STRANGE POWERS OF HEALING by Brad Steiger

YOUNG LONDONER PREFERS HEALING TO "SWINGING!"

That's a chapter towards the end of this happy little volume, which hides a rogues gallery of scam artists and snake oil salesmen, all glowingly described with the utmost credulity by Steiger. The combo of unceasing, forced positivity and the unscrupulous nature of the subjects makes this one of Steiger's most unsavory books. Ghosts and ghouls are one thing, but an entire book promoting quack cures? In his introduction Steiger says that modern (1960s) American Christians are becoming more attuned to the power of faith healing. Given the explosion of televangelism and the "Alternative Health" industry in the decades since, I'd sadly say he was right. Thanks to guys like Brad, in the present day we face an absolute juggernaut of exploitive quackery, with useless, dangerous, or just just plain half-assed treatments peddled by modern conspiracists descended from the likes of those profiled in these very pages.

We got weeping Madonnas, we got the entirety of Christian Science, we got pioneering televangelist Oral Roberts, "influential New Thought Leader" Dr. Brown Landone, healer Harry Edwards, and a long long list of other so-called healers. Brad's buddy Paul Twitchell drops by with a tale of astral healing. There's a feeble fable of a French communist who converts to Christ after a miraculous healing, and later Steiger shakes his fist at the "Communist press" in Denmark for raising scurrilous rumors about the Royal Family and top Danish quack Greet Hofmans. Steiger relays the strange story of Felix Kersten, Himmler's personal masseuse, and the claim that he saved 60,000 Dutch Jews during the Holocaust. The facts seem a little more clouded there, with Kersten exaggerating his accomplishments postwar, but Steiger runs with the "heartwarming" story nevertheless. Every story herein is milked for maximum woo factor, from the courtly intrigue of Count Cagliostro to jes' plain folks like Granny Grant and folksy miracles like the healing waters of Snapfinger Creek.

Steiger ends with a thud, on a chapter of "Granny medicine" and folk remedies. That's boring, Brad!

"AHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Popular Library, 1968