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A man testified that the doctors had given him up for dead. He had drunk master-cell water and was still alive. A veteran said that he had been cured of violent malaria. A woman said she had got rid of her corns.
Not all John Brown's devotees were simple farmers. It soon came out that the financier of the master cell "experiments" was Gustave W. Goerner, soon-to-retire New England sales manager of a subdivision of the great Du Pont Co. He and other substantial-sounding citizens were talking about organizing a nonprofit foundation to make the master cell available to all humanity.
"Peace to All Men." Other things came out too. This was not the first time that Brown had claimed a wonder-working discovery. Born in Portugal of a U.S. seaman father, he had owned a drugstore in New Bedford, Mass., but had also run a "clinic" where patients were treated for everything from cancer to polio. On Nov. 13, 1939, he had been fined $1,000 for illegal practice of medicine, later had the sentence nullified. John Brown says he was framed.
Scientists (including a Massachusetts state chemist) have not been able so far to find anything unusual about John Brown's concrete discs. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is still investigating.
Last week Brown's cult was still growing; crowds still swarmed to his farm. He had begun to intone like the Psalmist and to compare himself (favorably) with Christ. The master cell, said Brown, "takes all the fight and hatred out of men and animals alike. It will prevent disease and pestilence. It will prevent famine. It will make pigs fatter; make cows produce more milk. It makes the atom bomb obsolete . . . The master cell is my God, and it will bring peace to all men."
Then, despite the flocking people, Brown locked up and went "to the country." Said a lieutenant: "He was tired and needed a rest."