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
Liquozone does this, and faithfully carries out its agreement.
Electro-gen, a new "germicide," which has stolen Liquozone's advertising
scheme almost word for word, also promises this. Dr. Shoop's agreement
{061}is so worded that the unsatisfied customer is likely to have
considerable trouble in getting his money back. Other concerns send
their "remedies" free on trial, among these being the ludicrous "magic
foot drafts" referred to above. At first thought it would seem that
only a cure would bring profit to the makers. But the fact is that most
diseases tend to cure themselves by natural means, and the delighted and
deluded patient, ascribing the relief to the "remedy," which really has
nothing to do with it, sends on his grateful dollar. Where the money
is already paid, most people are too inert to undertake the effort of
getting it back. It is the easy American way of accepting a swindle as a
sort of joke, which makes for the nostrum readers ready profits.
Safe Rewards.
Then there is the "reward for proof" that the proprietary will not
perform the wonders advertised. The Liquozone Company offer $1,000, I
believe, for any germ that Liquozone will not kill. This is a pretty
safe offer, because there are no restrictions as to the manner in which
the unfortunate germ might be maltreated. If the matter came to an
issue, the defendants might put their bacillus in the Liquozone bottle
and freeze him solid. If that didn't end him, they could boil the ice
and save their money, as thus far no germ has been discovered which
can survive the process of being made into soup. Nearly all of the
Hall Catarrh Cure advertisements offer a reward of $100 for any case
of catarrh which the nostrum fails to cure. It isn't enough, though one
hundred times that amount might be worth while; for who doubts that Mr.
F. J. Cheney, inventor of the "red clause," would fight for his cure
through every court, exhausting the prospective $100 reward of his
opponent in the first round? How hollow the "guarantee" pretence is, is
shown by a clever scheme devised by Radam, the quack, years ago, when
Shreveport was stricken with yellow fever. Knowing that his offer could
not be accepted, he proposed to the United States Government that he
should eradicate the epidemic by destroying all the germs with Radam's
Microbe Killer, offering to deposit $10,000 as a guarantee. Of course,
the Government declined on the ground that it had no power to accept
such an offer. Meantime, Radam got a lot of free advertising, and his
fortune was made.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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