Sidney Weltmer: I was mustachioed, as was the custom of the time.

It would be tough to label “Professor” Sidney Abram Weltmer a con man, since he seemed to sincerely believe his bullshit. Weltmer was a medical autodidact and “healer” who opened a clinic of sorts in Nevada, Missouri, in 1897. He offered in-person treatments and a mail-order course that employed something called “Suggestive Therapeutics,” which purported to be able to heal any disease with the power of poitive thinking and laying on of hands. It was a mish-mash of pseudo-medicine and spiritual platitudes. And it was incredibly popular for a good, long time, as Nevada was forced to increase the size of its post office and the frequency of its train service, as letters and visitors poured in. Other doctors and medical associations sued him for fraud, but the Supreme Court ruled in 1902 that Weltmer had broken no laws and was free to pursue his unique brand of medicine and medical instruction.

Weltmer had originally trained himself to be a healer because he suffered from consumption while he was a teen. Despite that often fatal disease, he didn’t die until 72 in 1930, so maybe he knew something after all. But probably not. An excerpt from the copy of the 1899 Weltmer ad titled “Disease Cannot Exist: 100,000 Cured By Weltmerism Prove It To Be Disease’s Most Formidable Foe”:

“The man or woman who is diseased or afflicted in mind or body is not in a normal condition, or in that condition which God or nature intended them to be. The organization of woman is so constructed that the monthly period is necessary and natural. If woman is healthy she need have no fear or no pain at this time. Debilitation is unnatural state of affairs. Indigestion, dyspepsia, stomach trouble and all diseases simply show a disordered system, and show the constitution is not in the condition in which it was intended to be.

The reason that the method of Magnetic Healing as originated by Professor S. A. Weltmer of Nevada, Mo., performs such marvelous cures is that it is perfectly natural and nature’s own cure. For without the aid of drugs or a surgeon’s knife, it goes directly to the seat of all afflictions and in a perfectly natural manner places the entire constitution in a strong and healthy condition.”