Part 12

been able to omit from this series all consideration of fraud, and devote my entire attention to the far less involved and difficult matter of poison. Unhappily, all of the Scott's Emulsion advertising is not up to this standard. In another newspaper I have seen an excerpt in which the Scott & Bowne Company come perilously near making, if they do not actually make, the claim that their emulsion is a cure, and furthermore make themselves ridiculous by challenging comparison with another emulsion, suggesting a chemical test and offering, if their nostrum comes out second best, _to give to the institution making the experiment a supply of their oil free for a year_. This is like the German druggist who invented a heart-cure and offered two cases to any one who could prove that it was injurious! Consumption is not the only incurable disease in which there are good pickings for the birds of prey. In a recent issue of the New York Sunday _American-Journal_ I find three cancer cures, one dropsy cure, one "heart-disease soon cured," three epilepsy cures and a "case of paralysis cured." Cancer yields to but one agency--the knife. Epilepsy is either the result of pressure on the brain or some obscure cerebral disease; medicine can never cure it. Heart disease is of many kinds, and a drug that may be helpful in relieving symptoms in one case might be fatal in another. The same is true of dropsy. Medical science knows no "cure" for paralysis. As space lacks to consider individually the nature of each nostrum separately, I list briefly, for the protection of those who read, a number of the more conspicuous swindles of this kind now being foisted on the public: Rupert Wells' Radiatized Fluid, for cancer. Miles' Heart Disease Cure. Miles' Grand Dropsy Cure. Dr. Tucker's Epilepsy Cure. Dr. Grant's Epilepsy Cure. W. H. May's Epilepsy Cure. Dr. Kline's Epilepsy Cure. Dr. W. 0. Bye's Cancer Cure. Mason's Cancer Cure. Dr. Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People, which are advertised to cure paralysis and are a compound of green vitriol, starch and sugar. Purchasers of these nostrums not only waste their money, but in many cases they throw away their only chance by delaying proper treatment until it is too late. {055} Properly, a "cure" known as Bioplasm belongs in this list, but so ingenious are its methods that it deserves some special attention. In some of the New York papers a brief advertisement, reading as follows, occupies a conspicuous position. "After suffering for ten years the torture that only an ataxic can know, Mr. E. P. Burnham, of Delmar, N. Y., has been relieved of all pain and restored to health and strength, and the ability to resume his usual pursuits, by an easily obtained and inexpensive treatment which any druggist can furnish. To any fellow-sufferer who mails him a self-addressed envelope Mr. Burnham sends free this prescription which cured him."--Adv. Now, people who give away something for nothing, and spend money advertising for a chance to do it, are as rare in the patent medicine business as out of it, and Delmar, N. Y., is not included in any map of Altruria that I have learned of E. P. Burnham, therefore, seemed worth writing to. The answer came back promptly, inclosing the prescription and explaining the advertiser's purpose: "My only motive in the notice which caught your attention is to help other sufferers. _You owe me nothing. I have nothing to sell_. When you are benefited, however, if you feel disposed and able to send me a contribution to assist me in making this great boon to our felow-sufferers better known it will be thankfully received and used for that purpose." I fear that Mr. Burnham doesn't make much money out of grateful correspondents who were cured of locomotor ataxia by his prescription, because locomotor ataxia is absolutely and hopelessly incurable. Where Mr. Burnham gets his reward, I fancy, is from the Bioplasm Company, of 100 William street, New York, whose patent medicine is prescribed for me. I should like to believe that his "only motive is to help other sufferers," but as I find, on investigation, that the advertising agents who handle the "Burnham" account are the Bioplasm Company's agents, I am regretfully compelled to believe that Mr. Burnham, instead of being of the tribe of the good Samaritan, is probably an immediate relative of Ananias. The Bioplasm Company also proposes to cure consumption, and is worthy of a conspicuous place in the Fraud's Gallery of Nostrums. Even the skin of the Ethiop is not exempt from the attention of the quacks. A colored correspondent writes, asking that I "give a paragraph to these frauds who cater to the vanity of those of my race who insult their Creator in attempting to change their color and hair," and inclose a typical advertisement of "Lustorene," which "straightens kinky, nappy, curly hair," and of "Lustorone Face Bleach," which "whitens the darkest skin" and will "bring the skin to any desired shade or color." Nothing could better illustrate to what ridiculous lengths the nostrum fraud will go. Of course, the Lustorone business is fraudulent. Some time since a Virginia concern, which advertised to turn negroes white, was suppressed by the Postoffice Department, which might well turn its attention to Lustorone Face Bleach. There are being exploited in this country to-day more than 100 cures, for diseases that are absolutely beyond the reach of drugs. They are owned by men who know them to be swindles, and who in private conversation will almost always evade the direct statement that their nostrums will "cure" consumption, epilepsy, heart disease and ailments of that nature. Many of them "guarantee" their remedies. They will return your money if you aren't satisfied. And they can afford to. They take the lightest of risks. The real risk is all on the other side. It is their few pennies per bottle against your life. Were the facile patter by which they lure to the bargain a menace to the pocketbook alone, one might regard them only as ordinary {056}followers of light finance, might imagine them filching their gain with the confidential, half-brazen, half-ashamed leer of the thimblerigger. But the matter goes further and deeper. Every man who trades in this market, whether he pockets the profits of the maker, the purveyor or the advertiser, takes toll of blood. He may not deceive himself here, for here the patent medicine is nakedest, most cold-hearted. Relentless greed sets the trap and death is partner in the enterprise. VI--THE FUNDAMENTAL FAKES. Reprinted from Collier's Weekly, Feb. 17, 1906. {057} Advertising and testimonials are respectively the aggressive and defensive forces of the Great American Fraud. Without the columns of the newspapers and magazines wherein to exploit themselves, a great majority of the patent medicines would peacefully and blessedly fade out of existence. Nearly all the world of publications is open to the swindler, the exceptions being the high-class magazines and a very few independent spirited newspapers. The strongholds of the fraud are dailies, great and small, the cheap weeklies and the religious press. According to the estimate of a prominent advertising firm, above 90 per cent, of the earning capacity of the prominent nostrums is represented by their advertising. And all this advertising is based on the well-proven theory of the public's pitiable ignorance and gullibility in the vitally important matter of health. Study the medicine advertising in your morning paper, and you will find yourself in a veritable goblin-realm of fakery, peopled with monstrous myths. Here is an amulet in the form of an electric belt, warranted to restore youth and vigor to the senile; yonder a magic ring or a mysterious inhaler, or a bewitched foot-plaster which will draw the pangs of rheumatism from the tortured body "or your money back"; and again some beneficent wizard in St. Louis promises with a secret philtre to charm away deadly cancer, while in the next column a firm of magi in Denver proposes confidently to exorcise the demon of incurable consumption without ever seeing the patient. Is it credible that a supposedly civilized nation should accept such stuff as gospel? Yet these exploitations cited above, while they are extreme, differ only in degree from nearly all patent-medicine advertising. Ponce de Leon, groping toward that dim fountain whence youth springs eternal, might believe that he had found his goal in the Peruna factory, the Liquozone "laboratory" or the Vitæ-Ore plant; his thousands of descendants in this century of enlightenment painfully drag themselves along poisoned trails, following a will-o'-the-wisp that dances above the open graves. Newspaper Accomplices. If there is no limit to the gullibility of the public on the one hand, there is apparently none to the cupidity of the newspapers on the other. As the Proprietary Association of America is constantly setting forth in veiled warnings, the press takes an enormous profit from patent-medicine advertising. Mr. Hearst's papers alone reap a harvest of more than half a million dollars per annum from this source. The Chicago _Tribune_, which treats nostrum advertising in a spirit of independence, and sometimes with scant courtesy, still receives more than $80,000 a year in medical patronage. Many of the lesser journals actually live on patent medicines. What wonder that they are considerate of these profitable customers! Pin a newspaper owner down to the issue of fraud in the matter, and he will take refuge in the plea that his advertisers and not himself are responsible for what appears in the advertising columns. _Caveat emptor_ is the implied superscription above this department. The more shame to those publications {058}which prostitute their news and editorial departments to their greed. Here are two samples, one from the Cleveland _Plain-Dealer_, the other from a temperance weekly, Green Goods "Cable News." The "Ascatco" advertisement, which the Plain-Dealer prints as a cablegram, without any distinguishing mark to designate it as an advertisement, of course, emanates from the office of the nostrum, and is a fraud, as the _Plain-Dealer_ well knew when it accepted payment, and became partner to the swindle by deceiving its readers. Tne Vitæ-Ore "editorial" appears by virtue of a full-page advertisement of this extraordinary fake in the same issue. Whether, because church-going people are more trusting, and therefore more easily befooled than others, or from some more obscure reason, many of the religious papers fairly reek with patent-medicine fakes. Take, for instance, the _Christian Endeavor World_, which is the undenominational organ of a large, powerful and useful organization, unselfishly working toward the betterment of society. A subscriber who recently complained of certain advertisements received the following reply from the business manager of the publication: "Dear Sir:--Your letter of the 4th comes to me for reply. Appreciating the good spirit in which you write, let me assure you that, to the best of our knowledge and belief, we are not publishing any fraudulent or unworthy medicine advertising. We decline every year thousands of dollars' worth of patent-medicine advertising that we think is either fraudulent or misleading. You would be surprised, very likely, if you could know of the people of high intelligence and good character who are benefited by these {059}medicines. We have taken a great deal of pains to make particular inquiries of our subscribers with respect to this question, and a very large percentage of them are devoted to one or more well-known patent medicines, and regard them as household remedies.