Guida alla salute: Il come prevenire le malattie, come curarle, come riguadagnare la salute, estesa descrizione delle cause, sintomi, e trattamento di tutte le malattie del corpo umano con un capitolo sul matrimonio e la vita sessuale [Guide to Health: How to anticipate illnesses, how to treat them, how to regain health, extensive description of the causes, symptoms, and treatment of all illnesses of the human body with a chapter on marriage and sexual life]. New York: Italian American Directory Co., 1904.
Title
Guida alla salute: Il come prevenire le malattie, come curarle, come riguadagnare la salute, estesa descrizione delle cause, sintomi, e trattamento di tutte le malattie del corpo umano con un capitolo sul matrimonio e la vita sessuale [Guide to Health: How to anticipate illnesses, how to treat them, how to regain health, extensive description of the causes, symptoms, and treatment of all illnesses of the human body with a chapter on marriage and sexual life]. New York: Italian American Directory Co., 1904.
Description
Collins, working in Liverpool, was a physician and quack. An issue of The Medical Standard dated 1896 announces his medical residency in Hicksville, NY. Later, he appears to have been fined $150 for advertising his medical practice without first seeking legal authorization.
That a work on health “written exclusively for the Italians in America” by this non-Italian could dare to have a chapter “on matrimony and sexual life,” including discussion of both “sexual indifference” and nymphomania, is itself noteworthy. That the Italian American Directory Co., which otherwise published only "directories" of, by and about the Italian American community, gave its imprimatur to publishing a work of this type also seems noteworthy.
Collins published the same or similar works in Spanish, Polish and other languages, thus giving the lie to his having claimed to have published this work "exclusively" for Italians.
On the other hand, practicing at the New York Medical Institute on West 34th Street, Professor Collins boasts on the inside front cover the “number of sick people cured in every state” of the U.S. by his medical methods, enumerated state by state. This impressive but dubious sounding boast is consistent with his having been called out in the pages of Il Proletario and La Follia as a quack.
Collins is quick to note that of these 20,196 patients, most of whom were permanently “cured,” “only a quarter were actually examined by me personally,” the rest by his original method by correspondence. The “object of this book is to teach to my fellow citizen Italians how to stay in good health, and how to recover it in case of sickness.”
The government shut down Collins' medical operation in 1911.
My thanks to Stefano Morello, a Ph. D. candidate at the City University of New York, for much of the information about Collins' life-long quackery.
That a work on health “written exclusively for the Italians in America” by this non-Italian could dare to have a chapter “on matrimony and sexual life,” including discussion of both “sexual indifference” and nymphomania, is itself noteworthy. That the Italian American Directory Co., which otherwise published only "directories" of, by and about the Italian American community, gave its imprimatur to publishing a work of this type also seems noteworthy.
Collins published the same or similar works in Spanish, Polish and other languages, thus giving the lie to his having claimed to have published this work "exclusively" for Italians.
On the other hand, practicing at the New York Medical Institute on West 34th Street, Professor Collins boasts on the inside front cover the “number of sick people cured in every state” of the U.S. by his medical methods, enumerated state by state. This impressive but dubious sounding boast is consistent with his having been called out in the pages of Il Proletario and La Follia as a quack.
Collins is quick to note that of these 20,196 patients, most of whom were permanently “cured,” “only a quarter were actually examined by me personally,” the rest by his original method by correspondence. The “object of this book is to teach to my fellow citizen Italians how to stay in good health, and how to recover it in case of sickness.”
The government shut down Collins' medical operation in 1911.
My thanks to Stefano Morello, a Ph. D. candidate at the City University of New York, for much of the information about Collins' life-long quackery.
Creator
Prof. E.C. Collins, M.D.
Publisher
Italian American Directory Co.
Date
1904
Format
18.5 x 13.5cm; 160 p.
Language
Italian
Citation
Prof. E.C. Collins, M.D., “Guida alla salute: Il come prevenire le malattie, come curarle, come riguadagnare la salute, estesa descrizione delle cause, sintomi, e trattamento di tutte le malattie del corpo umano con un capitolo sul matrimonio e la vita sessuale [Guide to Health: How to anticipate illnesses, how to treat them, how to regain health, extensive description of the causes, symptoms, and treatment of all illnesses of the human body with a chapter on marriage and sexual life]. New York: Italian American Directory Co., 1904.,” Italian-Language American Imprints: The Periconi Collection, accessed April 25, 2024, https://italianamericanimprints.omeka.net/items/show/55.
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