Some of the other ideas about Halley's Comet publicized in 1910 were fully as odd as the Koreshans' talk of "the breaking in of zones of cruosic energy generated at the colure". Jean B.Marchand refused to accept that the comet which appeared that spring was Halley's Comet -- the real one, he maintained, would not arrive until September. Edwin F.Nulty argued that comets' tails consisted of sunlight focused and concentrated by the head, which acted as a lens and that consequently, a path of fiery destruction would be traced across Earth wherever the focal point went as the comet passed between Earth and Sun.

The comet provided a final impetus for some people to go mad and for others to commit suicide. A sheep rancher in California tried to crucify himself and was badly injured. A Hungarian landowner named Adam Toma did commit suicide, saying he preferred death by his own hand "to being kiled by a star." But the story that a cult in Oklahoma was stopped just short of sacrificing a virgin to the comet was apparently made up and appeared only in some Eastern U.S. newspapers.

... One of the most famous items of 1910 Halley lore was the sale of "comet pills" guaranteed to protect people from the deadly effects of the tail's gases. Much has been said about this racket, but where was it actually practiced? Barnard in 1914 mentioned that such pills had been manufactured and sold among blacks in the south. The pills were reputed to come from Haiti. But the idea must have been picked up by other swindlers. Ruth Freitag mentions one seller of comet pills who was arrested in Texas but, because no one seemed to care about his misdeeds, was let go. In Chicago, people without comet pills or gas masks stopped up the cracks around their doors and windows with rags and newspapers while the Earth was supposed to be passing through the comet's tail.

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-- COMET OF THE CENTURY, P.183-184.