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its behalf, and it is the enthusiastic conviction of many that its effect is truly specific." Which, translated into lay terms, means that the syrup will cure consumption. I find also in the medical press "a sure cure for dropsy," fortified with a picture worthy of Swamp-Root or Lydia Pinkham. Both of these frauds in attempting to foster the idea that they will cure the disease, and they are none the less fraudulent for being advertised to the medical profession instead of to the laity.
Is there, then, no legitimate advertising of preparations useful in diseases such as tuberculosis? Very little, and that little mostly in the medical journals, exploiting products which tend to build up and strengthen the patient. There has recently appeared, however, one advertisement in the lay press which seems to me a legitimate attempt to push a nostrum. It is reproduced at the beginning of this article. Notice, first, the frank statement that there is no specific for consumption; second, that there is no
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A FRAUD'S GALLERY
From Two New York Sunday Papers of a Single Date.
Every one of these advertisements represents a bunco game on the sick and suffering.
attempt to deceive the public into the belief that the emulsion will he helpful in all cases. Whether or not Scott's Emulsion is superior to other cod-liver oils is beside the present question. If all patent medicine "copy" were written in the same spirit of honesty as this. I should have been able in omit from this series all consideration of fraud, and devote my entire attention to the far less involved and difficult matter of poison. Unhappily, all of the Scott's Emulsion advertising is not up to this standard. In another newspaper I have seen an excerpt in which the Scott & Bowne Company come perilously near making, if they do not actually make, the claim that their emulsion is a cure, and furthermore make themselves
