Ah, the good old days, when there were no government agencies regulating what you could and couldn’t sell as a medical miracle. The 1800s were a time when people knew enough about medicine and the human body to be dangerous—and enough about capitalism to be doubly dangerous. There were few, if any, drug regulations and no agency was insisting that companies list their miracle cures’ ingredients on bottles. The result was babies addicted to heroin and adults swearing by the hydrochloric acid they rubbed on their scalps.

1 Victory V Lozenges

Victory V Lozenges were an extremely popular cough drop in Britain starting in the mid-1800s. Developed in part by confectioner Thomas Fryer, they were advertised to relieve symptoms of the common cold. Because of their pleasingly sweet liquorice taste and the warm feeling they created in those who took them, their popularity skyrocketed. They were a particular hit with sailors because, in a 19th century stroke of marketing genius, they were tied to Admiral Nelson and his ship.

For many years, they continued to be made in the sweets factory of Fry and Company, continuing their candy-like advertising campaign. Unfortunately, that warm feeling was created by the lozenges’ other active ingredients—ether and chlorodyne, a mix of cannabis and chloroform. Victory V Lozenges are still available, without the ether and chlorodyne.

9 Dr. Thomas’s Eclectric Oil

Dr. Thomas’s Eclectric Oil was a miraculous cure-all that made some unbelievable claims, purporting not only to cure a wide variety of ailments, but to do so in a very specific amount of time. A backache would be gone in 2 hours, while an earache would disappear in 2 minutes. Toothaches, deafness, coughing, and sore throats could all be cured by this miracle drug, and it would also relieve the pain associated with burns when applied to the skin.

Developed in the mid-1800s by Dr. S.N. Thomas of New York and later marketed under the name Excelsior Eclectric Oil, this remedy had as an eclectic mix of ingredients as ailments it claimed to cure. Active ingredients were opium, chloroform, hemlock oil, turpentine, an unspecified type of alcohol, and alkanet (for color). The commercially produced product was so popular that recipes were published in books like 1899’s Secret Nostrums and Systems of Medicine by Charles Wilmot, giving people the chance to mix their own version.

8 Perry Davis’ Vegetable Pain Killer

Perry Davis was born into a poor family in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. An apprentice shoemaker turned failed inventor, his middle years were haunted by chronic aches and pains from colds, coughs, stomach pains, and kidney distress. He turned his inventor’s mind to curing himself, mixing a concoction of all herbal and naturally growing ingredients.

Several centuries before “all-natural” would become a popular catchphrase and marketing tool, Davis created his Vegetable Pain Killer. Testifying that it had cured him of all that ailed him, he went on to become known worldwide for his concoction that cured everything from cholera to coughs. It was even administered to horses in the Civil War to alleviate their aches and pains. The concoction was, indeed, all-natural—and included a hefty dose of opium and ethyl alcohol.

7 The Microbe Killer

William Radam took quack medicine and hoaxes to a whole new level in the late 1880s. Standing on the shoulders of recent scientific discoveries that suggested disease was closely tied to the presence of tiny microbes in the body, Radam’s Microbe Killer made some pretty hefty claims. The tonic was supposed to purify the blood and rid the body of any microbes that were causing disease and discomfort, and Radam had the support of a handful of people who claimed to have been completely cured of their ailments by his miraculous cure. The Microbe Killer wasn’t just a miracle cure, it was a safe miracle cure.

Made by exposing water to the vapors that came from sulfur, sodium nitrate, manganese oxide, sandalwood, and potassium chloride, it was touted as not just another one of those so-called miracles of modern medicine that attracted gullible people with hope of a revolutionary, scientific cure. This was the real thing, created by a humble gardener with no other interests aside from making the world a better place. Fortunately for Radam, more people read advertisements than read the transcripts of lawsuits and the findings of an analysis by the Department of Agriculture. Radam made a fortune from the sale of a miracle tonic that was 99 percent water.

6 Gripe Water

Gripe water is another modern medicine that is simply a safer version of what it once was. An American invention of the 1840s, gripe water was given to colicky babies to stop their crying and relieve their discomfort. It certainly did its job, as it contained sodium bicarbonate, dill seed oil, sugar, water, and as much as 9 percent pure alcohol.

An offshoot of a medicine designed to treat a strain of malaria in babies, gripe water is still commonly recommended by doctors to soothe a baby suffering from colic. Now, however, the active ingredient is the combination of herbs that breaks up air bubbles in the baby’s digestive system—not alcohol that knocks them out.

5 The Seven Sutherland Sisters Hair Grower And Scalp Cleaner

Fletcher Sutherland was a reverend in Cambria, New York in the late 1880s. Another early genius of marketing, Sutherland used his seven daughters and their singing act to promote his Hair Grower and Scalp Cleaner. More important than their singing ability was their collective 11 meters (37 ft) of hair. Rumors had started that their long-deceased mother used a special tonic to grow their hair to such lengths. Sutherland saw no reason why he shouldn’t capitalize on the rumors, so he created a concoction, bottled it, and started to sell it.

The girls, who had since joined Barnum & Bailey Circus, promoted a hair product that eventually raised them more than $3 million. With the honest reputation of their preacher father and living proof in the girls’ long hair, who would think that the mixture of rum, salt, magnesia, and hydrochloric acid wouldn’t work?

4 Coca Wine

Coca wine was the original energy drink. It wasn’t just marketed as a wine, but also as a medicinal drink that would cure fatigue of the body and mind as well as offer an emotional pick-me-up. It certainly would, as it was mostly a mixture of alcohol and cocaine.

Vin Mariani, a Corsican company founded in 1863, was at the forefront of coca wine production. Boasting more than 7,000 written endorsements from physicians on how the product stimulated brain, body, and nerves, they also had one stellar endorsement that topped them all—a gold medal from Pope Leo XIII. The pope was said to carry a hip flask of the stuff for those times when prayer just didn’t cut it and appeared on a promotional poster, along with his endorsement: “His Holiness The Pope writes that he has fully appreciated the benefits of this Tonic Wine.”

Another notable producer of coca wine was American John Pemberton. His original concoction of wine and cocaine hit a production roadblock when prohibition outlawed the sale of wine. He was forced to replace the wine in his drink with a sugar syrup, marketing it as “the temperance drink.” eventually, the cocaine was removed as well, but the name Coca-Cola stuck.

3 Dr. Scott’s Electric Devices

While not containing opium, heroin, cocaine, or alcohol, Dr. Scott still deserves a place among the others due of sheer volume and mislabeling of his devices. Though he called his creations electric devices, their curative powers lay in the magnetically charged iron rods that were in each of his hair and flesh brushes. While it might be a given that an “electric” hair brush would relieve headaches and prevent baldness, Dr. George Scott went a few steps further and claimed they could also cure constipation, blood diseases and paralysis.

He didn’t stop at brushes, either—he released a whole line of magnetic devices including corsets, belts, button hooks, curling combs, bracelets, toothbrushes, nail brushes, hats, anklets, rings, shoulder braces, shoe insets, and even brushes for horses. In perhaps his most brilliant marketing move, Scott warns against sharing his electric devices, because the more people that used an item, the more its healing powers would be depleted.

2 Cocaine Toothache Drops

At least Lloyd Manufacturing was truthful in the labeling of their Cocaine Toothache Drops. Boasting an “Instantaneous Cure!” for only 15 cents, Cocaine Toothache Drops were made in Albany, New York in the 1880s. And, perhaps frighteningly, they worked. The cocaine was prepared in such as way that it acted as a topical anesthetic while minimizing the mood-altering effects of the substance, but somehow, it still doesn’t seem as safe for both children and adults, as advertised.

Cocaine-based throat lozenges were also extremely popular—they also acted as a topical anesthetic, numbing the pain of a sore throat. Many druggists and chemists would buy tablets in bulk and repackage them under their own labels.

1 Bayer Heroin

In the case of Bayer, it wasn’t a matter of a company or individual using what’s now a controlled substance as a cure-all. With Bayer, they invented it. The first manufactured heroin was a product of the Bayer pharmaceutical company in Germany. Production started in 1897, and within two years, the company was making a ton of heroin each year. It was exported around the world, where it was used as a cure for tuberculosis and pneumonia and as a pain-killer.

Oddly enough, heroin was also marketed as a solution to a problem that had grown to be worldwide by the late 1800s—opium addiction. The first solution to getting people off their opium addiction was to switch them to the supposedly less dangerous morphine. When that didn’t work, they tried weaning opium and morphine addicts onto this new, also supposedly less dangerous drug called heroin. Medical reports around the world gave heroin a cautious thumbs-up into the 1900s, and it was even approved by the American Medical Association in 1906. Obviously, it didn’t work, and by 1924, it’s estimated that 98 percent of New York’s drug addicts were addicted to heroin.

There are different kinds of quack doctors. Some are just out to make a quick buck and prey on the sick, while others really, truly believe that they’ve found the next miracle cure or that they’re going to heal all the ills that plague mankind. But both kinds of quacks would be nothing without the people who believed them.

10 Louis XIV And The Royal Touch

There’s a lot of pressure and responsibility that goes along with being the monarch, and quite a few monarchs have been said to possess the “royal touch” and the capability to heal illnesses—especially scrofula, a type of tuberculosis. The idea started with England’s Edward the Confessor during his rule, which ended in 1066. Even Henry VIII was said to have the touch, which he passed along to ill subjects in the form of a protective coin that they could wear around their necks.

Some monarchs pushed the royal touch more than others. France’s Louis XIV saw around 3,000 people during his coronation alone, all waiting to be saved and cured by the touch of the king. Over the course of his reign, he was said to have touched, and perhaps healed, around 350,000 people.

The gift was said to be passed on by a particular oil by which the new king was consecrated. It had been handed down from king to king and had originally been brought to Earth by a dove that appeared at the 496 baptism of King Clovis. Kept in Reims Cathedral for hundreds of years, it was said to be the heaven-sent oil that bestowed healing powers on the kings.

Some monarchs discouraged it, with some—like William III—saying that good sense would most likely be more useful than a king’s touch. Eventually, it fell out of favor, and that happened largely with Louis XIV. The fate of the royal touch was helped along by an observation by Voltaire, who had stated that if he really did have the ability to cure scrofula by the touch, he certainly should have cured his mistress, who instead ultimately died from it.

9 Dr. Adolf Fritz, Ghost Surgeon

According to the story, Dr. Adolf Fritz was a German medic who died during World War I. Not content to leave his life’s work unfinished, he began possessing the bodies of Brazilian men, turning them not exactly into surgeons, but into faith healers.

His first occupation was of Ze Arigo, who acted as a vessel for the German doctor until 1971. Part of his routine was that he would visit with an ill person, and then write out a cryptic prescription for whatever it was that was ailing them. Conveniently, the only person who was able to read his handwriting was his brother, who also conveniently happened to be a pharmacist. Later, he moved on to psychic surgery, which he performed without cutting into the patient, removing tumors and such from bodies without leaving a mark on them.

Ze Arigo died in 1971, but Dr. Fritz showed up in a couple more bodies. Currently, he’s inhabiting Rubens Farias Jr., and he’s moving on from just plain psychic surgery to astral healing and a sort of medicine that treats a spiritual “body” in order to cure the physical one.

In 1997, members of the Heart Disease Research Foundation visited Farias and witnessed him in action. Diagnosis took only a few seconds, and most patients were given a shot containing an unidentified brown liquid, usually given around the area of the complaint. Occasionally, he actually performed a brand of surgery, usually assisted by actual, qualified medical personnel.

He ended up getting attention from the police in 1999, and when his office was raided, it was found that in addition to a stash of rather conventional medicines he was giving away without a license, he also had an armed guard with an illegal weapon, and plenty of allegations of fraud—including one from the illegally armed guard, swearing that people had died in his custody before being taken to a more traditional hospital.

Needless to say, no real evidence of an actual World War I surgeon named Dr. Fritz has ever surfaced, either.

8 Johanna Brandt’s Grape Cure

According to Johanna Brandt’s 1925 book, The Grape Cure, her method and medicine is mankind’s only hope to completely overcome cancer. She stresses that her methods are great as preventatives as well, and that following her instructions will help keep people cancer-free and even destroy cancer.

Her instructions are fairly simple. You have to prepare the body, first, with two or three days of fasting, drinking lots of water, and a few warm-water-and-lemon-juice enemas. All that means is the grapes will have a clean slate on which to start working their magic. After that, you have a few glasses of water, and your first grapes-only meal. Then you follow it with grapes-only meals every two hours from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM and repeat for a week or two.

A week or two may also be a month. Her directions aren’t really all that specific, but she is incredibly specific about the idea that you only eat grapes. You can eat all the different parts of grapes, and all the different colors of grapes (presumably, so you don’t get sick of eating grapes), but she definitely wants you to eat only grapes. At the very least, you should be eating 0.5 kilograms (1 lb) of grapes every day and 2 kilograms (4 lb) at the most. If you start to feel upset or resentful at the mere mention of grapes, skip a few meals, because in order to work best, you have to embrace and enjoy the grapes.

Needless to say, the American Cancer Society says that while grapes are, in fact, good for you, they’re not going to be curing cancer by themselves any time soon.

7 Peter Mandel And Colorpuncture

In the 1960s, Peter Mandel developed a new process of healing that balanced acupuncture, holistic healing and spirituality. He believed that the cause of sickness was an imbalance in the unconscious mind and the physical body, and that everything could be brought back to harmony with something he called colorpuncture, or acu-light therapy.

Colorpuncture is exactly what it sounds like. The therapy uses all the points of acupuncture, but applies different lights with different color frequencies to those points. According to Mandel, the application of color to the right places on the body helps to fix the relationship between the soul and the body, easing the stress between the two that is ultimately making the person ill. Light is applied to the skin using an “acu-light wand,” which not only applies the light but focuses it as well.

And, in order to ensure other parts of the body are in harmony with the treatment, practitioners also use things like healing crystals and sound therapy along with the colorpuncture. Mandel’s US Esogetic Colorpuncture Institute claims success in treating migraines, sleep disorders, respiratory disorders, and learning disorders in children.

6 Charles Baunscheidt And Baunscheidtism

On page 33 of his book on Baunscheidtism, 1800s doctor Charles Baunscheidt tells his reader that they’re on the cusp of numerous medical breakthroughs, all stemming from the realization that bloodletting probably isn’t the way to go about curing disease and illness. He hopes that soon, the world will stop the practice altogether, because he has something much, much better in mind—the Lebenswecker.

Also called the Resuscitator, Baunscheidt’s medical tools are needles—very, very sharp needles. Poking the skin with the needles allows the bad stuff that’s making a person sick to drain away in a method that is much safer than bloodletting, according to Baunscheidt. Baunscheidt’s methods were incredibly popular, beginning with his first designs of the tool that he perfected in 1865. It was so popular, in fact, that the company that continued to produce the Lebensweckers only stopped doing so when it was bombed by Allied forces in 1944.

Later, Baunscheidt would go on to add the use of oils to his practice, saying that application of his secret concoction to the skin would help draw out the toxins faster. The more irritated the skin was in this secondary source of trauma, the more distracted the body would get by it and the faster the original illness would drain away. He had quite the list of illnesses and troubles it was supposed to cure, ranging from baldness to whooping cough to a variety of mental illnesses.

5 James Morison And The Vegetable Universal Pills

When it comes to the world of medicine, James Morison is an incredibly interesting and rather two-sided character. On one hand, he was pretty revolutionary in his thinking. He believed that illnesses in the body were ultimately caused by something in the blood, and that the mind and body were linked in both health and sickness. On the other hand, he derided doctors, saying that prescribing too much medication to their patients was nothing short of a criminal act. He also thought that he had found the perfect cure for everything—his miracle Vegetable Universal Pills.

Originally a businessman, he started his campaign in 1825. He was so interested in just helping people that he originally gave his pills away; when no one was taking it seriously, he decided to charge for them. Five years later, he was making what today would be approximately $4 million a year; he eventually built the British College of Health to sell the pills from.

Throughout the decade, Morison wasn’t without his problems. He was confronted a few times with lawsuits claiming that overdosing on his pills had caused more than a few deaths, but it wasn’t long before he was over that little setback, with his pills clearly advertised and labeled as only the real thing. According to the claims, they were good for curing anything from cholera to jaundice to liver ailments. They could even relieve limb and joint pain and treat snakebites.

Morison died in 1840, and his son was content at that point to just let the company run itself. The pills themselves went through a few different variations, and by the 1900s it was found that they actually contained ingredients like myrrh, aloe, and rhubarb.

4 William Bates And Sun Gazing

When it comes to remembering little bits of knowledge that we first learn when we’re young, one of those is invariably something about not staring at the Sun because it’ll hurt your eyes. That’s the exact opposite of the instructions of ophthalmologist William Bates.

According to Bates’s turn-of-the-century techniques, looking directly at the Sun was precisely how you kept your eyes healthy and your vision sharp. He recommended regular sun gazing, and specified some eye exercises that you could do while you were staring at the Sun. He suggested circling the Sun with your eyes, then moving them in a figure eight pattern in order to strengthen your eye muscles and your vision. The point was that the light waves from the sun were necessary to keep your body and your eyes functioning at a healthy level, and they needed to be exposed to the full spectrum of light to keep vision from getting weak.

The Bates Method is still around, too—although now, the suggested technique is called “sunning,” and it involves keeping your eyes closed.

3 Royal Rife And His Cancer Zapper

There are two different points of view when it comes to the work of Royal Rife. Some people insist that he’s an absolute and outright fraud, while others insist that he was unfairly targeted by major medical organizations and his works shut down, because they didn’t really want the cure to cancer to get out.

Working in the 1930s, Royal Raymond Rife (alternately an optics engineer, a chauffeur, and a mechanic) created a microscope with a massive rate of magnification. (He also claimed he had a degree from Georgia Tech, but Georgia Tech has denied that.) The microscope allowed him to see all the germs and bacteria that he said were responsible for human illness, and because it’s no good having that knowledge if you can’t do something about it, he built a beam ray that he claimed could target and destroy the microbes that were causing illness. He started using the ray on patients in exchange for donations to his work, but his inventions were ultimately confiscated by the FDA.

Rife claimed that while he had been conducting his trials, he had successfully cured 15 cancer patients that had otherwise been told their cancers were untreatable. After 60 days with his beam therapy, they were cured.

The dismissal of his findings and the ultimate suppression of his work was the stuff that conspiracy theorists love. Even today, there are plenty of theories about how and why Rife’s work was shut down by the so-called “medical mafia,” who orchestrated a downfall steeped in bribes and betrayals, ultimately leading to the end of his medical career, even though there are still a handful of his devoted followers trying to resurrect his methods.

2 Ryke Geerd Hamer And German New Medicine

No one can deny that Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer suffered a terrible tragedy when his 17-year-old son was shot and murdered while on holiday. That moment was the turning point not only in Hamer’s life, but also in his career; it wasn’t long after his son’s death that he was diagnosed with testicular cancer.

And he realized that the two were invariably linked.

Hamer claims to have examined the lives of thousands and thousands of cancer patients, and he kept finding the same thing over and over—that their cancer diagnosis came after an incredibly traumatic event. He concluded that shock and surprise were the main causes of cancer, and that the development of the disease was the body’s response to the situation.

He calls this response the Meaningful Special Biological Program(MSBP), and the event that causes is it is the Dirk Hamer Syndrome (DHS), after his son. From the moment of the DHS, it’s possible that the outcome is eventually cancer. Oftentimes, the part of the body impacted will have something to do with what the crisis was—a mother worrying about her child will develop breast cancer, for instance.

In response, he developed something he called German New Medicine, and he says that not only is it based on common sense, but it’s pretty much the exact opposite of what regular doctors will have you doing. Instead of the traditional things like chemotherapy and radiation, the first step in recovery is therapy that reduces the original stress that started the process, thereby reversing it.

1 Norman Baker And The Crescent Hotel

Norman Baker was pretty prolific in his endeavors. He ran for the US Senate and for governor of Iowa, he was a popular radio host, organizer of a vaudeville troupe and magic show, a machinist, a high school dropout and, if his claims were to be believed, the man who discovered a cure for cancer.

Baker had the ear of an incredible portion of the country, as his anti-Catholic, anti-Semite, Republican, and small-town supporter radio show could often be heard across the country. When Herbert Hoover was elected president, Baker even got an invitation to meet with him. It was in 1929, though, that he slammed the American Medical Association and declared that he was the one that could cure cancer. Along the way, he took on a whole host of subjects that he said were causing health problems for people, including fluoride in the water and aluminum pots.

In 1930, his vaudeville showmanship came in handy when he staged a massive show in front of 17,000 people to demonstrate that he could, in fact, cure cancer. In front of the witnesses, his assisting medical team removed part of a patient’s skull, performed the magical cure, and declared him cancer-free. Two years later, he was on trial for peddling a cancer cure that was nothing more than a concoction of water, watermelon seeds, clover, and corn silk.

Eventually shut down by the Federal Radio Commission, Baker made his way to the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas and promptly painted the entire Victorian mansion purple, black, orange, yellow, and red, turning it into a sort of holistic healing retreat. It was while he was selling his miracle cures at the Crescent Hotel that he got in trouble for mail fraud and was eventually shut down for good.

Are you experiencing symptoms of imbalanced frequencies? Low cellular voltage? Psychic aberrations? Well, sit back and relax. There’s a wellness device just for you—even if you don’t feel diseased.

Warning: This list may contain misinformation, if the title wasn’t enough indication already.

10. Spooky2

Did you know that all medical conditions have specific electromagnetic frequencies? If you did, you’ve probably heard of the Rife machine. Invented in the 1920s, it delivers pulses of electromagnetism to cure almost any disease. Unfortunately for the inventor, and possibly for the world, mainstream science was hostile. The earnest engineer Royal Raymond Rife died penniless and embittered, and, in the years since, his already ruined legacy has been further sullied by snake oil salesmen and scandals.

More recently, however, especially during the feeding frenzy of COVID-19, Rife has made a big comeback. Marketed on Facebook as “the affordable Rife device for every home,” Spooky2 Scalar controversially promised to “protect you and your family from this terrible virus.” Supplied with a specific frequency for stopping the disease, as per Rife’s theories, the device came with additional assurance that “scalar energy provides optimal energetic support for the immune system.” The Federal Trade Commission disagreed and sent the company a warning. But don’t let that slow you down. The basic kit only costs $1,600 and comes in a reassuringly rugged briefcase with a cutesy smiling ghost logo.

9. Electropsychometer

Despite what Scientologists would have you believe, the E-meter wasn’t invented by L. Ron Hubbard. The Electropsychometer, as it was originally called, was invented by Volney Mathison, a chiropractor, for use in psychotherapy or analysis. This is ironic given Hubbard’s avowed antipathy to psychotherapists. But he had another use in mind: falsifying serious aberrations or criminality in a user with so-called “discreditable reads”. This is Scientology’s on-ramp.

The Church’s E-meters are assembled at Gold Base, California, a high-security compound under constant armed guard. Each unit usually costs $4,000, but you can pick up non-affiliated Electropsychometers or ex-Scientologist (FreeZone) E-meters for less. Just have a look on eBay.

They’re no more than crude lie detectors, polygraphs lite, galvanometers with tin can electrodes. Powered by leaky batteries, all they do is gauge your skin’s electrical resistance. Hubbard, however, believed (or pretended) the device could eliminate illness—for which the government sued him. Nowadays even the Church admits the device can do nothing by itself. But in the hands of an unscrupulous entrepreneur… Remember: you can’t help anyone until you get rich.

8. BioResonance Machine

Internal organs playing up? Don’t delay! Scan them for imbalanced frequencies and perform a non-linear statistical analysis today! All your organs, cells, and tissues emit electromagnetic waves, don’t you know, and their frequency changes in response to different stresses. In fact (or whatever), each disease has its own “signature resonance frequency”. So it’s possible to scan for pretty much anything without an invasive procedure. Simply attach the electrodes.

Developed (and presumably abandoned) by Russian scientists in the 1990s, this technology has now been perfected by the wizards at OBERON in Florida. Not only can the BioResonance Machine scan your organs for diseases; it can also heal them in no time—in the comfort of your home! It’s just a matter of altering your damaged cells’ frequencies via headphones.

There are no side effects, no chemicals, and no inconvenience, and it works best alongside good nutrition and other treatments… Yes, that’s consistent with placebo—but don’t be a sheep. Another bioresonance company, Rayonex Biomedical, actually has clinical proof of efficacy for cervical spine syndrome, or neck pain. Okay, so pain is easily treated by placebo, and yes, the study was conducted by Rayonex itself, and yes, they seem reluctant to carry out more trials given there’s no evidence—only anecdotes—for the other conditions listed. But did we mention it’s non-invasive?

7. Stimulations VII

Small cup size getting you down? Forget surgery. The Stimulations VII vacuum device can permanently, non-invasively, expand your lilliputian breast tissue. Just place the self-sealing dome over your bust and activate the pump for an enlargement of up to four cup sizes! It can even regrow breasts that were surgically removed by mastectomy. 

Well, that’s if you can find a Stimulations VII on the market. In the early 2000s, one ungrateful customer took the Iowa-based manufacturer, New Womyn, to court for refusing to refund her $2,000. She hadn’t read the small print. By “18-month money-back guarantee,” the company meant she had to use the device for 18 months before she was eligible for a refund. And she would only be eligible if, throughout that time, she’d visited a doctor once a month.

Fair enough. But she kicked up a stink all the same and poor Dan Kaiser, New Womyn’s CEO, was ordered to pay a $90,000 civil penalty.

6. BioPhotonic Scanner

If you’re the sort to wonder how many carotenoids you’ve got in your skin, this device is for you. If you don’t care, this device is also for you—because you should care, what’s the matter with you. Carotenoids are antioxidants that give orange, red, and yellow plants their color. They include beta-carotene, lutein, and lycopene, among others. And, according to experts, they may be one reason why eating fruits and vegetables lowers the risk of disease. What the BioPhotonic Scanner does is check that you’ve eaten enough (which, if you suffer from anterograde amnesia like in 50 First Dates and don’t like keeping a food diary, is no small thing).

Critics say it only measures carotenoids in the skin, and isn’t a reliable measure of your overall antioxidant status. But their only basis for saying so is the total lack of scientific evidence—which means their argument falls down as well. If there’s even a remote chance the BioPhotonic Scanner can measure your antioxidant health, can you really afford not to buy one? Just think of the money you could save at the greengrocer, knowing when to stop buying vegetables.

Plus, if your scan shows sub-optimal carotenoid levels, the same company that sold you the scanner will sell you antioxidant supplements. Beat that for convenience.

5. BioCharger

Sometimes all you need is some more “subtle energy”. Invented by Jim Girard, the BioCharger delivers pulsed harmonics, at a frequency of your choice, to weakly vibrating cells—re-energizing and revitalizing your natural magnetic energy, aligning your mind and body, and raising your cellular voltage. Sure, you can do the same by walking barefoot, releasing negative emotions, listening to pure sounds, and drinking alkaline water, but this is a lot more expensive.

According to the shut-ins at BioCharger, “over 90% of our day is spent indoors, blocked from nature’s vital energies.” They’re not suggesting you go outside; this machine is a high-tech alternative. Anyway, at $15,000, you’ll have to stay in to afford one. Don’t worry about the science; there are loads of testimonials. There’s also a 45-day guarantee, so there’s really nothing to lose besides the non-refundable $250 shipping fee.

With its plasma gas spectrum tubes and menacing red glow, the BioCharger certainly looks the part. Nobody has to know it doesn’t work. You could even make your money back by charging friends for treatment! That’s what Michael Nguyen does; the fecal transplant enthusiast is one of the BioCharger’s most high-profile advocates and even he admits it’s a glorified placebo about as effective as journaling. He still uses it, though, and so should you.

4. Electro Physiological Feedback Xrroid

In 2005, an Oklahoma woman suffering joint and leg pain wisely entrusted her health to the EPFX quantum biofeedback device. That her husband died using it for cancer didn’t matter; she believed it could nurse her back to health. The worst of her husband’s illness—the side effects of chemotherapy—she rightly blamed on the hospital. Neither does it matter that she died the same year.

EPFX salesmen have only good things to say. Even the developer himself, cross-dressing self-described genius William Nelson, who as a teenager helped NASA save Apollo 13, says it cures cancer and AIDS. Stinking rich from selling the things—17,000 of them at 20 grand a piece—he’s got a Budapest mansion with servants and a movie studio. When he’s not on tour giving pep talks to salesmen, he stars in his own movies about saving the world from the villainous FDA. He also has eight doctorates. But that’s all by the by.

EPFX treats the root cause of illness, not just the symptoms. It also has a display to watch healing occur in real time. Arterial cholesterol blockages, for example, appear as little white blobs that shrink and disappear during treatment. Similar to the BioResonance Machine, EPFX detects electrical imbalances (voltage, amperage, electron pressure, and so on) and immediately sets about correcting them.

3. Zapper

Finally, a wellness device that doesn’t bamboozle with a high-sounding sciencey name. Invented by Hulda Clark, doctor of physiology (okay, zoology), the Zapper kills parasites, bacteria, and viruses without harming bodily tissue. It does this by delivering low-voltage electrical zaps through the two supplied handheld electrodes. Not good enough? We can see you’re a sharp one. Why not ride business class with the Orgone Zapper model, which not only zaps but orgone-heals too. Just don’t use a Zapper if you’re wearing a pacemaker! Or pregnant, for that matter, as it can’t tell parasites from babies.

Even if you’re not suffering an infestation, the Zapper may still be for you. Some users report an aura-enhancing effect from just half an hour of use. Clark recommended only seven-minute sessions, but we use it for as long as we like. Just stop when you start seeing burn marks. And show no fear! Sweat can be a problem.

We know what you’re thinking. You can do all this yourself with a car battery, right? But Clark’s Zapper comes with positive offset square wave—and you don’t know what that is, do you?

2. Ozone generator

Hole in the ozone layer, bad. Therefore ozone, good. Therefore pumping the stuff right into your home, even better. It’s unimpeachable reasoning like this that brought us the ozone generator, improving the lives of thousands of investors and salesmen. There are always naysayers, of course: the Environmental Protection Agency, the American Lung Association, the Food and Drug Administration, and various so-called scientists, all of whom insist that ozone is harmful at high concentrations indoors. They’ll tell you it takes years for ozone to eliminate toxins, and that in doing it’ll release a lot more.

But forget about that and think about this: if it’s harmful to us, it’s harmful to parasites—bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens. So there’s really no surer way to banish stink and disease from your home. Besides, ozone is all-natural. Just plug the mechanical discharge unit into the mains and a high-voltage electrical field will do the rest, transforming all your smelly used oxygen into pure, clean ozone.

1. Hyper Dimensional Resonator

This one’s a little different. It’s a radionic time travel device that can help with astral projection by emitting unlimited white chi energy. Invented on a farm in Nebraska in 1981, it’s actually the souped-up version of an earlier prototype, the Sonic Resonator. The main improvement is a caduceus coil electromagnet. Operation is simple. Strap on the time-coil headband, spit in the witness well, add a quartz crystal, place the electromagnet between your legs, and turn the dials to the date you wish to visit. (Both go up to 10.) Then meditate while rubbing the rubbing plate. You should be transported—astrally, unless you happen to be sitting on a grid point or vortex, in which case physically—to your desired spacetime coordinates.

Users commonly find themselves aboard UFOs, in other countries, or in parallel dimensions and time lines. Some have returned with objects, only to see them disintegrate. Other times it’s more subtle. One user, after a seemingly unsuccessful session, woke up feeling strange like he was in the wrong place. His suspicions were confirmed when he opened the fridge and couldn’t find the cookie dough he left there. He called his wife at work and was astonished to hear there wasn’t any there in the first place. Another got to use it with the inventor himself, back in 1989: “When he turned it on, clouds formed in the room, and sparks danced around the chandelier.” At first it seemed like nothing had happened, but when she next sat down to watch her favorite movie, Shane, “dialogue she’d memorized was altered or spoken by different characters.” She said it scared her to death.

But don’t be put off; the Hyper Dimensional Resonator is a wellness device. Consistent use can nurture your spiritual growth. Just don’t get blood in the witness well; it’ll attract demons.