The Great American Fraud: The Patent Medicine EvilAdams, Samuel Hopkins
Science
The Great American Fraud: The Patent Medicine Evil
Adams, Samuel Hopkins
Patent medicines; Quacks and quackery
Careful study of this document will show that this is no explicit denial
of the testimonial. But who gives careful study to such a letter? On the
face of it, it puts the Peruna people in the position of having forged
their advertisement. Ninety-nine people out of a hundred would get
that impression. Yet I have seen the testimonial, signed with Admiral
Schley's name and interlined in the same handwriting as the signature,
and I have seen another letter, similarly signed, stating that Admiral
Schley had not understood that the letter was to be used for such
advertising as the recipient based on it. If these letters are forgeries
the victim has his recourse in the law. They are on file at Columbus,
Ohio, and the Peruna Company would doubtless produce them in defense of
a suit.
What the Government Can Do.
One thing that the public has a right to demand in its attitude toward
the proprietary medicines containing alcohol: that the government carry
out rigidly its promised policy no longer to permit liquors to disguise
themselves as patent medicines, and thereby escape the tax which is put
on other (and probably better) brands of intoxicants. One other demand
it should make on the purveyors of the concoctions: that they label
every bottle with the percentage of alcohol it contains; that they label
every man who writes testimonials to Duffy, and the W. C. T. U. member
who indorses Peruna, Lydia Pinkham, Warner and their compeers, will
know when they imbibe their "tonics," "invigorators," "swamp roots,"
"bitters," "nerve-builders" or "spring medicines" that they are sipping
by the tablespoon or wineglassful what the town tippler takes across the
license-paying bar.
III.--LIQUOZONE.
Reprinted from Collier's Weekly, Nov. 18, 1905. {023}
Twenty years ago the microbe was making a great stir in the land. The
public mind, ever prone to exaggerate the importance and extent of any
new scientific discovery, ascribed all known diseases to microbes. The
infinitesimal creature with the mysterious and unpleasant attributes
became the leading topic of the time. Shrewdly appreciating this golden
opportunity, a quack genius named Radam invented a drug to slay the new
enemy of mankind and gave it his name. Radam's Microbe Killer filled the
public prints with blazonry of its lethal virtues. As it consisted of a
mixture of muriatic and sulphuric acids with red wine, any microbe which
took it was like to fare hard; but the ingenious Mr. Radam's method of
administering it to its intended prey via the human stomach failed to
commend itself to science, though enormously successful in a financial
sense through flamboyant advertising.
Liquozone "Cures" Thirty-seven Varieties.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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