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Doctor of the fatal fast
In the late 1800s, extreme fasting and daily enemas were all part of a fake doctor's often-deadly treatment
On Aug. 7, 1911, the Tacoma Daily News in Washington State ran this headline: "Officials expect to expose starvation atrocities. Dr. Hazzard pictured as fiend."
For the angry people who had for some time expressed outrage at the horrific therapy Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard prescribed for her patients, this conclusion must have been long overdue.
To fully comprehend the cruel dimensions of this woman who claimed to be a physician, one needs to read Starvation Heights by Gregg Olsen, an award-winning U.S. writer. It is a chilling account of an evil and ruthless individual responsible for the deaths of many gullible people.
Dr. Hazzard was once a nurse who, after becoming a protegee of an osteopath, set up a medical practice in Minneapolis in the late 180Os. In 1906, she was listed in that city's telephone directory as "Burfield, Linda, specialist in fasting, physical culture and health home."
Not long after marrying Sam Hazzard, a bigamist and notorious con man, the couple moved to Seattle, Wash., where the "doctor's" book, Fasting for a Cure of Disease, attracted the attention of health fad followers from as far away as England and Australia.
Such an exciting and promising claim was bound to catch the attention of people who insisted they had illnesses their doctors had failed to cure. Many of them quickly arranged a consultation with the "healer," who offered her services at Hazzard's Institute of Natural Therapeutics located in Olalla, a small village west of Seattle.
With blind faith, many of those who met the imposing and charismatic woman agreed to the...