Linda Hazzard

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Linda Laura Hazzard was born Lynda Laura Burfield in Carver, Minnesota, one of the eight children of Susanna Neil (née Wakefield) and Montgomery Burfield. Hazzard had no medical degree, but was licensed to practice medicine in the state of Washington through a loophole that grandfathered in some practitioners of alternative medicine without degrees. According to her book The Science of Fasting, she studied under Edward Hooker Dewey, MD, a well-known proponent of fasting.

Hazzard developed a fasting method that she claimed was a panacea for all manner of illnesses, ridding the body of toxins that caused imbalances in the body. Over the course of her career, she wrote three books about what she claimed to be the science behind fasting and how it could cure diseases. The first was Fasting for the Cure of Disease (1908), followed by Diet in Disease and Systemic Cleansing (1917). A fifth revised and amplified edition of Fasting for the Cure of Disease was published in 1927 under the title Scientific Fasting: The Ancient and Modern Key to Health.

Hazzard established a "sanitarium" called Wilderness Heights, located in Olalla, Washington, where inpatients fasted for days, weeks, or months on a diet consisting of small amounts of tomato, asparagus juice, and occasionally orange juice. While some patients survived and publicly endorsed Hazzard's methods, dozens died under her care. Hazzard claimed that the deceased had succumbed to undisclosed or hitherto undiagnosed illnesses such as cancer or cirrhosis of the liver. Her opponents claimed that they all died of starvation; local residents in Olalla referred to the sanitarium as "Starvation Heights".

In 1912, Hazzard was convicted of manslaughter for the death of Claire Williamson, a wealthy British woman, who weighed less than fifty pounds at the time of her death. At the trial, it was proven that Hazzard had forged Williamson's will and stolen most of her valuables. Williamson's sister, Dorothea, also took the treatment, and, it is alleged, only survived because a family friend showed up in time to remove her from Wilderness Heights. It is suggested that one of the sisters managed to smuggle a telegram to alert their governess, who lived in Australia; however, by the time of arrival, Claire had already died. Dorothea was too weak to leave on her own, weighing less than sixty pounds. She later testified against Hazzard at trial.

Hazzard was sentenced to 2 to 20 years in prison, which she served in the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. She was released on parole on December 26, 1915, after serving two years, and the following year Governor Ernest Lister gave her a full pardon. Hazzard and her husband, Samuel Chrisman Hazzard (1869–1946), moved to New Zealand, where she practiced as a dietitian and osteopath until 1920.

In 1917, a Whanganui newspaper reported that Hazzard held a practicing certificate from the Washington state medical board. Because she used the title "Doctor", she was charged in Auckland under the Medical Practitioners Act for practicing medicine while not registered to do so, found guilty and fined £5 plus costs (approximately NZ$600 plus costs or US$462.13 plus costs in 2014). Three years later she returned to Olalla, opened a new sanitarium (known publicly as a "school of health" since her medical license had been revoked), and continued to supervise fasts until the sanitarium burned to the ground in 1935; it was never rebuilt.

Hazzard died of starvation in 1938 while attempting a fasting cure.

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