Texas and the West from Kenston Rare Books

Item 232 is another promotional piece, but this one is for agriculture, and focuses on rural Colorado: Soil and Products: Story of the Midland Empire... The promoter was the Colorado Midland Railway, which ran a line over the Rocky Mountains from Colorado Springs in the east to Grand Junction in the West. There were plans to extend it to Salt Lake City, which might have made it more viable, but business was not sufficient to support the cost. The Midland's territory was probably not the greatest for agriculture, most of it being either so high that there are frosts year around, or arid, desert like territory, though there are more favorable pockets. The railway could have used more farmers as it needed cargo to haul, especially since its terminus in Grand Junction made it hard to compete for long-haul business. Like so many railroads, it was born in the 1880s, 1883 to be precise, and went out of business in 1918, eight years after this pamphlet was published. $145.

One thinks of the West as a place for cattle and agriculture, but it was a home of great scientific inventions too, as this undated San Antonio broadside displays:Dr. Bergman's Radio Magnetic Nerve Vitalizer. It comes with the instructions (but not the device itself). It was promoted as “A Scientific Invention for the Treatment of All Nervous and Chronic Diseases.” “The Result of twenty-seven years of unceasing research, combined with some of the greatest work modern expert intellects have been able to produce...” (I think this is what is known as “hyberbole”) it cured such things as appendicitis (no need for an operation), eye trouble, ear trouble, gland trouble, constipation, kidney trouble, asthma, rheumatism, pleurisy, paralysis and much more. It worked by converting “electrical current into magnetic force, which feeds and revives the entire system including all nerve centers.” Now, I'm not an expert in electrophysics, but isn't this where you wrap a wire around a nail, hook it up to a battery, and it becomes a magnet? It took the greatest expert intellects 27 years to come up with this? This will cure virtually every disease known to mankind? Who knew? I guess Dr. Bergman knew, and he undoubtedly said it with a smile. Item 246. $475.

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