Author again selling book about 'old Oto doctor'

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"We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of ... Oto?" |ret||ret||tab|

Oto, once a tiny Stone Coun-ty town between Crane and Hur-ley, was the home of the Ozarks' very own "wizard" during the 1930s, according to retired English and journalism teacher Carley Andrus, in her book "The Wizard of Oto." |ret||ret||tab|

Dubbed "the wizard of Oto" by the St. Louis Post in 1933, Omar Palmer was a mysterious stranger with a German accent who materialized in Oto in 1932 and provided medical care free of charge to those who couldn't afford a doctor.|ret||ret||tab|

Andrus, who lives in Oto, now known as Sugar Tree Hollow, published the book herself in 1985 having it printed at Litho Printers in Cassville. She sold all 2,500 copies of the book's first printing within a year of its publishing. |ret||ret||tab|

She said because of a renewed interest in the story, She recently had an additional 2,000 copies of "The Wizard of Oto" printed and hopes to again sell it at bookstores and flea markets in Springfield and Stone County, and perhaps at Silver Dollar City. Ozark Mountaineer, a Branson-based bimonthly folklore magazine, will also offer the book to its readers via mail order again, she said. |ret||ret||tab|

"I didn't want to (print the book) again, because it was a lot of work ... but people kept calling me and writing me," Andrus said. "I'm retired this time, so I thought it might be fun." |ret||ret||tab|

She said the book is again being advertised in the Crane Chronicle, which is mailed to subscribers all over the United States.|ret||ret||tab|

"I sold as many books in California as I did in Missouri," Andrus said, about the book's first printing. "Of course, those were mail order and I had to do them myself. I got pretty efficient at it after awhile." |ret||ret||tab|

She said she charges $6 for the paperback book, plus $2 for shipping. The illustrations in "The Wizard of Oto" were provided by Norma Wiebe of Springfield. |ret||ret||tab|

Andrus and her husband moved to Oto, which has a Crane mailing address and a Hurley phone number, in 1972. She said she had heard about "the old Oto doctor" as a child, but didn't know the full story until a relative related it to her after she moved to Oto and took a creative writing class for her master's degree. Her professor urged her to record the Palmer story before it was forgotten. |ret||ret||tab|

"He kept me after class and said if you don't put this down on paper, it's going to be lost,' and he was right because most of the people who remember this story first-hand are dead," Andrus said. |ret||ret||tab|

Andrus said because she was also teaching high school when she started writing the book, she worked on it during the summers. She said it took her four years to complete. |ret||ret||tab|

"Even after I had it compiled, it took quite a while to have it printed, because I had to do all the proofing. They typed it up on word processors and sent it to me, and I corrected it," Andrus said. |ret||ret||tab|

She said her main source of information for the Palmer story was Fannie Cox, the daughter of the couple whose Oto house was the site of his clinic from 1932-34. |ret||ret||tab|

"I was so thrilled to find her. She had her mother's journals from that time. Her mother prepared the herbs for the doctor and was his assistant," Andrus said. She said Cox also gave her newspaper clippings about Palmer dating from the '30s and '40s.|ret||ret||tab|

Thousands flocked from all over the United States to see Palmer during his years practicing medicine in Stone County. He was arrested and tried for practicing medicine without a license in 1933, but because he didn't charge for his services, he was found not guilty, and resumed his practice. |ret||ret||tab|

Palmer moved his clinic to its own building in Hurley in 1934, when crowds to see him at the Cox house became too much. |ret||ret||tab|

In 1935, the Oto Remedy Company was established in Springfield and sold the medicines that Palmer and his helpers created from herbs picked from the Stone County countryside. Palmer closed the Hurley clinic and moved to Aurora in 1938, where he ran the company and saw a few patients, until retiring to Pineville, Ark. in 1944. |ret||ret||tab|

Palmer died two years later at the age of 85, taking the mystery of who he was and where he came from with him.[[In-content Ad]]