Vitapathy

In Volume 4, Number 9, The Psypioneer, in publishing a text of William Britten's in one of its issues, remarks that (according to his obituary) Britten was a graduate of the Vitapathic College in the US.

There was only one such Vitapathic institution, run under various names, including the American Health College, by John Bunyan Campbell, in Cincinnati.

To get us started down this interesting path, Dr. Otto Juettner's remarks, in his Historical and Biographical Sketches (1909), on Campbell are instructive:

There is only one individual whose memory ought to be preserved because he exemplifies the possibilities of schemes executed under the cloak of medicine. He is the type of an entire class and as such is necessarily of value to the medical historian. This man was the Cagliostro of Medical Cincinnati,
John Bunyan Campbell, who at one time did more to amuse the educated and mystify the ignorant than all the other charlatans put together.
Campbell was born in 1820 on Little Pine Creek, Lycoming Co., Pa. The sketch of his earnest efforts to find the truth in medicine, given by himself in the preface to his "Encyclopedia of Vitapathic Practice," reminds one of Faust's "Monologue." This preface and the book should be read by every physician who has the blues. The fact that this man ever found even one human being who took him seriously, is an unfathomable mystery. There were thousands in all parts of the country who were his devout followers, some of whom, when the spell was broken, entered medical colleges and graduated in medicine. Campbell called his system "vitapathy," a mongrel mixture of half-digested science, brazen assurance and medical and religious quackery. His graduates were "vitapathic physicians and ministers" who were empowered to heal the sick, to give the vitapathic breathing prayer, to administer the milk-sacrament, to receive and give forth higher spiritualization, etc., etc. Campbell wrote a book on practice and another on vitapathic materia medica, in which he included all the quack-nostrums and house-remedies of all ages and centuries. The principal therapeutic agent is "vita," the vital spirit which is everywhere and is introduced into the body, if handled by a properly qualified vitapathic physician. Campbell says : "The higher wisdom and spiritual power comes in at the top of the head and the hair must be parted there to let the spirit in, as hair is a non-conductor." Campbell did not sell any of his books, nor did he allow his students to divulge the contents. He made his students pronounce a terrible oath that they would not speak of the contents of his books or show the books to anyone.... Campbell charged a good fee for his "course of instruction" and drew large classes of males and females.... His citadel of infamy still stands in Fairmount, a mute witness of iniquity unspeakable. After following up this man's career, the only question remains whether he should have properly been confined in a State prison or in an insane asylum. His "graduates" some years ago could be found in every State in the Union.

Graduates of Campbell's school were, as noted, minister-doctors, denoted (unfortunately), V. D. (presumably Vitapathic Doctor) and were certified by the school both to practice medicine and to "perform the functions of a minister of the Gospel," as one practitioner explained to her state licensing board when haled up before it.

Campbell clearly understood the medical game -- indeed, the modern medical game -- and not only asserted his intellectual property rights aggressively, as the image above indicates, but took out patents on aspects of his practice.

No doubt one particular patent (US Patent # 606887, for the electric extraction of poisons) reflects a vitapathic practice that both William and Emma were subsequently to use to advantage.

The similarities between the machinery drawn in this patent illustration, and the machinery described in the Electric Physician are many, and close.

A History of the Schools of Cincinnati (1906), provides this summary of Campbell's American Health College:

"The American Health College and Vitapathic Sanitarium was organized in Cincinnati in 1876, and chartered in 1883. The society owns its own college building and sanitarium in Fairmount. To date, 400 doctors have been licensed. John Bunyan Campbell, president and founder. This college objects to much medicine, and uses few drugs. Electricity plays a prominent part." (p. 297)

The state of Illinois, in 1892, was less charitable:

Record held by the American Medical Association note, however, the existence of the American Health College in 1871, which seems more in keeping with our timelines, if we presume that William Britten studied galvanic medicine before practicing it, rather than, say, getting a degree as an afterthought.

Given the dating of Campbell's college (1871-1876, reorganized 1876, chartered [by what organization?] 1883) , Britten must have been an early student of Campbell's, after his marriage to EHB. That bit of their trajectory remains as yet unplotted.

Cincinnati, by the way, seems at the time to have been a positive gold mine of quackery and degree mills.

But I think we find the linkage we're looking for -- as no doubt the editor who selected the story to run did -- from this snippet from the New York Times of April 16, 1905:

Hagiography

Some time between William Britten's death in 1994 and EHB's death in 1899, the Two Worlds Publishing Company produced a very expensive Album (Manchester: The Two Worlds, etc., [n.d.]) that is clearly a vanity house production designed to flatter the friends of the firm. I have a digital copy and will publish it in due order, but the lack of photos of William Britten lead me to post his now.

Handsome man. Given that the photograph of EHB dates from her Australian tour, I'm inclined to date the William Britten photograph, on nothing more than a hunch, to the Electric Physician period in Boston, possibly from a carte-de-visite.

Dr. Britten's Home Battery

Speaks for itself.

The snippet is from the Countess of Caithness' book, Old Truths In A New Light (1876). EHB and the Countess had a long association -- the Countess shows up as a 'friend' of the Two Worlds Publishing Company, established by EHB and William in Manchester in the 1880s, in a vanity book the press did in the 1890s (below).