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
The publisher found no answer, but thereafter his paper was put under
a censorship of advertising. Many dailies refuse such "copy" as this of
Wine of Cardui. And here, I believe, is an opportunity for the entering
wedge. If every subscriber to a newspaper who is interested in keeping
his home free from contamination would protest and keep on protesting
against advertising foulness of this nature, the medical advertiser
would soon be restricted to the same limits of decency which other
classes of merchandise accept as a matter of course, for the average
newspaper publisher is quite sensitive to criticism from his readers. A
recent instance came under my own notice in the case of the _Auburn_ (N.
Y.) _Citizen_, which bought out an old-established daily, taking over
the contracts, among which was a large amount of low-class patent
medicine advertising. The new proprietor, a man of high personal
standards, assured his friends that no objectionable matter would be
permitted in his columns. Shortly after the establishment of the new
paper there appeared an advertisement of Juven Pills, referred to above.
Protests from a number of subscribers followed. Investigation showed
that a so-called "reputable" patent medicine firm had inserted this
disgraceful paragraph under their contract. Further insertions of the
offending matter were refused and the Hood Company meekly accepted the
situation. Another central New York daily, the _Utica Press_, rejects
such "copy" as seems to the manager indecent, and I have yet to hear of
the paper's being sued for breach of contract. No perpetrator of unclean
advertising can afford to go to court on this ground, because he knows
that his matter is indefensible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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