Much has been written about the patent medicine evil during the past few years. One very thorough crusade has been instituted and efficiently carried through, exposing the evils of the patent medicine business. Whatever legislation is in force to-day which has for its object the regulation of the evil, is largely a product of that crusade. Notwithstanding these efforts, it is a fact that scarcely any of the great majority who should be interested in the subject, because they are its victims, have any knowledge of the nature or extent of the evil, or appreciate its far-reaching and pernicious influence. For two reasons I regard it as peculiarly fitting, that the subject should be given adequate consideration in this book:-- First, because mothers should be told the whole truth about all conditions that have any influence on the health of the members of the home. Second, because though we are the victims of many evils and many forms of "graft," which directly or indirectly affect our pockets and our morals, we submit to them because they have no bearing on the physical well-being of the race. As mothers, however, and as the conservers of the fitness of the family and the home, we are directly and rightly interested in an evil which deeply affects the health and the efficiency of members of the family as the patent medicine evil does. It is through the mothers of the race that this enemy of the home must be finally and completely overthrown. If every mother in the land could be taught to understand even a fraction of the truth of the insidious wrong hidden under the mask of the nostrum advertisement, we would witness a righteous resentment that could only be satisfied by legislative enactment that would wipe out forever the whole infamous business. No spasmodic or localized effort will ever succeed against this public enemy. Its very strength is the people whom it dupes and despises, because they supply the money with which the patent medicine combine fights its battles. It has been estimated that three hundred millions of dollars are spent annually on patent medicines and fake medical cures in the United States. Three hundred million dollars fraudulently obtained every year, mostly from the poor, is surely a subject deserving of honest and careful consideration.