{"id":4975,"date":"2014-06-11T22:07:53","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T03:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4975"},"modified":"2014-06-11T22:07:53","modified_gmt":"2014-06-12T03:07:53","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-june-11-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4975","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour for June 11, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Starved Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
\n<\/strong>
\n

\"Linda<\/a>

Linda says: Food, it’s bad for you!<\/p><\/div>Linda Burfield Hazzard had the potential to accomplish a great deal of good\u00a0in her lifetime. Born in 1867 in Minnesota, she became a doctor at a time\u00a0when women were not encouraged to pursue such a career. She was an\u00a0intelligent and very determined woman as well, and a charismatic speaker and\u00a0writer. \u00a0But something went wrong. Something went very wrong indeed. \u00a0Dr. Hazzard chose a peculiar area of medicine in which to specialize. Her\u00a0specialty was fasting. At that time, fasting was considered quack medicine,\u00a0largely discredited. This did not prevent the determined doctor from\u00a0publishing a highly successful book in 1908, “Fasting as a Cure for\u00a0Disease.” In it, she claimed that her fasting method could cure just about\u00a0any disease known to man, up to and including cancer. \u00a0With her alcoholic husband Sam, Hazzard opened Wilderness Heights, a\u00a0“sanitarium” in Olalla, Washington, a remote and picturesque coastal town. \u00a0Here, wealthy patients came to take the cure. Many never made it out of\u00a0Olalla alive.<\/p>\n

Earl Erdman, a Seattle city engineer, kept a detailed diary of his stay at\u00a0Wilderness Heights. In it, he described the spartan meals he consumed as\u00a0part of the fasting treatment. The diet consisted mostly of strained tomato\u00a0or asparagus broth, only a cup or less once or twice a day, supplemented\u00a0with tiny amounts of orange juice. Erdman wrote that he slept well on this\u00a0diet but that he was light-headed, suffered severe backache, and that his\u00a0eyes were “yellow-streaked and red.” He died after nearly two months at\u00a0Wilderness Heights. Predictably, the cause of death was starvation.<\/p>\n

It was the Williamson sisters who finally exposed the full extent of the\u00a0“treatment” prescribed by Linda Hazzard. Dorothea and Claire were wealthy\u00a0British women in their early thirties, both perfectly healthy but with an\u00a0interest in medical fads. This, coupled with a fair amount of hypochondria,\u00a0led them to sign on for the fasting cure in 1912.\u00a0Initially the sisters lived in an apartment in Seattle, where they were\u00a0cared for by a nurse and visited by Dr. Hazzard. When they were sufficiently\u00a0weakened, they were moved to Olalla and the sanitarium itself.\u00a0It was at this point that Linda Hazzard gained control of the sisters’\u00a0finances and took possession of their jewelry and other valuables. She took\u00a0advantage of the ladies’ rapidly-deteriorating health to get them to sign\u00a0documents giving her such control.<\/p>\n

And the treatment continued. Dory, as Dorothea was called, finally began to\u00a0suspect that something sinister was going on. She and Claire were literally\u00a0wasting away, in constant pain and barely able to talk. Dr. Hazzard\u00a0separated them, and by the time Dory was finally permitted to see her\u00a0sister, Claire was near death. Claire died shortly after a “massage” which\u00a0was a part of the “treatment” which consisted, essentially, of Hazzard\u00a0vigorously pounding on the sunken abdomen. \u00a0Claire Williamson died weighing less than fifty pounds. Dory was less than\u00a0sixty pounds when a family friend finally arrived and rescued her, taking\u00a0her to Seattle against the strong objections of Dr. Hazzard.<\/p>\n

From there the terrible truth of what happened at Wilderness Heights began\u00a0to come out. Hazzard went on trial for the murder of Claire Williamson, with\u00a0Dory as the star witness against her. She was found guilty of manslaughter\u00a0and sentenced to two to twenty years in prison. She was released after two\u00a0years, and a year later was pardoned by the governor of Washington.\u00a0The Hazzards promptly moved to New Zealand, where Linda worked as an\u00a0osteopath and dietician for four years. After that they returned to Olalla\u00a0and reopened their “sanitarium” though this time Dr. Hazzard billed herself\u00a0as an educator, since her license to practice medicine had been revoked. \u00a0But the loss of her license made little difference. Linda Hazzard was still\u00a0starving her gullible patients. Several more would die by her “treatment”\u00a0methods, but she continued to operate without interference. The local\u00a0residents were used to seeing pathetic, skeletal men and women around the\u00a0sanitarium, and they referred to the place as Starvation Heights.\u00a0The sanitarium finally burned to the ground, and a few years later, in 1938,\u00a0Linda Hazzard died by self-starvation in an attempt to cure herself.<\/p>\n

Culled from: Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest<\/a>\"\"
\nSubmitted by: Aimee
\n<\/a>
\nWhile this book is very informative, I feel honor-bound to tell you that it\u00a0is also a big, crashing bore. – Aimee<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Starved Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Linda Burfield Hazzard had the potential to accomplish a great deal of good\u00a0in her lifetime. Born in 1867 in Minnesota, she became a doctor at a time\u00a0when women were not encouraged to pursue such a career. She was an\u00a0intelligent and very determined woman as well, and a charismatic speaker […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4975"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4980,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4975\/revisions\/4980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}