Part 6

ful? Positively not, Douglas Smith assured them. On the contrary, it was the greatest boon to the sick in the world's history, and he produced an impressive bulk of testimonials. This apparently satisfied them; they did not investigate the testimonials, but accepted them at their face value. They did not look into the advertising methods of the company; as nearly as I can find out, they never saw an advertisement of Liquozone in the papers until long afterward. They just became stockholders and directors, that is all. They did as hundreds of other upright and well-meaning men had done in lending themselves to a business of which they knew practically nothing. While the lawyers continued to practice law, Messrs. Smith and Hopkins were running the Liquozone Company. An enormous advertising campaign was begun. Pamphlets were issued containing testimonials and claiming {025}the soundest of professional backing. Indeed, this matter of expert testimony, chemical, medical and bacteriologic, is a specialty of Liquozone. Today, despite its reforms, it is supported by an ingenious system of pseudoscientific charlatanry. In justice to Mr. Hopkins it is but fair to say that he is not responsible for the basic fraud; that the general scheme was devised, and most of the bogus or distorted medical letters arranged, before his advent. But when I came to investigate the product a few months ago I found that the principal defense against attacks consisted of scientific statements which would not bear analysis and medical letters not worth the paper they were written on. In the first place, the Liquozone people have letters from chemists asseverating that the compound is chemically scientific. Faked and Garbled Indorsements. [IMAGE ==>] {025} ANALYSIS OF LIQUOZONE. SULPHURIC ACID -- About nine-tenths of one per cent. SULPHUROUS ACID -- About three-tenths of one per cent WATER....... -- Nearly ninety-nine per cent. Sulphuric acid is oil of vitriol. Sulphurous acid is also a corrosive poison. Liquozone is the combination of these two heavily diluted. Messrs. Dickman, Mackenzie & Potter, of Chicago, furnish a statement to the effect that the product is "made up on scientific principles, contains no substance deleterious to health and is an antiseptic and germicide of the highest order." As chemists the Dickman firm stands high, but if sulphuric and sulphurous acids are not deleterious to their health there must be something peculiar about them as human beings. Mr. Deavitt of Chicago makes affidavit that the preparation is not made by compounding drugs. A St. Louis bacteriologist testifies that it will kill germs (in culture tubes), and that it has apparently brought favorable results in diarrhea, rheumatism and a finger which a guinea-pig had gnawed. These and other technical indorsements are set forth with great pomp and circumstance, but when analyzed they fail to bear out the claims of Liquozone as a medicine. Any past investigation into the nature of Liquozone has brought a flood of "indorsements" down on the investigator, many of them medical. My inquiries have been largely along medical lines, because the makers of the drug claim the private support of many physicians and medical institutions, and such testimony is the most convincing. "Liquozone has the indorsement of an overwhelming number of medical authorities," says one of the pamphlets. One of the inclosures sent to me was a letter from a young physician on the staff of the Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago, who was paid $25 to make bacteriologic tests in pure cultures. He reported: "This is to certify that the fluid Liquozone handed to me for bacteriologic examination has shown bacteriologic and germicidal properties." At the same time he {026}informed the Liquozone agent that the mixture would be worthless medicinally. He writes me as follows: "I have never used or indorsed Liquozone; furthermore, its action would be harmful when taken internally. Can report a case of gastric ulcer due probably to its use." Later in my investigations I came on this certificate again. It was quoted, in a report on Liquozone, made by the head of a prominent Chicago laboratory for a medical journal, and it was designated "Report made by the Michael Reese Hospital," without comment or investigation. This surprising garbling of the facts may have been due to carelessness, or it may have some connection with the fact that the laboratory investigation was about that time employed to do work for Mr. Douglas Smith, Liquozone's president. Another document is an enthusiastic "puff" of Liquozone, quoted as being contributed by Dr. W. H. Myers in _The New York Journal of Health_. There is not nor ever has been any such magazine as _The New York Journal of Health_. Dr. W. H. Myers, or some person masquerading under that name, got out a bogus "dummy" (for publication only, and not as guarantee of good faith) at a small charge to the Liquozone people. For convenience I list several letters quoted or sent to me, with the result of investigations. The Suffolk Hospital and Dispensary of Boston, through its president, Albert C. Smith, writes: "Our test shows it (Liquozone) to possess great remedial value." The letter I have found to be genuine. But the hospital _medical_ authorities say that they know nothing of Liquozone and never prescribe it. If President Smith is prescribing it he is liable to arrest, as he is not an M.D. A favoring letter from "Dr." Fred W. Porter of Tampa, Fla., is quoted. The Liquozone recipients of the letter forgot to mention that "Dr." Porter is not an M.D., but a veterinary surgeon, as is shown by his letter head. Dr. George E. Bliss of Maple Rapids, Mich., has used Liquozone for cancer patients. Dr. Bliss writes me, under the flaming headline of his "cancer cure," that his letter is genuine and "not solicitated." Dr. A. A. Bell of Madison, Ga., is quoted as saying: "I found Liquozone to invigorate digestion." He is _not_ quoted (although he wrote it) as saying that his own personal experience with it had shown it to be ineffective. I have seen the original letter, and the unfavorable part of it was blue-penciled. For a local indorsement of any medicine perhaps as strong a name as could be secured in Chicago is that of Dr. Frank Billings. In the offices of _Collier's_ and elsewhere Dr. Billings has been cited by the Liquozone people as one of those medical men who were prevented only by ethical considerations from publicly indorsing their nostrum, but who, nevertheless, privately avowed confidence in it. Here is what Dr. Billings has to say of this: Chicago, Ill., July 31, 1905. _To the Editor of Collier's Weekly._ _Dear Sir_:--I have never recommended Liquozone in any way to any one, nor have I expressed to any representative of the Liquozone Company, or to any other person, an opinion favorable to Liquozone. (Signed) Frank Billings, M.D. Under the heading, "Some Chicago Institutions which Constantly Employ Liquozone," are cited Hull House, the Chicago Orphan Asylum, the Home for Incurables, the Evanston Hospital and the Old People's Home. Letters to the institutions elicited the information that Hull House {027}had never used the nostrum, and had protested against the statement; that the Orphan Asylum had experimented with it only for external applications, and with such dubious results that it was soon dropped; that it had been shut out of the Home for Incurables; that a few private patients in the Old People's Home had purchased it, but on no recommendation from the physicians; and that the Evanston Hospital knew nothing of Liquozone and had never used it. Having a professional interest in the "overwhelming number of medical indorsements" claimed by Liquozone, a Chicago physician, Dr. W. H. Felton, went to the company's offices and asked to see the medical evidence. None was forthcoming; the lists, he was informed, were in the press and could not be shown. He then asked for the official book for physicians advertised by the firm, containing "a great deal of evidence from authorities whom all physicians respect." This also, they said, was "in the press." As a matter of fact, it has never come out of the press and never will; the special book project has been dropped. One more claim and I am done with the "scientific evidence." In a pamphlet issued by the company and since withdrawn occurs this sprightly sketch: "Liquozone is the discovery of Professor Pauli, the great German chemist, who worked for twenty years to learn how to liquefy oxygen. When Pauli first mentioned his purpose men laughed at him. The idea of liquefying gas--of circulating a liquid oxygen in the blood--seemed impossible. But Pauli was one of those men who set their whole hearts on a problem and follow it out either to success or to the grave. So Pauli followed out this problem though it took twenty years. He clung to it through discouragements which would have led any lesser man to abandon it. He worked on it despite poverty and ridicule," etc. Liquozone Kills a Great German Scientist. Alas for romance! The scathing blight of the legal mind descended on this touching story. The lawyer-directors would have none of "Professor Pauli, the great German chemist," and Liquozone destroyed him, as it had created him. Not totally destroyed, however, for from those rainbow wrappings, now dissipated, emerges the humble but genuine figure of our old acquaintance, Mr. Powley, the ex-piano man of Toronto. He is the prototype of the Teutonic savant. So much the Liquozone people now admit, with the defence that the change of Powley to Pauli was, at most, a harmless flight of fancy, "so long as we were not attempting to use a name famous in medicine or bacteriology in order to add prestige to the product." A plea which commends itself by its ingeniousness at least. Gone is "Professor Pauli," and with him much of his kingdom lies. In fact, I believe there is no single definite intentional misstatement in the new Liquozone propaganda. For some months there has been a cessation of all advertising, and an overhauling of materials under the censorship of the lawyer-directors, who were suddenly aroused to the real situation by a storm of protest and criticism, and, rather late in the day, began to "sit up and take notice." The company has recently sent me a copy of the new booklet on which all their future advertising is to be based. The most important of their fundamental misstatements to go by the board is "Liquozone is liquid oxygen." "Liquozone contains no free oxygen," declares the revision frankly. No testimonials are to be printed. The faked and garbled letters are to be dropped from the files. There is no claim of "overwhelming medical indorsement." Nor is the statement {028}anywhere made that Liquozone will cure any of the diseases in which it is recommended. Yet such is the ingenuity with which the advertising manager has presented his case that the new newspaper exploitation appeals to the same hopes and fears, with the same implied promises, as the old. "I'm well because of Liquozone," in huge type, is followed by the list of diseases "where it applies." And the new list is more comprehensive than the old. All Ills Look Alike to Liquozone. [IMAGE ==>] {028} Just as to Peruna all ills are catarrh, so to Liquozone every disease is a germ disease. Every statement in the new prospectus of cure "has been submitted to competent authorities, and is exactly true and correct.," declares the recently issued pamphlet, "Liquozone, and Tonic Germicide"; and the pamphlet goes on to ascribe, among other ills, asthma, gout, neuralgia, dyspepsia, goiter and "most forms of kidney, liver and heart troubles" to germs. I don't know just w