insurance salesman from Georgia—a self-taught farm boy who went on to become the Colonel Harlan Sanders of the drug treatment industry.  And like the silver-haired Colonel Sanders, his success was based on a secret formula.

Charles B. Towns arrived in New York in 1901 with a plump nestegg from his foray into the life insurance business, and enough guts to take on Wall Street. But as many another farm boy has learned, the Street devours amateurs and he was quickly picked clean. Defeated for the first time in his life, Towns was still in shock when an acquaintance came up to him one day and whispered, “I have got a cure for the drug habit—morphine, opium, heroin, codeine—any of ‘em.  We can make a lot of money out of it.”

“That’s a job for a doctor.”

“It’s a job for a man with an almighty nerve.  You’ve got that.  I’ve got the formula.”^[20]

The formula turned out to be a powerful laxative mixed with a couple of deadly poisons.  Needless to say, it had a profound impact on the patient.  The first volunteer Towns and his partner experimented on tried to escape from the hotel room after the initial dose, and had to be held down for two days to keep him from committing suicide.  Then, “At the end of forty-eight hours, the divide was crossed... He was offered a hypodermic of the drug... and he declined it.”

“This is a cure!” cried Wright. Unfortunately, word of this vitriolic cure spread quickly on the streets and after that it was impossible for Towns to get any more volunteers.  So he finally kidnapped a junkie no one would miss—a racetrack tout—and locked him up like the first victim.  Though the formula had been modified, this patient didn’t like it either—“When I get out of here and tell the boys what you’ve been doin’ to me, your life won’t be worth twenty cents!”  But after five days they sent him home “a well man.”

Convinced he was onto something monumental, Towns began pushing for recognition in the medical establishment.  In his high white collar and pince-nez glasses, he certainly looked like a doctor, but with no diploma he was easily dismissed as a