To promote his bottled water business, Alfred Isham used Captain Charles Fitzallen’s testimonial, which told of the healing powers of the Sweetwater Springs water. The captain had commanded a voyage from Cardiff, Wales, destined for San Francisco. It was claimed that when the ship reached San Diego on its way north, Fitzallen was near death from scurvy, so he remained behind in San Diego to recover while his ship sailed on to San Francisco. In San Diego, Dr. Peter C. Remondino treated him. During his recuperation, Fitzallen worked for a short time as a caretaker on George Neale’s ranch at the base of the San Miguel Mountains. While there he drank regularly from the waters of the nearby Sweetwater Springs. Dr. Remondino checked on his patient and was shocked by the captain’s unbelievable recovery. The mineral water at the springs was credited for his improvement, and the water’s healing powers became renowned.

Captain Fitzallen and others also claimed that the water could cure baldness. In a statement to the newspaper Fitzalen testified that his "present new growth of hair, which appears to me as luxuriant as in my boyhood days," was attributable to the waters of the Isham Springs.

What is true of one of this class is true of all the “doctors,” “healers,” “medical institutes,” “homes of science” and various fresh-coined “opathys” which advertise to cure diseases by “special knowledge,” “marvelous inventions,” “startling discoveries in the realm of science,” or “miraculous powers.” Their schemes are, essentially, the same. One and all, they are frauds, operating by a shrewd and cunningly developed system, in which the sole essential of success is to bait the hook so as to attract the human gudgeon. Once he has nibbled, he is the charlatan’s fish. Lucky, indeed, may he count himself if he come off depleted in purse alone, and not in his chances of cure or of life.

Once on a time—this is a recognized and proper form for beginning a tale of magic—there was born a young wizard named Isham. In the natural course of growth he reached that point in life where he desired to turn his wizardry to financial account. Less ingenious representatives of his ilk take to side-shows on country circuits, and either “eat-‘em-alive” or become the beautiful Mlle. Astralette, Seer and Prophetess, according to sex and inclination. Isham had a soul above canvass. He has yearned for something permanent and high-sounding; so he devised “Humanity Baking Powder,” which, by a complicated scheme too long for detail here, was not only to raise the human race to heights hitherto undreamed of, but was even to extend their thoughts to the stars by means of a mighty telescope to be established from the dividends. The “Humanity Baking Powder” advertising was a thrill to behold; but the sodden and materialistic American mind (feminine) declined to respond with that spontaneity which was expected, so Isham dropped the scheme and came East to settle in that spot where, as every bunco man in this country knows, the Permanent Convention of Jays and Come-ons is always in session—New York City. Isham’s device for alienating the Innocents of New York from their money was the “California Waters of Life.” These waters flow from a spring near San Diego, Cal., having come a long way to reach that spot, since they are, so Isham assures me, the identical waters which gushed from the Scriptural rock when Moses smote it.

“How do you know that they are?” I inquired when this interesting statement was made to me.

“How do you know they aren’t?” demanded the Wizard triumphantly, and while I was dazedly feeling for some means wherewith to cope with this resilient brand of logic, he continued with an argument too profound for me to grasp in detail. The gist of it seemed to be, however, that all the waters of the earth, being in constant motion, eventually find their way to all parts of the earth, and that his spring was just as likely to be the Mosaic article as any other; a process of reasoning which I cheerfully leave to persons fond of dialectics. Whatever the source of the waters, Isham in the course of time, came out with huge advertisements in the New York papers, in which he exploited himself and his spring about equally, declaring that he had a scheme for abolishing poverty and suffering, that he had been in personal consultation with the Deity about it, and, further, that the Isham spring water would cure rheumatism in seven days, cancer in thirty days, Bright’s disease and diabetes in thirty days, would stop hair from falling out in three days, and would grow a luxuriant hirsute crop on the most sterile cranium. When San Francisco was destroyed, the thrifty Isham, eager to make capital out of calamity, rushed into print with the following head-lines:

Then followed the curative claims. When I called on Isham in his office in the Flatiron Building, New York City, to ask about the cancer cases, he loaded me down with testimonials of various kinds, most of which, however, related to thin hair, or to indeterminate ailments, ranging from indigestion, through supposed kidney trouble, to a bump on the spine sustained in a trolley accident. To investigate all that he produced in the way of testimonials (most of them obviously not worth investigation, as seriously supporting his claims) would have taken weeks, perhaps months.

A few interested me because they suggested technical knowledge on the part of the patient. One of these was a “Professor” Fogg, by whom, Isham seemed to set great store.

“What is he Professor of?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t know exactly know,” said Isham, hesitatingly. “He calls himself Professor.”

“Suppose I look him up at the Broadway address given in the advertisement.”

“You wouldn’t be likely to find him,” was the hasty response. “He only gets his mail there. He lives somewhere in Long Island City.”

Another name he gave me was that of a very prominent and high-standing New York physician. This physician, in reply to my query, stated that he had taken two cases of the waters for the rheumatism, and had experienced not the slightest benefit. If Isham desires a testimonial to this effect, I dare say he can get it for the asking. Fifteen or twenty fairly prominent Philadelphia business men and financiers appear on the Isham list of names “used by permission.” Several of these were asked whether they believed that Isham was divinely inspired, that his “Waters of Life” were the identical waters that gushed from the smitten rock of Moses, and that the waters would cure cancer in thirty days, all these statements having been publicly used by the Wizard to push the sale of his product.

Some of the recipients of my inquiry became alarmed, and sent the letter to Isham. Those who replied answered the questions in the negative. One bank president loftily characterized the queries as “absurd.” Apparently the initial absurdity of lending his name to the purposes of a preposterous quack like Isham had not occurred to him. At the close of my interview with Isham, after he had fervently harangued me on the supernal virtues of his water, declaring that it would make the drunkard a model of sobriety, reform the vicious and restore youth to the senile, he exhorted me to be fair and dispassionate in my judgment of him and his product. I shall try to be. As to the “Waters of Life,” they are probably a fairly good mineral water, as useful perhaps in minor stomach, kidney or uric-acid troubles as the average mineral spring water, and no more useful. They will no more cure cancer, Bright’s disease, diabetes or paralysis than will Croton water. To Isham himself I give the benefit of the doubt. I believe him to be mentally unsound. On any other premise he is the most arrant and blasphemous faker now before the public.