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| Periodical: | The Lindlahr Magazine |
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Summary: |
From Pat Deveney's database:
Lindlahr Magazine, The. There is no record of the journal after 1922 until it was revived in 1930 as Modern Living. This was a magazine put out by the Naturopath Henry Lindlahr in Chicago to advertise his innumerable enterprises. It was one of the wave of journals devoted to natural / drugless therapeutics, osteopathy, homeopathy and chiropractic, health, dietetics, physical culture, massage, air- and sun-bathing, "medical gymnastics," and crank remedies that flourished in the quarter century before the end of World War I, melding easily with the success and personal development side of New Thought. Lindlahr (1862-1924) was born in Germany where he early on was impressed with the remedies of Father Sebastian Kneipp that caused him to shed 40 pounds in a brief, painless fashion. He arrived in the United States in 1880, where he busied himself in the brewery business before he established the Atlanta Sanitarium in Chicago (with "Battle Creek methods") in 1903. This coincided with his obtaining his M.D. degree from L.D. Rogers' National Medical University, a diploma mill run from the early 1890s until it was closed down in 1914. The journal featured articles by Lindlahr on "vitamines," praise of Albert Abrams, A.M., LL.D., M.D., F.R.M.S. of San Francisco, opposition to vaccination and vivisection, and attacks on the American Medical Association and organized "allopathic" medicine in general and promotion of the American Medical Liberty League ("Rally to the League") that sought to correct the slanders of the AMA. It also contained articles by Henry's son Victor Hugo Lindlahr (1897-1969), who re-established the journal after his father's death and went on to become a leading early health-food promoter (You Are What You Eat, 1940) and radio dietetic guru. (He briefly achieved fame in the late 1940s as the promoter of Serutan ("'Nature's' Spelled Backward") as a cure-all. Henry's wife, Anna, graced the journal with her healthful recipes (published as a book by Lindlahr Publishing Company), and Ella Wheeler Wilcox provided poems. The real purpose of the journal, however, was to promote Lindlahr's various businesses: his books on natural therapeutics and iridology, a Help-Yourself Club (which offered mutual help and advice in solving problems), a bewildering variety of degree-awarding institutes and schools, and his sanitariums (always shown in impressive photographs). By about 1906, he had started Lindlahr's Sanitarium on Chicago's Southside, whose motto was "no surgery, no drugs, no serums," followed by others in Elmhurst, Illinois (a bucolic retreat from the bustle of the modern city), and in London. The most notable fact about the sanitariums is that Eugene V. Debs died after seeking treatment there, and was noted in the journal as "Our Distinguished Guest." For those unable to seek relief in the sanitariums, he offered Electronic Diagnosis by Mail": $20 for first examination of blood sample; $5.00 additional "for location of foci in the body"), reexamination $10. Lindlahr emphasized the scientific nature of this diagnosis-at-a-distance in terms that reflect the work of Albert Abrams: "Thus cancer has a vibratory rate of 50 ohms, tuberculosis of 42 ohms, congenital syphilis of 57 ohms, etc. This constancy of disease vibration seems to indicate that disease arises from the presence in the disease matter of a definite molecular structure. For instance, water consists of the atomic combination, H2O, two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. This definite atomic combination produces a definite rate of radio-active vibration, etc." In conjunction with his sanitariums, Lindlahr offered the Lindlahr Health Research in Elmhurst, the Lindlahr Nature Cure Institutes (that granted a Doctor of Chiropractic and a Doctor of Natural Therapeutics), and the Progressive College of Chiropractic . This last was advertised as having a clinic, student orchestra, and an impressive three-story building, complete with "Moving Picture and Radio apparatuses" – all for $100 for four weeks of courses, with the Lindlahr College Post-Graduate Diploma for successful completion of the courses. For $50 extra a student might receive the Howard College Post-Graduate Diploma, as well. (Apparently these fees were negotiable, since one of his graduates confessed that he received the instruction, the diploma, the chart, books and an adjusting table) for $89.50. The scope of this diploma-mill business came to light in 1923 with the arrest of Robert Adcox and Ralph Voight in St. Louis for running a "clearing house" for purveyors of bogus degrees (including those offered by Helmuth P. Holler, on whom see the note under, and Lindlahr). They supplied a turnkey operation, offering medical and other degrees from a variety of diploma mills and then obtaining licensing for the student by either hiring someone to take the state medical boards in the student's name or by bribing one of the examiners. In Chicago, Lindlahr moved in the circle of John E. Richardson ("T.K."). He was in the chain of title to what became T.K.'s Edgemoor Sanitarium in Wisconsin, and wrote for his journal Life and Action, making the acquaintance there of Parzival Braun, on whom see the notes under New Man, Zum Licht, Der Meister, Self-Culture, and Christliche Theosophie. He also wrote for American Theosophist, and peppered his books with reference to the "spiritual side" of healing and to telepathy. Harvard University; NY Academy of Medicine.
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| Issues: | Lindlahr Magazine V1 N1 Jan 1922 |
| Lindlahr Magazine V1 N2 Apr 1922 | |
| Lindlahr Magazine V1 N3 Jul 1922 | |
| Lindlahr Magazine V1 N4 Oct 1922 |
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