“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.
The West House: From sumptuous menu to a cure for what ails ya
Neil Snarr - Contributing columnist
From the late 1870s on there were three major hotels in downtown Wilmington: the West House on Main Street where the Masonic Temple building is currently situated; the Midland Hotel, which was built by a Black man on South Street across from the current courthouse (it still stands there mostly unused); and the Martin Hotel at the corner of Main and Mulberry (it was demolished some years ago).
My impression is that the Hawley and the West House were most important to the city, but served somewhat different purposes.