The Great American Fraud/Series 2:Chapter 1
—
Reprinted from Collier's Weekly, Jul. 14, 1906.
SERIES II. - QUACKS AND QUACKERY.
_________
I. THE SURE-CURE SCHOOL.
No peril in the whole range of human pathology need have any terrors for the man who can believe the medical advertisements in the newspapers. For every ill there is a "sure cure" provided, in print. Dr. This is as confident of removing your cancer without the use of the knife as Dr. That is of eradicating your consumption by his marvelous new discovery, or Dr. Otherone of rehabilitating your kidneys, which the regular profession has given up as a hopeless job.
The more deadly the disease the more blatantly certain is the quack that he alone can save you, and in extreme cases, where he has failed to get there earlier, he may even raise you from your coffin and restore you to your astonished and admiring friends. Such things have happened - in the advertising columns of the newspapers - and pitiful gropers after relief from suffering believe that they may happen again, otherwise charlatanry would cease to spread its daily cure.
Advertising furnishes the surest diagnosis of quackery. Any doctor, institution or medical concern which promises to cure disease, either in a public advertisement or in a circular or letter is, in its own type, branded "quack," and the man who wastes his money and his health on such is the Foolkiller's ablest assistant.
If there is one disease more than another where quackery means death to the patient, it is tuberculosis. For, taken early, consumption may be cured, not by medicine, indeed, but by regulated diet, open air, and sunlight. Yet the aim of the consumption quack is either to draw patients to his "sanatorium," often in a crowded city, where they will live under unhealthful conditions, or to treat them by some "special" method, usually a stimulant medicine, which excites the hopes while it undermines the stamina of the victim. There is good money for the crooked doctor in tubercular diseases, because the patient usually dies slowly, willing to the end to give up his last dollar for any promise of life. A distinguished citizen of Cincinnati amassed a large fortune from his understanding of the financial possibilities of tuberculosis. Dr. Thomas W. Graydon is now dead, but you wouldn't know it from the circular of his Alpha Medical Institute, which survives him. This institute continues to send out Dr. Graydon's literature promising to cure consumption by the Andral Broca method, which is a combination of worthless inhalation with worse than worthless medicines. The patient is encouraged to diagnose his own case, and this valuable hint is pressed on him: "Shortness of breath on making any unusual exertion . . . . is a serious warning that the lungs are affected."
Even the Laboratories are Fakes
That is, if a man unaccustomed to exercise should rush up fourteen flights of stairs, three steps at a leap, and should then discover that his breathing was somewhat labored, his proper course would be to rush hastily down again and write to Dr. Graydon for help. On this principle it seemed to me the Alpha Medical Institute would require large and commodious quarters in which to transact its extensive business, and I was not surprised to not in its pamphlet the picture of a fine office building bearing its sign. A visit to the given address in Cincinnati, however, revealed no such edifice as adorns the pamphlet's pages. On the site where it should have stood was a row of dingy houses, of distinctly funereal aspect. In one of these, designated as "office," I was received by a "manager" who seemed unaccountably perturbed by my visit. He was reluctant to give his name, or the name of any of the "consulting physicians." He couldn't tell me anything about the "Andral Broca method," whence it got its name or what it meant. He couldn't cite a single instance in support of the claim that the Graydon method "has been generally accepted and adopted by the leading medical authorities, and by the medical profession as a whole." His one argument was that he could produce testimonials, and his one plea, that the Institute ought not to be
FAKE HOME OF A FAKE MEDICINE
"pounded," as it was going out of business in a few months, anyway. This means that the field is exhausted; that, as invariably will happen, the accumulated force of experience, proving the Alpha Medical Institute to be a fraud, has finally overcome the counter-force of its advertising. Probably its proprietors (I understand that Dr. Graydon's sons have got rid of the business as a baneful influence upon their social aspirations) will presently start up under some other name.
New York has had a flourishing concern of this kind, the Koch Consumption Cure, with branches in the principal cities of the country, some of which still survive. Reuben N. Mayfield was the presiding genius of this hopeful scheme. Untrammeled by any meager considerations of the law, he copyrighted the famous Koch's picture for his own use, forged a document or two, and was doing famously when the County Medical Society descended upon him and he hastened to parts unknown to avoid forcible removal to a large sanatorium for the treatment of moral ailments at Sing Sing. The "Secretary" of his outfit, P. L. Anderson, is now running an X-Ray Consumption Cure swindle at 50 West Twenty-second Street, New York. "Koch Institutes" still flourish in other cities.
Actual appearance of the buildings at 316-318 East 6th St., Cincinnati, where the Alpha Medical Institute's "laboratory" is supposed to stand.
Somewhat on the Koch concern order is a scheme conducted by "Dr." Derk P. Yonkerman at Kalamazoo, Mich. "Dr." Yonkerman is one of those altruists who take "a personal interest in your case." He advertises a two hundred-page free medical book on consumption, which will prove to the dissatisfaction of any reasonable person that he's got it. The reader is urged to fill out a sympton blank, in reply to which he gets a letter from John Adam May, M.D., "consulting physician" and "specialist in tuberculosis," diagnosing that disease, and advising the use of Tuberculozyne (Yonkerman's remedy) at once. This letter, of course, is a form letter. I tested John Adam May, M.D., by sending him a list of symptoms that even a quack could hardly have regarded as possibly indicating tuberculosis, if he had considered them; but John Adam hadn't the wit to see the patent trap, and walked in by advising me that "your symptoms indicate the presence of the poisonous toxins generated by the consumption germ." "Tuberculozyne" is one of those vicious morphin
FATHER AND FOUNDER OF A FAMILY OF QUACKS.
concoctions which dull the patient's perceptions, render him insensible of the augmented progress of the disease, and keep him the unconscious and profitable slave of the dispenser until death puts an end to the gruesome farce.
The Woman's Mutual Benefit Company, of Joliet, Ill., has a scheme for swindling consumptives that works pretty well. It maintains women agents in various towns who personally canvass the sick. To the pastor of an Iola (Kan.) church I am indebted for an illuminating instance of the company's methods:
"A very poor man with a wife and two children is dying of consumption here. The doctors have said he will live about two months. The local agent of this 'medicine company' went to see him and aroused his hope of recovery by telling him of the wonders this stuff will do. A lodge to which he belongs raised about $10 to pay for one month's treatment. He is now weaker than ever. About a week ago he sent for me, and I, thinking the end was at hand, hurried to him. He wanted to get $12 from me to buy more Phosphozone! I sent for the agent and told her to treat the
Dr. B. F. Bye's "down-town" office and laboratory, as represented in his booklets, surround by broad lawns and shade trees - which exists in Dr. Bye's mind only.
man on the basis of the guarantee on the label, and that if any physician of standing pronounced him cured, I would pay the bill. Needless to say, she wanted the money first."
Consumption Cure Frauds.
The man is since dead, and his family is penniless. "Phosphozone" is guaranteed by the Woman's Mutual Benefit Company to cure consumption. Being a practically inert mixture of creosote and sugar, it will cure consumption just as it "cured" the poor dupe in Iola. It is a fake, pure and simple.
Mechanical devices and new "discoveries" for curing consumption abound. The Cabinare Institute of New York City advertises a Finsen-ray treatment which is no more the real Finsen ray than is a tallow-candle, being merely an ordinary electric passed through blue glass. There are "X-Ray" and Violet-Ray "cures," atomizers, vaporizers, the Bensonizer treatment, which is admitted to some supposedly particular magazines, the Condor Inhalation, and other specious devices for the relief of consumptives. The only thing they actually relieve any consumptive of is money. One and all, they are impotent to cure. Equally to be shunned are the concerns which exploit private medicines, such as the Lung Germine Company of Jackson, Mich., and the Sacco Institute, which "cures" hemorrhage in twenty-four hours by a combination of South African herbs. One rule can be set down for the whole field of tuberculosis remedies; every advertisement of a consumption cure cloaks a swindle.
THE QUACKS CAN NOT HELP LYING, EVEN ABOUT SELF-EVIDENT FACTS.
The Cancer Vampire.
The same is true of cancer cures. In this department of quackery the Bye family is pre-eminent. The family practice has split, owing to business differences, the father and one son conducting separate and rival establishments in Indianapolis and the two other sons operating from Kansas City. The fountain-head of the Bye fakery is D. M. Bye, president of the Dr. D. M. Bye Combination Oil Cure Company of Indianapolis. What kind of a "doctor" "Dr." Bye is, I do not know, but he is not an M.D. Perhaps he is a D.D. He has founded a little church in Indianapolis with the money extracted from his dupes, a type of financial penance made familiar by men of more conspicuous standing in the world. Dr. Bye slavers with piety in his "literature." "Surely God's blessing attends the oil cure." "We ask the prayers of God's people that we may keep humble, meek and lowly in the heart like Jesus would have us. So we pray." After which this Uriah Heep of the quack business turns to and swindles the credulous patients who are misled by his religious pretenses, contributing a tithe of the blood-money to his private church. Quite
A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK.
The youngest Bye sends out letters to his patients warning them against quackery in the cancer cure business.
frequently I heard in Indianapolis that whatever might be said of "Dr." Bye's business, he was "such a good man, and so unassuming; runs that church at his own expense." Truly it pays Uriah to be 'umble and pious.
It is against the Bye principle to use the knife. Such is the inference from the advertising. "The knife, even in the hands of the most skilled operators, proves as deadly as the disease." What would be the advantage of undergoing surgical operation, anyways, when "our treatment gives universal satisfaction," and is declared to meet with "almost universal success?"
"Almost universal success" is rather an elastic term, if one may credit Dr. L. T. Leach, the present manager of the "Dr." D. M. Bye Company. Dr. Leach, apparently forgetful of his advertising, frankly stated to me that the Bye treatment cured about 10 per cent. of the cases of genuine malignant cancer, and he wished to exclude from this sarcoma, one of the commonest and the most deadly form, on the ground that it was not cancer at all! Asked to reconcile his 90 per cent. of cases lost with his claim of "almost universal success," he found no answer. "We do as well as anybody can do," he said.
Even if this were so - and I leave to the reader's judgment young Dr. Leach's implied claim of equality with the most eminent surgeons in the country - the fact remains that the Dr. D. M. Bye Combination Oil treatment is built on charlatanry, since, by the admission of its manager, it performs at most only a small percentage of what it promises. As for the surgeon's knife, the knife which "proves as deadly as the disease," etc., it is habitually used in the Bye establishment. This one the explicit admission of Dr. Leach.
From Bye to Bye
Across the street from the Dr. D. M. Bye offices is the "down-town office and laboratory" of Dr. B. F. Bye. In the circulars this is pictured as a large and commodious brick building, standing far back in an imposing shaded yard. The picture is purely imaginary. So is that of the doctor's "Sanatorium" in the same phamphlet. The B. F. Bye outfit is ensconced in a shabby wooden house close to the street, and the "office and laboratory" are little more imposing inside than outside. The younger Bye makes the preposterous claim of 82 per cent. of "complete recoveries." His "remedy" consists of a sort of paste of clay, glycerin, salicyclic acid and oil of wintergreen; a mixture of cathartics for internal use; a vaseline preparation; and the oil itself, which is ordinary commercial cottonseed oil with an infusion of vegetable matter, probably hyoscyamus. And with this combination he proposes to remove cancer and cure the condition that causes it! His treatment wouldn't remove a wart or cure a mosquito bite.
Dr. B. F. Bye's correspondence is replete with unconscious humor; vide this sample from his "hurry-up" form-letter: "When I pause and consider the amount of quackery and humbuggery practiced all over the country, it is not difficult to understand why the afflicted hesitate to accept new treatment, no matter how logical it may be."
He belongs to most of the fake medical organizations in the country, whose diplomas (purchased) he proudly displays on his walls. The remaining two members of this estimable clan do a "sooth, balmy oil" business, under the title "The Dr. Bye Company, Kansas City." They make the same ridiculous claims, and, from the bulk of their advertising, would seem to be prospering beyond the other branches at present.
Another quack family with a cancer branch is the Kilmer family of Binghamton, N.Y. Kilmer's Swamp Root, one of the most blatant of the "patent-medicine" swindles, was devised by Dr. S. Andral Kilmer, who sold out years ago (although Swamp Root dupes are still urged to write him), and is now proprietor of a "CanCertorium," and an itinerant charlatan. "Cancer's First Conqueror" is his modest description of himself. He "itinerates" through the large towns and small cities of New York State, advertising like Barnum's circus. Free consultation, remedies at $3 a week, and treatment at $2 a week, constitute his traveling plan. At his CanCertorium at Binghamton, N. Y., the charges are higher. A campus caretaker at Hamilton College, afflicted with facial cancer, went to Dr. Kilmer's CanCertorium on a fund raised for him among the undergraduates, who did not know of teh nature of teh institution. He was provided with all the liquor he could drink, evidently with a view to keeping him drugged, until Kilmer had extracted $800 from him, when the progress of his disease was so marked that he became frightened and left, going to a reputable surgeon, who at once operated. He is now back to work. This man kept track of seven of the CanCertorium patients whom he came to know well, of whom, so he tells me, five died and the other two are apparently going the same way. Dr. S. Andral Kilmer represents an old, picturesque and fast-disappearing tribe of bunco-artists, and when his side-whiskers disappear from the pages of the small city dailies, those publications will be the less amusing, though the more respectable for the loss.
An Ananias of Quackdom.
Much more up to date in his methods is Dr. G. M. Curry of Lebanon, Ohio. I don't want to overrate Dr. Curry in his own department of human activity, but he seems to me, on the whole, one of the most eminent all-around liars I have encountered anywhere in Quackdom. According to his own statements, Dr. Curry has discovered not only the germ of cancer, but also a cure for it. Any kind of cancer is easy for him. "Worst cases cured in twenty days. To use other treatment simply invites death." Thus his advertising, which seems hardly fair to his fellow-fakers.
The fact is, of course, that Dr. Curry can not cure cancer, and he knows that he can not. he has not found and identified "the real cancer organism," as he claims, and his statement to this effect is a deliberate falsehood.
He exploits himself as a member of the Ohio and Kentucky State Medical Societies, which he is not, and Surgeon for the Inter-Urban Railway Company of Cincinnati, which writes me that he is not in their employ; also examining physician for the New York Mutual Life Insurance Company, the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, the Prudential Life Insurance Company, and other similar organizations. His commission with the latter company was terminated in 1897, the New York Mutual got rid of him as soon as the nature of his business became known to them, and the Massachusetts Mutual informs me that he hasn't done any work for them for nearly ten years. One of his principal advertised connections, however, is sound; he is a pension examiner for the United States Government, and makes use of the prestige attaching to his office for the furtherance of his disreputable business. In his enterprise he has the support of Lebanon's "best citizens," including County Treasurer Lewis, Sheriff Gallaher, Recorder Spence, Auditor Stillwell, Judge O'Neall, Attorneys Wright and Runyan, Bankers Wood and Eulass, and several other prominent inhabitants.
Hear their pronunciamento:
"Dr. Curry is no quack. His remedy is no fake. Both are entitled to the fullest confidence of cancer sufferers, and Lebanon is proud of his success."
To controvert such a galaxy of expert testimony as this is risky. Yet, on the strength of Dr. 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." He calls himself S. R. Chamlee, M.D. Ph. S., and conducts his business from St. Louis. "Dr."
A STRONGLY INDORSED QUACK.
Of the ten statements which Dr. Curry prints under his picture, three are true, one other is probably true, and the remaining six are lies.
Ohliger of Toledo is also a faker to beware of. He is something for a ghoul, too, since he uses the name of the late President Harper of Chicago University as a case that could have been saved by his treatment.
The Ascatco Lie.
In one of the "patent-medicine" articles I touched briefly on a product known as Ascatco. Properly Ascatco belongs to the domain of quacker, since it is not sold, like "patent medicine," through the drug stores, but is "dispensed" from the Austrian Dispensary, on West Twenty-fifth Street. New York City. It makes claim to being a sure cure for catarrh and asthma, and its newspapers advertising, which is all of the "paid reading matter" variety, masquerading as telegraphic or cable news, exploits it as an Austrian product, the discovery of distinguished savants, endorsed by leading European scientists and by the United States Consular reports. One Leonard Hill is the presiding genius of the Austrian Dispensary. He wished to exhibit to me an extensive collection of testimonials, but did not wish to answer certain questions regarding the nature of Ascatco. Here are some of the points on which he declined to enlighten me: Whereabouts in Austria Ascatco is made? by whom it is made? what European savants endorse it? whence emanate the "cablegrams" as to its virtues, printed in the newspapers and paid for by the Ascatco company? As he would not answer my queries I must do my best to answer them myself. Ascatco is not made in Austria; it is made in this country to the order of the Ascatco company. Its "cablegrams" are manufactured by the company. It is not endorsed by any European savants. As to consular support of the stuff, the only available consular report on it (to the use of which it is perfectly welcome) is a statement made, on the authority of two of the leading official pharmacists of Austria, by Mr. McFarland, American Consul at Reichenberg, Austria:
"Both [official pharmacists] state that 'Ascatco' is not an Austrian product, does not appear on any official list, is not on sale in Austria, and is by name or otherwise utterly unknown."
Minor Quackery.
The product itself is a strong solution of arsenious oxid, one twenty-fifth of a grain to a seven-drop dose, and is by no means a safe thing for an uninstructed laymen to experiment on himself with. My visit to the Austrian Dispensary opened up a minor and quite unexpected vista of quackery. From time to time a curious little publication calling itself the "National Advertiser" has been indulging in "canned editorial" arguments, attacking Collier's for it's "patent-medicine" articles, and upholding the Proprietary Association's interests. In my innocence I had supposed that the little magazine was merely defending the principle of fraudulent advertising for the sake of its own profits. How directly these were involved I discovered only when I found that the "National Advertiser: is issued from the top floor of the Ascatco building, by one of the "Ascatco" Hills, and is practically an Ascatco concern.
The kidney cures are a large and growing class; conspicuous among them are the Pape Company of Cincinnati; Dr. Irving S. Mott of the same city, who used the name of the Harvard Medical School, which he has never seen, against its protest, until the magazines and newspapers being warned, refused his advertisements; the Church Kidney Cure crowd, the Fulton Company of San Francisco, and many others make unfulfillable promises to cure Bright's disease and diabetes. This type of enterprise, at its worst (and it is equally typical, in its general workings, of all quack institutions), is well described, by a young physician who took employment in a "kidney-cure" concern, but "got disgusted and quit," to use his own phrase, and is now a reputable practitioner in a southern city. Driven by necessity, shortly after graduating from a medical college standing, he became "case-taker" (alleged diagnostician) in one branch of the St. John's Medical Institute, which operated bunco factories in Baltimore, St. Paul and Kansas City.
"I remember, the 'great laboratory,' " he writes, "where the remedies were prepared in lots labeled 1, 2, 3, 4 up to 72, and the great case-taker (myself) made the diagnoses in the front office and prescribed 1, 2, of 3, as required for the case. These valuable remedies cost 1 cent each bottle, excepted 72, which costs 2 cents. In no more case must the cost of treatment be more than 10 cents per month per patient. On one occasion the genius who got up our advertising had failed to get from the engraver some fierce uric-acid crystal illustration to fit the story of how they ground through tissues, tearing up heart, lung, kidneys, etc. In reality the pictures were borrowed from a publisher of school-books, and were not uric-acid crystals at all, but starfish."
Motto: "Keep 'em Sick!"
When the St. John's Medical Institute changed hands (transferring its patients to the new management as one of the chief assets) the "case-taker" left and took a position with the Copeland Medical Institute of Des Moines, Iowa (which pretends to cure nearly everything), where to quote his own words, "the office girl made the diagnoses and the laboratory was presided over by an expert chemist at $7 per week, who was a graduate from the Chamberlain Remedy Company, where he had taken a course in bundle-wrapping."
Under our treatment," he writes, "there were hopeless incurables who had given up a fee every month for periods varying from one month to eight years in one case. The policy was, when you couldn't keep the sucker under treatment any longer, to tease the testimonial out of him by some means. Well, we were a sweet bunch of philanthropists, and our motto was, 'A cured patient pays no fee. Keep 'em sick!' which was done by 'suggestion' for longer or shorter periods. Over 30,000 people were treated from this office."
This gives a fair notion of the class of service furnished by the medical outlaws.
Various publications, lecturers, renegade physicians, hospitals and institutes batten parasitically on the vested interests of quackery. A fake concern called the Viavi Company, which preys on impressionable women, has organized an elaborate "lecture bureau," mostly women and clergymen, to spread its doctrines, the chief of which is that every woman has something wrong with her, and that whatever it is, Viavi preparations alone will cure it. A Chicago woman, who received an invitation to one of these lectures, through a friend, lays bare the whole "game" in a few sentences:
"After the lady lecturer finished her course, it became evident to me that there was no one present who was exempt from the need of 'Viavi,' from the actions and words of the lecturer, and also, I am sorry to say, from the words of the ladies."
The Special Agents of Quackery.
The same old "skin game"; get your victim to worrying and she'll buy your medicine. "Viavi Hygiene," of course, is based on the fallacy of diagnosing and treating by mail.
Two alleged publications have for some time been making a living as special agents of quackery. One, the "New York Health Journal," has lately quit the field, by reason of the death of its "editor." It gout out a number whenever enough quacks and fraud-medicines could be found to pay for its editorial space. It had no real existence as a magazine, and its "professional contributors" were myths. Anything was grist to its mill; it even printed solemn editorial endorsements of such roaring farces as Liquozone and Vitæ Ore. The "United States Health Reports" belongs to this same category. It, of course, is a fake imitation of the "United
FRONT PAGE OF FAKE CURE PUBLICATION.
States Public Health Reports," published by the United States Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service, which would very much like to lay hands on the proprietors of the scheme. They sell "official commendations" to beer, patent foods, quack medciines or anything else that will buy.
Just how to list certain medical journals, which profess to uphold the standards of the medical profession, and yet more or less openly defend mendaciously advertised nostrums, is difficult to determine; they seem entitled to a nice somewhere in the Quack Hall of Fame. Certainly such a publication as the St. Louis "Medical and Surgical Journal," which is run openly as a defender of "patent medicines," performing the unsavory work of the Proprietary Association with the Proprietary Association's approved methods of falsehood and fraud, leave no doubt as to its nature. No intelligent man defends quackery under a misapprehension, and when A. H. Ohmann-Dumesnil, A.M., M.D., acting under the order of the Anti-Kamnia fraud factory, deliberately prostitutes his editorial pages to the purpose of the nostrum trade, he becomes, at the best, an accomplice of quackery. For his wages, see his advertising columns. The owners of the "Western Druggist," a Proprietary Association organ, also control the "Medical Standard," which, less openly, is a nostrum-defending publication under the pretense of an ethical attitude. To the medical profession the handling of such journals as these may safely be left: the deception has already worn transparently thing.
Medical directories can be so conducted as to take a profit of quackery. Galen, Gonsier & Company go about getting doctors to subscribe to state rosters. They have left a sore crowd of regulators in Ohio, for, after listing all the respectable members of the profession, the included in their list of "Cincinnati Specialists" all the notorious quacks in the city, and sold their advertising page to "Caneer Cure" Curry and "Dr." Annie Florein, whose hospital is most widely, if not most favorably, known as an abortion resort. "Dr." Annie has been at least once convicted for illegal practice. The Suffolk Hospital and Dispensary of Boston has already been mentioned as living largely from the sale of donated "patent medicines," for which it pays in testimonials. St. Luke's Hospital, at Niles, Mich., has an equally ingenious scheme; it sells diplomas to quack doctors. Most of those whom I have visited have its parchment framed on their walls, not-withstanding that the institution has passed out of existence, its two founds being at present fugitives from justice. I had thought to have finished with Peruna in the "patent-medicine" series, but as the Peruna Company labors under the delusion that it has been harshly treated, and floods me with correspondence, claiming that its testimonials will bear the severest scrutiny, I revert to them long enough to show their support by a quack doctor who apparently makes a business of selling endorsements. Several months ago, a picture of one, Dr. Patrick F. Maley, in the attitude of making an affidavit endorsing the "wonderful remedy," Peruna, appeared conspicuously in the papers. The accompanying matter recited Dr. Maley's record; graduate of a regular medical college, Army and Navy surgeon, ex-alderman of Cincinnati, ex-coroner of Hamilton County, and ex-pension examiner. (And, by the way, if the Pension Bureau will go over its list of examiners, it will, I believe, find opportunities to improve its personnel by a little judicious "muckraking.") What the Peruna Company did not state was that their eminent medical endorser is an ex-convict, having served a year in the Dayton jail for embezzling a pension fund from a helpless old soldier. The evidence was readily available had any effort been made to investigate Dr. Maley's record. Dragging forth an old crime into the light of day to blight an ex-convict's career is a measure which I should not employ but for the fact that Dr. Maley is to-day in an enterprise as fradulent, if not as criminal, as thievery, the selling of testimonials to "patent-medicine" companies, for not in the Peruna list alone do I find his name. He endorses Juniper Tar and other fakes. I can not prove that the Peruna Company paid him for his picture and affidavit; but will any one, knowing his past record and his present occupation of providing this kind of matter, believe that he presented this valuable evidence to Dr. Hartman's "booze," free? Quite a number of physicians eke out their incomes by this disgraceful method. Most of them are themselves quack practitioners, or ignorant backwoods graduates of some medical night school; a few are abortionists.
How shall the public protect itself against quackery? A few very simple rules, while not all-embracing, will pretty thoroughly cover the field. 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. 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.