burfield

In the early twentieth century, Linda Burfield Hazzard claimed she could cure disease through fasting. Patients came to her retreat seeking health, discipline, and certainty. Many left dangerously weakened. Some did not leave at all.

The Woman with the Cure examines the rise and fall of Hazzard and her infamous sanitarium, known as Starvation Heights. Through careful historical analysis, this book traces how authority, belief, and isolation combined to turn care into coercion - and why intervention came too late.

A sober work of historical true crime, this is not a story of spectacle, but of trust, power, and the quiet mechanisms that allow harm to flourish under the promise of healing.