But with other proprietary medicines it is quite clear that the makers cannot in the slightest degree believe in the claims they make; the “remedy” in these cases is some substance or mixture devoid of medicinal activity, or possessing some slight therapeutic property having no relation to the disease for which the nostrum is put forward as a cure. It is often, indeed, for inert preparations that the most extravagant and emphatic claims are made; the makers, and the advertisement-writers whom they employ, are untrammelled by any necessity of squaring their statements with the real properties of the thing to be recommended, and having set out consciously and deliberately to deceive, they are able to give their whole attention to telling the most effective stories in the most plausible manner, and reaping the maximum of payment for the minimum of expenditure. People who are ill or suffering are to be frightened with impressive pictures of the aggravated suffering and premature death that await them unless they take the “only cure” in question, therefore let them be frightened thoroughly. Careful suggestion will induce people who are not ill to believe that they or some of those dear to them are in the early stages of some disease; therefore let everything possible in the way of striking advertisements, personal letters, and repeated assertions be utilised to produce the result. It is the victim’s money that is wanted; therefore let the price be fixed high, and the advertisements be written up to it. If it should be discovered by correspondence that so much cannot be cajoled or frightened out of an individual sufferer, the price can be reduced gradually as “special concessions,” in return for which testimonials may be extracted. Of quack medicines the sale of which is conducted more or less on these fines, two examples are described in this chapter, and other examples will be enumerated later.