I fear that Mr. Burnham doesn't make much money out of grateful correspondents who were cured of locomotor ataxia by his prescription, because locomotor ataxia is absolutely and hopelessly incurable. Where Mr. Burnham gets his reward, I fancy, is from the Bioplasm Company, of 100 William street, New York, whose patent medicine is prescribed for me. I should like to believe that his "only motive is to help other sufferers," but as I find, on investigation, that the advertising agents who handle the "Burnham" account are the Bioplasm Company's agents, I am regretfully compelled to believe that Mr. Burnham, instead of being of the tribe of the good Samaritan, is probably an immediate relative of Ananias. The Bioplasm Company also proposes to cure consumption, and is worthy of a conspicuous place in the Fraud's Gallery of Nostrums. Even the skin of the Ethiop is not exempt from the attention of the quacks. A colored correspondent writes, asking that I "give a paragraph to these frauds who cater to the vanity of those of my race who insult their Creator in attempting to change their color and hair," and inclose a typical advertisement of "Lustorene," which "straightens kinky, nappy, curly hair," and of "Lustorone Face Bleach," which "whitens the darkest skin" and will "bring the skin to any desired shade or color." Nothing could better illustrate to what ridiculous lengths the nostrum fraud will go. Of course, the Lustorone business is fraudulent. Some time since a Virginia concern, which advertised to turn negroes white, was suppressed by the Postoffice Department, which might well turn its attention to Lustorone Face Bleach. There are being exploited in this country to-day more than 100 cures, for diseases that are absolutely beyond the reach of drugs. They are owned by men who know them to be swindles, and who in private conversation will almost always evade the direct statement that their nostrums will "cure" consumption, epilepsy, heart disease and ailments of that nature. Many of them "guarantee" their remedies. They will return your money if you aren't satisfied. And they can afford to. They take the lightest of risks. The real risk is all on the other side. It is their few pennies per bottle against your life. Were the facile patter by which they lure to the bargain a menace to the pocketbook alone, one might regard them only as ordinary {056}followers of light finance, might imagine them filching their gain with the confidential, half-brazen, half-ashamed leer of the thimblerigger. But the matter goes further and deeper. Every man who trades in this market, whether he pockets the profits of the maker, the purveyor or the advertiser, takes toll of blood. He may not deceive himself here, for here the patent medicine is nakedest, most cold-hearted. Relentless greed sets the trap and death is partner in the enterprise. VI--THE FUNDAMENTAL FAKES. Reprinted from Collier's Weekly, Feb. 17, 1906. {057}