Another bitter contention that is confusing some, and disgusting others, is the acrimonious strife between users and non-users of proprietary medicines. This usually develops into a sort of "rough house" affair, the druggist mixing up as savagely as the doctors before the fight is finished. I know nothing of the rights or wrongs of the case nor of the merits or demerits of proprietary medicines, but I do know this, however: The stupendous sale of nostrums that in 1907 represented a sum of money sufficient to have provided every practitioner of medicine in the United States with a two thousand dollar salary, has been helped by the use of proprietary medicines. I am aware that my position is likely to be called in question by many physicians. But they should hear druggists arguing with people who hesitate about buying patent medicines because their physicians tell them they should seldom take medicine unless prescribed by a doctor. They would hear him say: "Your doctor gives you medicines that are put up in quantities for him just as these patent medicines are put up for us." He then produces literature and proves it--at least beyond the refutation of the patient. Physicians would then realize, perhaps, how the use of proprietary medicines stimulates the sale of nostrums. CHAPTER VI. FAITH CURE AND GRAFT IN SURGERY. Suggestive Therapeutics Chief Stock in Trade--Advice of a Medical College President--Disease Prevention Rather than Cure--Hygienic Living--The Medical Pretender--"Dangerous Diagnosis" Graft--Great Flourish of Trumpets--No "Starving Time" for Him--"Big Operations"--Mutilating the Human Body--Dr. C. W. Oviatt's Views--Dr. Maurice H. Richardson's Incisive Statements--Crying Need for Reform--Surgery that is Useless, Conscienceless and for Purely Commercial Ends--Spirit of Surgical Graft, Especially in the West--Fee-Splitting and Commissions--A Nation of "Dollar-Chasers"--The Public's Share of Responsibility--Senn's Advice--The "Surgical Conscience." I think we have enough before us to show why intelligent people become followers of fads. Seeing so many impositions and frauds, they forget all the patient research and beneficent discoveries of noble men who have devoted their lives to the work of giving humanity better health and longer life. They are ready at once to denounce the whole medical system as a fraud, and become victims of the first "new system" or healing fad that is plausibly presented to them.