There was no shortage of health and wellness movements at the turn of the 20th century. One of them was Ralstonism, a completely made-up set of rules for living that was promoted by by one Webster Edgerly, who also went bythe name Everett Ralston. He walked on the balls of his feet and never in a straight line — all in the name of health. At one time, he had more than 800,000 adherents. "The Ralston Health Club had no formal location," Jake Rossen has reported. "It existed mostly in Ralston's head, which also conjured a series of self-help titles such as Lessons in Artistic Deep Breathing and Sexual Magnetism. Written under the pen name Edmund Shaftesbury, these tomes were verbose and offered dubious advice, like picking up a marble from a table and swinging it around in order to increase one's 'personal magnetism,' or what Edgerly believed was a person's energy and charisma. Young men were advised to bed women old enough to be their grandmothers and then marry women 20 years their junior. (Edgerly, already married once, wed again at age 42 to an 18-year-old.) He also spread a language he called Adam-Man Tongue. He promised continued study of this assorted wisdom might ultimately result in the power to control the thoughts and actions of others — or even achieve immortality."
A Missouri woman says she visited a mattress store to test out the beds, finding one so comfortable that she dropped off to sleep. As she snoozed, apparently unnoticed, the employees closed the shop for the night. But the sleepy woman had a rude awakening when police were called in the morning. "That's honestly the best mattress endorsement we've ever heard," the police department posted on social media. The store did not want to press charges against the woman for trespassing, so officers escorted the well-rested customer out of the business, which police declined to name.
