Medicine: Fountain of Fire

To hear her tell it, Italian-born Cora Galenti had found the Fountain of Youth. She even gave the name to her Sunset Boulevard salon. There and at her lavish Hollywood home she treated thousands of women and many men. When they went in, the skin on their aging faces was sagging and wrinkled. When they came out, $3,000 poorer after about three weeks, their faces were usually pink and unnaturally smooth. But last week Cora Galenti’s well-paying fountain was turned off by the law. Its source was a bottle of phenol (carbolic acid), which made the treatment both painful and dangerous.

For almost 20 years, Cora Galenti, 64, had got away with it while Hollywood buzzed with talk about famous, but always unnamed, actresses she had rejuvenated. Though doctors suspected that the active ingredient in her lotion was phenol, she kept the formula secret. Put out of business in Los Angeles by court action, Cora simply moved to Las Vegas. There the law finally caught up with her on a mail-fraud technicality.

Cora had advertised that her treatment was painless, but a beauty shop operator from Columbus testified: “She put some liquid on my face, and it was just like liquid fire.” Though no one testified to actual injury from Cora’s treatment, doctors said in court that since it peels off the top layer of skin by a slow burn, the phenol formula would definitely do damage; it might also injure the kidneys.

The law had been a long time catching up with Cora. And just such delays have probably encouraged other phenol-formula peddlers to grab for a fast buck elsewhere. An establishment in Westport, Conn. (TIME, Sept. 15, 1961), was shut down only last year. But Federal Judge Roger Foley did his best to supply a proper deterrent; he sentenced Cora Galenti to five years in prison, plus five years on probation during which she must not teach or practice rejuvenation.