Quacks and Nostrums (1959)

Shows the ways in which medical quacks dupe the consumer and the steps taken by local and federal agencies to protect the public. A young man grows concerned at his mother’s fascination with a local alternative medicine practitioner. Skeptical of the practitioner’s healing claims, he seeks confirmation of his beliefs from medical and public health professionals, and begins to conspire with them against his mother. Typical of medically motivated critiques of unconventional medicine, this film also recalls the anticommunist witch hunts of the fifties.

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