Legislation and enforcement should reach the newspaper, magazine, billboard, street car, that advertises a falsehood or less than the essential truth regarding drugs, foods, and patent medicines. Public sentiment condemns the advertising of many opportunities to commit crime or to be disorderly or indecent or to injure one's neighbor. The facts about hundreds of nostrums can be absolutely determined. The advertising agency, whether secular or religious, that carries misrepresentation of drugs and foods should be forbidden circulation through the mails. The existence of such advertisements should be made evidence of complicity in a public offense and punished accordingly. Treat them as we treated the Louisiana lottery. Boards of health, instead of furnishing names to druggists and manufacturers who want to sell patent foods and medicines, should print circulars exposing frauds, and punish so far as the law permits. While trying to secure adequate legislation and efficient administration of the above-mentioned standards, there is much that can be done by individuals and clubs. We can give preference to those journals that refuse drug and food advertisements unless evidence is produced that the truth is told and that the goods are not harmful. We can refuse to have in the house a paper or journal which prints notices that lie or that conceal the truth. If this drastic measure would cut us off entirely from daily papers, we could choose the least offensive and petition it to exclude specific lying methods. When it preaches health, honesty, and philanthropy, we can cut out of one issue the noble editorial and the exploiting advertisements and send them to the editor with our protest. Knowledge of the ingredients and dangers of patent medicines should be a prerequisite for the practice of medicine or pharmacy. We can help bring about such conditions, and we can patronize physicians who send patients to drug stores that cater to intelligence rather than to ignorance. Fighting patent-medicine evils is a civic duty to be accomplished by civic cooeperation, not private effort. It is impossible to organize unofficial educational agencies that can offset the cumulative, lying advertisement. Personal opposition is but the beginning. Official machinery must be set running and kept running so as to protect the public health against the commercial motive that preys upon ignorance and easily inspired faith. CHAPTER XXXVIII HEALTH ADVERTISEMENTS THAT PROMOTE HEALTH