Pathoclast
notes: label: Description
content: “Scientists the world over spend endless days and nights in too frequent and vain efforts to ascertain when disease first attacks the body.” But the Pathoclast, “a wonderful new invention detects disease in its early stages.” So claimed a Pathometrist in <i>The Indianapolis Times</i> for Jan. 7, 1928. Other advertisements termed the Pathoclast a "radionics" medical device that offered “a better method of analyzing and neutralizing disease.” The FDA deemed the Pathoclast a quack medical device and confiscated many examples in the 1960s. An inscription on this example reads “Pathoclast Model A-II.”
label: Description
content: John Walter Wigelsworth (1885-1975) was an American naprapath, nutritionist, and co-founder (with his brother Arthur) of Anabolic Food Products. He was also an early practitioner of radionics and chromopathy, and proprietor of Pathometric Laboratories Inc., the firm that manufactured the Pathoclast.
label: Description
content: Ref: J. W. Wigelsworth, <i>Pathodyne System of Diagnosis Therapy</i> (Chicago: Pathometric Laboratories Inc., 1924).
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Illinois, Chicago
label: Associated Place
content: United States: Illinois, Chicago
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Medicine
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Food and Drug Administration
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: MG.274347.098
label: accession number
content: 274347
label: catalog number
content: M-12106
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Electrotherapeutic Device
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: wood (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 117 cm x 54 cm x 112 cm; 46 1/16 in x 21 1/4 in x 44 3/32 in