“Medicated, Electric, Turkish and Massage Baths. Treatment on Reasonable Terms. We Cure Diseases of the Head, Throat, Lungs, Heart, Liver, Stomach, Bowels, Kidneys, and other organs. All Diseases of Women, General and Nervous Debility, Headache, Rheumatism, Dyspepsia, Piles, Serofula, Catarrh, Etc. Diseases of the Skin, Blood, Nerves, Spine, Bones, Joints, Eye, Ear, Tumors, and Paralysis. D.E. Cripe, Medical Director. MUNCIE SANITARIUM, 207 North High Street, Muncie, Indiana.”
Such was a Sept. 17, 1899 advertisement I recently stumbled across in the Muncie Morning News. I didn’t know of the Muncie Sanitarium before reading this ad. Yet, like all good historical discoveries, the advertisement led me down a rabbit hole of research, yielding new information about Muncie weirdness, Progressive Era (mis)conceptions of illness, and old-fashion American quackery.