The Miracle Cure of 1872
A Seattle resident documents his miraculous recovery from twenty years of deafness under the care of a visiting traveling physician.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
SEATTLE, June 26th, 1872. To Whom it may concern: I hereby certify that I have been under the treatment of Dr. Aborn for deafness and that he has almost entirely restored my hearing. I had been quite deaf for over twenty years, and in one ear had not heard the tick of a watch for the above time; and the second day after he commenced treatment, I could hear very plain, and I feel like a new man. — JOHN WEBSTER. DR. ABORN’S SECOND VISIT TO SEATTLE. — Dr. Aborn, Oculist, Aurist and Physician for chronic diseases, late of San Francisco and Portland, hereby informs the people who reside at the towns along Puget Sound and vicinity, that he will make another visit to Seattle, as one of the many successful cures was in that region, who had been unable to obtain relief at any place in this territory. The Doctor will be at the Occidental Hotel, Seattle, from the 1st of August to the 1st of September.
“I had been quite deaf for over twenty years, and in one ear had not heard the tick of a watch for the above time; and the second day after he commenced treatment, I could hear very plain, and I feel like a new man.”
In the 1870s, itinerant doctors often toured the Pacific Northwest, promising relief for chronic conditions through advertisements in local papers. While medical regulations have since professionalized, the desperation for affordable healthcare and the reliance on 'miracle' solutions in a frontier town echo contemporary debates around alternative health markets and access to care in high-cost cities.
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