1880's Cure-All Kills a Gullible Immigrant
Jacob Doerrler’s family thought he was a genius … but he was fooled to death by an extreme medical stunt.
Since when do fasting and other diet restrictions cure a farm laborer’s heat stroke?* Never. Not even in old wives’ tales. But sure enough, to help him rebound from the summer’s heat, in 1880, twenty-two-year-old Joseph Jacob Doerrler (born 1858) responded to a newspaper ad for a fasting cure and paid a “quack” mail-order doctor the equivalent of $800 U.S. Dollars… to die.
*The standard treatment for this ailment in the 1880s was rest, fluid intake, and evaporative cooling techniques, such as wrapping a wet blanket around one’s body.
Not true!
For years after Jacob’s death, Jacob’s sister Theresa Doerrler Wiener (1861–1926) passed down a story to her children about how their Uncle Jacob died in service of the German Imperial Army, back in Baden (presently Baden-Württemberg). The alternative story she crafted didn’t match the evidence recently found, though.
Doerrler family historian, Louis Jacob Nasch (1884–1964, Jacob’s nephew), had in his possession an English language textbook with his uncle’s signature scroll work and doodles inside. On the cover, Jacob had notated: “Fillmore, Minnesota 1877.” Why would a dead guy in Baden write such a thing, and how did it end up with my family in St. Paul?
The 1880 U.S. Census for Fillmore County shows the Doerrler-Kahles family in Granger, MN without Jacob. Was he dead by then? Did he head back to his war-torn homeland? Nope. He moved a township over to Harmony and worked as a live-in farm laborer for Thomas Moore’s “Yankee” family.
It wasn’t until 1881, when the Doerrler-Kahles family moved into the immigrant enclave of St. Paul’s West Side that Jacob finally disappeared from all empirical records.
What Happened to Jacob?
Jacob’s demise remained a dark family secret until Louis Nasch began pursuing the truth. Before his grandmother’s death, he captured the heartbreaking oral history of Maria Baumann Doerrler Kahles (1831–1911) that no one else had ever previously admitted to. In 1958, he passed the information along to his son, Ralph, and urged him to take an interest in preserving the family history while he was young and able… and while people were still alive, “because dead people can’t talk.”
From his carefully documented letters and handwritten genealogical accounts preserved and passed down for three generations, we can now solve the confusion over what happened to Jacob.
Jacob, the Genius
Jacob grew up in Mosbach, Baden (then, a new addition to the German Empire). He is one of seven children born to Valentin Jacob Doerrler (1830–1866) and Maria Josepha Baumann (1831–1911). As a child, Jacob excelled in mathematics, world languages, and art. At school, he earned accolades for impressive penmanship, sketching and scroll work.
“Jacob was a Jeanus[sic]!” Louis boasted with surety, as he’d inherited several doodled-in schoolbooks showing his uncle’s fine craft.
By seventeen, Jacob received a desirable invitation to work with a major “picture company” in Germany. Unfortunately, the German Imperial Army ruined this prospect by demanding his service. The expansion of the Empire meant that war was a certainty for every available male.
Jacob never wanted to be a soldier. He begged of his mother, “I want to go to America!”
Jacob’s stepfather Sebastian Kahles (1836–1914) had already sailed across the Atlantic four years prior, without the family. Sebastian was a former Prussian soldier, either seeking good soil and adventure in the new land… or evading the mandatory military service that young Jacob got caught up in. Ultimately, as Maria retold her grandson, Sebastian stole the cash from her small dry goods store and took off, allegedly finding employment as a wagon cart driver for a major brewery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (approx. 1873–1877).
To Go or Not To Go?
Maria may have considered that she’d be better off remaining divorced by distance. She’d never wanted to marry Sebastian after her first husband died in a tragic fire-fighting accident. But the bright blonde soldier charmed her parents with his lofty dreams and talent for the tuba and big bassoon. Everybody loved him… except Maria. After two years of being pressured by her parents to return his affection, she reluctantly agreed to the marriage.
“Soon there will be war and if I get to be a cripple … you would be to blame, mother,” she remembered her son saying. After some convincing, Maria gave in to family pressure again, and in 1877, she reunited the family with Sebastian in Fillmore County, Minnesota.
Jacob’s Last Year
In 1880, Jacob’s Harmony employer allegedly took advantage of desperate immigrants who came through town. He overworked Jacob for three years.
Sebastian counseled his stepson to leave the Moores and tossed out a slew of slurs for the white New Yorker who was abusing his stepson.
Jacob wouldn’t listen to the man who robbed his mother and by the end of the harvest season, he fell ill from sunstroke (aka “heatstroke”). Severe weakness cost him his job and he moved in with his parents and two sisters but could barely get out of bed. Despite the home remedies available for this situation, and his parents' obvious concerns, Jacob became dazzled by an unusual solution.
He found an article in the newspaper about a doctor in New York who advertised a way to cure all diseases — through extreme fasting. This doctor is suspected to be Dr. Henry S. Tanner from Minneapolis, MN. When Dr. Tanner struggled with a painful gastrointestinal issue, he instinctively abstained from all food. After a few days, he realized he hadn’t died and continued fasting to see just how long he could go. After 42 days, he claimed his health had come back in full and he’d literally saved his own life.
What Jacob may have seen was from Dr. Tanner’s repeat experiment in August of 1880 to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that going food-less was A) not a hoax, B) that he wouldn’t die from it, and C) that anyone can fast at such lengths to reset their body’s total health. For this second stunt, Dr. Tanner moved into a New York University classroom and invited physicians and members of the press to observe him 24/7 as he conducted his water-only fast… again. Afterward, one of the journalist-observers published a book about it.*
*Forty Days Without Food: A Biography of Henry S. Tanner by Robert Gunn (1880).
Could An Extended Fast Restore Jacob, Too?
In desperation, Jacob mailed the doctor a list of his symptoms and $30.00 in hard-earned cash (about $800 in 2021). In return, he received instructions that read something like: “Don’t eat this, eat this, don’t eat that,” and so on (as Louis put it).
That Fall, at family meals, Jacob complimented his mother’s cooking with, “I could eat that n’lickt [the] bowl!” But he would not partake. This lasted into the winter and Jacob only weakened more. The family urged him to seek a second opinion from a local physician, but he refused. No pleading or logic could get him to eat beyond his instructions. He was determined to save his own life.
“He just starved,” Maria relayed to Louis.
Finally, one snow-stormy day, Maria sensed it was her son’s last. “I don’t think our Jacob will live ‘till morning,” she lamented and asked Sebastian to get the priest.
Sebastian rode out into a “right cold snow,” found one, then raced home in the dark of night. Sadly, when he and the priest returned, Maria ran outside in tears to announce that, “Jacob just died.”
The next day, Jacob disappeared.
Louis had no record of the burial details in his letters and ledgers. A Fillmore County recorder’s search in 2022 produced neither a death certificate nor a grave location. The local church’s cemetery record contained nothing for Jacob, either.
While part of the mystery is now cleared up, there is still so much more to be discovered … perhaps, if you live in Granger, the answer may lie in your own backyard!
Note from the Author: Jacob Doerrler is not the only person in the Nasch lineage who participated in extreme fasting. In the 1920s, Louis’ wife Martha sustained seven years on a food-less lifestyle. This claim landed her a committal in the St. Peter State Insane Asylum, features in ninety news articles across the nation, and a mention in Time Weekly Magazine. Much is written on her incredible feat and her involvement with the Breatharian movement. Her complete biography is titled Poems from the Asylum by Martha Nasch (2021).
Learn more about Martha Nasch at JanelleMolony.com/SevenYearsInsane and stay tuned on Facebook.com/SevenYearsInsane (@SevenYearsInsane).
See more from the author by following on Medium and on social media. More publications by Molony can be found on her official author webpage.
