Waterbury Evening Democrat

HANGING AS A CURE.

Chicago Policeman Under Treatment for Locomotor Ataxia, Suspended Every Day.

They hang a man at St. Joseph's hospital at Chicago, every day. The victim is not a murderer: he is, in fact, paid to suppress law-breakers, and has been instrumental in bringing a man to the gallows. Yet he is being hanged daily all the same.

Reinbold Meyer is his name. Before he entered St. Joseph's hospital he was a policeman detailed at Central station, Chicago, and after his neck has been sufficiently stretched he hopes to travel again on his old beat. For be it known, Meyer is hanged, not to end his life, but to add to his years.

Meyer is afflicted with locomotor ataxia, and takes his daily stringing up NINETY SECONDS OF THE ROPE just as another man might take his pills or his cod-liver oil. Instead of so many spoonfuls of this or that, Patrolman Meyer's prescription reads: "Ninety seconds of the rope."

Every afternoon Dr. Daniel R. Brower, who is handling the case, wheels the scaffold into his room. Meyer is placed in a chair beneath it, and the noose carefully adjusted about his neck, his chin being placed in a cup-like attachment to the noose. Then Dr. Brower pulls on the rope until Meyer swings free from the floor. After a minute and a half he is lowered and put back into bed.

The object of this heroic treatment is to strengthen Meyer's spine. He is also massaged daily and given hypodermic injections. He has been hanged 14 times, and Dr. Brower says he will have to be suspended at least 42 more times before a cure can be completed.

Meyer does not seem to mind. In fact, he says he really likes being hanged. Said he, with a grin, while his masseur slapped and kneaded his legs: "It's lucky, though, that I haven't got a rubber neck - one of the kind that stretches, but won't some back, or I'd be a sight by the time I get through with this."