Do You Make Use of the Head-Sweating Apparatus?
Revised Reprint from The Witchtower, July 2010
“In a family and in a house where it is available and used, this little all-purpose device surely will obviate the need for a doctor many times.” – Das Goldene Zeitalter [German edition of The Golden Age], December 1, 1931, page 359
As the Bible clearly foretold, after “the year 1918, when God destroys [“destroyed”, German edition] the churches wholesale and the church members by millions,” Jehovah’s Witnesses should experience an unprecedented expansion. (The Finished Mystery, page 485) This did happen, for “at the Bible Students’ convention at Cedar Point, Ohio, U.S.A., September 1-8, 1919, a notable outpouring of Jehovah’s spirit activated his people to organize a global campaign of preaching.” (Revelation – It’s Grant Climax at Hand!, page 143).
Which divine mission that all true Christians are obliged to accomplish was introduced at this event? The speaker “outlined methods for a new work of obtaining subscriptions for The Golden Age.” (1975 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, page 123) The purpose of this heaven-sent instrument was “to explain in the light of Divine wisdom the true meaning of the great phenomena of the present day and to prove to thinking minds by evidence incontrovertible and convincing that the time of a greater blessing of mankind is now at hand.” (The Golden Age, January 1, 1919, page 3)
In hindsight Jehovah’s Witnesses noted: “Little did the conventioners know what a courageous journal The Golden Age would prove to be.” (Jehovah’s Witnesses – Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, page 77) So, which precious, life-giving truths were announced in the Golden Age?
For example, the magazine called the claim that diseases would be caused by “germs” a “preposterous idea” and “a leftover superstition of a past age.” (The Golden Age, March 18, 1931, page 404) After the German edition stated that there would be no more excretions in paradise (February 1, 1924), the English issue of April 2, 1930 claimed that likely all women would then be transferred into men. – page 446.
The January 15, 1936 Golden Age issue told its readers to train their elimination, to avoid remedies, and to abstain from fried potatoes, tea, laziness, hypocrisy, dishonesty, and warm water. Another issue of the German edition explained the central problem of the time: “Slow but steady, the human brain starts to suffer from the weight of the progress of our knowledge … This superfluity of knowledge breaks our nervous system, and one of these days we sit there with incurable insanity.” (Das Goldene Zeitalter, May 1, 1926, page 142) Another German issue explained that “the airy spirits” would affect not only “the weather, temperature, and wind direction,” but also “the development and spreading of noxious miasmas.” – October 15, 1924.
Another issue showed that “one cup of sweet orange juice by mouth answers any emergency in which blood transfusions would be used.” (The Golden Age, July 25, 1928, page 679) The March 20, 1929 issue explained on page 399 “that the white race is an unnatural, a sick, a pathological one” because “the blood is continually over-filled by … waste with white color – therefore the white appearance of the entire body.” People who avoid bread have red skin and are healthy “due to … the great lack of white blood corpuscles.” The September 1, 1931 issue of the German edition suggested on page 259 that cancer is caused by a lack of nuclear radiation. Mental diseases, on the other hand, are caused by the “influence of demons, the wicked spirits,” but only because “the patient has eaten too few fruits.” – Das Goldene Zeitalter, February 15, 1931, page 58.
At least once, the editors proved to be really visionary. In the October 15, 1919 issue they announced that “in a very few years, at most,” there would be “cheap wireless phones … making long-distance conversationpossible to any part of the world at nominal cost.” (page 56) Here the Watchtower Society’s writers showed for the first time what they understand by “very few years.” The prophecy that soon “airplanes may float without engines and men may step out of a window into the air without fear of falling” has not come true though. – The Golden Age, June 12, 1929, page 586.
Under the headline “Why is the World Still Unconverted, and Who is to Blame?” the Golden Age explained: “Everybody will agree that the world is … farther from being converted than ever before … One hundred years ago there were about 500,000,000 heathen on the earth, while today there are at least 1,000.000,000 … The vices of tobacco-using, whiskey-drinking … divorce and scandals … are peculiarly the vices of so-called Christian nations. Any thoughtful person can easily see that these vices are rapidly increasing; so much so that it is impossible to build prisons and penitentiaries enough.” (August 24, 1927, page 759) So they wanted more prisons for people who smoked, drank liquor, or divorced.
Of course, time and again the magazine featured irrefutable proofs for the fact that Armageddon was near. Under the title “Signs of the time of the end” the German edition said: “The Reich Ministry of Postal Services is planning a postage increase from 10 to 15 pfennigs.” (Das Goldene Zeitalter, May 15, 1927, page 160) Later, after Armageddon, the survivors would be “dynamiting the earth into a paradise.” – The Golden Age, October 1, 1919, page 15.
No wonder that Jehovah’s Witnesses deservedly glanced down at people who refused to accept such manifest evidence and considered them “enemies”or “opposers,” worthy of annihilation. – Children, page 240.
Sincere people though recognized at once that the message of the Golden Age was the truth. William Dingman from Oregon said: “When I was a teenager, I enjoyed reading it, and I became convinced that it contained important Bible truth.” (The Watchtower, November 1, 1997, page 19) But that was in the 1930s, when science had not yet advanced too much. However, if the information in the Golden Agewas from God, it should be timeless and still attracting people even decades later.
Exactly that was the case. “In 1953, Robert … moved into a dilapidated old farmhouse.” Behind a wall where mice had stowed away debris, he found an issue of the Golden Age (which must have been more than 16 years old because it was published under that name only until 1937). “He was so impressed by the clear, Bible-based direction given in the magazine that he told [his wife] Lila that they were going to join ‘the religion of The Golden Age.’” (The Watchtower, July 1, 2000, page 17) Indeed, “thinking people responded to the message of The Golden Age.” – The Watchtower, January 1, 1994, page 21.
How could the editors of the Golden Age have the ability to write such fascinating, foresighted articles of universal significance? By their own admission, they did not rely on “human wisdom, because that has been tried and failed and such wisdom is foolishness in the sight of Jehovah.” They rather claimed to “point the people to the clear and indisputable evidence in the light of present-day events.” – The Golden Age, October 1, 1919, page 3.
Indeed, most statements of the Golden Age that were based on “clear and indisputable evidence” have proved wrong in the meantime and seem preposterous even to current Jehovah’s Witnesses. Still, the assertion that the Golden Age would not be based on “human wisdom” was correct, since even from a human point of view it cannot have been “wisdom” which guided the editors. Rather the Golden Age was based on human idiocy.
However, the question how the Golden Age editors were able to make up such absurd articles had been unanswered until shortly. But a thoughtful reader of Erbrechet! magazine (the German companion title of The Witchtower) now finally found the reason why the writers were unable to keep a cool head. It is revealed in the German issue from December 1, 1931: “Another device is the head-sweating apparatus. With the same small steam generator you can irradiate single sick parts … This apparatus has also been in use for some time past for the staff of the Golden Age at our premises.” – page 359.
So the editors admitted that there were “sick parts” in their heads that were regularly treated with a “head-sweating apparatus.” Below is a table of all the possible applications of this fantastic product:
Unfortunately, the detailed user manual for the apparatus did not survive. Likely the steam generator (labeled with the letter “w” in the illustration) was filled with water and then heated by electricity, so that the bonnet on the user’s head was filled with water vapor. Maybe the brain size decreased through the high temperature and moisture; it is also possible that parts of the brain died off totally.
We do not know today from which material the steam generator, the tube, and the bonnet were made; however it might well be that the hot steam dissolved harmful substances from the apparatus and so caused additional injury to the brain. As the steam generator was operated with electricity and also allowed for “electric baths,” it is possible that the user of the head-sweating apparatus got electric shocks occasionally.
It is still unclear though whether the steam generator was really filled with water. The letter “w” in the illustration could also stand for “Watchtower,” “water of life” [= Watchtower], “wine,” or “whisky.” After all, the manufacturer had been “a Golden-Age-reader for many years” – hence it would not be a surprise if he and his customers would have torn out pages from theGolden Age or the Watchtower and boiled them up with water, so that they could absorb the “truth” along with the hot steam. Unfortunately, even back then the magazines were printed with toxic ink (as today), so that additional poisoning and further mental enfeeblement may have been the consequences.
Though we cannot be sure how it happened, we can be certain that the use of the head-sweating apparatus harmed the brain. Someone with a sound brain would not put a bucket-like rubber case around his head in order to inhale hot steam from a metal kettle connected to the power outlet!
The “small, simple, and cheap device” promoted in the Golden Ageoffered a number of other applications besides the head-sweating apparatus. With a different hose it could be used as ear steam blasting apparatus (fig. 6). Likely the users hoped to route the fumes directly into the brain and so achieve a greater [dumbing-down] effect. Maybe the use of this device also injured the ears, so that the meetings were easier to endure afterwards.
It is possible that this device also allowed treating the brain with power surges. The application of the ear steam blasting apparatus may have been an early form of electroconvulsive therapy, which is used today to treat serious depressions – an indication that the editors of the Golden Age (who used these devices) might have suffered from depressions or other mental diseases.
The unit also allowed an electric water hip bath (fig. 4). For this purpose, the water in the rubber bathtub was directly connected to the power line through a kind of transformer; the short description in the magazine read: “For electric baths, electricity from the power outlet is conducted into the water by two elements.”
We do not know the specifications of the transformer (if there was one at all), but we know that “DC voltage causes … chemical changes in the body.” (Wikipedia, German edition) Depending on transformer specifications and usage duration, the device may have caused “chemical changes” leading to debility and other diseases.
What about the full steam healing apparatus (fig. 7)? We do not know exactly how it was used; since it was “not for electric connection,” the steam had to be produced beforehand somehow. Maybe the steam kettle was first connected to fill the rubber mantle with steam and then removed.
Anyway, according to the illustration there were only two small vents for breathing, and the brain is “an organ uniquely sensitive to a lack of oxygen;” lack of breathing air can “irreparably damage” it. (Awake!, January 8, 1990, page 25) Hence extensive use of the full steam healing apparatus could further boost the dumbing-down effect of the head-sweating apparatus, the ear steam blasting apparatus, and the electric water hip bath.
On the face of it, the steam healing apparatus with electric connection did not seem to affect the brain. Its application is described as follows: “A closed, wreathlike rubber mantle hung around the head, the head free, a small rubber bathtub with a small wooden seat standing in it, a small, electrically heated herbal steam kettle, and within a quarter of an hour the person sweats. He can exude around ½ – ¾ liters of bad fluids by perspiration immediately.”
When looking closely at the apparatus and comparing it to products of other suppliers (who were not readers of the Golden Age), we can identify a flaw though. As mentioned above, the user could exude up to ¾ liters by perspiration during the application of this apparatus. This amount of liquid is removed from the body and would have to be compensated by drinking. Moosdorf’s steam sweating apparatus, presented already 40 years earlier, had for this purpose a “dumb waiter … a glove-like extension of the top part,” so that the user could, for example, “bring a glass to his mouth.” – Advertisement in Bilz – Das neue Naturheilverfahren, 25 th edition, 1895.
The low-cost model promoted by the Golden Age lacked such a feature; the user had no possibility of drinking during the application. Hence dehydration was bound to occur, and this “leads to a decrease in the brain’s energy potential … Subsequently anxieties, worries, rage, and other negative emotions emerge.” (Zentrum der Gesundheit) So the steam healing apparatus with electric connection could also harm the brain, like the head-sweating apparatus, the ear steam blasting apparatus, the electric water hip bath, and the full steam healing apparatus.
The Golden Age said about the unit: “In a family and in a house where it is available and used, this little all-purpose device surely will obviate the need for a doctor many times.” (Das Goldene Zeitalter, December 1, 1931, page 359) Was that true? This is likely so. All the negative effects (water deficiency, anoxia, toxic fumes, and electricity) probably shortened the users’ lives. Since many visits to the doctor are required at old age, the need for these was ‘obviated’ because the potential patient was already dead.
It seems that the author of the article praising these hazardous appliances and offering “a special discount” for subscribers of the Golden Age did himself not make extensive use of them, or he was impervious to their dumbing-down effect. The magazine names “Paul Gehrhard” as the writer, but it is known that Paul Balzereit, at that time managing editor of the Golden Age in Germany, “published in the magazine The Golden Ageunder the pseudonym of Paul Ge[h]rhard.” (1974 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, page 107) Later, in the concentration camp, he “signed the declaration abdicating association with the brothers,” finally he even became “a violent opposer” of Jehovah’s Witnesses. (1974 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, pages 149, 150) Later he collaborated with the Ministry of State Security to weaken Jehovah’s Witnesses in the German Democratic Republic.
If you want to avoid becoming an apostate, you should make extensive use of the head-sweating apparatus. Though the device is no longer available from Franz Egle, the original supplier, who left Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1937 and died in 1941, possibly from the effects of his appliances. But you can easily build a comparable apparatus by yourself.
