Key Takeaways:

• Fishbein, as editor of JAMA, mounts a broad attack on unorthodox healing systems and charismatic healers he sees as preying on the public.
• He catalogues a wide range of "cures" and devices, arguing that many rely on suggestion, ignorance, or outright fraud rather than sound science.
• The book helps define mainstream medicine’s self‑image in the early 20th century: rational, scientific, and opposed to commercialized pseudoscience.
• In doing so, it also documents the sheer diversity of alternative health movements that flourished in response to conventional medicine’s limits.