Quackery

What the mind perceives to be true is true, but not necessarily the Truth.
Before the infomercials there were commercials. Before commercials on television or radio things were pretty much limited to magazines and newspapers. Remember those magazine ads as a child. From tonics to the cure-alls to magic elixirs. It gravitated to infomercials in the 70’s , 80’s and persists.
Advertising and utilizing the US postal service was common at the turn of the last century. And they were investigated. Often ordered to stop.
Examples:
• Dennis Dupuis (aka Rupert Wells, M.D.) of St. Louis.
• S. R. Chamlee who operated a mail-order "cancer cure" concern in St. Louis, Mo., under the name of "Dr. and Mrs. Chamlee & Co." and in Los Angeles, CaL, as "Dr. and Mrs. Chamley & Co.,"
• Dr. G. M. Curry, of Lebanon, Ohio,
• C. W. Mixer of Hastings, Mich., aka "Drs. Mixer"
• B. F. Bye of Indianapolis

Bye was interesting. He advertised and showed elaborate buildings far from the truth.
Dr. B. F. Bye's "down-town" office and laboratory, as represented in his booklets, surrounded by broad lawns and shade trees which existed in Dr. Bye's mind only. (From "Great American Fraud.")
Dr. B. F. Bye's office as it actually was at 301 North Illinois Street, Indianapolis. The brick building in the rear is a hotel, in no way connected with Dr. Bye's establishment. (From "Great American Fraud.")

And then there was Sidney A. Weltmer [1858-1930] the founder of the Weltmer Institute of Suggestive Therapeutics which was located in Nevada, Missouri at the corner of Austin and Ash Streets.

Founded in the 1887, the Weltmer Institute had a substantial financial impact on Nevada and the surrounding area. Railroads added additional cars to transport the thousands of patients who came to the Weltmer Institute for healing. Additionally, hundreds came to be trained in the Weltmer methods of healing at the Institute.

The Nevada post office was upgraded to a class one post office, and a new building was constructed to handle the massive volume of mail to and from the Institute.

Old postcards and ads refer to it by different names: "The Weltmer School of Magnetic Healing","The Weltmer Institute of Suggestive Therapeutics", "The Weltmer School of Healing", but usually just "The Weltmer Institute".

In 1900 a concerted attack was made to destroy the Weltmer Method of Healing. Persecutions and prosecutions followed one another in rapid succession until November 17, 1902, when the litigation had finally reached the United States Supreme Court, which sustained Professor Weltmer's work, and among other things declared his methods and practice to be "sound and practical" "legitimate and lawful and in no conflict with the laws of Congress.

This settled, for all time, the legal status of the Weltmer Method of Healing.
[Fraudster? Quack? Genius? Stay tuned ... more to come]