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
"As you are aware, we have your testimonial to our remedy. It has been
some time since we have heard from you, and so we thought best to
make inquiry as to your present state of health and whether you still
occasionally make use of Peruna. We also want to make sure that we have
your present street address correctly, and that you are making favorable
answers to such letters of inquiry which your testimonial may occasion.
Remember that we allow 25 cents for each letter of inquiry. You have
only to send the letter you receive, together with a copy of your reply
to the same, and we will forward you 25 cents for each pair of letters.
"We hope you are still a friend of Peruna and that our continued use
of your testimonial will be agreeable to you. We are inclosing stamped
envelope for reply. Very sincerely yours,
"The Peruna Drug Manufacturing Company,
"Per Carr."
And here is an account of another typical method of collecting this sort
of material, the writer being a young New Orleans man, who answered an
advertisement in a local paper, offering profitable special work to a
news paper man with spare time:
"I found the advertiser to be a woman, the coarseness of whose features
was only equaled by the vulgarity of her manners and speech, and whose
self-assertiveness was in proportion to her bulk. She proposed that I
set about securing testimonials to the excellent qualities of Peruna,
which she pronounced 'Pay-Runa,' for which I was to receive a fee of $5
to $10, according to the prominence of 'the guy' from whom I obtained
it. This I declined {066}flatly. She then inquired whether or not I was
a member of any social organizations or clubs in the city, and receiving
a positive answer she offered me $3 for a testimonial, including the
statement that Pay-Runa had been used by the members of the Southern
Athletic Club with good effects, and raised it to $5 before I left.
"Upon my asking her what her business was before she undertook the
Pay-Runa work, she became very angry. Now, when a female is both very
large and very angry, the best thing for a small, thin young man to do
is to leave her to her thoughts and the expression thereof. I did it."
[IMAGE: ==>] {066}
No Questions Desired.
{067} Testimonials obtained in this way are, in a sense, genuine; that
is, the nostrum firm has documentary evidence that they were given;
but it is hardly necessary to state that they are not honest. Often
the handling of the material is very careless, as in the case of Doan's
Kidney Pills, which ran an advertisement in a Southern city embodying
a letter from a resident of that city who had been dead nearly a year.
Cause of death, kidney disease.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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