Samuel Hopkins Adams

“ He would scorn to restrict himself to any one of disease or class of diseases. Thacher will cure anything, paralysis, consumption, Bright's disease, obesity, insanity or senility; it's all one to him. Just let him get the patient inside a set of "the famous Thacher Magnetic Shields," and disease and death must slink away, impotent and ashamed. Hear the trumpet-tones of Thacher, via the New York "American:"
⁠"I want to say to every man, woman and child within my reach that I can cure any disease that afflicts the human race. ”

“ I can touch on only a few of those which may be regarded as typical: the alcohol stimulators, as represented by Peruna, Paine's Celery Compound and Duffy's Pure Malt Whiskey (advertised as an exclusively medical preparation) ; the catarrh powders, which breed cocain slaves, and the opium-containing soothing syrups which stunt or kill helpless infants; the consumption cures, perhaps the most devilish of all, in that they destroy hope where hope is struggling against bitter odds for existence; the headache powders, which enslave so insidiously that the victim is ignorant of his own fate ”

“ Any physician who advertises a positive cure for any diseases, who issues nostrum testimonials, who sells his services to a secret remedy, or who diagnoses and treats by mail patients who he has never seen, is a quack. Any institution which publishes other than in a medical journal, testimonials or endorsements, is a quack institution. Any publication, medical or otherwise, which editorially or otherwise endorse secret or dishonest remedies or methods of cure, is a quack publication. ”

“ In a self-gratulatory dissertation the Peruna Company observes in substance that, while the leading minds of the nation have hitherto shrunk from the publicity attendant on commending any patent medicine, the transcendent virtues of Peruna have overcome this amiable modesty, and one and all, they stand forth its avowed champions. ”

“ But no label of opium or cocain, though the warning skull and cross-bones cover the bottle, will excuse the sale of products that are never safely used except by expert advice. I believe that the Chicago method of dealing with the catarrh powders is the right method in cocain- and opium-bearing nostrums. Restrict the drug by the same safeguards when sold under a lying pretence as when it flies its true colors. Then, and then only, will our laws prevent the shameful trade that stupefies helpless babies and makes criminals of our young men and harlots of our young woman. ”

“ Curry's own testimony in letter and advertisement, I will adventure it. Dr. Curry is a quack. His remedy is a fake. And the highly respectable citizens who bolster it are, giving them the benefit of the doubt, the dupes of an arrant swindler.
⁠I can do no more than mention, by way of warning, a scoundrel who endeavors to frighten women into taking his treatment by advertising in the papers, "In woman's breast any lump is cancer." ”

“ If the public drugger can convince his patron that she is well, she is well - for his purposes. In the case of such diseases as naturally tend to cure themselves, no greater harm is done than the parting of a fool and his money. With rheumatism, sciatica and that ilk, it means added pangs; with consumption, Bright's disease and other serious disorders, perhaps needless death. No onus of homicide is borne by the nostrum seller; probably the patient would have died anyways; there is no proof that the patent bottle was in any way responsible. ”

“ Were its perilous quality known, the headache powder would hardly be so widely used. And were the even more important fact that the use of these powders becomes a habit, akin to the opium or cocain habits, understood by the public, the repeated sales which are the basis of Orangeine's prosperity would undoubtedly be greatly cut down. Orangeine fulfills the prime requisite of a patent medicine in being a good "repeater." Did it not foster its own demand in the form of a persistent craving, it would hardly be profitable. Its advertising invites to the formation of an addiction to the drug. ”

“ The Health Commissioner is now formulating a plan which, with the work of the chemists as a basis, shall check the trade in public poisons more or less concealed behind proprietary names.
⁠It is impossible, even in a series of articles, to attempt more than an exemplary treatment of the patent-medicine frauds. The most degraded and degrading, the "lost vitality" and "blood disease" cures, reeking of terrorization and blackmail, can not from their very nature be treated of in a lay journal. Many dangerous and health-destroying compounds will escape through sheer inconspicuousness. ”

“ For fraud, exploited by the skillfulest of advertising bunco men, is the basis of the trade. Should the newspapers, the magazines and the medical journals refuse their pages to this class of advertisements, the patent medicine business in five years would be as scandalously historic as the South Sea Bubble, and the nation would be the richer not only in lives and money, but in drunkards and drug-fiends saved. ”

“ The man who dies in spite of the patent medicine - or perhaps because of it - doesn't bear witness to what it did for him. We see recorded only the favorable results: the unfavorable lie silent. How could it be otherwise when the only avenues of publicity are controlled by the advertisers? So, while many of the printed testimonials are genuine enough, they represent not the average evidence, but the most glowing opinions which the nostrum vender can obtain, and generally they are the expression of a low order of intelligence. ”

“ Worse than its secrecy is its policy of careful and dangerous deception. Orangeine, like practically all the headache powders, is simple a mixture of acetanilid with less potent drugs. Of course, there is no orange in it, except the orange hue of the boxes and wrappers which is its advertising symbol. But this is an unimportant deception. The wickedness of the fraud lies in this: that whereas the nostrum, by virtue of its acetanilid content, thins the blood, depresses the heart, and finally undermines the whole system, it claims to strengthen the heart and to produce better blood. ”

“ It is well established that in certain classes of disease the opposite is true. A considerable proportion of tuberculosis cases show a history of the Peruna type of medicine taken in the early stages, with the result of diminishing the patient's resistant power, and much of the typhoid in the middle west is complicated by the victim's "keeping up" on the stimulus long after he should have been under a doctor's care. But it is not as a fraud on the sick alone that Peruna is baneful, but as the maker of drunkards also. ”

“ The Magic "Red Clause"
⁠With a few honorable exceptions the press of the United States is at the beck and call of the patent medicines. Not only do the newspapers modify news possibly affecting these interests, but they sometimes become their active agents. F.J. Cheney, propiertor of Hall's Catarrh Cure, devised some years ago a method of making the press do his fighting against legislation compelling makers of remedies to publish their formulae, or to print on the labels the dangerous drugs contained in the medicine - a constantly recurring bugaboo of the nostrum-dealer. ”

“ One and all, they are frauds, operating by a shrewd and cunningly developed system, in which the sole essential of success is to bait the hook so as to attract the human gudgeon. Once he has nibbled, he's the charlatan's fish. Lucky, indeed, may he count himself if he come off depleted in purse alone, and not in the chances of cure or of life.
⁠Once on a time - this is a recognized and proper form for beginning a tale of magic - there was born a young wizard name Isham. In the natural course of growth he reached that point in life where he desired to turn his wizardry to financial account. ”

“ Professor Haab is a genuine authority and his book is an excellent foundation for eye practice, but not as Coffee uses it. The Des Moines expert's interest in confined to the pictures, which are in color and are rather painful to look at; just the sort of thing to set one worrying about his own eyes. Herein lies their value to the shrewd Coffee. He gets up a book of his own, all about himself and his successful Absorption Treatment; and, applying the treatment to the Haab volume, absorbs the illustrations whole. ”

“ For it is the careless or conscienceless physician who gets the customer for the "ethical" headache remedies, and the customer, once secured, pays a profit, very literally, with his own blood. Once having taken Antikamnia, the laymen, unless informed as to its true nature, will often return to the drug store and purchase it with the impression that it is a specific drug, like quinin or potassium chlorate, instead of a disguised poison, exploited and sold under patent rights by a private concern. ”

“ Shut your eyes to the medical columns of the newspapers, and you will save yourself many forebodings and symptoms. Printer's ink, when it spells out a doctor's promise to cure, is one of the subtlest and most dangerous of poisons. ”

“ Catarrh powders are the medium. A decent druggist will not sell cocain as such, steadily, to any customer, except on prescription, but most druggists find salve for their consciences in the fact that the subtle and terrible drug is in the form of somebody's sure cure. There is need to say nothing of the effects of cocainn other than that it is destructive to mind and body alike, and appalling in its breaking down of all moral restraint. ”

“ Normal people do not knowingly take opium or its derivatives except with the sanction of a physician, and there is even spreading abroad a belief (surely an expression of the primal law of self-preservation) that the licensed practitioner leans too readily toward the convenient narcotics.
⁠But this perilous stuff is the ideal basis for a patent medicine because its results are immediate (though never permanent) , and it is its own best advertisement in that one dose imperatively calls for another. Therefore it behooves the manufacturer of opiates to disguise the use of the drug. ”

“ There is no claim of "overwhelming medical indorsement." Nor is the statement 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." ”

“ The "Humanity Baking Powder" advertising was a thing to thrill the soul; but the sodden an dmaterialistic American mind (feminine) declined to respond with that spontaneity which was expected, so Isham dropped the scheme and came East to settle in that sport, where, as every bunco man in this country knows, the Permanent Convention of Jays and Come-ons is always in session - New York City. Isham's device for alienating the Innocents of New York from their money was the "California Waters of Life." ”

“ That alcohol and water, with a little coloring matter and one-half of 1 per cent. of mild drugs, will cure all or any of the ills listed above is too ridiculous to need refutation. Nor does Dr. Hartman himself personally make the claim for his product. He stated to me specifically and repeatedly that no drug or combination of drugs, with the possible exception of quinin for malaria, will cure disease. His claim is that the belief of the patient in Peruna, fostered as it is by the printed testimony, and aided by the "gentle stimulation," produces good results. ”

“ He is cunning, ignorant and without genuine medical qualifications, in spite of which he has as partner in his noisome enterprise the proprietor of one of Toledo's principal newspapers, a gentleman who takes pride in his record as a public influence for good through lectures and Y.M.C.A. addresses; yet who takes profit from a swindle, compared to which three-card monte is respectable and harmless.
⁠Every city has its quacks of the miracle-working kind. ”

“ Invariably, when taken steadily, it produces constitutional disturbances of insidious development which result fatally if the drug be not discontinued, and often it enslaves the devotee to its use. Cocain and opium stop pain; but the narcotics are not the safest drugs to put into the hands of the ignorant, particularly when their presence is concealed in the "cough remedies," "soothing syrups," and "catarrhal powders" of which they are the basis. Few outside of the rabid temperance advocates will deny a place in medical practice to alcohol. ”

“ BLASPHEMY COMBINED WITH QUACKERY
The "Professor" Hadley is also Medical Director of the Force of Life fake.
⁠Science, ingeniously perverted, is made the agent of the miracle-working quack. Should some scientist authoritatively announce to-morrow a method of conserving the light and heat of the sun, within a few weeks we should read in the papers that "Bottled Sunlight" is a sure cure for any and all ills. So radium, having occupied the public mind and excited the public fancy, has furnished material for the lively commercial imagination of the quacks. ”

“ One spoonful would freeze a man's tongue, teeth and throat to equal solidity before he ever had time to swallow. If he could, by any miracle, manage to get it down, the undertaker would have to put him on the stove to thaw him out sufficiently for a respectable burial. Unquestionably Liquozone, if it were liquid oxygen, would kill germs, but that wouldn't do the owner of the germs much good, because he'd be dead before they had time to realize that the temperature was falling. ”

“ For instance, a member of the audience presents himself to be cured of deafness. The Great Vurpillat stands fifteen feet away from the patient, and in a voice like a dying saint's last whisper inquires: "Can you hear me speak?"
⁠"No," replies the patient in answer to the expression of inquiry on the demonstrator's face. Anointment with some kind of embrocation follows after which the wonder-worker moves away forty or fifty feet, and thunderously bellows: "Can you hear me now?" ”