A Golden Opportunity

So what happens when something seems too good to be true?  An advertisement for The Hagey Institute first appeared in the Plattsburgh Sentinel in November of 1893 as an establishment which provided the “gold cure”, a permanent cure for the disease of addiction to liquor, morphine, opium and nicotine.  Offered was a ‘golden opportunity’ for an absolute cure in 21 days.  With this promise, the Hagey Institute opened for business on November 4, 1893 in the Winslow Block across from the Witherill Hotel on Margaret Street. The Plattsburgh Institute was a branch of a Nebraska firm owned by the Sutphen Family and was one of 60 such branches in 22 States.

What was the treatment for these addictions? Those signing up for the cure were injected with a secret combination of chemicals four times a day and ingested a tonic every two hours.  The injected portion was a formula originated by Dr. William Henry Harrison Hagey called “bi-chloride of gold.” Later some laboratory reports claimed it contained not gold but “practically everything else, including quinine, strychnine and other poisons, and even alcohol, morphine and opium”.  No cost was ever advertised for the cure. The claim by the Institute, both early on and later, was that treatment entirely eliminated a graduate’s addiction.

In June of 1894, local investors formed the New York Gold Company and took over the Hagey Institute in Plattsburgh. They accumulated $125,000 from shareholders and purchased the Hagey formula for $50,000.   Company officers included two members of the Sutphen Family with local businessman and First National Bank Director Edwin G. Moore as President. Under new ownership the Institute moved from Margaret Street to lower Bridge Street, just southeast of the bridge. To quote the Plattsburgh Sentinel from their 1897 Souvenir Industrial Edition, “The building in which the Hagey Institute is located is peculiarly adapted to the work.  The rooms are large and cheerful.  The Club room is furnished with the leading magazines and daily papers, and the old graduates often come in to spend a pleasant hour with the beginners and cheer them with their testimony of what the Cure has done for them”. The large sign on the west side of the building faced downtown Plattsburgh.

By September of 1896, the New York Gold Company announced that 485 residents had been cured, five for morphine addiction and the rest for alcoholism.  Additionally, the Company had opened branches in New Jersey and New Hampshire.

Those cured by the Institute were called graduates and their testimonials began to appear in local newspapers. The names attached to many testimonials can be traced to real people in the community although their vivid descriptions read like professional ads. One of the most influential endorsements, however, may have been in February of 1894 from 37 Plattsburgh community leaders including Judge John Booth, Plattsburgh Sentinel owner Abram Lansing, local architect A. L. Inman, three doctors including Dr. Jaques LaRocque, four members of the clergy, and William T. Howell, owner of the Witherill Hotel. They certified they “no longer entertain doubts as to the efficacy of this treatment” and recommended it to all who were addicted in the “hope of helping suffering humanity.”

Again, the 1897 Souvenir Industrial Edition pointed out that “among the many patients treated at the Hagey Institute, we point with pride to some of our most prominent lawyers, businessmen, farmers, and mechanics, that owe their lives and happiness to the Hagey treatment.” The Plattsburgh Sentinel saw the Souvenir Industrial publication as an opportunity to “do full justice” to local industries, and the Hagey Institute was one such industry.

Physicians were often praised by the Institute graduates. The first physician at the Hagey Institute was Dr. Daniel Oscar Fosgate who appears to have left in mid-1894 and can later be found as an authority on stethoscopes. Dr. J. G. McKinney was next in charge. Dr. McKinney, originally from Schuyler Falls, was a long-standing and respected member of the Clinton County Medical Society and had an active practice at 20 Court Street in Plattsburgh.  His term as chief physician at the Hagey Institute ended in early 1896 when a Dr. T. Bates Cook from Laconia, New Hampshire, took over.  Dr. Cook stayed until just before the Institute closed. By December 1897 Dr. Cook was in Dyea, Alaska apparently following the gold rush.

Despite the convictions of the owners that “the Hagey treatment will provide a sure and effective cure”, the Institute closed by the end of 1897, and the New York Gold Company was not mentioned again in the local papers. A blog from Western Kentucky University reports that although the Hagey treatment out there promised to be “perfect and pleasant . . . rather than instituting a pleasant withdrawal, it more commonly made users nauseous, fatigued, inebriated, confused, and even insane.”  As science improved, remedies of this type were moved to the category of quackery. Was this the reason for our local company’s fate?  Ironically, the building which housed the Institute became the home of a liquor warehouse.

Did the ‘gold cure’ work?  Not for Gardner McLean of Saranac Lake who took the cure twice and sadly, in a ‘drunken frenzy’, shot his wife to death.  Hopefully, the hundreds of others reported to have taken the cure fared well.

For more information on the Hagey Institute, email director@clintoncountyhistorical.org.

-Thanks to Pat Loughan, NNYLN’s historic newspapers and the CCHA Antiquarian for their information on the Institute.

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