guess what else? Here's the rest of the story. There's a pretty good sitcom in there, but isn't that, no, that's the butterfly. Why don't we try to clean up our oops first, and then we can worry about the rest of the sand beckons? All right, well, I want to tell you about Curtis Housebringer. Okay.

Okay, and thank you to Bryson for calling my attention to this terrible oversight on my part. And this terrible person, I guess, right? Yeah, I, you know, I try not to pass, I mean, I think of questionable ethics, you could say. Mr. Springer, Dr. Springer, if you feel like it, I guess, was born in Birmingham in 1896. We know that he attended high school for some period of less than two years. Okay.

And that he did complete one year of Bible school. Okay. As far as we know, that's pretty much it for any sort of education or training in any sort of trade. Okay. He was married a couple times. He had a few kids.

If you asked him, he would tell you that before he got into his big job, the job that we're going to talk about that he was known for as a medicine man, he allegedly served in the US Army as a private and top boxing. Yeah. You know, anytime it takes a 30 seconds or less to recap someone's medical credentials, it probably is not does not bowed well for them. No.

No. is not does not bowed well for them. No, no. And that, there's a similar air of, I don't know if any of this other stuff I'm telling you is really true. Okay, good. In terms of, in terms of the rest of your life. Enjoy your history pockets, everybody. Well, no, I mean, he told people that he taught boxing in the army.

I don't think we ever had any evidence that he was in the army or top boxing. Yeah. I don't know if he did that. He did work it. We think selling sheet music for a while. And that at some point he may have worked at an automotive and technical school that that closed down at some point after that. So I would buy to me my barometer, my truthiness barometer is probably wouldn't make up story about selling sheet music.

Might make up story about teaching punching to the fight men. Like that sounds like something you might cook up. That's fair. That's not it. It might not be as impressive to say. And I and also sold cheap music for a lot. Sold Japan. He moved around a while. Florida, Chicago, different places. And it's not until the 1930s when things start to get weird. Okay. When we start to, when Mr. Springer Curtis, can we call him Curtis, starts to kind of make his mark on human history. He starts touring the Midwest at this point and he's giving

lectures different places and he's he when he gives the lecture obviously yes to give them some sort of credentials like why would we allow you to lecture at our university or you know whatever association organization exactly and he said sometimes that he was the Dean of Greer College which had been a college it was closed by the time he was claiming to be Dean of it. He would sometimes refer to himself as a representative from one of several different schools, the National Academy. Just that. Just that, yeah. Just National Academy.

Sure. The Springer School of Humanism, note does have his last name in the title. The American College of Doctors and Surgeons and the West Lake West Virginia College. Oh, why and familiar with that one. You are? No, I just thought it would be weird if it was the West Virginia and I wasn't. Oh, well, I mean, they're fake. Like, he made up all these places. Nice. Nice. And I'm sorry, I lied There were, there were also two non-existent osteopathy schools that he made up one in Pennsylvania and one in New Jersey that he also claimed to be

a representative, which I feel like if you're gonna just say you're a rep, like if you're already gonna make up the school, just go for it, just say like you're dean or chair of some department or whatever, like if you're just going to make up the school. Oh, well, maybe they were worried they'd introduce them to somebody else who had the same job title he had and he would have to like talk shop with them, like a, a, a, a, a, a Dean form. That one Dean form that we all can't sand.

You know, I hate, I hate foot rub day when we have to go around and give foot rubs to the chairs of all the different. Why did they even come up with a rule of foot rub day? It's demoralizing. I could really trap somebody in a game like that. I bet why? I don't know. I just feel like I'd be clever.

I think you'd be good at it. I think I'd be good at that. And making something else that sounds plausible for a dean to do, but isn't true. If you need to fool a dean, there's only one thing you turn to. Sydney, Dean Sydney McRoy, she's not a dean, but we bet you were fooled. Because we call her one. Sydney McRoy is a way to go call 3 4-599. Oh, don't call that number. That's a law firm.

Oh, you're wrong. Don't call that. Please don't call that law firm that just just gave you the number for. That's a law firm here in Huntington, where they wrote a jingle once, and then they added more people to the firm. They keep jim and more names in. It used to be pretty good.

Danny Klein is the way to go. And now they got a bunch of days And they was like from a clinic in Kimballon also Peterson and also Prichard's Way to go good jingle though because obviously it works on me if I ever need a law I'm calling Danny Klein first thing You're just gonna call it number. I don't know who works here now. Hello. Is this lawyer? I need you. I did a bad Help I need law. I need law, please. So along with claiming that he was a representative of these different fake places, he also started claiming various degrees. Sometimes he was an MD, sometimes he was a DO, sometimes he was a PhD, although he would have these lectures and you could attend them for free.

So he would charge you to come listen to his whatever he was making up. He would do one of two things to help make money. He would pass around a hat and get donations, which wasn't hard to do. You know, once you already showed up and you're listening to the sky and you brought in everything and then you feel bad if it's like, and please leave me some money so I can keep spreading. I thought you were saying it wasn't hard for him to pass his hat around. It's like, well, yes, it needs turning it upside down. Get the damn.

Well, I suppose it wasn't physically hard for him to get it. He he would also love you. Rebecca, what's he doing? Have you ever seen anything like this? That's upside down. It won't put on his head that way. He wouldn't go that way. People are running money in Arabaca.

He would also upsell you on personal lectures that he could give you in psychoanalysis. One of his specialties, not, but one of the things he claimed to be a specialist in, and if you bought into his lecture, there's no reason to think you might not pay the 25 bucks and get the special, special set of private lessons. Right. In addition, at some point in this time period, he started calling himself a Methodist Minister as well. Sure.

Uh, lectures, so some of the lectures and also the books and pamphlets that he would hand out at these lectures, just to give you kind of an idea as to what he was talking about. Uh, the, the titles varied. So there was one lecture called Picking a Husband for Keeps. I guess it's opposed to Ford not Keeps. Character analysis, success through self-mastery. Okay. Foods a healthy body requires. And the layman's handbook of life. I like that one. I'd read that. He sounds like he was like nowadays. This guy probably could have

just been a life coach. Yeah, like a self-help kind of guru. Yeah, I mean, that's I think he was just he was just a life coach before his before we had those. So we had to make up a bunch of other stuff that he was. In 1934, he applied for airtime in Chicago. We wanted to start broadcasting. What now had become a mixture of both evangelizing and then like healthy lifestyle tips and medical help and psychoanalysis and just anything. One stop shot. Exactly. And he wanted to start broadcasting that to everybody. So he went and applied for airtime. One station turned him down because he at this point was already being investigated by the American Medical Association and the better business bureau. But WCFL gave him two slots a day. And he took advantage

of that and he started using that time to evangelize again to talk about even things like politics. He was a big supporter of FDR and the New Deal and he talked about that quite a bit. And then sometimes he would just sing gospel songs. And other times he would sell fake medicine. Sure. This is more or less why we're talking about my dad is living in person. Let anybody on the radio. This is not that surprising. And this guy by all accounts was a fairly good singer. So for nothing else. So that's what people DJ's this day like. They're not like full service entertainment hubs. I mean, it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun.

It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun.

It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun.

It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's a say like, and let's go to commercial. And then there's be dead air. I'm like, oh my God, I have to sell something. I have to make up a medicine. I have to make a medicine. I pretended to have those medicals. See, he didn't have a medical degree for real, so it's not like he really knew, well,

else was he gonna do? Yeah. So he made some stuff up. First of all, our shifts a lot of time to fill. First of all, he made up something called Rehib, which was an antacid that was mainly just sodium bicarbonate, it also had some peppermint oil in there. Those are thumps. Yeah. Well, there you go. Not even thumps, no. No. Calcium. Oh, right,

all right. Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda, right? Yep. Okay. Not, not, I'm sorry, not your best bet for an antacid. No, no, no. Especially not if you drank vinegar earlier because that's not gonna go great. He, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, you have like a volcano in your stomach now. People who would be doing that would definitely, definitely be drinking vinegar before and,

you know that happened to somebody. Your science project. There's a car, it's got the rhines. Fightin' down. Love is felming at the mouth. Or dressin' up like a volcano, take him to the right bees, put him down. Luck is filming at the mouth. Or dressing up like a volcano, taking the science fair, when a blue ribbon. A plus or whatever they had for A plus is back then.

There was also another medicine that was fairly popular. It was the anti-deluvian tea. I like that name, anti-deluvian. Yeah, it's a nice one. It was really just a botanical, laxative tea bag. Great. So it looked like a tea bag, except for it was full of laxatives.

So then you would make tea out of it and, well, you can probably figure out the rest. Keep busy. You got, I mean, you knew it worked. Sure. One of his most popular items was to do it yourself on hemorrhoid kit. Sounds like you already sold that.

It sounds like the prior item. Big repackage, rebranded. No, you're already sold that. Sounds like the prior item. Big repackage, rebranded. No, you don't want that business happening if you've got hemorrhoids. Eritate that. To give yourself hemorrhoids is up to get. Yes, to do it yourself. Give yourself hemorrhoids.

What do I mean? Yeah. There was something he sold called Manna, delicious Manna, I should say, which was just some sort of bit. None of the people do that. Just call it delicious. It's all delicious. And they have to, you had legally have to say it's delicious.

It was actually just a vegetarian food supplement. And he had a lot of food supplements. This was a big thing for him. It would just, like they would be labeled like, this is a vegetarian one, this is a protein one, this one has iodine in it, just different things. And they were just, I don't know, they were just some sort of pill or package of powder

or something that supposedly had, it probably just had either like a bunch of dehydrated ingredients in it or it would actually just be some mixture of juices. Yeah. And that was pretty much it. But he sold a lot of stuff in that line. There was nerve cell food and throng. I like youth because it's supposed to sound like the

word youth, but it's why you TH nice. There was something called the Hollywood pep cocktail. I would take two of those please. I know you would. I know he would tell you on that right? Some old Vim vigor just like my heroes Clark Gable. I love that. So there were lots of different ones. I run them all down just because I really appreciate some of them. I like I like Neptune's like Tropicos. I think people buy that there was FWO which was foods for women is what it was told.

Like this is food for women. It's FWO. Norm. Norm. Norm. Norm. Norm, that was the name of one of his, Zimud, he had special foot crystals, which I'll tell you more about in a little bit.

There was one called Moher, I bet you could guess what that did. I helped you grow your hair. He gave you Moher. He gave you Moher. Okay. Alleroids, imbroids, imperial, organic return, dango, shangrelay.

It just was endless. These are excellent. Yes, they were creative and none of them did anything and he sold them with great enthusiasm and sometimes he'd send them to you for free. If you just felt moved by the spirit to send him a donation and return, he'd greatly appreciate it. Wow. It's great because it's a great deal. You get both greetings of that deal. You get to give money to

God and you get free stuff. Man, what a deal. What was next for this guy? I said, now I'm assuming he didn't stay shackled to to this small potato as biz. Oh, no,'s much more in store but before we go there why not you head with me to the billing department. Let's go. Okay said I am I have we caught up on the medicines this cat create what's in the name again? This is Curtis house bringer Curtis house Curtis Curtis how how springer springer got a name check him I forgot it mr. Springer fake doctor Springer. Yes, you feel like calling him doctor Springer just for the if you're nasty or What was next room? So because he was having so much success in the fake medicine arena, he started opening a series of health spas. First there was Haven of Rest in Pennsylvania, which got closed because he wasn't paying

any taxes on it. He tried some others in Pennsylvania, moved on to Maryland, moved to Iowa. All of them were either briefly operational before he got closed down again for not paying taxes or he could never even get them up and running. them were either briefly operational before he got closed down again for not paying taxes or he could never even get them up and running. He was starting to get quite a reputation as you can imagine. So in 1944, he had actually, he had married a new, a new lady and she helped him in this pursuit. They filed a mining claim on some land in the Mojave desert. Okay. Now, sounds like he's finally gone legit. The thing about a mining claim on some land in the Mojave Desert. Okay.

Now, sounds like he's finally gone legit. The thing about a mining claim, and I had to read a little bit about this to understand what happens for this gentleman, is that you have to, like you can file the claim and it's federal land, right, that he's filing this claim on. So he gets to go try to uncover what he believes or what he claims are some precious

minerals that you can't necessarily get somewhere else, right? And that have some sort of benefit or value. So that is the that's kind of the spirit in which you would file such a claim. Well, instead he starts turning it into his dream spa. There was already an abandoned army posts in an old railroad station there and he kind of used that plus Created a whole new infrastructure for the spa. He also named it. He named the town and the spa itself And the name of this town and spa which is still there today Well, the the town is the buildings you can go you can see it is Xiex great great name that is Zyzex. Great.

Great name. That is Zzyzex. Easy to remember, easier to spell. Great name. Zyzex. Why did he call it Zyzex? I don't know. I was hoping you knew.

Because if you can imagine where this would be listed in some sort of phone book or directory, it was the last word in health. Oh, it's good. It's really good. It's in it's still in San Bernardino County. It's at the end of a country road named Sisex Road. And initially it was just a bunch of tents, but then he obviously needed to build some buildings. So he went down to Skid Row in LA and hired as many homeless people as he could find He would actually continue to recruit homeless people as he grew his infrastructure there throughout this time period He he built a road that he called the Boulevard of Dreams perfect and the the people that he employed

He would offer them free room and board for their services who would actually pay them He would just say hey come build these all these concrete structures that he built, he would offer them free room and board for their services. He would actually pay them. He would just say, hey, come build all these concrete structures that he built. And if you do that, then you can stay here for free. And somehow he manipulated that into making his spa taxes tax exempt as well. Sounds like this guy's crushing it. A lot of good work. He's helping a lot of people getting a new spa out there or they appreciate that.

So this grew from just some concrete buildings to include a fake hot spring. It's fake because he said it was a hot spring, but it was really just a bunch of pools that he had boilers under. So they were hot springs, but he said they were a 60 room hotel. Like I said, there was a spa, there was a big church, there was a radio station.

I think the church itself, part of it was shaped like a giant cross too. So it was like visually impressive as well. There was an air strip there, he called Ziport. He had a castle built on the property. There was a man-made lake. There was a food processing plant for all of his weird food supplements. and there was a printing plant as well.

Sounds like he's really making something of himself. And all the while he from his now his own radio studio that he has on site, he is now broadcasting a syndicated program to 221 US stations and 102 stations abroad, selling both pre-packaged the Word of God and some fake patent medicines all in one. These guys awesome. He claimed cures for everything with these medicines, everything, anything you came up with, he could fix for you. And he was happy to send you the cures for whatever ale do whether it be heartburn or diarrhea or acne or allergies or cancer that too anything you had he could send you a cure for

free because he was doing God's work. But if you didn't mind a little donation to help continue the good work that he's doing this is awesome would be nice. These guys doing such a good job. And he would of course send you a donation form to fill out and send back with the free product that he gave you. Right.

Is it? And then he'd send back a, well, it's not called a receipt. It's like a donate, it's like a thank you note. It's just a donation form. Yeah. It also had a space on it for your favorite radio station. He also would obviously allow on it for your favorite radio station.

He also would obviously allow people to come here. Or radio station just stole half of your money and give you a fake cure for cancer. That'd be a ZZX. It's my favorite. He had everything but a t-shirt can and really. So if you wanted to come stay at his spa, there was some extra stuff. In addition to the cures that he would give you, you know, over the radio, there were some extra stuff you'd get.

There were a couple of rules you had to follow. No alcohol, no arguing. Okay. You could smoke, though, certain places while you were there. All right. And you would get the special cures. You'd get a lot of extra fruit and vegetable juice mixes. A lot of really expensive laxatives were thrown your way. Some goat milk,

hemorrhoid creams. Twice a day he would project a sermon over the loudspeakers. One of his most popular treatments that you would receive while you're at this spa was just a mixture of carrot, celery, turnips, parsley, and brown sugar. John, it's delicious. brown sugar. John's delicious. Does it? Back in those days, that was like the most decades that were possible. Is that dessert?

Yeah. Celery with brown sugar. I've read some stuff about like victory gardens and the kind of things that they treated to blade desserts. I think that's pretty good. You'd get lots of treatment from the local, the minerals and whatever that they said they were unearthing, you know, to kind of help support their mining claim. You would get mud packs from the local mud and like the special clay that they told you had

So, you know things in it that weren't found anywhere else in the world and these crystal rubs with these salt crystals from the local minerals that would float to the top of these pools and they would go sift off the crystals and that they contained things that that no other mineral crystals on earth could contain. And he sold these two, Zyzex foot crystals were sold all over too. There was also something that they would have you do there, where there was a product called Zypack and you would buy the Zypack

and then the treatment they would have you go through is to put it on your scalp and then bend over until you feel flushed because then you know the Zipack's working. Yeah, I'll take two. You could lay in the sun, you could soak in the mineral spring. The most common foods you were served were rabbit and fruit and homemade ice cream. Sounds great. That's really nice. So he had a pretty good deal going for quite a while.

Yeah, I know. He had a pretty good deal going for quite a few. This guy had this place going for something like 30 years. How did they bring him down? This is awesome. So what finally ended the madness is the fact that quite simply, you can only snooker the federal government for so long. Yeah. They want the taste.

Eventually, they got wise to the idea that this guy was not only, you know, he had filed this mining claim, taken this federal land, built a health spoff from which he was making money. But then he also started selling or leasing out parts of the land to other people. They subletting the stuff that he stole. Subletting the land to people who were his followers, kind of like people who just really wanted to live close to him, because they believe so deeply in what he did. So he would let them come live on his land and then pay him to build houses and live there.

And that's finally when the government went, whoa, whoa, whoa, what is happening? What is this place? We let him call it what? Sidezix? Who was in charge of this? Larry. We're just letting everybody. Was this you, Larry?

Larry. What were you doing out there? I said a name and after me. Larry's Isaacs. So at that point, like I said, the feds got wise. They started investigating the mining claim. And basically he had never turned up any minerals that really justified the claim. So you can't just keep the land for free at that point, and he was taken to court.

The great thing is that because he was taken to court, and because the the crux of it was that he was claiming that there were special minerals there that weren't really there, the way that he proved it was by presenting all of his fake products for them to check out and test and analyze. So I found the court documents with like the analysis of all these different products and the feds breaking them down with their chemists until basically they're like, these aren't special mineral crystals, it's like salt. This is a special clay, this is just plain old clay that you get anywhere. It's funny because they investigated all the stuff he was selling. It said, none of this is special.

None of this justifies the mining claim that you have on this land. You're not mining. You have a help spa. We're on to you now. There was one place where he actually did actually find some gold on his land. But he had never claimed that wasn't part of his argument in the lawsuit. He had some gold there for a reason. Yeah.

It's like he never investigates. He never explored that. So there may have been, I don't know, but it doesn't matter. The point is he was lying. It was to convicted of false advertising because of this analysis of all of his products that was done. He got a 60-day sentence and he served 49 days of it. That was it. Not bad. That was it. On the bright side, a consortium of local universities took over the land and the buildings. Okay. They turned it into the Desert Studies Center, which still stands and is still used to study the unique environment of the Mojave Desert to this day. Well, so he was, so I guess what you're saying is he was right all along. No, no.

I am, I'm not, I'm not, no, I'm not saying that, no. I'm not saying No, no. I am. I'm not gonna do a press here on saw bones. Thank you, get me undies who are dedicated to riding the world's most comfortable underwear. Go to me undies.com slash saw bones for free shipping and 20% off your first order. Thanks to taxpayers for letting us use our song medicines. This is the intro and outro of our program. We sure appreciate it.

Sid, do you have anything you'd like to plug? No, I just want to say he wasn't right. Okay, he wasn right. He was absolutely wrong. Thanks for the building. My hard drive here is full. Go listen to the city show still buffering with her sister Riley. The new episode is about sex education and it is awesome. You can find that on iTunes or at teengoogle.com. Thanks to the maximum fun network for letting us be a part of their extended podcast family. They got a lot of great shows You can find them all at maximumfun.org Folks, that's gonna do it for us until the next time we have something to talk with you about my name is Justin McAroy I'm Sydney McAroy and it's always don't drill a hole in your head Alright!

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