The Great Humiliation

For a fellow who ended his formal schooling after the eighth grade, Harry M. (for Mathias) Hoxsey, 52, has made quite a name for himself in the world of medicine. His formula for success: a mixture of roots, water and licorice, labeled Hoxsey Tonic and sold in 16-oz. bottles to thousands as a remedy for cancer.

The tonic, and Harry Hoxsey's special treatment, have brought him wealth --and fame of a sort. He has been denounced as a charlatan by the A.M.A.; the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regards his tonic as worthless as a cancer cure. Yet some 40 new patients a day keep coming to the Hoxsey Cancer Clinic in Dallas, hoping for the miracle cure--at $300 to $400 a treatment ("charity" patients pay little or nothing). Hoxsey friends are now trying to extend his domain beyond Texas. For weeks an attempt to establish a new Hoxsey clinic in Pennsylvania has been kicking up a major row.

Also Barber's Itch. Hoxsey's rise began 30 years ago in Illinois, when he inherited the magic formula from his father, an itinerant veterinarian turned faith healer and "cancer expert." Skipping from town to town across the U.S., Hoxsey prescribed the tonic for internal tumors, and a yellowish arsenical powder (a widely used turn-of-the-century remedy) for skin cancer. By his own count, he was arrested more than 100 times. During a suit against the A.M.A. in Iowa, in 1931, one patient testified that after Hoxsey diagnosis and treatment, he had gone to a local doctor and discovered that he was suffering not from cancer but from barber's itch. Yet enough patients have stood by him to convince juries that Hoxsey and no other saved them. Through it all, Hoxsey recalled later, "I stood the humiliation for humanity."

In 1936 Harry Hoxsey set up a cancer clinic in a small building in Dallas and got a naturopath's license. Despite several lawsuits, he was soon doing well enough to move to plusher quarters. He hired two assistants (neither of them M.D.s), within ten years boosted his annual net income to $100,000. On the side he plunged into oil and real estate, bought a 588-acre ranch.

Today Hoxsey runs a fast-moving medical assembly line. When a new patient applies for treatment, he gets an interview, routine blood and urine tests, X rays, and a fast diagnosis from osteopaths Delmar Randall and Donald Watt. The fee is paid in advance.

Also Cough Syrup. In 1952 the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denounced Hoxsey's claims for his cancer tonic as "false and misleading," ordered the district judge in Dallas to forbid interstate sales and shipment of Hoxsey's bottled wares. (Hoxsey and his lawyers delayed the ban for 15 months.) Said the A.M.A.'s watchdog bureau of investigation: "The whole thing reeks of fraud." The American Cancer Society was even more emphatic: "There is nothing in his . . . medicine which has the slightest effect on cancer, except, according to one investigator, to stimulate its growth slightly."

Boasts Hoxsey: "I'll deposit $100,000 in any bank in Dallas County if I can't prove positively that we have cured both internal and external pathologically proven cases of cancer. Nobody's ever taken me up on the offer." Full-scale tests of his methods have been impossible for one reason: out of the thousands of patients he has treated, Hoxsey has yet to produce 50 "cures" of internal cancer with biopsies and clear five-year histories--the minimum requirements for reliable statistical study.

The worst of Hoxsey's method, say the cancer researchers, is that he draws cancer victims away from conventional treatment, making eventual cure impossible. But Hoxsey goes right on making new friends. No friend is louder or more loyal than Pennsylvania State Senator J ohn J. Haluska, who plumped for Hoxsey after his 35-year-old sister took the tonic last summer. "I don't care whether it's cough syrup or pure mountain water." she told him. "That's what I owe my life to."

Also a Cure for Recession. As administrator of the 160-bed Miners' Hospital in Spangler, Pa. (pop. 3,200), Booster Haluska castigated the hospital staff ("slaughterers") for not adopting the tonic. Then he staged a "Hoxsey Day," with a parade, baton-twirling high-school girls, and a speech by Hoxsey, up from Dallas for the occasion. Hoxsey won over miners and businessmen with talk of the wealth that a Hoxsey clinic would bring to Spangler and nearby Portage, both badly hit by the recession in the coal-mining industry. Later Haluska suggested that the Miners' Hospital (run by the United Mine Workers) should give its nurses' home as a clinic to Hoxsey.

The 16 M.D.s at Miners' Hospital promptly declared that they would quit unless 1) Hoxsey was kept out of the county, 2) Haluska was fired as administrator. Cried Haluska: "There will be bloodshed, marches on the hospital. Labor is inflamed." A few days later the doctors charged in court that Haluska, for all his baiting, had quietly offered to clear out if they paid him $10,000. Whereupon the hospital board of trustees fired both Haluska and the hospital's entire medical staff (although the doctors were reinstated later). Last week, after a stormy court hearing, County Judge John Pentz refused to help Haluska get his job back, rejected his demand for court action against the doctors and trustees. Angrily, Haluska announced that he would look for another Hoxsey clinic site near Spangler, Pa. "to serve suffering humanity."

Down in Dallas, Harry Hoxsey's golden days may be running out. Hoxsey has announced that he will continue to ship his tonic out of Texas despite the U.S. court injunction; can expect to face contempt-of-court charges. But Harry Hoxsey is undisturbed. Says he: "You couldn't run me out of here with a Gatling gun."

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