Body & Mind Raid

In the clinic, a converted garage in Manhattan's fashionable East 60s, a lecture was going on. Flanked by a Great Dane on one side, a grateful patient on the other, Dr. Edward Spencer Cowles, head of the lucrative Body & Mind Foundation, was up on a platform addressing an audience of 300. In popped the police, led by Assistant Attorney General Bernard Bienstock. Thus after 19 stormy years Dr. Cowles's treatment of nervous socialites with brown medicine and mass pep talks came at least temporarily to a halt.

While the patients sang Hail, Hail the Gang's All Here, State Education Inspector Albert A. Buchholz served the doctor with a summons to appear before the medical grievance committee of the State Department of Education. The charges: 1) operating a dispensary and clinic without a permit; 2) "falsely, fraudulently, deceitfully and unlawfully" allowing unlicensed persons to practice medicine in the clinic; 3) violating State law by advertising unethically in magazines.

Dr. Cowles, a graduate M.D. of 62, with great faith in the suggestibility of mankind, started his clinic, known originally as the Body & Soul, in 1923 in connection with Manhattan's famous church of St. Mark's-in-the-Bouwerie. Six years later, Actress Jeanne Eagels died in his Park Avenue sanitarium, of an overdose of heroin. By 1932, after Dr. Cowles had treated several thousand patients in St. Mark's, the vestrymen told Dr. Cowles to clear out. This action was approved by Bishop William T. Manning.

Investigators reported that the doctor's treatment for all cases, from ulcers to neuroses, was the same: several hundred patients gathered three times a week at his clinic, lined up before a "cocktail window," received a brownish liquid in a paper cup. The mixture was called A.T.O.P., for reasons unknown, and contained the powerful drugs chloral hydrate, bromides, digitalis. After drinking this potion (which often made them giddy, set them a-warbling), patients proceeded in line to "treatment" by Dr. Cowles. New patients were examined and interviewed by two of Dr. Cowles's non-medico assistants. Placing one hand against the patient's stomach, the examiner grasped the bridge of the patient's nose with the knuckles of the first and second fingers of his other hand. Then he said: "Relax your mind. Relax your body. Now you're feeling better." After this, the patient entered the auditorium, listened to testimonials from others.

Dr. Cowles charged a fee of $12 for the first three treatments, plus $5 a week for succeeding ones. Since he treated thousands of patients annually, investigators estimate he grossed about $500,000. On the Foundation's original Board of Directors were such personages as the late Samuel Untermeyer, Amos Pinchot, Colonel Joseph Hartfield. According to Attorney General Bennett, the raid was inspired by "much whispering in high social and entertainment circles." Said he: "A number of internationally known men and women have attended the clinics of the Body & Mind Foundation, and their subsequent conduct caused great distress to members of their families."

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