Victory Over All Diseases

[Baltimore]: University Press (Self-published), 1945.

Red cloth 8vo, 260pp. With damage from water exposure that seems like it got left out in the rain: Good- with mottling to cloth, discoloration to endpapers; in a fair dustjacket with chipping and losses to the upper edge; rippling and discoloration, residue on the verso of the jacket (now in a cover). Additional photos available. 5 copies in OCLC—4 in the US: LOC, National Library of Medicine, Duke, and U. Nebraska—and one at the Military Health Library in Paris.

"THE AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK has not referred to any known writings and, outside of a few references from the Bible and the Press, it is original from cover to cover, containing the actual experiences and findings of an unprecedented search which today has no equal in the annals of recorded literature... It is the first book of its kind in the world since history began that definitely gives the cause and the cure of all diseases… (6)"

A frankly bonkers work of naturopathy meets Christian Science that proudly cites no sources other than the Bible. There are some things it gets right, like the toxicity of DDT (252); but more that it gets wrong, like penicillin being a conspiracy of the American Medical Association that is actually the same as the salt crust on urinals (71), or that there is a magical substance called GOD-OL that is secreted from human skin, and some parts of the earth, and seems to be God in sebum form. 

Carlson wrote to the U.S. Army in the middle of WWII, suggesting GOD-OL as a cure for athletes’ foot, and actually got a response.“I was asked by their highest authority to submit technical details, theoretical background and statistical data for their evaluation. I could, of course, supply neither…” (98). Gen. George Marshall, whose estate this comes from, was the Army Chief of Staff at the time.

The front jacket flap says, “…this book reads like a first-class detective story that will keep the reader spellbound from the first page to the last;” the rear jacket flap says, “It is the first book of its kind that intelligently proves to the world why some are white and others are colored.” The first claim is so immensely true that, being spellbound, it’s unclear how the second claim, and most others in the book, are supposed to have played out.