Henry H. Timken, president of Timken Roller Bearing Co., Canton, Ohio, began to spend virtually a million dollars last week so that Dr. Orval James Cunningham of Kansas City, Mo., might study and test his treatment of certain cases of diabetes, pernicious anemia and cancer by putting the patients in tanks filled with air under pressure. Mr. Timken has spent $165,000 for a ten-acre plot of land on the Lake Erie shore at Cleveland's eastern limits and, last week, had agents apply for a building permit to construct the first steel tank, to be 64 feet in diameter and the equivalent of five stories high. Inside will be airtight chambers to contain compressed air, like the treatment tank that Dr. Cunningham has had operating in Kansas City for eight years.
Dr. Cunningham, aged 47, is a graduate (1904) of Rush Medical College, Chicago; a Kansas City specialist in internal medicine; a member of the Associated Anesthetists of the U. S. and Canada; a fellow, through his local medical society, of the American Medical Association.
His theory is that certain forms of diabetes, pernicious anemia and cancer are caused by germs that can grow only in the "absence of free oxygen. The corollary of this theory is that if the body tissues are made to absorb and carry enough air, the oxygen will prevent such germs developing. So Dr. Cunningham puts his patients into shut rooms where air pressure of 10 to 50 pounds a square inch more than ordinary is maintained and keeps them there for from a few hours to a month. Some patients merely spend their nights in the tank treatment rooms; others live and sleep in them. The rooms resemble, except for their fine appointments, the air locks used in excavating tunnels.
Of Dr. Cunningham's theories, the Bureau of Investigation of the American Medical Association (directed by Dr. Arthur J. Cramp) has stated: "There is not the slightest scientific evidence to support the thesis on which the Cunningham treatment rests. As independent investigators have never checked up on the subject (for reasons that are rather obvious—namely, the tremendous expense of the apparatus) there is nothing to support Dr. Cunningham's statements or theories except his own unsupported word.... It is our personal belief that Dr. Cunningham, at any rate at the outset, was perfectly sincere and honest in his belief that he had stumbled on something. As is always the case, however, when some new method of treating human beings is carried out without any independent check or balances, there seems little doubt that Dr. Cunningham has allowed his subject to run away with him."
None the less, Manufacturer Henry H. Timken has been willing to spend a million dollars to give a full test to the doctor's theories. This is no whim of Mr. Timken who is well known in Canton for his secret philanthropies, especially for supplying medical aid to indigents.