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Faith Healing, Medical Regulation, and Public Religion in Progressive Era Chicago

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Timothy E. W. Gloege
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Abstract

This essay examines a six-year campaign against the radical faith healer John Alexander Dowie mounted in the 1890s by Chicago doctors, public health officials, and their “respectable” middle-class allies. The incident demonstrates the important role of religion in the process of medical professionalization. Medical professionals established cultural authority by aligning themselves with a broader discourse of “orthodoxy”—an ill-defined set of beliefs and practices thought necessary to maintain social order. Protestants used this discourse both to exclude outsiders and unite elites across denominational lines. An initial attempt to prosecute Dowie based on legalistic claims of practicing medicine without a license led to a backlash against medical professionals by middle-class Protestants who believed it compromised the integrity of religious liberty. This suggests that the growing efficacy of medical advances was an insufficient basis of social authority. Only when medical professionals self-consciously aligned themselves with the Protestant establishment and portrayed themselves as defenders of the social order (focused especially on the integrity of the family) were they able to rally the middle classes to their cause. This shift in rhetoric was an important step in the process of creating a discourse of “orthodox” medicine. It helped grant medical professionals the right to oversee the public body just as elite Protestants superintended its soul.

Keywords

medical professionalizationProtestantismfaith healingsecularizationcultural authority
Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , Summer 2013 , pp. 185 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2013

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References

Notes

1. “Riot at Dowie Lecture,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 19, 1899, 1 [hereafter CDT]. The medical students came from five area schools—their organizers from the best of these, the nearby Rush Medical College. Rush was the only school in Chicago sufficiently rigorous to pass muster in the Flexner Report. The other four west side medical schools especially were almost certainly a mixed bag of class backgrounds and professional attainment. Flexner, Abraham, Medical Education in the United States and Canada, Bulletin no. 4 (New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1910), 216 Google Scholar.

2. “Wait in Vain for Dr. Dowie,” CDT, October 21, 1899, 16; “Tumult of College Men,” CDT, October 29, 1899, 1.

3. “No More Escorts for Dowie,” CDT, November 3, 1899, 2.

4. “Students Fined the Costs,” CDT, October 20, 1899, 10. Similarly nonconfrontational interactions were reported between police and the college student rioters. “Tumult of College Men.”

5. “Dowie Needs Cooling Off,” CDT, October 29, 1899, 36. This is a telling contrast to medical students in London, who, after a nearly identical performance a year later, were castigated by a magistrate “shocked at the fact that educated men had acted so disgracefully.” See “Rowdies Fined and Roasted,” Los Angeles Times, October 24, 1900, 12.

6. “Dowie Must Go,” CDT, May 18, 1901, 12.

7. Specifically, the presumption persists, given new life by the philosopher Charles Taylor, that there is an oppositional relationship between religion and modern western culture. By Taylor's telling, “modernity” transformed an all-encompassing “naïve” faith into a selfconscious, problematic, choice—an act of willing to believe. Thus, religion survives only as something private and individualistic. Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007)Google Scholar. Most historians have not engaged this work, but those who have find its history problematic. See Butler, Jon, “Disquieted History in A Secular Age,” in Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, ed. Warner, Michael, Antwerpen, Jonathan Van, and Calhoun, Craig (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 193–216 Google Scholar; Sheehan, Jonathan, “When Was Disenchantment? History and the Secular Age,” in ibid., 217–42Google Scholar. Historians have their own deeply ingrained secular storyline, especially related to post–Civil War elites. This standard narrative is outlined in Carter, Paul Allen, The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Wiebe, Robert H., The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967)Google Scholar; and Lears, T. J. Jackson, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981)Google Scholar.

8. Butler, Jon, “Jack-in-the-Box Faith: The Religion Problem in Modern American History,” Journal of American History 90, no. 4 (2004): 1359 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schultz, Kevin M. and Harvey, Paul, “Everywhere and Nowhere: Recent Trends in American Religious History and Historiography,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78, no. 1 (March 2010): 148 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. One significant exception is Lears, Jackson, Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920 (New York: Harper, 2009)Google Scholar, a survey of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era that is organized around the religious idea of rebirth. Histories of psychology have also included an important religious dimension. See Taves, Ann, Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; and White, Christopher G., Unsettled Minds: Psychology and the American Search for Spiritual Assurance, 1830–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Religion is also increasingly important to histories of Populist politics, for example, in Kazin, Michael, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (New York: Anchor, 2007)Google Scholar; and Creech, Joe, Righteous Indignation: Religion and the Populist Revolution (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006)Google Scholar. Especially in studies of the professional classes, the primary agents of change are the forces of bureaucratic efficiency, scientific expertise, a therapeutic ethos, and hedonistic consumption—the presumption being that these forces were constituted largely without religious influence. Those studies that consider the religion of white collar professionals (as a class) treat it as private and apolitical. See, for example, Rieser, Andrew, “Secularization Reconsidered: Chautauqua and the De-Christianization of Middle-Class Authority, 1880–1920,” in The Middling Sorts: Explorations in the History of the American Middle Class, ed. Bledstein, Burton J. and Johnston, Robert D. (New York: Routledge, 2001), 136–50Google Scholar.

10. Starr, Paul, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1982)Google Scholar; Light, Donald W., “Introduction: Ironies of Success: A New History of the American Health Care ‘System,’” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 45 (2004), Special Issue: 1–24 Google Scholar; Johnston, Robert D., ed., The Politics of Healing: Histories of Alternative Medicine in Twentieth-Century North America (New York: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar. See also Leavitt, Judith Walzer, “Medicine in Context: A Review Essay of the History of Medicine,” American Historical Review 95, no. 5 (December 1990): 1471–84CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, for an early, but still helpful, review of the social turn in the history of medicine.

11. The most important exception to this general rule is Numbers, Ronald L. and Amundsen, Darrel W., eds., Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions (New York: Macmillan, 1986)Google Scholar, which helpfully outlines healing traditions for all major Christian denominations. Even this puts professional medicine in opposition to religion (such that religion “succumbed … to the homogenizing influence of modern medicine”). The editors rightly note this is only “part of the story” but focus primarily on faith healing. The book makes only fleeting reference to other types of interactions, such as the “moral guidance” provided by religion to “ethical dilemmas” created by medical technology (3).

12. Cunningham, Raymond J., “From Holiness to Healing: The Faith Cure in America,” Church History 43, no. 4 (December 1974): 499–513 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Baer, Jonathan R., “Redeemed Bodies: The Functions of Divine Healing in Incipient Pentecostalism,” Church History 70, no. 4 (December 2001): 735–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Schoepflin, Rennie, Christian Science on Trial: Religious Healing in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003)Google Scholar, has documented the importance of Christian Science practitioners in opposing increasing medical authority and the mixed results health officials achieved in regulating them through legal means. Curtis, Heather D., Faith in the Great Physician: Suffering and Divine Healing in American Culture, 1860–1900 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007)Google Scholar, shows the centrality of suffering in the discourse of faith healing. On Dowie, see Wacker, Grant, “Marching to Zion: Religion in a Modern Utopian Community,” Church History 54, no. 4 (December 1985): 496–511 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cook, Philip L., Zion City, Illinois: Twentieth-Century Utopia (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1996)Google Scholar. In the sophisticated and helpful monograph on faith healing in Canada, James Opp similarly juxtaposes a so-called medical body unproblematically with the religious body. That religion may have served to define and defend the supposedly secular medical body is not considered. Opp, James William, The Lord for the Body: Religion, Medicine, and Protestant Faith Healing in Canada, 1880–1930 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

13. Burton Bledstein's classic work on professionalism regularly notes the importance of values and morality but dismisses the role of religion in this. Bledstein, Burton J., The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York: Norton, 1976), esp. 196–202 Google Scholar. Religion is all but absent in Haskell’s study of the emergence of professional social science but subsequent studies have shown explicitly how theological concepts played a foundational role. Compare Haskell, Thomas L., The Emergence of Professional Social Science: The American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Authority (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977)Google Scholar, to Bateman, Bradley W. and Kapstein, Ethan B., “Between God and the Market: The Religious Roots of the American Economic Association,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 13, no. 4 (Fall 1999): 249–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sklansky, Jeffrey P., The Soul's Economy: Market Society and Selfhood in American Thought, 1820–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)Google Scholar. For moral discourses in even lower status professions, see Willett, Julie A., Permanent Waves: The Making of the American Beauty Shop (New York: New York University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and Hornstein, Jeffrey M., A Nation of Realtors: A Cultural History of the Twentieth-Century American Middle Class (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Asad, Talal, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Asad, Talal, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

15. Fessenden, Tracy, Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), 4 Google Scholar. See also Griffith, R. Marie and McAlister, Melani, “Introduction: Is the Public Square Still Naked?” American Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2007): 527–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. Protestants superintended “a dominant religion that exerted a controlling influence on public life” and established “moral norms that defined and limited” the rights of dissenters and would-be reformers. Sehat, David, The Myth of American Religious Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 2 Google Scholar.

17. Gutman, Herbert G., “Protestantism and the American Labor Movement: The Christian Spirit in the Gilded Age,” American Historical Review 72, no. 1 (October 1, 1966): 74–101 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Handy, Robert T., A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 81 Google Scholar. On the role of Protestantism in broader reform movements, see Boyer, Paul S., Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; and Foster, Gaines M., Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Legislation of Morality, 1865–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)Google Scholar. On the continuing cultural authority of the Bible in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, see Bademan, R. Bryan, “‘Monkeying with the Bible’: Edgar J. Goodspeed's ‘American Translation,’” Religion and American Culture 16, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 55–93 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Even after an explicitly Protestant establishment gave way to a “Judeo-Christian” morality in the 1940s, and then to the “spiritual-but-not-religious” formulation today, the imprint of Protestant assumptions remain. David Hollinger and Matthew Hedstrom convincingly argue for liberal Protestantism's influence in mainstream social norms in America through the permeation of their ecumenical values. Hollinger, David A., “After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Ecumenical Protestantism and the Modern American Encounter with Diversity,” Journal of American History 98, no. 1 (June 2011): 21–48 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hedstrom, Matthew S., The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The issue of ministerial authority, the downward mobility of the clergy vis-a-vis other professions, and related subjects stemming from the claims of Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1977)Google Scholar will not be addressed in detail. It is worth noting, however, that in the early twentieth century, average incomes for ministers from the elite Protestant denominations that constituted the establishment averaged between $800 and $1,200, compared with between $750 and $1,500 for doctors. Compare Hudnut-Beumler, James, In Pursuit of the Almighty's Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 85–86 Google Scholar, to Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, 84–85, 142. Elite ministers in Chicago earned substantially more than this average range (by several thousands of dollars) and were seen by the public as being aligned with the city's elite classes during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. See Heath Carter, “Union Made: Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2012), 34–39. In medicine, the opposite was true: at least one survey suggested that city doctors earned substantially less than their country cousins. Whatever the downward mobility of ministers as a class from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, it is a well-known fact to medical historians that doctors (as a class) were held in even lower esteem. Prestige lagged far behind other professions (including the ministry) at America's leading colleges. Only in 1925 did doctors (barely) edge out ministers and lawyers in a survey of occupational prestige—and they still fell behind bankers and college professors. Starr, , The Social Transformation of American Medicine, 81–85, 143Google Scholar.

18. On the diversity of religious practice in the United States, see Butler, Jon, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Tweed, Thomas A., ed., Retelling U.S. Religious History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Albanese, Catherine L., America: Religions and Religion, 4th ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing, 2006)Google Scholar.

19. My thinking on cultural versus social authority in religion is rooted in Paul Starr's analysis, cited below.

20. Religious systems need not be stable or unquestioned in order to influence public life; like other systems of power—race, class, and gender—it requires only that a sufficiently powerful part of a society see some benefit in maintaining them. The composition of American Protestantism has always been a mixed bag of sincere and cynical, since clear social benefits were reaped from the execution of religious duties. Of course, many Americans who benefited made no pretense whatsoever to adhere to a Protestant faith. One might argue that there was greater religious diversity in America before the Civil War than after. If we consider the multiplicity of Indian religious practices that were subsequently exterminated, recombined, and/or quarantined, the varieties of African religions increasingly homogenized within African American Protestantism and Islam, and the self-conscious Americanization project of Progressive Era Catholic bishops in the United States, the modern era might be understood as a period of consolidation. Even in a Protestant context, the divides between denominations were felt more deeply in the eighteenth century than in the twentieth. Homrighausen, Elmer J., “Cooperative Evangelism and the Unity of American Protestantism,” Religion in Life 40, no. 3 (June 1971): 391–403 Google Scholar.

21. When speaking of “orthodoxy,” we must take care not to overestimate the degree of religious harmony among this establishment (especially across region) or minimize the importance of religious outsiders in the shaping of American society. To ignore the influence of this Protestant establishment, however, is both to obscure the advantages given to Protestant elites and to diminish the achievements of religious groups who flourished without those advantages. On the distortions caused by past histories focused on religious insiders, see Moore, R. Laurence, Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

22. Starr, , The Social Transformation of American Medicine, 13–15 Google Scholar.

23. The term “sect,” used widely by historians of medicine, is not purely metaphorical; many “non-regular” schools of medicine were aligned with sectarian religious movements. Ibid., 95.

24. Vogel, Morris J. and Rosenberg, Charles E., eds., The Therapeutic Revolution: Essays in the Social History of American Medicine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Opp, The Lord for the Body, 14–15, 25–27.

25. Nord, David Paul, “The Public Community: The Urbanization of Journalism in Chicago,” Journal of Urban History 11, no. 4 (August 1985): 425 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nord, David Paul, “The Paradox of Municipal Reform in the Nineteenth Century,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 66, no. 2 (1982–1983): 129–30Google Scholar. Schwarzlose, Richard A., “Newspapers,” in Encyclopedia of Chicago, ed. Grossman, James R., Keating, Ann Durkin, and Reiff, Janice L. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004)Google Scholar, provides an excellent overview of Chicago's press. Contemporaneous reports suggest a broad, “respectable” middle-class perspective among Chicago's newspapers that were not found in other urban locales. Armstrong, F. Leroy, “The Daily Papers of Chicago,” Chautauquan, 27, no. 5 (August 1898): 538–545 Google Scholar; Abbot, Willis J., “Chicago Newspapers and Their Makers,” Review of Reviews 11 (June 1895): 646–65Google Scholar. Middle-class ministers reportedly praised the press as a collective defender of social morality in Chicago. “Praise Meeting at Auditorium,” CDT, October 9, 1899, 1. Dowie, too, thought of the Chicago press as a collective enterprise that unfairly targeted him. Dowie, John Alexander, Zion’s Holy War against the Hosts of Hell in Chicago: A Series of Addresses (Chicago: Zion Publishing House, 1900), 36–37 Google Scholar.

26. Hansen, Bert, “America's First Medical Breakthrough: How Popular Excitement about a French Rabies Cure in 1885 Raised New Expectations for Medical Progress,” American Historical Review 103, no. 2 (April 1998): 373 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

27. Denominationally oriented histories, almost by definition, are structured around internal theological struggles between liberals and conservatives. See, for example, Ahlstrom, Sydney, A Religious History of the American People, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. The classic study of populist religion in the early republic is Hatch, Nathan O., The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989)Google Scholar. Attempts to “reform” America were typically pursued by “orthodox” denominations. Abzug, Robert, Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America.

28. Sehat, , The Myth of American Religious Freedom, 22 Google Scholar.

29. Baird, Robert, Religion in America: Or an Account of the Origin, Relation to the State, and Present Condition of the Evangelical Churches in the United States, with Notices of the Unevangelical Denominations (New York: Harper and Bros., 1844), 288 Google Scholar.

30. Hatch, Nathan O., “Sola Scriptura and Novus Ordo Seculorum,” in The Bible in America: Essays in Cultural History, ed. Hatch, Nathan O. and Noll, Mark A. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 59–78 Google Scholar.

31. Sehat, , The Myth of American Religious Freedom, 62 Google Scholar.

32. Quoted in Handy, , A Christian America, 37 Google Scholar.

33. Sehat, , The Myth of American Religious Freedom, 84–85 (see also 166, 188–89)Google Scholar; Handy, , A Christian America, 27, 32 Google Scholar. Indeed, “the political and the religious orders” were so linked, according to Timothy Smith, that nineteenth-century American elites thought it impossible for education to take place outside of a religious context. For these elites, “Americanism and Protestantism were synonyms.” Smith, Timothy L., “Protestant Schooling and American Nationality, 1800–1850,” Journal of American History 53, no. 4 (March 1967): 680 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. Mullin, Robert Bruce, Miracles and the Modern Religious Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Hall, David D., Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York: Knopf, 1989)Google Scholar; Taves, Fits, Trances, and Visions, esp. 20–46.

35. On Romanticism, supernaturalism, and science, see M., Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: Norton, 1973)Google Scholar; and Winter, Alison, Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

36. Marsh, R. L., “Faith Healing”—a Defense, Or, the Lord Thy Healer (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1889)Google Scholar.

37. McGreevy, John T., “Bronx Miracle” American Quarterly 52, no. 3 (September 2000): 405–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38. This and the subsequent summary of early faith healing in America is taken from Cunningham, “From Holiness to Healing”; Dayton, Donald W., The Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury, 1987)Google Scholar; Mullin, Miracles and the Modern Religious Imagination; Baer, “Redeemed Bodies”; and Curtis, Faith in the Great Physician. Quote from A. B. Simpson, The Gospel of Healing (Harrisburg, 1915) (a reprint of Simpson's earlier faith healing tracts).

39. “Can People Be Cured by Faith, and How?” Boston Daily Globe, August 12, 1894, 20. On Moody's encouragement to visit Simpson, see Olsen, Margaret Hook, Patriarch of the Rockies: The Life Story of Joshua Gravett (Denver: Golden Bell Press, 1960), 43 Google Scholar.

40. Many opponents of faith healing still held to an older cessionist view. A typical critique was “The Faith Cure Fallacy,” Los Angeles Times, May 29, 1886, 2.

41. For a typical medical critique of faith healing by doctors in the 1880s, see “The Faith-Cure. What Eminent New York Physicians Think of Mr. Simpson's Work,” CDT, December 26, 1882, 3.

42. “Faith Is Mighty,” CDT, November 7, 1884, 5.

43. Carter, R. Kelso, “Divine Healing, or ‘Faith Cure,”’ Century Magazine, March 1887, 777–80Google Scholar; Buckley, J. M., “Faith-Healing and Kindred Phenomena,” ibid., 781–87Google Scholar.

44. On the social standing of physicians in the last third of the nineteenth century, see Duffy, John, “The Changing Image of the American Physician,” in Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health, ed. Leavitt, Judith Walzer and Numbers, Ronald L. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 131–37Google Scholar; Numbers, Ronald L., “Do-It-Yourself the Sectarian Way,” in ibid., 87–95 Google Scholar; and Gevits, Norman, “Three Perspectives on Unorthodox Medicine,” in Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America, ed. Gevits, Norman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 1–28 Google Scholar.

45. Hansen, Bert, “New Images of a New Medicine: Visual Evidence for the Widespread Popularity of Therapeutic Discoveries in America after 1885,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 73, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 629–78CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

46. For non-Protestant forms of faith healing, see Umansky, Ellen M., From Christian Science to Jewish Science: Spiritual Healing and American Jews (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; and Gevits, Other Healers. Christian Science, founded by Mary Baker Eddy, was another important form of spiritual healing. However, because it was founded by a woman, promoted an alternative religious text, and had theological and philosophical features that were at odds with the Protestant “orthodoxy” at the time, it was almost immediately dismissed as a “sect” without the intrinsic religious authority of Protestant ministers. Members were similarly prosecuted, especially on the East Coast, and it played an important role in medical professionalization. Schoepflin, Christian Science on Trial. A few prosecutions were attempted in Chicago, but far less effort was put into pursuing Christian Scientists than Dowie.

47. Harlan, Rolvix, John Alexander Dowie and the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion (Evansville, Wisc.: Press of R. M. Antes, 1906), 28–34 Google Scholar; Reinders, Robert C., “Training for a Prophet: The West Coast Missions of John Alexander Dowie, 1888–1890,” Pacific Historian 30, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 2–14 Google Scholar; Wacker, , “Marching to Zion,” 497–98Google Scholar; Dowie, John Alexander, American First-Fruits: Being a Brief Record of Eight Months’ Divine Healing …, 2d ed. (San Francisco: Leaves of Healing, 1889), 39, 41Google Scholar.

48. Dowie, American First-Fruits, Appendix, 1 (first two quotes); 41 (third quote). Dowie's recollection of the start of his faith healing ministry is reprinted in Harlan, John Alexander Dowie, 30–33.

49. “Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness,” Los Angeles Times, May 29, 1889, 3; “The Rev. Dowie,” ibid., June 6, 1889, 5; “University Place,” ibid., February 8, 1890, 5; “Dowie in Chicago,” ibid., October 19, 1890, 12; [No Title], ibid., March 14, 1891, 4.

50. “A Prophet Is Now with Us,” Omaha Daily World-Herald, July 14, 1890, 8; “Something New Under the Sun,” ibid., July 9, 1890, 4; “Bowed the Knee to Dowie,” ibid., July 25, 1890, 1. On the growing controversy Dowie caused, see “Dowie's Creed Doubters Rev. Drs. Henson and Cooley Are Not Converted to the Faith Healer,” ibid., July 15, 1890, 8; and “Practicing on Public Credulity,” ibid., July 20, 1890, 4.

51. “Dowie Faith Healer,” Chicago Herald, August, 3, 1890, 28. The Herald's coverage became more skeptical by October. See “Cured by Their Faith,” ibid., October 28, 1890, 6.

52. “Medical News and Miscellany,” Times and Register, October 11, 1890, 342.

53. “Baffled by No Disease,” CDT, October 3, 1890, 1; “Bible Readings and Collections,” ibid., February 13, 1891, 7; “Just Lays on His Hands,” ibid., May 23, 1891, 1. For typical coverage of Dowie in the Chicago Inter Ocean, see “Prayer Healed Them,” CIO, August 28, 1891, 6 [hereafter CIO]. The first coverage with any negative connotations was “City in Brief,” ibid., December 25, 1894, 8.

54. For an overview of medical professionalization in Illinois, see Goebel, Thomas, “Professionalization and State Building: The State and the Professions in Illinois, 1870–1920,” Social Science History 18 (1994): 309–37Google Scholar. On the Medical Practice Act of 1887 and its challenges, see “The New Medical Practice Act,” CDT, June 21, 1887, 9 (from which quote was taken); “Quacks, Chorea, Yellow-Fever,” ibid., October 19, 1887, 6; “Constitutional Law—Right of Physicians to Advertise,” Albany Law Journal 37 (February 11, 1888): 113–15; and “State Regulation of Medical Practice,” Medical News, March 9, 1889, 274. On the state of medical regulation in the 1890s, see “The Chicago Medical Society Denounced,” Medical Record, August 16, 1890, 186; and Illinois State Board of Health, Annual Report of the Illinois State Board of Health (1895), xvii.

55. Cook, , Zion City, 10–11 Google Scholar; Wacker, , “Marching to Zion,” 498–99Google Scholar. The last attack on Dowie at this time by the Tribune was “Dowie and the Spiritualists,” CDT, June 24, 1891, 3.

56. On the smallpox outbreaks and the health department's difficulties, see Annual Report of the Illinois State Board of Health (1895), xii–xiii; “Police to Stamp out Smallpox,” CDT, April 20, 1894, 7; “Smallpox Patient Is at Large. Health Department Officials Too Busy to Transport Her to the Pesthouse,” ibid., March 2, 1894, 8; “Complaint of Health Officers. More Smallpox Cases That Are Said to Be Wofully [sic] Neglected,” ibid., April 30, 1894, 8; “The Shame of Chicago,” ibid., May 16, 1894, 6; and “Where Economy May Be Practiced,” ibid., February 24, 1894, 12. On the state board's controversy over medical school regulation, see “Its Power Attacked. Charges Are Made Against the State Board of Health,” ibid., January 26, 1894, 8; and “Against the State Board of Health,” ibid., April 24, 1894, 3. Illinois governor John Peter Altgeld insisted that the state was not taking sides in these professional controversies. It simply wanted everyone who practices medicine “to get a certain degree of education before attempting the art of healing.” After this, “he can disregard it all and adopt other methods that in his judgment are better.” John P. Altgeld, Live Questions: Comprising His Papers, Speeches, and Interviews (Chicago, 1899), 462–63.

57. Johnston, Robert D., The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

58. Dowie quoted in Wacker, , “Marching to Zion,” 499 Google Scholar; “John Alexander Dowie Seeks Gore,” CDT, April 23, 1894, 1; “Miracle Healing,” Independent, October 11, 1894, 13; “Divine Healer Sails into Coxey,” CDT, May 14, 1894, 8.Dowie attacked the different schools ofmedicine with equal ferocity. See “Dr. Dowie Lectures,” CIO, November 25, 1895, 5.

59. “‘Healing Hand’ Dowie Turned Out,” CDT, June 25, 1894, 8; Harlan, , John Alexander Dowie, 34 Google Scholar.

60. A representative selection includes, “Dowie's Magic Hand Takes a Day Off,” CDT, April 16, 1894, 1; “Dies in Dowie's Den; Homer Harrison Succumbs under Miraculous Treatment,” ibid., April 27, 1894; and “Dowie Asks Dollars. His Healing Hand Reaches Out for the Shining Cash,” ibid., April 30, 1894, 8. The Tribune self-interestedly reported that his threats led the city to dispatch “three shifts of 100 policemen to guard the Tribune office night and day.” “Divine Healer Sails into Coxey.”

61. “Dowie May Be Arrested,” CDT, June 29, 1894, 8; “State Officials After Dowie,” CIO, January 6, 1895, 11; “Visit Dowie's Homes. Building Inspectors Look at the Healing Institutions,” CDT, January 8, 1895, 12. See also “Health Board Investigating Dowie,” CDT, June 27, 1894, 9; “Dowie's Race Is Nearly Run,” ibid., January 9, 1895, 8; and [No Title], ibid., January 7, 1895, 6.

62. “To Protect the Sick,” CDT, January 13, 1895, 10. On Dowie’s initial arrest, see “The City in Brief,” CIO, January 9, 1895, 8; “‘Faith-Healer’ Dowie Arrested,” CDT, January 6, 1895, 1; and Wacker, , “Marching to Zion,” 499–500 Google Scholar. Two other failed actions preceded the prosecution’s using the hospital ordinance. First, Dowie was charged with larceny for reportedly taking money from a victim of an unsuccessful healing. “The City in Brief”; “Items,” CDT, January 25, 1895, 8. Then, Dowie also was charged with “violating the medical practice act” for practicing medicine without a license. “‘Divine Healer’ Dowie Fined $100,” CDT, February 3, 1895, 6; “John Alexander Dowie on Trial,” CIO, January 12, 1895, 7; “Court Notes,” ibid., April 11, 60 1895, 10. On healing homes, see Heather D. Curtis, “Houses of Healing: Sacred Space, Spiritual Practice, and the Transformation of Female Suffering in the Faith Cure Movement, 1870–90,” Church History 75, no. 3 (September 2006): 598–611.

63. “Arrested Dr. Dowie,” CIO, June 14, 1895, 1; “Dr. Dowie Shows Anger,” ibid., June 19, 1895, 12. Dowie unsuccessfully appealed to the mayor and filed an unsuccessful injunction. “His Appeal Refused,” ibid., June 23, 1895, 20.

64. “Want Dowie Ousted,” CIO, July 2, 1895, 2.

65. “Divine Healing,” New York Evangelist, August 8, 1895, 26.

66. “Dowie Continues His Services,” CIO, June 24, 1895, 5. For representative coverage in the Chicago Daily Tribune, see “Dowie in the Toils,” CDT, June 14, 1885, 1; “To Keep Issuing Warrants for Dowie,” ibid., June 16, 1895, 12; “He Vents His Spleen. Dowie Rants and Raves,” ibid., June 17, 1895, 8; and “Bad Day for Dowie,” ibid., June 20, 1895, 8.

67. “A Silly Impostor,” Independent, February 28, 1895, 10. For a brief historical sketch of the Independent, see Mott, Frank Luther, A History of American Magazines, 5 vols. (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1930), 2:367–79Google Scholar.

68. “Courts of Record,” CIO, July 12, 1895, 10; “Dowie on the Stand for Himself,” CDT, January 23, 1895, 9. Quotes of Dowie about medicine and the prosecutorial response in “The City in Brief,” CIO, July 26, 1895, 8. Quotes about defining “hospital” and subsequent discussion in “‘Dr.’ Dowie Rejoices,” ibid., August 15, 1895, 8. For Dowie’s contrast between the common and professional definitions of “hospital” and “medical practice,” see “Jury Deliberating in Dowie's Case,” ibid., November 15, 1895, 8.

69. “Two Jurors Hang Out,” CIO, June 26, 1895, 1; “Juror Reynolds Blamed for Verdict,” ibid., July 11, 1895, 8 (here, religion was specified as the cause of the hung jury); “Dowie Jury Disagrees,” August 1, 1895, 2. For not guilty findings, see “The City in Brief,” ibid., August 8, 1895, 8; “The City in Brief,” ibid., August 17, 1895, 7; and “Dowie Wins a Suit,” ibid., August 30, 1895, 8.

70. “From the Interior,” Congregationalist, August 1, 1895, 162. See also “Chicago Letter,” New York Evangelist, August 1, 1895, 25.

71. “Overdoing the Dowie Business,” CDT, July 23, 1895, 6.

72. [No Title], CIO, August 31, 1895, 6. He promised to investigate police behavior and called a halt to his continuing arrests.

73. “‘Dr.’ Dowie Rejoices.”

74. “Case against Dowie Dismissed,” CIO, August 23, 1895, 12. When the city refused to pay for the jury, because the case did not go to court, Dowie shrewdly offered to pay the fee.

75. “The City in Brief,” CIO, December 25, 1895, 8. See also “Dowie's Case Heard on Appeal,” ibid., November 8, 1895, 8. One last attempt at prosecution was made in March, but this, too, resulted in the same conclusion. “Dowie's Troubles Seem Ended,” ibid., March 3, 1896, 8.

76. McLennan, W. E., “Religious Intelligence,” Independent, January 30, 1896, 16 Google Scholar.

77. The Chicago Daily Tribune printed only three short articles in 1897 and 1898 (in contrast, it had published more than one hundred articles on Dowie from mid-1894 to mid-1896, many on the front page).

78. Curtis, , Faith in the Great Physician, 6 Google Scholar.

79. The Chicago Daily Tribune devoted nearly one hundred articles to the heated debate (it continued unabated during Dowie's prosecution in 1895) and printed editorials expressing doubts as late as January 1896. On the extent and speed of dissemination of bacteriology, see “They Deal in Death,” CDT, August 20, 1893, 27. For examples of Chicago Daily Tribune coverage of the antitoxin debate, see, for example, “Is Anti-Toxin Ever Harmful?” ibid., February 24, 1896, 10; and “Opposed to Antitoxin; Deems it a failure as a remedy for Diphtheria,” ibid., December 14, 1896, 12. Editorials expressed doubts as late as January 1896. “Defends Ethics in Medicine,” ibid., January 25, 1896, 14. For evidence of the striking shift to support in light of the growing body of statistical evidence for the effectiveness of the diphtheria antitoxin, see “Some Statistics on Diphtheria,” ibid., December 1, 1895, 3; “Antitoxin a Success,” ibid., September 6, 1896, 30; “Death Rate Is Only 1.07,” ibid., November 9, 1896, 9; and “Work of the Year,” ibid., January 1, 1898, 7.

80. “Notes and Queries,” Outlook, October 2, 1897, 343.

81. “Lutherans and the Faith Cure,” CIO, November 7, 1895, 7; see also “Warn against Dowie Theories,” CIO, November 8, 1895, 8. For Dowie's response, see “Dr. Dowie Lectures.” Methodist bodies took similar actions after a Dowie associate caused controversy at a Chicago-area camp meeting. See “Among the Campers,” CIO, July 24, 1895, 5. An earlier editorial in the Methodist Advocate advised ministers against using their reputations to endorse medical products—essentially recommending they steer clear of making any pronouncements on such topics. It was approvingly reprinted in the Medical News. See “Ministerial Indorsement [sic] of Humbugs,” Medical News, April 20, 1895, 442.

82. “Faith-healing and the Pulpit,” Medical News, November 2, 1895, 496. On Moody's changing attitudes toward faith healing, see Dorsett, Lyle, A Passion for Souls: The Life of D. L. Moody (Chicago: Moody Press, 1997), 334–35Google Scholar.

83. “Chicago Letter,” New York Evangelist, March 18, 1897, 11.

84. Carter, Russell Kelso, “Faith Healing” Reviewed after Twenty Years (Boston, 1897)Google Scholar. A typical review is Daniel Steele, “Faith Healing,” Zion's Herald, December 22, 1897, 819; and “Among the Books of the Day,” CDT, February 12, 1897, 8. Often, articles attacked practitioners of modern miracles while insisting that some were authentic. See, for example, “Modern Miracles,” New York Evangelist, November 25, 1897, 15; and Independent, November 25, 1897, 13.

85. [No Title], Independent, October 28, 1897, 11.

86. “Faith-healing and the Pulpit.” For an example of the Stewart's advertisement, see CDT, March 17, 1897, 3. The same ad was used for at least two years.

87. [No Title], CDT, May 7, 1899, 41.

88. “Proposed Medical Practice Acts,” Medical Standard, March 1897, 93–95; “The Standard of the Profession,” ibid., 75–76. The original elimination of alternative schools of medicine was reversed the following month. Ibid., April 1897, 134–35; “Illinois Medical Practice Legislation,” ibid., April 1897, 111–12.

89. “The Medical Practice Act,” CDT, April 13, 1897, 6.

90. “Voice of the People,” ibid., May 8, 1897, 14.

91. “Illinois Medical Practice Legislation,” Medical Standard, April 1897, 147–48; “The Illinois Legislature,” ibid., May 1897, 147–48; “The Illinois Law-Givers,” ibid., July 1897, 220–21.

92. “Fight on Medical Bill,” CDT, March 30, 1899, 7; “On Medical Practice Act,” ibid., April 26, 1899, 7; “Laws Take Effect,” ibid., July 1, 1899, 8. See also “Working with a Might,” ibid., April 8, 1899, 2; and [No Title], ibid., July 29, 1899, 1.

93. “Yawping at the Press,” CDT, December 16, 1895, 3.

94. Independent, March 12, 1896, 11; ibid., February 27, 1896, 14; John Alexander Dowie, “If It Be Thy Will,” Leaves of Healing, October 8, 1898, 975–77.

95. Independent, February 27, 1896, 14; Reynolds, C. G., “Chicago Letter,” New York Evangelist, March 18, 1897, 11 Google Scholar; “From the Interior,” Congregationalist, January 7, 1897, 10; Independent, March 25, 1897, 12; ibid., October 28, 1897, 11; ibid., December 30, 1897, 16.

96. “Statistics of the Churches,” Christian Index, January 12, 1899, 1.

97. ‘’Disease and the Devil,” CDT, April 2, 1899, 6. Bratz image found in “‘Divine Healer’ and Patient Who Died,” ibid., July 30, 1899, 5. Bratz editorial quote found in “Prayer Did Not Save Her,” ibid., July 30, 1899, 32.

98. The salient point is that medical professionalization necessitated these types of critiques in order to expand their regulatory power. The charge that faith healing endangered the family—especially through its possible harm to children—was neither unique to Chicago nor pioneered there. In 1889, California medical regulators used a very similar strategy to the one described here in the aftermath of Dowie's ministry there. See, for example, “Faith Cure. Another Child Who Was Taken by Diphtheria,” Los Angeles Times, July 8, 1889, 4. This strategy was also used against Christian Scientists. See Schoepflin, , Christian Science on Trial, 168–90Google Scholar.

99. “She Has Faith But Dies,” CDT, July 28, 1899, 1; “To Sift ‘Divine Healing,”’ ibid., July 31, 1899, 12. Once in the courtroom, the latter article explained, “Bratz … was almost forgotten except in the formalities of the court,” being overshadowed by Dowie, who argued in her defense. The 1899 Medical Practice Act took effect on July 1. “New Laws Take Effect,” ibid., July 1, 1899, 8.

100. “Blow for ‘Zion’ Cure,” CDT, August 17, 1899, 12; “Faith Healing in Chicago,” New York Times, August 20, 1899, 11. The Chicago Daily Tribune's coverage made no mention of these objections.

101. “Practicing FaithCure onChildren,”CDT,August 20, 1899, 32.

102. “Renew Attack on ‘Zion,”’ CDT, August 29, 1899, 5. The “proof” of Dowie's use of “means” was his incidental physical contact with the patient. See also “Children the Victims,” ibid., September 10, 1899, 32; and “Say Repeal if Akin Is Right,” ibid., September 10, 1899, 5.

103. “Vale ‘Dowieism,”’ Los Angeles Times, August 23, 1899, 8. See also “Gave to ‘Zion’ while Family Starved,” New York Times, August 25, 1899, 1.

104. “Medical Matters in Chicago,” Medical News, September 9, 1899, 343.

105. “Startled by Crane's Views,” CDT, April 18, 1899, 7; “Ministers Attack Dowieism,” ibid., September 12, 1899, 3.

106. “Invoke Law on Dowie,” CDT, August 15, 1899, 10; “Organize to Fight Dowie,” ibid., August 30, 1899, 12.

107. “Dr. Dowie's ‘Zion,”’ Independent, May 11, 1899, 13.

108. “Dowie the ‘Faith Healer,”’ Los Angeles Times, August 18, 1899, 14.

109. Carroll, H. K., “The Sects of Healers,” Methodist Advocate, July 27, 1899, 1178 Google Scholar. On Mormonism, see Gordon, Sarah Barringer, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

110. “Official Death Record,” CDT, March 19, 1898, 5. The incident, purged of any reference to Dowie or faith healing, is found in Davis, George T. B., Torrey and Alexander: The Story of a World-Wide Revival (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1905)Google Scholar; and Torrey, Reuben A., The Holy Spirit: Who He Is and What He Does (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1927), 93–95 Google Scholar.

111. Torrey's letter to Dowie recounting the event was lithographically reproduced in Leaves of Healing 5, no. 24 (April 8, 1899), 460 (from which the quote is taken). There is overwhelming corroborating evidence that these were faithful reproductions of the letters written by Torrey.

112. Moody, D. L. to Torrey, R. A., March 14, 1899, D. L. Moody Correspondence Files, Moody Bible Institute Archives, Chicago Google Scholar.

113. “Religious Amenities,” CDT, October, 3, 1899, 6.

114. Chicago Chronicle, October 2, 1899, 2. The Chicago Inter Ocean reprinted the sermon in full the next day; in addition, the Chicago Daily Tribune and the Chicago Journal also reported the controversy and the contents of Torrey's letters. See CDT, October 3, 1899, 9, and Chicago Journal, October 2, 1899, 1. The story was also picked up by the national media. “Two Chicago Pulpits,” Washington Post, October 6, 1899, 6, and “Dowie vs. Talmage,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1899, 7. Torrey’s letters were not included in the abbreviated national coverage.

115. “Religious Amenities,” 6.

116. “Moody's Tribute to the Doctors,” CDT, October 6, 1899, 12.

117. CDT, October 3, 1899, 9; Chicago Chronicle, October 2, 1899, 2.

118. A new wave of efforts against Dowie was originally announced in the New York Times on October 3 but was delayed. Compare “Peril Due to Dowieites,” CDT, October 26, 1899, 1, to “Divine Healer to Blame,” New York Times, October 3, 1899, 4.

119. “Rescue for ‘Dr.’ Dowie,” CDT, November 1, 1899, 1; “Echoes and News,” Medical News, November 4, 1899, 590; “Dowie’s Many Troubles,” Los Angeles Times, November 2, 1899, 2; “Mob Besieges ‘Dr.’ Dowie,” New York Times, November 2, 1899, 7.

120. “Dowie Suffers from Attack,” CDT, October 29, 1899, 2.

121. “Ministers Attack Dowieism,” ibid., September 12, 1899, 3; “Bishop on Christian Science,” ibid., November 20, 1899, 4; “Dowie Sermon Surprises Baptists,” ibid.,March 27, 1900, 4; “Warns People against Dowie; Father Conway … Talks Pointedly to His Congregation,” ibid., March 19, 1900, 5. On changing attitudes toward faith healing among Episcopalians during this time, see Robert BruceMullin, “The Debate over Religion and Healing in the Episcopal Church: 1870–1930,” Anglican and Episcopal History 60, no. 2 (June 1991): 213–34.

122. “Echoes and News,” 590.

123. “Topics of the Times,” New York Times, October 4, 1899, 8. This was written to support the initial action that was delayed because of the Torrey incident.

124. “To Inspect the Pupils,” CDT, October 27, 1899, 2.

125. Dowie had toyed with the idea of founding the “City of Zion” during the first wave of prosecutions but had not made any further efforts to make it a reality until the turn of the twentieth century. “He Will Call It Zion,” CIO, June 7, 1895, 1.

126. Quote from Wacker, , “Marching to Zion,” 503 Google Scholar. “‘Dr.’ Dowie at Arcade Hall,” CDT, October 30, 1899, 4; “Dowie Tours the City,” ibid., October 23, 1899, 5; “From the Interior,” Congregationalist, January 18, 1900, 100; “Chicago and the Interior,” ibid., July 26, 1900, 118. For later attempts to prosecute Dowie, see “Plan Campaign against Dowie,” CDT, May 21,1901, 3. On the demise of Dowie, see Wacker, “Marching to Zion,” 507–8.

127. “Menace in Dowie Faith,” CDT, February 27, 1901, 1.

128. “Uses Antitoxin in Zion,” ibid., July 24, 1901, 9.

129. Andrews, Champe S., “Medical Practice and the Law,” Forum, July 1901, 544 Google Scholar.

130. Guthrie, G. W., “Medicine and Superstition,” Medical News, September 29, 1900, 479–80Google Scholar.

131. Flexner, , Medical Education in the United States and Canada, 157, xiii, xvGoogle Scholar.