Nexus - 0501 - New Times Magazine-pages

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able problems he encountered with "unmanageable and freaky Canadian political scientist Andrew Michrowski fixes the date currents". with even more precision: "It was possible for Nikola Tesla, In 1908 he left India to promote his inventions through Europe, Alexander Graham Bell and George Westinghouse to make their eventually, in 1911, dropping anchor in the US with his (first) mark because in their time, before 1913, the retardant forces were wife and two children. He loved America and vigorously not yet organized enough to totally counterweigh their innova- embraced the principles and politics of an open democracy. tions." However, the same cannot be said of his wife who, in reaction to Suffice it to note that 1912 was the year that young Morris her early years of impoverishment and perhaps more than a little | Fishbein, MD (sic) (neither passing anatomy nor completing his culture-shocked, returned alone to India. residency), entered the employment of the already disreputable Dinshah was so taken by his vision of a Walt Whitman/Horatio American Medical Association, without ever practising medicine. Alger America as perceived in those pre-war years that in 1914 he In 1913 he became Assistant Editor of the AMA's journal, JAMA. turned down a private offer of US$100,000 for his Internal A prolific writer of articles, editorials and, later, books crusading Combustion Engine Fault Finder which he developed while serv- for the medical profession, Fishbein became Editor of JAMA and ing as Professor and Chief Instructor at the Hygeia in 1924, holding these two posts for New York College of Engineering Science 25 years. and Automobile Instruction. Instead, he So it was against this background that gave all rights to the US military for avia- Dinshah, ignorant of or indifferent to this tion application. (Amongst his patented dawning of a New Age of Darkness, inno- inventions are: #983,703, Electrical Wiring | Dyring th | I cently went public with SCT in April 1920 in Device, 1911; #1,144,898, Automobile u g t e p ague yea s New York City. The first formal instruction, Internal Combustion Engine Fault Finder, of the early 1900s, in December that year, was attended by 27 1915; #1,544,973, Color Wave Projector, A ' . students. During the next four years (as 1925; #1,724,469, Electric Thermometer, Dinshah s eclectic and Morris Fishbein consolidated his political oe fae 1936)" Color Wave Projection unorthodox power within the ay Dinshah het 26 pparatus, . 18 . classes, training over students, predomi- Dinshah was granted US citizenship in ministrations effected a nantly physicians but including many lay commission as Capsaze in the New York 60 per cent recovery a the vevy ease with which the correct Police Department Reserve, and in rate, in contrast to the tonation could be determined and recognition of his wartime civilian applied by laymen in the privacy of aeronautic harbour-patrol activities he 40 per cent recovery their homes (as much as, if not more was promoted to Colonel, awarded the X i n f than, mere efficacy) which constituted Liberty Medal by NYC Mayor John e pectat WUE © . the true threat. If Dinshah had kept the conventional medical practice. Hyland and appointed head and princi- SCT technology arcane, the equipment pal instructor of the NYPD Aviation expensively overdesigned and within School. The banner year of 1919 the preserve of the professional health found him a member in good standing community, events would have played with the American Association of out quite differently. Unquestionably it Progressive Medicine, and the elected was this accessibility and the conse- Vice-President of the Allied Medical quent commercial threat which SCT Association of America and the represented that made Dinshah an early National Association of Drugless target for an eager Fishbein. Practitioners. Fortunately for Dinshah, an early This all seems a strange background for a "charlatan" and attendee was the 23-year-tenured Chief Surgeon of the Woman's "huckster", as he was to be labelled and pilloried by Fishbein's Hospital of Philadelphia, the highly credentialled Kate W. AMA, in conjunction with the equally acquiescent, ever spineless Baldwin, MD, FACS, a member of the AMA and the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) in the decades that fol- Pennsylvania Medical Society, and the first woman in the lowed. American Academy of Ophthalmology and Ololaryngology. Something insidious and unnoticed had happened during the 24 _— Until her death in 1937, she remained a private SCT practitioner years since Dinshah's first visit to America. The robber barons of and a vociferous advocate in public, frequently defending SCT the 19th century had discovered value in technology and proceed- and Dinshah against the dark forces of repression. ed to exercise the same piratical control over intellectual property Dr Baldwin enjoyed sufficient status and seniority that the ini- as they previously had over the traditional sources of material tial anti-light-therapy onslaught could only incommode but not wealth. Lights dimmed all over the shortlived Age of intimidate or destroy her. Indeed, so forceful was her presence Enlightenment as new acquisitional and inquisitional institutions and so unequivocal her defence testimony at Dinshah's first trial became empowered and entrenched. in 1931, that the government refrained from any prosecution of Social historian and author David Lindsay (Magnificent | Dinshah—on the basis of science—during her lifetime. Possibilities, Koodansha America, Fall 1996) notes that with the In 1921 Dr Baldwin arranged for Dinshah to lecture in change of the century there was a change in the perception of the Philadelphia. Eventually her brother, the equally eminent surgeon technical man, the inventor. New social forces coalesced, mediat- L. Grant Baldwin, MD, FACS (Mayo Clinic), was to introduce ing direct contact between people and technology. The control several SCT units to his Brooklyn, NY, practice. and credibility that had been the scientist's were co-opted by agen- Some of the social (political) history of SCT is to be found pre- cies of industry working with agencies of government. served in the meagre, but reliable, regular Minutes of the Board of unorthodox practice. NEXUS - 39 DECEMBER 1997 - JANUARY 1998