[Dr. / Prof.] MacDonald's Farmers Almanac and Dream Book.
Other titles: Prof. MacDonald's Farmers Calendar / Prof. MacDonald's Astrological Farmers Calendar and Weather Guide. A Complete Family Almanac / MacDonald's Family Almanac / Dr. MacDonald's Household Almanac / MacDonald's Universal Almanac
1897—1978? Annual
Binghamton, NY. Publisher: Atlas Printing Company. Editor: Jeremiah MacDonald (1859-1918); Reuben H. MacDonald (1882-1938), Arthur Cleveland MacDonald (1884-1951).
1/1, 1897.

This was a nice combination of patent medicines, astrology, prophecy, hypnotism and farmers' almanac. Jeremiah MacDonald was born in New York City and started his career selling real estate before moving on to Chicago, where he obtained his M.D. degree in 1893 from Chicago Medical College. At some point thereafter, before 1895, when he moved to Binghamton, New York, he was associated with St. Luke's Hospital in Niles, Michigan, a famous diploma mill of the period. This institution, which seemingly never admitted a single patient, was organized solely to award, for a price, ornate Latin "diplomas" with which quack physicians could grace their walls. (The diplomas, in reality, were "certificates of merit," though it would require a fair Latinist to discern the difference.) When this was closed by the state in 1901 (on the information of one of the hospital president's "numerous wives"), the entire enterprise (with the same "diplomas") was reopened in Chicago as the Christian Hospital, this time under the leadership of News E. Wood, publisher of Star of the Magi. St. Lukes counted among it attending physicians R.S. Clymer, Oren Oneal, and a host of other less well known but in no way less disreputable healers. In Binghamton, MacDonald added to his patent medicines (initially his "Atlas Compound") a publishing company, Atlas Printing, which published the almanac and his books on astrology, dreams, and obtaining success—and also published a pirated edition of Hiram Butler's Solar Biology. MacDonald early on recognized the value in advertising and the almanac under one or another of its various names was advertised nationally until the mid-1930s. He himself advertised widely, labeling himself in Immortality in 1901 as the "most successful, reliable and lowest priced Astrologer in the United States. Fifteen years experience." In 1915 the diligent federal regulators convicted Jeremiah MacDonald (and fined him $30) for "misbranding" "Dr. MacDonald's Atlas Compound Famous Specific No. 18 (“the "King of All Tonics") by leading customers to that "in whole or in part, [it] was composed of or contained ingredients or medicinal agents effective, among other things, as a remedy for catarrh, rheumatism," etc., whereas, as the federal chemists discovered it did not have such agents. Your tax dollars at work. University of Rochester Medical Center; Binghamton University; Cornell University Library; University of Delaware; Texas A&M; Buffalo History Museum; Wisconsin Historical Society.

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