Providentia

Exposing the Martian Medium

Being a spirit medium has always been a tough market to crack.   

No matter what tricks you used, standing out from the crowd meant coming up with something memorable enough to bring in paying customers.   During the early part of the 20th century, spirit mediums shifted their focus away from "spiritual realms" by claiming to be in contact with beings from other planets (with Mars being a particular favourite).  One of the most well-known of these cases involved "Helene Smith," a spirit medium relied on automatic writing to receive messages from various illustrious spirits as well as retrieving memories from her many past lives.  Along with having been Queen Marie Antoinette and an Indian princess, Smith also described her past life as an inhabitant of the planet Mars.  She even produced samples of the Martian language, complete with alphabet.  While later skeptics, including eminent psychologist Theodore Flournoy dismissed her Martian memories as a form of cryptomnesia (a term which Flournoy coined), many true believers continued to insist that her Martian claims were real. 

All of which brings us to the amazing Marxa, the "Martian Medium". ...

Not content with simply relaying messages sent by creatures from other worlds,  Marxa went her rivals one better:  along with communicating with Martians, she could also make them materialize during the seances she held regularly.   During these seances, all of which were conducted in a special parlor at her place of business, spectators would be seated in a semi-circle facing a cabinet where the medium would sit at all times.   The cabinet contained a single chair to which Marxa would be bound at the beginning of each seance.   

It likely added to the appeal that the medium was young and beautiful, as well a making a habit of undressing before the audience to show that she had no tricks up her sleeves (or anywhere else).  The scantily-clad Marxa would then sit in the cabinet while her manager provided ropes for audience members to tie her up.    Once the audience members were satisfied that Marxa was securely bound, the manager would then draw the curtains on the cabinet and turn down the lights and the Martian would then emerge.  While her claims seemed incredible, numerous spectators attested to her supernatural abilities.

Hoping to prove that Marxa was no fraud, her manager even invited professional magician and skeptic Joseph Dunninger to attend one of her seances in 1944.   Widely known as one of the most amazing mentalists of his time, Dunninger would later become one of the pioneers in bringing his special brand of magic to television, and his radio performances had already won him a national audience.  Not only was he a close friend of fellow magicians such as Harry Houdini but had performed repeatedly at the White House at the request of then-President Franklin Roosevelt.   Other prominent admirers included Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Edison, both of whom invited him to perform when he was only seventeen years old.   

Perhaps more importantly, he was also widely known as a professional debunker who specialized in exposing fraudulent mediums.   Much like Houdini, Dunninger worked with Scientific American and the Universal Council for Psychic Research to test any medium or psychic who hoped to win the $10,000 prize he offered to anyone who could produce a supernatural effect he couldn't reproduce or explain himself.  As he would later write, "through all these long years, I have sought good honest ghosts, phantoms, spirits, astral beings, banshees, fays, wee folk, apparitions, fetches—the whole pack and passel of the unsubstantial world—and I have always been able to prove them frauds."

Whether he was hoping to win the $10,000 or simply to drum up more publicity, Marva's agent arranged for Dunninger to attend one of Marxa's seances.   Already aware of her reputation for materializing supposedly authentic Martian creatures during her seances, he wasted no time accepting the invitation.    In explaining his reasons for investigating, Dunninger would write that "these fakers trade upon public credulity.  It is easy to gull people, who have already been softened up by superstitious beliefs.  Recognizing that fact is the chief trick in a charlatan's bag."  

As  for Marxa herself, he described her as "young and attractive, a streamlined contrast to the bulky, middle-aged ladies who generally deal in materializations."  After being greeted by the medium and her manager, Dunninger also inspected the seance room, including the cabinet in which Marxa would be sitting.  He noted that it had bulky outer curtains but also an inner curtain with elastic cords to cover any gap in the middle:  "a promise of coming fraud."    The seance then began with Marxa's usual routine of disrobing and sitting in the chair to which she would be tied by audience members.   Dunninger recalled being given "the longest rope" though other audience members insisted that she was already tied up securely so he just took his seat with the others. 

Once the manager drew the curtains and lowered the lights, there was a sudden chill in the room.   The manager explained that this was due to the influence of the Martian spirit about to appear.  Being accustomed to "polar temperatures", it had arranged for the cold in order to "survive its brief visit."   But that was just the beginning. ..

It was then that the outer curtains of the cabinet opened and what Dunninger  called the "most outlandish creature I have ever viewed anywhere" popped out.   In his account of the seance, he wrote that:  "The thing from Mars was round and squatty, with a head that seemed a bulbous protuberance of its body.It hopped around on feet that had practically no legs, and even in the red light, its horrible face was all too plain.  The face was an ugly saffron color; the eyes and lips were thin and wide.; and the nose was like a bashed-in melon."  

Despite its tiny size (about half the height of the slender Marxa), the sight of the creature terrified most of the audience.   Women screamed and men fell out of their chairs as the "living horror" hopped around the room.   Dunninger reported that the creature then glared at him - and perhaps for good reason.   Unknown to Marxa and her manager, Dunninger had taken advantage of the rope they gave him:  secretly hitching one end to a chair at the far end of the room and holding the other end in his hand, Dunninger used it to trip up the "Martian" as it hopped around.   After it sprawled "with a very human squeak,"  Dunninger than screamed out a single word:  "Lights." 

What followed can only be appreciated in the magician's own words:  "As it tried to get up, the creature elongated to almost human size.  I stretched it further by grabbing a top-knot above its head.   As it lost the unusual robe it was wearing, the witnesses saw the most amazing transformation even accomplished in any seance room.    The thing from Mars had become Marxa.  Her disguise was simple, but remarkably effective when seen in the red light.  She had taken the cabinet's inner curtain, the one with the elastic cord, and drawn it about her.   Squatting inside, she had appeared really hideous.  With her shoulders doubled down to her knees, she had reduced her height.   Marxa was an acrobat as well as a contortionist, and her spry hops around the floor had resembled the steps of a Russian dance.   The saffron face with its slant eyes and flat nose had been produced by one of her stockings, drawn over her head.  The silk had thinned into a yellow film, and the tightened material spread the girl's face into a hideous grimace.  All that was wiped away when I tugged the top-knot, formed by the stocking's toe, and pulled the stocking clear away. "

As for the drop in temperature before the "creature's" appearance, that had been produced by the manager.  At the right moment, he had secretly uncorked a double flask containing liquid air, and basic physics did the rest.   When Dunninger and the other witnesses checked the chair where Marxa had supposedly been tied, they found that the ropes were still in place but the acrobatic medium had managed to slip out of them.   After her performance, she would simply have removed the stocking she was wearing, replaced the inner curtain, and slipped back into the ropes to make it seem as if she had been tied up all along.  

While that was pretty much it for the amazing Marxa, the "Martian racket" continued to draw in gullible customers willing to spend their money on other-worldly hijinks. 

In the same article in which Dunninger exposes Marxa, he also reported on another bizarre scam which he was asked to debunk.   Apparently, a group of financiers sought Dunninger's advice about an "interplanetary motor" that an inventor had reportedly designed in consultation with a spirit medium who claimed to be in contact with the "master minds living on Mars."   Though the financiers were skeptical about the medium's involvement, the inventor had a working model that had been running non-stop for an entire month.   Described by Dunninger as "an intricate collection of cogs, sprockets, and pistons standing on a square sheet of glass, mounted on four glass legs on a large wooden base", the motor reportedly drew its power straight from Mars from a large interplanetary projector located there.  To ensure there was no trickery involved, the financiers had arranged for a team of private detectives to monitor the motor at all times.  Working a 24-hour shift, the detectives verified that the motor had been running constantly and was completely self-contained, with no indication of any external power source.  

Having asked for 24 hours to make his own arrangements, Dunninger and the financiers then returned to the inventor's laboratory.  There, they found the inventor and the medium, who was supposedly translating Martian messages for everyone concerned.   Though the  financiers were ready to close the business deal, Dunninger simply pointed his finger at the motor and, to the amazement of everyone watching, it stopped suddenly.   Taking advantage of his 24-hour grace period,  Dunninger had arranged with the electric company to cut off power to the neighbourhood at a pre-arranged time (which must have taken some convincing).   With the loss of power, the "Martian motor" had suddenly stopped working and the confidence scheme was exposed.   

To avoid prosecution, the two men involved grudgingly revealed how they had pulled off their deception.  One of the glass legs on which the motor rested was actually hollow with a glass rod inside connected to an electric motor hidden underneath.   The status of the interplanetary projector on Mars was not revealed....

After the 2016 Presidential Election

A new study in the journal Emotion examined predictors of changes over time in subjective well-being (SWB) after the 2016 United States presidential election. Two indicators of SWB—general happiness and life satisfaction—were assessed three weeks before the election, the week of the election, three weeks later, and six months later. Partisanship predicted both indicators of SWB, with Trump supporters experiencing improved SWB after the election, Clinton supporters experiencing worsened SWB after the election, and those who viewed both candidates as bad also experiencing worsened SWB after the election. The impact of the election on SWB decreased over time, with all participants returning to baseline life satisfaction six months after the election. Trump supporters and those who viewed both candidates as bad for the country also returned to baseline general happiness six months after the election. Clinton supporters, in contrast, remained below baseline levels of general happiness six months after the election. Moral and political values, and exposure to media inconsistent with those values, predicted lasting change in subjective well-being. National events can affect how people perceive the overall quality of their lives and these effects are exacerbated when moral and political values are involved. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Anti-vax Movement Blamed for Infant Deaths in Macedonia

The deaths of three Macedonian infants since December, 2018 due to a measles epidemic has been blamed on anti-vax propaganda pushed by right-wing populists in that country.   

Over the past five years, measles vaccination rates in Macedonia have fallen sharply and are now among the lowest in Europe.  As many as 10 new measles cases are being diagnosed daily according to that country's  Institute for Public Health. Of those new cases, more than half are children below the age of four, most of whom are either not-vaccinated, not re-vaccinated, or had an unknown vaccine status.  

During the early stages of the current measles epidemic, government agencies determined that over 15,000 children were unvaccinated in the capital city of Skopje alone.  Despite an aggressive media campaign promoting the MMR vaccine, 8,434 people received the vaccine — 5,900 of them in Skopje , though this was not enough to stem the epidemic.  Most epidemics can only be controlled through the herd immunity resulting from an 80-90 percent  rate of immunes among a given population.  In most parts of Macedonia, vaccination rates are deemed too low to prevent the continuing spread of measles and other diseases.   

While anti-vax attitudes have always been popular among right-wing populists,  media outlets controlled by Macedonia's right wing government began aggressively promoting anti-vax propaganda beginning in 2013.    This included giving more air coverage to "alternative medicine" advocates and anti-vax activists, many of whom relied on propaganda being promoted in other parts of the world.    Many of these advocates were declared to be "health experts" who insisted that the MMR vaccine was unsafe.  One of them, Sladjana Velkov, had moved to Macedonia in 2016 after coming under fire in her native Serbia for promoting bleach therapy to treat children.   Despite being discredited, government media sources continued to promote her conspiracy theories about vaccines as recently as last year.

But much of the support for the anti-vaccine movement in Macedonia also comes in the form of aggressive social media posts, many of which have been linked to "Russian trolls."   In fact,  researchers at George Washington University announced last August that 93 percent of the 1.8 million tweets about vaccines posted on Twitter between 2014 and 2017 came from bots and malicious accounts.  According to a statement by the study researchers, these messages help undermine confidence in vaccines by drowning out legitimate debate about vaccines with often-abusive language claiming a conspiracy by vaccine producers.  “Russian trolls and sophisticated bots promote both pro- and antivaccination narratives,” the researchers added.  This creates a “false equivalency, eroding public consensus on vaccination.”  

While the new government in Macedonia has promised democratic reforms to improve the quality of life , it is still not clear how health agencies hope to overcome the deep-rooted mistrust that is allowing epidemics to continue.

For more information

 

 

The Dentist Did It

Dr. Arthur Warren Waite had it all.   Or so it seemed.

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1887, he completed his training as a dentist and worked as a dentist at a work camp in South Africa for years before finally returning to the United States in 1915.   Soon after his return, he married his long-time sweetheart, Clara Peck, daughter of Grand Rapids millionaire John Peck.  Peck had made his fortune in lumber and pharmaceuticals and, as a gift to his daughter and son-in-law, set them up in an expensive Manhattan apartment.  He also gave them a generous monthly allowance.   

This allowed the good dentist to establish a prosperous New York practice and to become part of the New York social scene.  Except that he he soon lost interest in his dental practice as he preferred to spend his time socializing, especially with a beautiful (and quite married) former cabaret singer named Margaret Horton.   Despite the fact that he and his wife were still newlyweds, Waite managed to keep his affair hidden from his wife and her family.   For reasons that would only become clear much later, he also developed an interest in germ research, including collecting active strains of some truly deadly diseases. 

In December, 1915,  John Peck and his wife, Hannah, arrived in New York to spend Christmas holidays with his daughter and her new husband.   Soon after their arrival, Hannah Peck was suddenly taken ill and her condition declined rapidly.  Nobody had any idea why she was so ill but everyone was touched by the gentle care she received from her son-in-law.   After her January, 1916 the doctor who signed her death certificate declared that she had died of kidney disease.

The grieving John Peck took his wife's body back to Grand Rapids where she was cremated.   Soon afterward, he decided on a return visit to New York to stay with his daughter and her kindly husband.   Almost immediately after his arrival, his health began declining rapidly and,following his death March 12, the attending physician also attributed his death to kidney disease.  Arthur Waite insisted that his father-in-law had requested to be cremated after his death and even made the arrangements himself.  John Peck's body was carefully embalmed and the good dentist personally escorted the coffin back to Grand Rapids.   

It was in Grand Rapids where things started going wrong, however.   Waite's brother-in-law, Percy Peck, announced that he had received an anonymous telegram telling him not to allow the cremation.   It likely helped that he had never liked his new brother-in-law and had become suspicious over the deaths of both his parents when visiting the Waites.  He insisted on an autopsy which, sure enough, showed that John Peck had died of arsenic poisoning.  

Though Percy Peck immediately suspected Arthur Waite of murder, police were more cautious about laying a charge.  Frustrated over their inaction, Percy hired a private detective, Raymond Schindler, to investigate Waite.  It was Schindler who turned up evidence of the handsome dentist's relationship with Margaret Horton.  When Percy passed these details on to his sister, she refused to believe that her husband was unfaithful.   But, a few days later, she became violently ill after spraying her throat with an atomizer of "medication" that had been prepared for her by her loving husband.   

Immediately suspicious, Percy had the atomizer examined while his sister was still recovering;  it had been laced with anthrax and typhoid germs (remember Waite's fascination with germ research?).  Finally convinced that her husband might be guilty, Clara admitted that Waite had pressured her into drafting a will after her father's funeral which left him everything.      Police also learned from the embalmer who had prepared John Peck's corpse that Waite had tried to bribe him into claiming that the embalming fluid had been laced with arsenic.  They also interviewed Margaret Horton and her husband, both of whom insisted there had been no wrongdoing but the newspapers soon began printing all the lurid details.  Police even turned up the author of the anonymous telegram to Percy.   It was a distant relative of the Pecks who had become suspicious after seeing Waite at the Plaza with a "beautiful brunette when he was supposed to be happy with Clara."   She added that, "When both the Pecks died so suddenly - well, I just put two and two together."

Though Arthur Waite had tried to laugh off the murder rumours, evidence of his bizarre behaviour before and after both deaths was enough to convince police to lay charges.   It was the revelation that Clara was suing for divorce and named Margaret Horton in the suit was too much for him.   Knowing that his arrest was imminent, Waite attempted to kill himself with sleeping pills.   The police managed to get to him in time and, while he was still recovering in hospital, was soon charged with two counts of murder. 

 While in custody, Waite initially denied having anything to do with Hannah Peck's death and tried to explain away the arsenic in John Peck's body by claiming that the old man had committed suicide.   He grudgingly admitted to providing the arsenic but only at his father-in-law's request.   The Peck family were less than happy with this defence and only agreed to help with the costs of Waite's defense if he withdrew that claim.   He then  decided on a new tactic by claiming that he had been insane at the time.   

This led to his being sent to Bellevue for a medical assessment.  While there, he told doctors and police that he was possessed and that "a bad man from Egypt dwells in my body."  He also insisted that " He makes me do bad things.  He struggles for possession of my soul."   Suffice it to say, nobody really believed him  (though the doctors eventually diagnosed him as a "moral imbecile."   After being found sane and returned to prison, he eventually admitted to poisoning both Pecks (despite refusing to plead guilty in court).   In fact, his description of the poisoning was so detailed that it left the prosecutor with very little to in proving his case.

According to Waite, he had started poisoning his mother-in-law with the very first meal after they arrived.  "I gave her six assorted tubes of pneumonia, diphtheria, and influenza germs in her food," he said.  "When she finally became ill, I took her to her bed, I ground up twelve five-grain veronal, and gave her that, too, last thing at night."   When it came to killing his father-in-law, he had more difficulty.   Not only didn't  John Peck die of the various disease strains Waite put into his food (including typhoid, diphtheria, and influenza), but he refused to die despite being given several different poisons.   Finally, Waite had enough and simply chloroformed the old man before holding a pillow over John's face until he died.

But Waite's had more victims planned, including one of John Peck's sisters (she had trusted him with a hefty sum that he was supposed to invest for her), though this failed as well.   As he admitted to trying to kill his wife, he was so amused by this  revelation that  he burst out laughing on the witness stand.  When questioned about his motive, he simply stated that he wanted to inherit the fortune  his in-laws left behind.   He even said that he had done his wife a favour by speeding up her inheritance. It's hard to say what he hoped to accomplish by being so jovial considering he was facing the death penalty.   The revelation that he had tried to bribe two members of the jury didn't do much to help his case either.  

As for the jury, they didn't need much convincing.  After a seven-day trial, it only took  them twenty minutes to come up with a guilty verdict.    Justice Slattery then sentenced Arthur Waite to death, something to which Waite only replied, "What a relief."   Jovial to the end, he accepted the verdict and even suggested that he be executed as soon as possible.   Finally, following a year-long appeal with psychiatrists on both sides battling it out, Arthur Waite went to the electric chair at Sing Sing on May 1, 1917.    According to prison staff, his last words were "Is this all there is to it?"   

Though his burial site is unknown, his wife Clare went on to remarry and move far away from New York and her life there.   She had three children and dedicated herself to charity work before dying in 1965.   Her obituary page makes no mention of the long-ago murder of both her parents.  Or of her first husband.

 

 

The Kennedy Target

Not everyone was thrilled when Senator John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. Presidential election. 

Although the Camelot that the attractive young President-elect and his First Lady would launch still lay in the future, John F. Kennedy's Irish roots and Catholic upbringing still upset hardcore extremists.   And the vast wealth and privilege that the entire Kennedy family enjoyed made him all the more appealing as a target.

Which brings us to Richard Paul Pavlick...

Born in 1887 in Massachusetts to German immigrants, Richard Pavlick must have seemed like an unlikely assassin.   After briefly serving with the US Army during World War I, he received an honourable discharge in 1918  and showed no indication of any violent tendencies when he returned to civilian life.  Although Pavlick had difficulty putting down roots, he eventually settled down in New Hampshire on a 150-acre timber lot that he purchased in 1938.  He supported himself by selling timber from his lot before eventually moving to Belmont, New Hampshire where he purchased a rundown house.  By the time of the 1960 election, he was already in his seventies with no family of his own (his only brother had died while he was still in the military).   Pavlick was mostly known around town for his frequent political rants (both in person and through his numerous letters to the press), usually over improper displaying of the American flag and the excessive power that Catholics enjoyed in American society.    Living in New England meant regular exposure to the Kennedy family's wealth and social status and Pavlick was openly resentful of both.   His frequent political screeds to various occupants of the White House also brought him to the attention of the U.S. Secret Service.   

Having already been investigated by local authorities over an incident in which he confronted the supervisor of the local water company with a gun (it was later confiscated), Pavlick decided to act following the final outcome of the Presidential election vote.  He gave his run-down property to a local youth camp and piled all his possessions into his 1950 Buick.   While hardly any of  Belmont's residents took much notice of Pavlick's strange departure, that would soon change.  The postmaster, Thomas Murphy, started receiving bizarre postcards from Pavlick stating that the town would soon hear of him "in a big way".     Disturbed by this, Murphy soon noticed that the dates on the postmarks coincided with John F. Kennedy's visits to the different cities from which Pavlick mailed the postcards.  That was enough for Murphy to contact the local police who, in turn, contacted the Secret Service.   When the Secret Service agents interviewed many of Belmont's locals, they learned two disturbing things:  that Richard Pavlick had a pathological hatred for President Kennedy, and that he had recently purchased explosives.

While President Kennedy won the election on November 9, his actual term as President of the United Status was not scheduled to begin until he was sworn in on January 20, 1961.  During the intervening ten weeks, the President-elect continually shuttled between different family homes in New York, Georgetown, Hyannisport, and Palm Beach while he put together his Cabinet and met with various party officials.    Richard Pavlick visited nearly every one of these locations as he carefully planned how the assassination would take place.    Not only did he take numerous photographs of each house, he also made complete notes concerning the level of security that he could expect to face.  

After long consideration, Pavlick selected the Kennedy home at 1095 North Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach, Florida as the site for his assassination scheme.  Not only was the President-elect there most frequently, but "Mattress Jack" (his private nickname those days) was in the frequent habit of sneaking out of the house to his private suite at the nearby Breakers Hotel for various amorous exploits.   Despite impressive private security, the "Winter White House" seemed ideal for Pavlick's grandiose assassination scheme.  He checked into a cheap motel which, as it happened, was quite close to where Kennedy's own Secret Service detail was staying.   Somewhere along the way, Pavlick had purchased detonators, blasting caps, seven sticks of dynamite, and four large cans of gasoline which he kept in his battered Buick.  

Pavlick's scheme was simple and diabolical.  He would turn his  vehicle into a massive car bomb and wait outside the President-elect's house for the presidential limousine.  At that point, Pavlick would ram the limousine with his car and blow both himself and the President up.   Unfortunately for Pavlick, President-elect Kennedy used his time at Palm Beach for an endless series of photo opportunities so he was never without his wife Jackie or newborn son, John Jr.  While Pavlick was determined to kill John F. Kennedy, he had no wish to kill the First Lady or their infant son and he could never find the perfect opportunity to get the President-elect alone.   As a result, he kept returning to the North Ocean Boulevard five days in a row and, incredibly enough, the Secret Service took no notice of his continuing presence on the street outside the Kennedy home.  Presumably, the white-haired, ruddy-cheeked Pavlick simply did not fit the usual profile for a Presidential assassin.

In the end, it was a simple traffic violation that led to Richard Pavlick's arrest.  When a traffic policeman stopped him on December 15, the dynamite was found in Pavlick's car and the entire assassination scheme was revealed.  Once in custody, Pavlick was extremely open about his plan and his justification for killing the incoming president.  As far as he was concerned, Joseph Kennedy had used his wealth to buy the election for his son and Pavlick was determined to save the United States from the Kennedy presidency.  While the Secret Service initially denied that  President-elect Kennedy had ever actually been in danger, the "retiring" chief of the Service, U.E. Baughman, would later admit to Look magazine that it had been an extremely close call.   

As for Richard Pavlick, he was shuttled from institution to institution over the next several years as officials kept trying to decide what to do with him.   Although he was eventually indicted for plotting to kill President Kennedy, these charges were later dropped on August 4, 1964, not long after John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas.   At the insistence of the federal prosecutor however, Pavlick was ruled to be incapable of telling right from wrong and was sent to the New Hampshire State Mental Hospital in Manchester for an indefinite stay.   

Following an intensive letter-writing campaign by Pavlick as well as a series of newspaper articles in the local newspaper, he was finally released on December 16, 1966.   Almost immediately after his parole expired however, Pavlick returned to Belmont and began stalking Thomas Murphy and his family over the postmaster's role in exposing his assassination scheme.  At some point, Pavlick also wrote a book about his experiences titled, "An Innocent Man Illegally Arrested Spent Six Years in Hell: an autobiography of his life and the true story of an illegal arrest, indictments, and false charges".   Running to only 74 pages, Pavlick's book was never the best seller that he had hoped for but still provides an interesting glimpse into his reasons for trying to kill the President.   Although local police kept an eye on him,  Pavlick managed to stay out of trouble.  He eventually ended up in the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Manchester where he died on November 11, 1975.

There seems to be unending conspiracy theories over the actual circumstances surrounding President John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963.  The official "lone gunman" story is often greeted with scorn, usually on the premise that a presidential assassination could only be the result of a widespread conspiracy.  Still, Richard Pavlick's assassination attempt came within a hair's breadth of success.  It was only his reluctance to kill a woman and her child that kept him from ending the Kennedy administration before it even started.  That should be a grim reminder that no conspiracy, however byzantine, has ever worked as well as the actions of a single individual with a grudge, a plan, and a little luck.

Do Smartphones Make Us Smile Less?

New developments in technology—from the printing press to television—have long facilitated our capacity for “absent presence,” enabling us to escape the limits of our immediate environment. Does being constantly connected to other people and activities through our smartphones diminish the need to engage with others in the immediate social world, reducing the likelihood of approach behavior such as smiling? In a new study published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior,  strangers waited together with or without their smartphones; their smiling was later coded by trained assistants. Compared to participants without smartphones, participants with smartphones exhibited significantly fewer smiles of any kind and fewer genuine (Duchenne) smiles. These findings are based on objective behavioral coding rather than self-report and provide clear evidence that being constantly connected to the digital world may undermine important approach behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Can Telemedicine Help End Psychiatrist Shortage?

“Telemedicine in psychiatry, using video conferencing, is a validated and effective practice of medicine that increases access to care,The American Psychiatric Association supports the use of telemedicine as a legitimate component of a mental health delivery system to the extent that its use is for the benefit of the patient, protects patient autonomy, confidentiality, and privacy; and when used consistent with APA policies on medical ethics and applicable governing law.”

In a 2017 statement issued by the American Psychiatric Association, the use of telecommunications to provide psychiatric services to patients living in remote areas received a major boost and added psychiatrists to the long list of medical practitioners  looking to telemedicine to ease the current health care crisis facing many Americans.   At present, there are 25,000 to 50,000 practicing psychiatrists in the United States, most of whom are over 50 years of age and facing retirement within the next two decades.   Along with related problems such as burnout and suicide, the shortage of psychiatrists in most states has already meant even longer waiting lists for services, especially for people suffering from severe mental illness and for pediatric patients. 

While telemedicine has mainly focused on providing services to people living in remote regions of the country, the lack of qualified professionals has meant that patients often have to travel long distances to see a medical specialist or receive specialized treatment.   To curb this shortage, state medical boards have formed the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact to expedite services from qualified physicians to patients living in other states.   After becoming effective in 2007, the Compact has grown to 24 states and one territory.   Along with streamlining the certification of qualifying physicians in participating states, the Compact has also pioneered the expanded use of telemedicine, including teleconferencing, electronic transmission of medical files and diagnostic imaging results, and even telemonitoring of patients using in-home telecommunications devices.

Though telemedicine has its drawbacks, including the cost of telecommunications technology as well as lack of face-to-face meetings that many patients might find more beneficial,   Still, as Peter Yellowlees, M.D., of the University of California, Davis and past president of the American Telemedicine Association pointed out in a recent media interview, the critical shortage of psychiatrists is not a problem that can be easily resolved.  "There is a particular shortage of psychiatrists not just in rural areas but in all regions of the country when it comes to adolescent and geriatric psychiatric care," he said.  "One of the biggest problems is overmedication of patients in nursing homes.  Many are being treated by doctors who have little training in psychiatry and drugs and may be more inclined to write prescriptions to sedate patients who are exhibiting behavioral problems.”   Having already used telemedicine to treat thousands of patients since 1991, Dr. Yellowlees endorsed its continuing use following proper guidelines.   

As private health networks continue to endorse telemedicine, its already taken off in other countries.   In the United Kingdom, for example, an NHS representative has suggested that virtual consultations may be more common than seeing medics in person within a decade and other countries will soon follow suit.    Whether in-person visits with your doctor will go the way of house calls remains to be seen, but the future of medicine definitely appears virtual.

The Great Coca-Cola Trial

Harvey Washington Wiley was a man with a mission.

As Chief Chemist of the United States Department of Agriculture Division of Chemistry and one of the founders of the Association of Official Analytical Chemists, Wiley led a crusade against the use of chemical additives in food and drugs. Using a specially selected "poison squad" (the twelve volunteers that he used to test food safety), Wiley's campaign for purer food and drink products became the stuff of legend.  Although the Division of Chemistry had no regulatory powers at first, Wiley and his chemists published their findings on food adulterants in a ten-part series in 1902.  He then recruited various medical and special interest groups to lobby for reform.  Given that Wiley`s crusade happened at the same time as the publication of Upton Sinclair`s well-known book, The Jungle, the push for stringent safeguards in commercial food preparation became a major political issue. The crusade led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act in 1906 and Wiley`s book, Foods and Their Adulteration, became a standard in the field when it was first published in 1907. 

With the passage of the bill and the increased mandate for the Division of Chemistry (which was a forerunner for the modern Food and Drug Administration), Wiley`s crusade was met with opposition from food companies over the continuing use of chemical preservatives in food (which was not actually addressed by the new law).  His puritanical attacks on many popular food and drink products offended potential supporters although his ultimate downfall came with his crusade against caffeinated soft drinks. 

Although caffeine had been around since ancient times and was a prime ingredient in coffee and tea, it wasn't chemically isolated until 1819 when Friedrich Ferdinand Runge first extracted the purified form of caffeine from coffee (hence the name).  By the end of the 19th century, chemists learned to synthesize caffeine and it became a common ingredient in many food and drink products.  Despite caffeine's popularity (and its largely undeserved reputation for curing drunkenness), medical authorities expressed concern over possible harmful effects on the human body. Ever since coffee and tea were first introduced to the West, medical tracts condemning coffee, tea, and chocolate were common enough and the Netherlands was probably the only European nation that didn't have its own anti-caffeine temperance movement at some point.

As coffeehouses sprang up all over Europe (the first American coffeehouse opened in New York in 1696), they acquired a sinister reputation as hotbeds of sedition and unrest. In 1833, John Cole wrote a paper published in the medical journal Lancet outlining the dangers of excessive coffee and tea drinking.  Cole presented nine case studies describing the various symptoms of coffee/tea intoxication and suggested that "May not the greater prevalence of cardiac disease of late years have been considerably influenced by the increased consumption of coffee and tea?" Cole's paper would be highly influential in shaping later prejudices towards caffeinated products when they were later introduced. 

Which brings us to Coca Cola...

Beginning as a patent medicine sold as a tonic syrup in pharmacies in the late 19th century, Coca Cola took its name from two of its main ingredients: coca leaves and kola nuts.  Originally billed as a cure for numerous ailments (including morphine addiction and impotence), Coca Cola became a popular soft drink by the turn to the 20th century. As its popularity grew, changes to the original formula were deemed necessary.  By 1904, the pure coca leaf extract (containing an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass) was replaced by "spent" leaves with the cocaine content removed.  Any remaining stimulant value came from the caffeine which was provided by the kola nuts and the 46 milligrams of caffeine per twelve fluid ounces of Coca Cola.  Unfortunately, that's where the company got in trouble with Harvey Washington Wiley.

Although Coca Cola was extremely popular in prohibitionist circles as a non-alcoholic beverage, Wiley was not pleased by its caffeine content and, given his considerable power at the time, decided to do something about it.  As he pointed out, there was quite a difference between coffee and tea and Coca Cola and its imitators.  While adults were free to drink caffeine products as they pleased, children needed special protection from the negative effects of caffeine.  Since children were the greatest consumers of Coca Cola, the potential harm was far greater (especially since Coca Cola's advertising campaigns downplayed the caffeine content).  Although  Asa Candler (then CEO of Coca Cola) protested Wiley's accusations and insisted that the product was safe, that wasn't enough for Wiley.  Using his authority, Wiley had the US government seize a shipment of Coca Cola being transported from its main plant in Atlanta, Georgia to the principal bottling plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee on October 9, 1909.  Under the Pure Food and Drug Act, the shipment wast declared contraband beginning one of the most memorable early cases involving food products (still known as the U.S. vs. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca Cola case). 

It was quite a trial.  On one side was Wiley with the full backing of the United States government while on the other side was the Coca Cola company, already one of the largest businesses in the country.  Wiley's case against Coca Cola focused on the product as being "adulterated and misbranded".  The adulteration came in the form of  the caffeine content which "might render the product injurious to health".  Chemical analysis also showed that, despite the product name, there were almost no traces of coca and "little if any cola".  The actual ingredients, according to the trial transcript, included sugar, water, caffeine, glycerin, lime juice, "and other flavoring matters" (so much for the secret formula). 

The company responded to Wiley's complaint by insisting that Coca Cola was a registered brand name and that the formula had been followed for more than twenty years without problems.  As for the adulteration charge, that was harder to dispute since caffeine had never been proven to be harmful.  When the trial opened on March 13, 1911, there was an array of witnesses giving testimony on both sides.  Religious fundamentalists testified that drinking Coca Cola led to wild parties, sexual indiscretions by coeds and "induced boys to masturbatory wakefulness".   Most of the remaining testimony was scientific in nature although the research methodology involved was often flawed. 

Realizing that there was little actual research into the effects of caffeine on human beings, the head of Coca Cola`s team of scientific experts suggested that a psychologist be hired to conduct a research study.  After several prominent psychologists were approached, the team eventually recruited Harry Levi Hollingworth, a then-instructor at Barnard College.  Given the stigma associated with applied work, Hollingworth was reluctant to accept the assignment but agreed on the condition that Coca Cola not use his results in their advertising or use his name to endorse their product.  With the funds provided by Coca Cola, Hollingworth and his wife Leta (who was finally able to attend graduate school as a result of the windfall) designed and carried out one of the first comprehensive double-blind studies into the effect of caffeine on human health.  

Despite the time constraints involved (due to the impending trial date), the Hollingworth study was designed to be as comprehensive as possible and ran for more than forty days.  Using a six-room Manhattan apartment that had been specifically rented for the experiments, sixteen subjects (ten men and six women) ranging in age from nineteen to thirty-nine were recruited.  As paid volunteers, they were expected to adhere to a series of conditions including abstaining from any caffeine or alcohol during the course of the study.  A physician took careful measurements on the subjects who maintained daily records of their level of alertness, sleep habits, and general health.  There were actually three separate studies with the longest running four weeks and involving multiple tests of cognition, perception, judgment, discrimination, and attention.  Between test periods, subjects were free to relax in a leisure room reserved for their use  For the first week, subjects received placebo capsules and baseline data was collected as they became adapted to the research routine.  In the next week, subjects were divided into four groups with three groups receiving different doses of caffeine and the fourth group continuing with the placebo.  Since it was a double-blind study, the experimenters working with the subjects and the subjects themselves remained unaware of whether the subjects were in the experimental groups or the control group.  The caffeine dosages used were intended to reflect what a typical Coca Cola drinker might consume in a given day. 

The second and third studies examined post-caffeine withdrawal as well as differing caffeine doses in specially prepared Coca Cola syrup when taken with food.  Although the subjects were sent home at 6:30 pm each evening, the Hollingworths, along with the graduate students who were working on the project, often worked long into the night processing the more than 64,000 different measurements that had been collected (no computers in those days).  As well, the Hollingworths maintained a duplicate set of the day's data to be housed in a separate location due to fears of the information being destroyed in a fire.  When the data was presented at the trial (already underway in Chatanooga, Tennessee), Hollingworth's results quickly stood out from the other expert testimony that had already been presented.  In his testimony, Hollingworth concluded that there was no evidence of caffeine producing any negative effects on cognitive or motor performance.  A reporter from the Chattanooga Daily Times later described Hollingsworth's testimony (his name was misspelled) as "by far the most interesting and technical of any yet introduced.  cross-examination failed to shake any of his deductions".  Given that the Coca Cola trial was a major media event, Hollingworth (and applied psychology in general) received a major media boost.  

The trial lasted another week but never reached the jury in the case.  Presiding judge, Edward T. Sanford, acting on a motion from Coca Cola's attorneys, declared the government's case invalid and directed the jury to return a verdict in favour of the  company.  Since the case was thrown out on a technicality (over whether caffeine was an additive rather than simply an ingredient of Coca Cola), the question of caffeine's harmfulness was never actually addressed in the trial.  With various appeals, the Coca Cola case dragged on until 1916 before the Appeals Court in Cincinnati, Ohio upheld the lower court decision.   The case also marked the end of  Harvey Washington Wiley's government career and he was forced to resign from his position in 1912. 

Not that this silenced him, mind you.  He simply jumped ship and took over the laboratories of Good Housekeeping magazine as head of their Bureau of Food, Sanitation, and Health. He would continue in that position for eighteen years and often used the magazine to rail against caffeinated soft drinks as part of his crusade for truth in advertising.

With Coca Cola's victory, the company launched a major advertising campaign proclaiming its "vindication".  That including publishing a brochure titled, Truth, Justice and Coca Cola, including a prominent picture of the company trademark with the scales of justice superimposed.  The pamphlet also provided the names of the various expert witnesses who testified on the company's behalf (Hollingworth's name was omitted in keeping with his prior agreement with the company).  Harry Hollingworth published his caffeine research results in 1912 as a comprehensive 166-page monograph as part of Robert Woodworth's series, Archives of Psychology.  Given that Wiley's anti-caffeine campaign continued to stir up controversy, Hollingworth's study was frequently cited by medical researchers investigating the effects of caffeine (and still is).  As the first comprehensive behavioural study of its kind, the Hollingworth caffeine study remains a classic in the area of industrial psychology.

In the meantime, Coca Cola continues its reign as the world's premier soft drink company.  The role that Harry Hollingworth's testimony played in saving the company from financial ruin so long ago seems to have been quietly forgotten. 

So it goes.

Hunting the Werewolf

It was in the autumn of 1572, following a rash of animal attacks in the woods near Dole, France, that the local peasants were authorized to seek out the werewolf assumed to be responsible. There were few actual sightings of the animal but the "loup garou" had carried off several small children and attacked horsemen who had driven it away " only with great difficulty and danger to their persons". The peasants were instructed "to assemble with pikes, halberts, arquebuses, and sticks, to chase and to pursue the said were-wolf in every place where they may find or seize him; to tie and to kill, without incurring any pains or penalties". Despite their search, it was only on November 8 of that year that peasants came upon a "monstrous creature" attacking a young girl. The creature was driven off although the girl later died of her injuries. Even in the darkness, some of the peasants thought they recognized the creature as a local hermit named Gilles Garnier.

Garnier was not popular in the region and was arrested after fifty witnesses filed depositions against him. Whatever protests of innocence he had were quickly ended by a session on the rack which "persuaded" him to confess to the charges. Garnier was sentenced to be burned alive at the stake and "that his ashes be then scattered to the winds". He was also ordered to bear all court costs and the sentence was carried out on January 18, 1573.

A similar case was brought to trial in 1603 involving a mentally disturbed (and possibly intellectually challenged) boy named Jean Grenier. Following reports of animal attacks on children in Gascony, France, Grenier confessed to all of the attacks and claimed to have eaten some of the children involved. He also stated that he was part of a werewolf "coven" and transformed himself using a "wolf's skin" given to him by a mysterious stranger. Survivors of the attacks confirmed Grenier's testimony and he was found guilty. In a remarkable move for the time, the court concluded that Grenier was mentally ill (but possessed) and he was sentenced to a Franciscan monastery for the rest of his life. When visited in the monastery years later, he was reported to be "diminutive in stature, very shy, and unwilling to look anyone in the face. His eyes were deep set and restless; his teeth long and protruding; his nails black, and in places worn away; his mind was completely barren; he seemed unable to comprehend the smallest things". Jean Grenier died at the age of 20.

There were an estimated 30,000 cases of lycanthropy reported in Europe between 1520 and 1630 alone. The epidemic of werewolf hysteria that plagued Europe seemed to be linked to the witchcraft mania occurring during the same period. Witches were frequently accused of changing themselves into cats or rabbits and attending demonic Sabbaths to meet Satan. Werewolves, in turn, were accused of transforming themselves with the Devil's aid. Convicted werewolves and witches were often condemned to be burned alive (except in England where they were merely hanged).

The werewolf hysteria seemed to be largely fuelled by lurid stories of wolf attacks (which were more likely to be due to wild dogs) and only subsided when wolves were hunted to virtual extinction across Europe. The growing recognition that testimony obtained through torture was basically unreliable probably played a role as well (waterboarding advocates take note). The last major werewolf panic was in Gevaudan, France following a series of killings by a "wolflike creature" between 1763 and 1767. The killings were never solved.

While clinical lycanthropy (the delusion of changing into an animal) remains a recognized psychiatric condition, actual cases tend to be rare (I've never encountered a case myself, alas, although I remain hopeful). Reports in the forensic literature of clinical lycanthropy patients committing violent acts are even rarer (but they have happened). Modern cases of lycanthropy tend to be part of broader psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia. Along with the classic werewolf delusion, there have also been reported cases of patients believing that they have been changed into other types of animals including dogs, frogs, and bees. While werefrogs do not evoke the same superstitious terror associated with werewolves, the unusual nature of the psychopathology makes for fascinating case histories in the clinical literature.

Treatment seems to be straightforward as lycanthropic delusions respond well to medication (no burning necessary). Despite the popularity of werewolf movies in the past few years, there has been no evidence of any upsurge of cases and the condition remains rare. Although werewolves live on as a cultural phenomenon, the hysteria that condemned Gilles Garnier to death has mercifully subsided (I hope).

Click here for a recent case history.

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What is Burnout?

Burnout has been defined as a job-induced syndrome combining emotional exhaustion, depersonalization/cynicism, and a sense of reduced personal accomplishment. An article recently published in the International Journal of Stress Management examined past analyses of burnout by reviewing key, yet overlooked, problems affecting the construct. The authors concomitantly examine the implications of these problems for the overall validity of burnout research. What they found was that burnout research is undermined by 4 main problems. First, what constitutes a case of burnout is unclear. Second, the basic conceptualization and operationalization of burnout are ill aligned. Third, burnout is unlikely to be the specifically job-induced syndrome it has been posited to be. Fourth, the discriminant validity of the burnout construct is unsatisfactory. These fundamental problems, disregarded for decades, render burnout research inconclusive. This state of affairs (a) bears on researchers’ and practitioners’ ability to monitor and protect workers’ health and (b) prevents public health policymakers from producing authoritative recommendations. The burnout construct thus appears to not well serve the goal of promoting occupational health. The depression construct may offer occupational health specialists a way out of the “burnout impasse.” Depression is diagnosable. Like burnout, depression can be studied dimensionally (i.e., as a process) and examined from both an individual and a social standpoint. Methods for investigating the etiological link between depressive symptoms and disorders and job stress are available. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract