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
For a local indorsement of any medicine perhaps as strong a name as
could be secured in Chicago is that of Dr. Frank Billings. In the
offices of _Collier's_ and elsewhere Dr. Billings has been cited by the
Liquozone people as one of those medical men who were prevented only by
ethical considerations from publicly indorsing their nostrum, but who,
nevertheless, privately avowed confidence in it. Here is what Dr.
Billings has to say of this:
Chicago, Ill., July 31, 1905.
_To the Editor of Collier's Weekly._
_Dear Sir_:--I have never recommended Liquozone in any way to any one,
nor have I expressed to any representative of the Liquozone Company, or
to any other person, an opinion favorable to Liquozone. (Signed)
Frank Billings, M.D.
Under the heading, "Some Chicago Institutions which Constantly Employ
Liquozone," are cited Hull House, the Chicago Orphan Asylum, the Home
for Incurables, the Evanston Hospital and the Old People's Home.
Letters to the institutions elicited the information that Hull
House {027}had never used the nostrum, and had protested against the
statement; that the Orphan Asylum had experimented with it only for
external applications, and with such dubious results that it was soon
dropped; that it had been shut out of the Home for Incurables; that a
few private patients in the Old People's Home had purchased it, but on
no recommendation from the physicians; and that the Evanston Hospital
knew nothing of Liquozone and had never used it.
Having a professional interest in the "overwhelming number of medical
indorsements" claimed by Liquozone, a Chicago physician, Dr. W. H.
Felton, went to the company's offices and asked to see the medical
evidence. None was forthcoming; the lists, he was informed, were in the
press and could not be shown. He then asked for the official book for
physicians advertised by the firm, containing "a great deal of evidence
from authorities whom all physicians respect." This also, they said, was
"in the press." As a matter of fact, it has never come out of the press
and never will; the special book project has been dropped.
One more claim and I am done with the "scientific evidence." In a
pamphlet issued by the company and since withdrawn occurs this sprightly
sketch:
"Liquozone is the discovery of Professor Pauli, the great German
chemist, who worked for twenty years to learn how to liquefy oxygen.
When Pauli first mentioned his purpose men laughed at him. The idea
of liquefying gas--of circulating a liquid oxygen in the blood--seemed
impossible. But Pauli was one of those men who set their whole hearts on
a problem and follow it out either to success or to the grave. So Pauli
followed out this problem though it took twenty years. He clung to it
through discouragements which would have led any lesser man to abandon
it. He worked on it despite poverty and ridicule," etc.
Liquozone Kills a Great German Scientist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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