![]() I could barely stop turning the pages throughout this part, only really stopping to yell at the people within the pages. The first part of the book deals with the experience of the sisters’ at ‘Dr’ Hazzard’s hands, and reads like an extremely effective horror/thriller. Buying into ‘Dr’ Hazzard’s assertions that every single one of their non-issues could be cured by fasting, the sisters were dumped in a shack on the edge of Hazzard’s property (a far cry from the fancy sanitarium they’d been promised), had their money, possessions and power of attorney wrenched from them, and were administered extreme enemas whilst being beaten (‘massaged’ – although massages involve less punching where I’m from) and starved past the point of being able to function. In 1911, two wealthy British sisters – of the type that my line of work tends to call the ‘worried well’ – travelled to the United States in order to undergo the ‘fasting cure’ in the sanitarium of Dr Linda Burfield Hazzard. Hazzard died in 1938 while attempting a fasting cure on herself.Perfect reading for cold, dark nights, Starvation Heights is a fantastic helping of true crime that reads like a thriller that will have you constantly scurrying to the kitchen for sandwiches, as well as giving a wide berth to anyone who sets themselves up as a health guru. In 1920 she returned to Olalla, Washington and opened a new sanitarium, known publicly as a “school of health” since her medical license had been revoked, and continued to starve patients until it burned to the ground in 1935 it was never rebuilt.ĭr. She assured people that her method was a panacea for all manner of ills, because she was able to rid the body of toxins that caused imbalances in the body. Local residents referred to the place as “Starvation Heights”. While some patients survived and publicly sang her praises, more than 40 patients died under her care, most from starvation. ![]() She created a “sanitarium”, Wilderness Heights, in Olalla, Washington, where inpatients fasted for days, weeks or months, on a diet of small amounts of tomato and asparagus juice and occasionally, a small teaspoon of orange juice. In 1908 she published a book, Fasting For The Cure Of Disease, promoting fasting as a cure for virtually every ailment, including cancer. Fasting had heretofore been considered a quack medical cure, popular with “health faddists” of the time. Hazzard was the first doctor in the United States to earn a medical degree as a “fasting specialist”. She and her husband, Samuel Christman Hazzard, moved to New Zealand, where she practiced as a dietitian and osteopath until 1920. She was released on parole on Decemafter serving two years, and the following year Governor Ernest Lister gave her a full pardon. Hazzard was sentenced to 2 to 20 years in prison, which she served in the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla. She later testified against Hazzard at trial. She was too weak to leave on her own, weighing less than 60 pounds. Williamson’s sister, Dorothea, also took the treatment, and only survived because a family friend showed up in time to remove her from the compound. At the trial it was proved that Hazzard had forged Williamson’s will and stolen most of her valuables. In 1912 she was convicted of manslaughter for the death of Claire Williamson, a wealthy British woman, who weighed less than 50 pounds at the time of her death.
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