Page:The Great American Fraud (Adams).djvu/68




 * "It is the only cure and preventative [sic] of consumption, pneumonia, grip, bronchitis, coughs, colds, malaria, low fevers and all wasting, weakening, diseased conditions."


 * "Cures general debility, overwork, la grippe, colds, bronchitis, consumption, malaria, dyspepsia, depression, exhaustion and weakness from whatever cause."

All the high-class medical publications accept the advertising of "McArthur's Syrup of Hypophosphites," which uses the following statement: "It is the enthusiastic conviction of many (physicians) that its effect is truly specific." That looks to me suspiciously like a "consumption cure" shrewdly expressed in pseudo-ethical terms.

The Germicide Family.

Zymoticine, if one may believe various medical publications, "will prevent microbe proliferation in the blood streams, and acts as an efficient eliminator of those germs and their toxins which are already present." Translating this from its technical language, I am forced to the conviction that Zymoticine is half-brother to Liquozone, and if the latter is illegitimate at least both are children of Beelzebub, father of all frauds. Of the same family are the "ethicals" Acetozone and Keimol, as shown by their germicidal claims.

Again, I find exploited to the medical profession, through its own organs, a "sure cure for dropsy." "Hygeia presents her latest discovery," declares the advertisement, and fortifies the statement with a picture worthy of Swamp-Root or Lydia Pinkham. Every intelligent physician knows that there is no sure cure for dropsy. The alternative implication is that the advertiser hopes to get his profits by deluding the unintelligent of the profession, and that the publications which print his advertisement are willing to hire themselves out to the swindle.

In one respect some of the medical journals are far below the average of the newspapers, and on a par with the worst of the "religious" journals. They offer their reading space for sale. Here is an extract from a letter from the Medical Mirror to a well-known "ethical firm:"

"Should you place a contract for this issue we shall publish a 300-word report in your interest in our reading columns."

Many other magazines of this class print advertisements as original reading matter calculated to deceive their subscribers.

Back of all patent medicine advertising stands the testimonial. Produce proofs that any nostrum can not in its nature perform the wonders that it boasts, and its retort is to wave aloft its careful horde of letters and cry:

"We rest on the evidence of those we have cured."

The crux of the matter lies in the last word. Are the writers of those letters really cured? What is the value of their testimonials? Are they genuine? Are they honest? Are they, in their nature and from their source, entitled to such weight as would convince a reasonable mind?

Three distinct types suggest themselves: The word of grateful acknowledgement from a private citizen, couched in such terms as to be readily available for advertising purposes:  the encomium from some person in public life, and the misspelled, illiterate epistle which is from its nature so unconvincing that it never gets into print, and which outnumbers the other two classes a hundred to one. First of all, most nostrums make a point of the mass of evidence. Thousands of testimonials, they declare,