Part 15

for publication,' he said. I replied that I had used but little of it, and found it only the same as any other whisky. He then asked if I was satisfied with the results as far as I had used it. I replied that I was. He then asked me to state that much, and I very foolishly said I would, on condition that it was not to be used as an advertisement, and he assured me it would not be used. I then, in a few words, said that 'I (or we) have used and are using Duffy's Malt Whiskey, and are satisfied with the results,' signing my name to the same. He left here, and what was my surprise to receive later on a booklet in which was my testimonial and many others, with cuts of hospitals ranging along with people who had reached 100 years by use of the whisky, while seemingly all ailments save ringbone and spavin were being cured by this wonderful beverage. I was provoked, but was paid as I deserved, for allowing a smooth tongue to deceive me. Duffy's Malt Whiskey has never been inside this place since that day and never will be while I have any voice to prevent it. The total amount used at the time and before was less than half a gallon." This hospital is still used as a reference by the Duffy people. Many of the ordinary testimonials which come unsolicited to the extensively advertised nostrums in great numbers are both genuine and honest. What of their value as evidence? Some years ago, so goes a story familiar in the drug trade, the general agent for a large jobbing house declared that he could put out an article possessing not the slightest remedial or stimulant properties, and by advertising it skillfully so persuade people of its virtues that it would receive unlimited testimonials to the cure of any disease for which he might choose to exploit it. Challenged to a bet, he became a proprietary owner. Within a year he had won his wager with a collection of certified "cures" ranging from anemia to pneumonia. Moreover, he found his venture so profitable that he pushed it to the extent of thousands of dollars of profits. His "remedy" was nothing but sugar. I have heard "Kaskine" mentioned as the "cure" in the case. It answers the requirements, or did answer them at that time, according to an analysis by the Massachusetts State Board of Health, which shows that its purchasers had been paying $1 an ounce for pure granulated sugar. Whether "Kaskine" was indeed the subject of this picturesque bet, or whether it was some other harmless fraud, is immaterial to the point, which is that where the disease cures itself, as nearly all diseases do, the medicine gets the benefit of this _viæ medicatriæ naturæ_--the natural corrective force which makes for normal health in every human organism. Obviously, the sugar testimonials can not be regarded as very weighty evidence. Testimonials for a Magic Ring. There is being advertised now a finger ring which by the mere wearing cures any form of rheumatism. The maker of that ring has genuine letters from people who believe that they have been cured by it. Would any one other than a believer in witchcraft accept those statements? Yet they are just as "genuine" as the bulk of patent medicine letters and written in as good faith. A very small proportion of the gratuitous indorsements get into the newspapers, because, as I have said, they do not lend themselves {069}well to advertising purposes. I have looked over the originals of hundreds of such letters, and more than 90 per cent, of them--that is a very conservative estimate--are from illiterate and obviously ignorant people. Even those few that can be used are rendered suitable for publication only by careful editing. The geographical distribution is suggestive. Out of 100 specimens selected at random from the Pierce testimonial book, eighty-seven are from small, remote hamlets, whose very names are unfamiliar to the average man of intelligence. Only five are from cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants. Now, Garden City, Kas.; North Yamhill, Ore.; Theresa, Jefferson County, N. Y.; Parkland, Ky., and Forest Hill, W. Va., may produce an excellent brand of Americanism, but one does not look for a very high average of intelligence in such communities. Is it only a coincidence that the mountain districts of Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee, recognized as being the least civilized parts of the country, should furnish a number of testimonials, not only to Pierce, but to Peruna, Paine's Celery Compound and other brands, out of all proportion to their population? On page 65 {065} is a group of Pierce enthusiasts and a group of Peruna witnesses. Should you, on the face of this exhibit, accept their advice on a matter wholly affecting your physical welfare? This is what the advertiser is asking you to do. Secure as is the present control of the Proprietary Association over the newspapers, there is one point in which I believe almost any journal may be made to feel the force of public opinion, and that is the matter of common decency. Newspapers pride themselves on preserving a respectable moral standard in their news columns, and it would require no great pressure on the part of the reading public (which is surely immediately interested) to extend this standard to the advertising columns. I am referring now not only to the unclean sexual, venereal and abortion advertisements which deface the columns of a majority of papers, but also to the exploitation of several prominent proprietaries. Recently a prominent Chicago physician was dining _en famille_ with a friend who is the publisher of a rather important paper in a Western city. The publisher was boasting that he had so established the editorial and news policy of his paper that every line of it could be read without shame in the presence of any adult gathering. "Never anything gets in," he declared, "that I couldn't read at this table before my wife, son and daughter." The visitor, a militant member of his profession, snuffed battle from afar. "Have the morning's issue brought," he said. Turning to the second page he began on Swift's Sure Specific, which was headed in large black type with the engaging caption, "Vile, Contagious Blood Poison." Before he had gone far the 19-year-old daughter of the family, obedient to a glance from the mother, had gone to answer an opportune ring at the telephone, and the publisher had grown very red in the face. "I didn't mean the advertisements," he said. "I did," said the visitor, curtly, and passed on to one of the extremely intimate, confidential and highly corporeal letters to the ghost of Lydia E. Pinkham, which are a constant ornament of the press. The publisher's son interrupted: "I don't believe that was written for me to hear," he observed. "I'm too young--only 25, you know. Call me when you're through. I'll be out looking at the moon." Relentlessly the physician turned the sheet and began on one of the Chattanooga Medical Company's physiological editorials, entitled "What {070}Men Like in a Girl." For loathsome and gratuitous indecency, for leering appeal to their basest passions, this advertisement and the others of the Wine of Cardui series sound the depths. The hostess lasted through the second paragraph, when she fled, gasping. "Now," said the physician to his host, "what do you think of yourself?" The publisher found no answer, but thereafter his paper was put under a censorship of advertising. Many dailies refuse such "copy" as this of Wine of Cardui. And here, I believe, is an opportunity for the entering wedge. If every subscriber to a newspaper who is interested in keeping his home free from contamination would protest and keep on protesting against advertising foulness of this nature, the medical advertiser would soon be restricted to the same limits of decency which other classes of merchandise accept as a matter of course, for the average newspaper publisher is quite sensitive to criticism from his readers. A recent instance came under my own notice in the case of the _Auburn_ (N. Y.) _Citizen_, which bought out an old-established daily, taking over the contracts, among which was a large amount of low-class patent medicine advertising. The new proprietor, a man of high personal standards, assured his friends that no objectionable matter would be permitted in his columns. Shortly after the establishment of the new paper there appeared an advertisement of Juven Pills, referred to above. Protests from a number of subscribers followed. Investigation showed that a so-called "reputable" patent medicine firm had inserted this disgraceful paragraph under their contract. Further insertions of the offending matter were refused and the Hood Company meekly accepted the situation. Another central New York daily, the _Utica Press_, rejects such "copy" as seems to the manager indecent, and I have yet to hear of the paper's being sued for breach of contract. No perpetrator of unclean advertising can afford to go to court on this ground, because he knows that his matter is indefensible. Our national quality of commercial shrewdness fails us when we go into the open market to purchase relief from suffering. The average American, when he sets out to buy a horse, or a house, or a box of cigars, is a model of caution. Show him testimonials from any number of prominent citizens and he would simply scoff. He will, perhaps, take the word of his life-long friend, or of the pastor of his church, but only after mature thought, fortified by personal investigation. Now observe the same citizen seeking to buy the most precious of all possessions, sound health. Anybody's word is good enough for him here. An admiral whose puerile vanity has betrayed him into a testimonial; an obliging and conscienceless senator; a grateful idiot from some remote hamlet; a renegade doctor or a silly woman who gets a bonus of a dozen photographs for her letter--any of these are sufficient to lure the hopeful patient to the purchase. He wouldn't buy a second-hand bicycle on the affidavit of any of them, but he will give up his dollar and take his chance of poison on a mere newspaper statement which he doesn't even investigate. Every intelligent newspaper publisher knows that the testimonials which he publishes are as deceptive as the advertising claims are false. Yet he salves his conscience with the fallacy that the moral responsibility is on the advertiser and the testimonial-giver. So it is, but the newspaper shares it. When an aroused public sentiment shall make our public men ashamed to lend themselves to this charlatanry, and shall enforce on the profession of journalism those standards of decency in the field of medical advertising which apply to other advertisers, the Proprietary {071}Association of America will face a crisis more perilous than any threatened legislation. For printers' ink is the very life-blood of the noxious trade. Take from the nostrum vendors the means by which they influence the millions, and there will pass to the limbo of pricked bubbles a fraud whose flagrancy and impudence are of minor import compared to the cold-hearted greed with which it grinds out its profits from the sufferings of duped and eternally hopeful ignorance. THE PATENT MEDICINE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. Reprinted from Collier's Weekly, Nov. 4, 1905. {072} "Here shall the Press the People's rights maintain. Unawed by influence and unbribed by gain." --Joseph Story: Motto of the Salem Register. _Would any person believe that there is any one subject upon which the newspapers of the United States, acting in concert, by prearrangement, in obedience to wires all drawn by one man, will deny full and free discussion? If such a thing is possible, it is a serious matter, for we rely upon the newspapers