Melvin E. Page

Melvin E. Page (1894-1983) was an American alternative dentistry advocate known for his pseudoscientific views on dental health, dieting and disease.

Biography

Page was born at Picture Rocks, Pennsylvania and established a dentistry practice in Muskegon, Michigan, in 1919. Page was influenced by the pseudo-nutritional ideas of Weston Price. He joined the staff of a nearby hospital where he conducted blood chemistry tests and developed pseudoscientific ideas on dental health. Page argued that for bones and teeth to stay healthy there has to be a calcium-to-phosphorus ratio of 10:4 present in the blood and if this ratio was maintained then absorption of dentures would not occur. In 1940, he was stopped by the FDA for selling Ce-kelp as he advertised the product as curing everything from cataracts to cancer. The FDA charged Page with "unfair and deceptive" acts based on his false claims that Ce-kelp would supply minerals missing from modern diets due to rainfall having washed them from the soil and restoring impoverished glands by supplying necessary salts. He considered tooth decay to be an "outstanding example of systemic chemical imbalances."

The idea of balancing body chemistry was also promoted by Page's student Hal Huggins.

Opposition to milk

In his book Degeneration-Regeneration, Page argued that cow's milk is an "unnatural" poison and people should not drink it or give it to their children. He stated that milk consumption is the underlying cause of many diseases including colds, sinus infections, colitis and cancer. Page is described as a food faddist with "strange dietary views" in Martin Gardner's Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.

Selected publications

Young Minds with Old Bodies (1944) Degeneration-Regeneration (1949) Body Chemistry in Health and Disease (1954) Health vs. Disease (with H. Leon Abrams, 1960) Your Body is Your Best Doctor (with H. Leon Abrams, 1975)