His prescription: hot and cold compresses to increase her absorption of water. Although she weighed only 108 pounds when she visited him, Carroll permitted her to go on a 10 -- day fast in which she took nothing but water. Inevitably, Mrs. Hull died of starvation and tuberculosis, weighing 60 pounds. Moreover, her husband and child contracted T.B. from her. (Small wonder a Spokane jury awarded the husband $35823 for his wife's death.)

In California, a few years ago, a ghoul by the name of H. F. Bell sold electric blankets as a cure for cancer. He did this by the charming practice of buying up used electric blankets for $5 to $10 from survivors of patients who had died, reconditioning them, and selling them at $185 each. When authorities convicted him of practicing medicine without a license (he got off with a suspended sentence of three years because of his advanced age of 77), one of his victims was not around to testify: He was dead of cancer.

By no means are these isolated cases. ``Unfortunately,'' says Chief Postal Inspector David H. Stephens, who has prosecuted many device quacks, ``the ghouls who trade on the hopes of the desperately ill often cannot be successfully prosecuted because the patients who are the chief witnesses die before the case is called up in court.''

Death! Have no doubt about it. That's where device quackery can lead. The evidence shows that fake therapeutic machines, substituted for valid medical cures, have hastened the deaths of thousands.