Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/537

 Rh of an incurable disease grasp at this frail straw in the hope of being rescued from untimely death. Such are found especially among cases of consumption, cancer, spinal disease or other similar chronic complaints whose outlook is unfavorable. Many of the nostrums belonging to this class are quite inert, while others contain opiates or stimulants which give temporary relief from symptoms but only hasten the end.

The question must present itself most forcibly, if the statements outlined above are true, how does it come that such a large body of the people continue to use these irrational remedies? This question is usually answered by attributing the results to 'shrewd advertising.' If shrewdness is synonymous with falsehood and blackmail the answer is correct. While it is true that an enormous amount of money is spent in advertising, yet back of all these advertisements is a mass of deceit which in any other business would prove ruinous.

It is necessary to digress for a moment to obtain a comprehension of the factors which have made successful commercial methods which under ordinary circumstances would mean certain failure. All patent medicines, with a few exceptions, as the laxatives, may be divided into two classes, the inert and the dangerous. The harmful remedies which are employed are usually either opium, cocaine, alcohol or acetanilid. All of these are drugs whose use is liable to lead to a craving for more. It is evident that if Peruna once starts an alcohol habit, or if Bull's 'Cough syrup' makes an opium fiend, or Birney's 'Catarrh Cure,' a cocaine habitué, the future sale of that remedy is assured. After once being persuaded to consume the first bottle of the deadly nostrum the financial and moral wreck of the victim is an easy matter. It is asserted that so widespread has become the use of some of these remedies that cures are now being advertised for the relief of the Peruna habit. With the inert nostrum the conditions are somewhat different. These depend for their prosperity upon the large number of credulous persons from among whom new customers may be obtained when some old customer awakes to the fact that, in the language of the college youth, 'he has been stung.'

It is clear that the task of the purveyors of inert frauds is a more difficult one than that of the vender of habit-forming poisons. But the methods of procuring new customers is essentially the same in each instance. To obtain fresh victims there is no depth of immorality to which the manufacturer of the nostrum will not stoop. The lies are of manifold variety, but of a few classic types.

The first of these, which may be denominated as the lie simple, is the extravagant claim to cure all sorts of conditions, based simply on the statement of the owner of the drug. Sometimes these are fortified by offer of 'money back if not satisfied' or one hundred dollars, or a