8. Electric baths, giant bug zappers, and Dr. Harvey Kellogg
When it comes to oddball ideas, few people reigned more supremely than Dr. Harvey Kellogg, best known for his beloved cornflakes. His mind overflowed with the blueprints for all sorts of peculiar gadgets, but one of his most popular notions was that known as the “electric bath.” Which looked like a giant bug zapper. Not long after his friend Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb in 1879, Kellogg began working on what he called the “electric light bath,” at the sanitarium he ran in Battle Creek, Michigan, where he practiced holistic methods in the hopes of promoting good health. And the idea of light therapy really grabbed his attention. Which means he invented corn flakes and the tanning bed. Yes, he did. Really.
And electric baths did seem to work. For some things at least. Sunlight, whether natural or produced artificially, was understood to be quite healthy for us, especially if used all over the body. In the 1890s, it was discovered that ultraviolet could kill bacteria, and in 1903, Denmark’s Niels Finsen received the Nobel Prize for his work in treating skin tuberculosis by using ultraviolet light. Soon, light therapy was used to treat circulatory diseases, anemia, varicose veins, heart disease, polio, and tuberculosis. And its success rates were substantial. By 1947, more than 80,000 people had been treated and success rates were around 50-80 percent.