“Beg pardon, sir, but you appear to be suffering from locomotor ataxia. You will excuse me for addressing you, but I was afflicted in the same way myself for ten years, and have a sympathetic feeling for fellow sufferers.” If you are a genuine sufferer this will command your attention. Here is a robust, healthy man who tells you that for ten years he was afflicted with the same ailment which you have been assured by many physicians 197is incurable. Naturally you want to know how the disease was overcome. The stranger smiles, and says: “Why the thing is so easy it sounds ridiculous, and I dislike to tell of it on that account. For eight years I doctored, and spent a large amount of money, without obtaining the slightest relief. About two years ago I read in a magazine of a new treatment with which wonderful results were being accomplished. After so many failures I naturally didn’t have much faith, but things couldn’t be any worse so I decided to investigate. What I learned led me to take the treatment. There was an improvement after the first week, and at the end of the sixth month I was just as sound as I am to-day. That was eighteen months ago, and there are no signs of a reaction of any kind.” By this time the real sufferer is deeply impressed. Here is a prosperous stranger, once a fellow sufferer, dangling before his eyes the hope, nay, the certainty, of cure, with no other object than that of sympathy. It is the one chance for which he has been so long and fruitlessly seeking. Pressed to tell where this wonderful treatment may be had, the “steerer,” if he is one of the sharp ones, will be apt to say: “I believe the address is No. —— Michigan Avenue. Let’s see, I think I have the doctor’s card in my pocket somewhere.” Meantime he searches through various pockets (knowing full well all the time where it is) and finally locates the doctor’s card. 198“Ah, yes, here it is. ‘Dr. ——, —— Michigan Avenue.’” Adroitly he changes the topic at this point, shifting to the various features of the disease itself, its excruciating pains, the cushion-soled feet, loss of various bodily functions, and other unfailing accompaniments of the ailment. Comparing notes the two find that they have suffered much in the same way (all ataxia patients do) and from that moment there is a strong bond of fellowship between them. The smooth steerer tells of the various treatments he had taken at great cost and without results, glibly describes the many drugs swallowed, and the tortures endured with mechanical appliances, such as the “hanging” process, winding up with “but not one of them did a bit of good until I took up the —— —— treatment.”