Thomas Goetz

This involved a lot of vomiting and diarrhea, but it usually worked to rid a body of worms within 24 hours.

Second, they went on an outhouse building campaign.

One estimate at the time held that 35% of white households and 75% of black households had no privies.

That would have to change.

The goal was to build an outhouse for every home with a pit at least four feet deep.

Third, shoes.

Now, this was a big cultural change.

Children in the South rarely wore shoes, especially in the summer.

But shoes keep the worms out.

The hookworm campaign quickly took off.

State governments got engaged.

With Rockefeller money, many Southern states established sanitary commissions and better state departments of health.

Soon, there was talk of an expanded national public health service, one that could build on the success of the hookworm campaign and advance sanitation and healthcare across the land.

The Rockefeller Coalition framed this as a movement for the conservation of country life.

But they were really demanding that people change how they lived, where they lived, what they wore, how they ate.

Change was the only way to keep disease at bay.

And many people did not like all that change.

Enter the National League of Medical Freedom.

This opposition group condemned scientific medicine, arguing that people should be free to pursue whatever form of treatment they believed best, and that the federal government should steer clear of endorsing certain kinds of medicine as more worthy than others.

The League was funded by homeopaths, osteopaths, and others in the alternative medicine business.