In the 1950s, Oklahoma pastor Charlie Shedd’s book convinced readers it was possible to “Pray Your Weight Away,” while in the 1920s, men paid North Carolina native John Brinkley $750 to have goat testicles sewn into their scrotums in the hopes of boosting their sexual prowess. 

Then there was the Hager Medical Company in Indiana, which told women “they could cure any ailment of the vagina with a generous application of Oak Balm suppositories (which consisted of boric acid, alum, cacao, and butter, with a side of scorn),” as author Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling writes in “If It Sounds Like A Quack: A Journey to the Fringes of American Medicine” (PublicAffairs).

Indeed, there’s a long — and not exactly noble — American tradition of the pursuit of revolutionary medical breakthroughs, with each new advocate shunning accepted science in favor of something new, different and often very dangerous.

Not much has changed.

In fact, thanks to the Internet and people’s predilection for self-diagnosis, it’s perhaps easier than ever to trick the population, even with the Food and Drug Administration keeping a close eye on developments.

“If It Sounds Like A Quack” examines cases of those individuals who all believed they had discovered the “One True Cure.” 

With methods as wild and as varied as leeches and laser beams, they are all people who, Hongoltz-Hetling writes, have “all undertaken journeys to the furthest fringes of health and healing.”

And the results are truly disturbing.

JIM HUMBLE, a k a THE ALIEN

Jim Humble may have looked like a small, white Alabaman in his 60s but his real-life story was, he claimed, actually quite different.

“He didn’t see himself as a straight, white, male, human Terran,” writes Hongoltz-Hetling.

“He was an ancient alien god from the Andromeda Galaxy.”

He was also over a billion years old.

The alien’s mission on earth, Humble said, was to end disease forever — which is why he gave the world his health drink, Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS) in 1996.

Made from the industrial bleaching agent chlorine dioxide, it purportedly soaked into the body’s cells, killing whatever illness was lurking within.

It worked on cancer and on malaria and “the alien in Humble’s skin soon discovered that the health drink cured diabetes, AIDS, erectile dysfunction — in fact, just about anything.”

His only problem was getting it to market, the result, he believed, of “Big Pharma” bearing down on him.

Penniless and living on Social Security, he was also experiencing what Earthlings called “cash flow issues” and had no idea how to market his product. “Nothing in his billion-year existence had prepared him to create a website,” said Hongoltz-Hetling.

He also believed user’s reactions to MMS — typically vomiting, nausea, and diarrhea — were a sign that the medicine was working. 

Countless people became ill after taking it. Some were hospitalized. Some even died.

Humble even began his own “Genesis II Church of Health and Healing,” using MMS as their sacrament. 

Others just called it the “Church of Bleach.”

He left the church in 2015 when he fell out with his co-founder and moved to Guadalajara, Mexico. No one has seen him since, although he still maintains his website.

LARRY LYTLE’S LASERS

Developed by Larry Lytle, a dentist from Rapid City, SD, the revolutionary QLaser universal healing system could treat almost any medical complaint.

From deafness to diabetes, cancer to AIDS, all you had to was fire it up and point it at the pain. 

You could even use it for treating psychological diagnoses (“perhaps a prerequisite for customers,” writes Hongoltz-Hetling).

According to its inventor, there was no limit to what it could achieve.

“In a particularly ballsy move, Lytle advertised the lasers as being suitable ‘for the treatment of any unknown condition,’ ” adds the author.

Lytle’s lasers sold for between $4,295 and $12,600 and he claimed they worked by firing light directly into human cells, restoring lost or damaged electrons to perfect health.

While Lytle’s business boomed — he sold around 20,000 lasers to mainly elderly customers, taking over $16 million in online and mail order sales between 2010 and 2015 alone — he was undone when one customer complained he had blinded himself with one of the lasers, alerting the FDA.

He wasn’t the only one.

When Lytle was prosecuted for fraud in 2017, one 15-year-old girl gave evidence, explaining how her mother had forgone cancer treatment, believing that the QLaser would cure her. Instead, she died.

In 2018, Lytle, by then 83, was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

TOBY McADAM, THE MASTER HERBALIST

Toby McAdam, a divorcé from Livingston, Mont., had tried his hand at many jobs, not least running for governor of the Big Sky State under the Hamlet-esque slogan: “Toby or not Toby.”

But as Hongoltz-Hetling explains, “the campaign fizzled when he failed to qualify for the ballot, but by then the local paper had called him out for not having paid child support since 1988.”

But it was his quest for the One True Cure that consumed him.

When McAdam’s mother, Frances, was diagnosed with lung cancer, he set about finding a natural way to help her. During his research, he learned how the plant bloodwort contained a chemical compound called berberine that could possibly inhibit the growth of a tumor.

So he made some capsules and gave them to his mother.

When his mother suffered a stroke and died, McAdam couldn’t understand why they hadn’t worked. 

Then he found all the tablets he had given her. 

“His main takeaway was that the full bottles proved the stroke had come only because she wasn’t on his medication,” writes Hongoltz-Hetling.

“But with her dying breath, Frances had imbued him with a new purpose. 

“He, Toby McAdam, had discovered that his herbal concoctions were the One True Cure.” 

Soon, McAdam launched his own Rising Sun brand of supplements, selling a range of bloodroot oils, salves, tonics, tinctures, and even toothpaste.

“One of his first real hits was a salve, which had a caustic property that meant it (like zombies) could eat human flesh,” writes the author.

“Toby advised his customers to use his salve to burn skin cancer off their bodies.”

When the author met him, for instance, McAdam told him: “I’ve dealt with a thousand people with cancer,” adding that he had “a 98 percent success rate.”

Like Lytle, the FDA soon got wind of this, buying his products anonymously online to compile evidence. “The FDA became his best customer,” writes Hongoltz-Hetling.

“Undercover agents bought Old Amish Dewormer Original Formula (to fight parasites and cancer); they bought capsules of CanFree Internal Formula (“has shown positive benefits in battle with cancer”); they bought Anemia Formula (anemia and sore throat and also “cleanses the blood”); they bought Kavakosh for Epilepsy/Depression (“to act on the brains [sic] limbic system”); they bought ADD/ADHD Support, Amazonian Analgesia, Arthritis Support, and twelve other products.”

In short, enough to shut McAdam down.

McAdam agreed to cease trading, but he didn’t.

Eventually, the FDA caught up with him ­— again — and in 2015, McAdam pleaded guilty to violating two court orders preventing him from selling dietary supplements. He was jailed for four months and ordered to pay $80,000 in damages and nearly $5,000 in attorney’s fees. 

DALE AND LEILANI NEUMANN AND PRAYERFUL HEALING

Devout Pentecostal Christians Dale and Leilani Neumann didn’t need doctors — not when they had Jesus Christ on hand.

The couple from Weston, Wis., believed that all illness had spiritual root causes and that prayer and faith was the only effective way of curing it.

It had certainly worked for Dale.

“After a decade of undergoing chiropractic treatments for persistent back pain, he instead sought a higher form of treatment,” writes Hongoltz-Hetling. “And just like that, God answered – the chronic pain went away.”

The rest of the family benefitted too. Their children found they could pray away the sniffles while Leilani’s allergies and anxiety disappeared whenever she prayed.

It was such a success, they became convinced “that prayer, not medical science, was the One True Cure,” writes the author.

That wasn’t all. “Dale and Leilani soon took that reasoning a step further. If God was willing to cure their ills, wasn’t seeking out a doctor instead of God a blasphemous insult?” adds Hongoltz-Hetling.

In March 2008, however, their daughter, Kara, became unwell. 

Believing her to be under some form of spiritual attack, Leilani Neumann summoned as many people as she knew to pray for her, rather than take her to a doctor. “Leilani’s father suggested that she should give Kara Pedialyte; Leilani responded that to do so would take away from the glory of God,” writes the author. 

On March 23, Kara Neumann died. She was 11 years old. Later, it was revealed she was suffering from undiagnosed diabetes.

The Neumanns, meanwhile, would be found guilty of second-degree reckless homicide and sentenced to 180 days in jail and 10 years of probation.