Professor+Phinneas+Peale

Peter Peterson was born in Battle Creek, Michigan in the 1850s to parents of modest means, Scandinavians who had immigrated in the 1840s. One was a school teacher one was a barber and apothecary. After a variety of childhood "odd jobs" that ranged from selling tobacco on the street outside his father's apothecary to messenger boy, Peterson enrolled in the Bennett College of Eclectic Medicine in Chicago and earned a diploma there. He then began work on a line of elixirs, potions, and remedies under the brand name "Pete Peal's." He marketed his products with the slogan "Pete Peal's Will Heal." While traveling in cities in New England distributing his wares, Peterson attended a circus show and was fascinated. Soon, Peterson caught on with [|PT Barnum], adopted the name "Professor" Phinneas Peale, and toured the United States and Europe with Barnum. The "Professor" played myriad roles with the circus, advising Barnum on business matters, serving occasional stints as ringmaster, and even selling his potions and elixirs in the sideshow, with demonstrations claiming miracle cures, Having made a small fortune thanks to his charismatic personality, among other talents, Peale returned to Michigan to retire while only in his late 40s. In the midst of an asylum building boom, Michigan disabused Peale of the notion of retirement, and he took a job with the [|Eastern Michigan Asylum for the Insane]. He tired quickly of the chaos at the hospital and was lured by his new friend, [|John Harvey Kellogg], to a position at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Peale credited the healthy habits he learned during a stint at the Sanitarium for his ability to fight of the influenza of 1918, so he obliged Kellogg's request to join the staff there. Peale assisted Kellogg, treating patients and lecturing on natural remedies, until he died at the age of 73 in 1928.

Hey, I'm Anna, I saw you in the circus. You are nifty.