The Maze of Superstition
It’s the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and The Maze of Superstition is on exhibit at The Hall of Man. It is sponsored by the Bayer Company. According to a first-hand account from Bruno Gebhard:
“The material was collected by Science Service of Washington, D.C. We exhibited about 100 items. By making a slight detour at the entrance, one could avoid a huge ladder that was placed across it. An electric eye clocked those who passed under the ladder. The exit of the exhibit was marked by a giant wishbone gate.”
Gebhard goes on to explain the market research Bayer was conducting about attitudes toward folk medicine. (worth a read)
There is an extraordinary photograph of a model of a man at The Maze of Superstition. The man appears to have antennae (or maybe they are supposed to be horns?) and an insect-like head. A serpent encircles his right arm; tiny black cats are scattered down his left arm. He wears a necklace that appears to be made of bear’s claws or animal teeth, and his crotch is covered by fig leaves topped with a horseshoe (prongs up). It looks like there may be an alligator on his foot?
Ornaments hang from a ring above his head. They include: a black umbrella in the open position inside a house; a ladder; three lips with lit cigarettes; a penny; a four leaf clover and a hand in the mano figa gesture. The word “Friday” also appears. It’s difficult to make out the images in the background, but the number 13, a large wishbone, a black cat, a horseshoe and a skull all stand out.
The Brooklyn Eagle (October 24, 1939) offers further details:
“With Halloween drawing near and the Fair coming to a close, this is surely the week of superstitions, when exposition executives avoid walking under ladders and cross their fingers as they think of ‘40….And if on Halloween someone rushes up to us and reports that they’ve seen a witch fly over the Perisphere, we won’t be at all surprised. A stunt like that isn’t beneath Leo Casey, the Fair’s press chief. All of which ought to serve as a timely introduction, even at this late date, to the Maze of Superstition in the Hall of Medicine and Public Health. This display of the whimsical medical beliefs that have been exploded by modern scientific research is daily drawing capacity crowds, none of whom, however, have been seen to throw away that withered four-leaf clover when they left the exhibit. A review of the fantastic superstitions which served as a basis for curative and preventative medicine in the old days brings to light some which haven’t died out. There is, for example, a model of a hand covered with toads to explode the popular belief that toads cause warts. You couldn’t tell a lot of people that they didn’t.
“Some of the truths which the show preaches include:
Fish is not brain food.
Scaring is no cure for hiccoughs.
Cobwebs are germ traps and will not heal wounds.
An amber necklace will not cure goiter.
Inhaling camphor will not prevent disease.
Eating ground glass will not cure tape worm, but it will ruin the lining of the digestive tract.
Carrying a rabbit’s foot or old potato will not cure rheumatism.
Wearing red clothes is no substitute for vaccination for smallpox.
“The superstition that the color red was a cure for smallpox was one to which Francis I, Emperor of Germany, clung until his death from the dread scourge. That was, of course, before Pasteur’s vaccine was discovered. The Death of Francis I is depicted in life size as one of the features of the Maze of Superstition. Clad entirely in red, the emperor is shown lying in a red bed beneath red coverlets in a room the walls and every article of furniture of which are red.”