written by Gregg Olsen
Scary book, this.
It's a piece of true crime, set in the early 1900s, about a quacky "fasting doctor" named Linda Burfield Hazzard, who was actually not a doctor at all. She was a charlatan who applied a "fasting treatment" to her patients (many of whom ended up dying of starvation) at her Wilderness Heights "sanitarium" on an out-of-the-way island in the Pacific Northwest. It just so happened that several of her patients were rather wealthy, and what do you know, much of their wealth ended up in the hands of the good doctor (supposedly according to the patients' wishes) prior to their deaths.
It was a case of not only malpractice but also brainwashing, and I found it fascinating.
In the book's spotlight are Claire and Dora Williamson, sisters and young British heiresses who had traveled to Washington state on holiday. Upon reading about Hazzard's fasting treatment, they decided to put themselves under her care for some unnamed malady that they both claimed was sapping the life out of them. The author implies that there was likely nothing major wrong with the two young women; they were just faddists whose interest in alternative healing methodologies led them to the wrong place at the wrong time. Within a month of arriving at what the locals had dubbed Starvation Heights, the two women were emaciated, delusional, and unable to walk or care for themselves. They had withered away to mere shadows after weeks of consuming little more than water and vegetable broth.
Oh and much of their money and jewelry had disappeared in the process.
One of the sisters ended up dying of starvation at the sanitarium. The other sister then began to see that Hazzard's practices were manipulative and unsound. However, too weak and withered to check herself out of the place, she secretly sent a desparate plea to a friend in Australia. This set in motion a long process of being rescued from the sanitarium and participating in a trial in which Hazzard was eventually convicted of medical malpractice.
I don't usually love true crime stuff, but this book reads like a novel and I enjoyed it a lot. I'd recommend it.
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