Baltimore Evening Sun (24 April 1913): 6.

Medical freedom in all its myriad and lovely forms is given a lot of space in the current issue of the Nautilus Magazine, the New Thought organ. Mother Elizabeth Towne, editor of the Nautilus, is an ardent medical freedomist herself and has written a treatise “Just How to Wake the Soler Plexus,” which every New Thoughter knows by heart. But her present rave, it would appear, is not for this tickling of the plexus, but for tonotherapy, or musical therapeutics, the invention of Prof. Dr. Eva Augusta Vescellus, of Croton-on-Hudson, N. Y.

All one needs, to become a full-fledged practitioner of tonotherapy, is a phonograph and a set of records. The whole treatment, no matter what the disease, consists in wooing the patient’s ears until he is well again. Thus a typical report from the Vescellus clinic:

A case of chills and fever was cured by one application of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata, followed by “The Evening Star” and Pilgrim’s chorus from “Tannhäuser” and “There Is a Land Mine Eye Hath Seen.” At the end of the last song the patient went to sleep. She awoke in perfect health, and has remained thus ever since.

A great discovery, but one that calls for further work by tonopathologists, for if music can cure, it can also kill, or, at any rate, wound. It is a well-known fact, for example, that the great majority of violoncellists suffer from cricks in the back, and that the constant playing of the oboe produces tonsilitis, sciatica and delusions of grandeur. Before the application of her remedy can be considered safe, Dr. Vescellus must investigate these contrary effects. Perhaps, of course, there is homeopathy mixed up with it--a familiar amalgam in the realm of medical freedom. Perhaps the strains of Schubert’s “Serenade,” which drive the average healthy man to the use of narcotics, may be a cure for the actual dope fiend. Such miracles are not unknown. The automatic piano, which rivals drink as a filler of our madhouses, is used in them to entertain the patients.

But tonotherapy is but one of the hundred or more great boons and inventions offered for medical freedom. Even more remarkable are the effects of the White Cross Electric Vibrator, which is sold by the Lindstrom-Smith Co., of 219 South Wabash street, Chicago. This wonderful appliance, according to the Nautilus,

is the result of years of work and experiment. It is absolutely perfect. If you have your home wired for electricity, you can connect it up as easily as an electric lamp. If not, it will run perfectly on its own batteries. With this great machine you can get Nature’s three greatest curative agents: Vibration, Galvanic and Faradio Electricity. Give yourself vibrating chair treatments, Swedish massage in your own home.

The vibrator is useful in all conditions of ill health, but its specialties are wrinkles and baltitude. It makes a fine new thatch, soft and silky, upon the baldest head. And it knocks out wrinkles in a few rounds--and not only wrinkles, but “also other disfigurations.”

It brings back the healthful glow of girlhood to pallid cheeks. Sagging muscles are strengthened and regain their beauty. Your complexion will be made as clear as a child’s. If you have too much flesh, vibration will reduce it. If not enough, vibration will cause the hollows to be filled out.

I am sending for one of these magical vibrators and shall let you know its effects. My own beauty, once so blooming, has begun to wither and go stale. I have 2½ chins, a waist like a taxicab, and a pair of large zigzag wrinkles across my brow. My nose, growing pink in winter, stays pink all summer. I lose hair every time the wind blows. The White Cross Electric Vibrator would seem to be my rescuer foreordained.

And if it fails, medical freedom still has many remedies to offer. I pass over Christian Science, osteopathy, chiropractic, the Emmanuel Movement and bovotherapy as already familiar to all cognoscenti. More remarkable than any of thern is the psycho-saline system of Prof. Walter De Voe, of 2057 East Sixty-ninth street, Cleveland, Ohio. You will find it described on page 85 of the Nautilus. Its basis is Prof. De Voe’s discovery that “in healing the sick two conditions must be made,” to wit:

1. The positive polarity of the body must he restored, so that every cell will be a positive centre of attraction for building elements, and will absorb them from food, etc.

2. The natural food elements must be provided in assimilable form.

But how to do it? Trust Professor De Voe! He is one of the whales of medical freedom--perhaps even its Ehrlich. This is how he goes about it:

1. I arouse the Organizing Power so that the entire body will become positive and attractive to vital elements in food, air, sunshine and earth radiance.
2. I provide refined food elements in the form of Nutrient Salts.

Just what these Nutrient Salts are Professor De Voe doesn’t explain, but he has a large supply of them on hand and will sell them to any sufferer as a personal favor. He does not offer them by the pound, but by the month. A dollar for one month, or $5 for six months. “Send main symptoms when ordering.”

Another medical freedomist who keeps one leg in the pharmacopœia, despite Mother Towne’s declaration (page 20) that “drugs are going out of fashion,” is Prof. Dr. Henderson, of Charleston, W. Va., who offers an “antiseptic mineral bath” that will “eliminate the body toxins” and cure “rheumatism, kidney disease, fevers, autotoxemia, joint troubles, catarrh, children’s diseases * * * and uric acid conditions.” Again, there is Prof. A. J. Straughan, of 920 Anheim street, Pittsburgh, Pa., with his eyetem of astro-biochemistry, a compound of astrology and scientific feeding. Yet, again, there is Prof. G. H. Brinkler, of Washington. D. C., with his discovery that butter and cheese cause catarrh, and that radishes are stimulating.

I go no further with these great boons of medical freedom. If you would enjoy them all, if you would escape from the foul clutches of the Medleal Trust, then my advice is that you subscribe to the Nautilus and follow Mother Towne and her friends. They are pledged to achieve the goal of Dr. William H. Welch. They dream of the day when doctors will cease to poison and surgeons will cease to slaughter--when all our drugs will be thrown away as useless, and a delivered populace will put its whole trust in “Science and Health,” bovotherapy, tonotherapy, the White Cross Electric Vibrator, osteopathy, Swedish massage, chiropractic, astro- biochemistry, the Subconscious, the Astral Self, Peruna, the Bhagavad Gita, the Aura, Deep Breathing, the Esoteric Atom, the solar plexus, the Emmanuel Movement and mechano-therapy.

The boomers! The boomers! Again they’re on the mat! And once again they sing a hymn and pass around the hat!