This is an ad for the Baker Hospital, run by the infamous Norman Baker. He scammed people out of their money who were suffering from cancer and desperate for anything that could help them. He claimed a surefire cure, despite all 5 of his test subjects dying, and his cure being simple substances like clover and watermelon. He had no medical license. Today he is considered one of the worst quacks in American history.
His cure was,
The (very expensive) cure for cancer, and other diseases as requested, consisted of injections of a mix of common substances including corn silk, watermelon seeds, clover, water, and carbolic acid. Simultaneously, KTNT denounced licensed doctors as “educated fools” and “cutters” incapable of helping patients.
He ran open air “cancer curings” with audiences of 10’s of thousands of people, who were urged to buy his products after witnessing someone being “cured”. His hospital racked up vast amounts of money, while casting doubt on evidence based medicine. Even in the 1930’s, some cancers could be treated, whether cured or just slowed to provide more time for the patient, with surgery or radiotherapy.
Eventually he was convicted,
In January 1940, the court found Baker’s cure a “pure hoax” and “utterly false” and jailed him pending appeals. Baker served his sentence at the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, from May 1941 to July 1944.
Here is his mugshot. The wiki link above has a lot more info about him.
Hospitals where weird back then. Everyone thought eugenics was the future around that time up into the two world wars.
We didn’t even calm down on the eugenics after Hitler. We imported natzi scientist who where doing shit like seeing if they could take the heart out of one of the cajoined twins, and just straight up sadistic and evil things.
We continued that stuff after world war 2 and eugenics too. We imprisoned people with mental health issues and experiemented on them. From the worst stuff like whatever Mk ultra was, to teaching a kid to studdeder just to see what would happen. Also worth noting anyone who wasn’t a white male home owner was considered mentally unwell and forcefully locked up. This disproportionately effected people of color, but if you where a vagrant, a prostitute, or just loitering around without a dollar in your pocket you could of been forcefully locked up. Medical science was kind of the Ai race back then, and a lot of abuse came from this rush from drug manufacturers, and the rest of the medical science field. Stuff like bio weapons, meth, etc.
Not only that but everytime I watch a video about a old historical hospital around that time period it’s never anything good. They where always doing stuff to the kids or abusing patients even without all the eugenics shit.