Frank Lloyd Wright Applied Leeches and Had His Teeth Pulled

Sometimes, we discover that our aesthetic heroes have serious moral flaws—or just very strange quirks. In the latter category we can attribute to the fact that one of the most respected architects of the twentieth century, Frank Lloyd Wright, underwent medical treatment that was outdated and downright bizarre. Equally surprising is the fact that some of his ideas came from the artists and curators who commissioned him to build the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Hilla Rebay commissioned Wright to design a museum for her patron, writing to him in 1943, “I want a fighter, a space enthusiast, a founder, a tester, a wise man. I want a spiritual temple, a monument! And your help to make this possible.”

Bruce Pfeiffer mentioned in his book Frank Lloyd Wright: Guggenheim Correspondence During their first meeting in New York, the Rebbe and Wright “immediately liked each other…and soon they were on a first-name basis.” Just two weeks after the letter was sent, an agreement was signed. Wright promised the Guggenheim that his avant-garde museum would “make the Met look like a Protestant barn.” The museum, which opened its iconic spiral rotunda in 1959, is one of the most recognized art institutions in the world, if not the most recognizable work of architecture.

Rebay was the child of a Prussian officer. He was born in Strasbourg in 1890 as Hildegard Anna Augusta Elizabeth Freiin Rebay von Ehrenwiesen and Baroness Hilla von Rebay. She was an artist who had painted a portrait of the Guggenheim in 1928, and took the opportunity to talk to him about “non-objective” art (which she distinguished from abstract art, which, as she said, was “abstracted” from nature), created by figures such as Wassily Kandinsky. She soon became his advisor and curator.

“Her personality was so dynamic that not only Mr. Wright but also Mrs. Wright shared her medical qualities,” Pfeiffer wrote.

These qualities are no joke. written in new yorker In 1987, Brendan Gill described the Rebbe as “a diabolical amateur doctor”.

On the one hand, the Rebbe believed in using leeches for bloodletting, an ancient medical practice that is now in decline—though it might surprise you to read just a century before her first letter to Wright. Gill noted that the Wright brothers agreed on several occasions to have leeches “applied to their throats to drain the body of toxic ‘old’ blood and promote the creation of pure ‘new’ blood.” Historically, doctors drained blood to balance the “humors,” the mysterious substances purportedly controlling human health.

Perhaps even more bizarrely, at the Rebbe’s urging, the architect also had all his teeth removed and replaced with dentures — “within six weeks of their meeting,” Pfeiffer writes. The foundation was careful to note that Hilla Rebay’s papers at the Guggenheim Museum contained information about “her interest in new and alternative medical treatments, including dental and skull X-rays.”

But Gill points out that the architect and his wife had their own limitations: “One day, the Wrights noticed that the Rebbe seemed to be taking a clinical look at their young daughter Ivana’s healthy teeth, and they stopped paying serious attention to her medical advice.”

Perhaps we can look back at the medical thinking of people eighty years ago and, with some kindness, view them as outdated. Those were different times. In the 1940s, the medical establishment took seriously problems that were no longer considered serious, such as flat feet, crooked teeth, and heart murmurs. Antibiotics were just beginning to be widely used. It was not until 1946 that histamine was discovered, leading to the treatment of allergies.

But today, bizarre ideas about medicine have more sinister connections, with President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (whose slogan is “Make America Healthy Again”) regularly spreading dangerous disinformation. Let’s recall that Trump suggested at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic that we could fight the disease by injecting disinfectants or exposing ourselves to bright lights. Recently, he insisted, without all evidence, that Tylenol is linked to autism. Kennedy inexplicably claimed that “there is no safe and effective vaccine” despite the fact that it was the vaccine developed under his boss that has saved countless lives from Covid-19. Preventable diseases like measles, which were previously nearly eliminated, are surging amid unfounded but widespread fears about vaccines.

Of course, the Rebbe is not president. She’s not even the Secretary of Health and Human Services. (In the Rebbe’s day, the department Kennedy led didn’t even exist by that name.) Millions of people were unlikely to agree with her ideas, so she posed little threat to public health.

But it all does make you wonder – if Wright were alive today, would he go full Maha?