To quote Mr. Sullivan again: "All these are made the subject of public barter. Here are offered for sale, for example: 7,000 Paralysis Letters; 9,000 Narcotic Letters; 52,000 Consumption Letters; 3,000 Cancer Letters, and even 65,000 Deaf Letters. Of diseases of the most private nature one is offered here nearly one hundred thousand letters--letters the very classification of which makes a sensitive person shudder." An Appeal To The American Woman. "If the American woman would withhold her patronage from these secret nostrums the greater part of the industry would go to pieces. I do not ask any woman to take my word for this. Let me give her a personal statement direct from one of these manufacturers himself--a 'doctor' to whom thousands of women are writing to-day, and whose medicines they are buying by the hundreds of thousands of bottles each year. I quote his own statement, word for word: "'Men are "on" to the game; we don't care a damn about them. It is the women we are after. We have buncoed them now for a good many years, and so long as they remain as "easy" as they have been, and we can make them believe that they are sick, we're all right. Give us the women every time. We can make them feel more female troubles In a year than they would really have if they lived to be a hundred.' ".--From "Why 'Patent Medicines' are Dangerous," Edward Bok, Ladies' Home Journal, March, 1905. "REPEATERS." It is the "repeat" orders that make the profit. Referring to a certain patent medicine that had gone to the wall a nostrum agent said that It failed because "it wasn't a good repeater." When these men doubt whether a new medicine will be a success they say: "I'm afraid it wouldn't be a 'repeater.'" "_Cure_ rheumatism" said a veteran patent medicine man considering the exploitation of a new remedy; "good Heavens, man, you don't want a remedy that _cures_ 'em. Where would you get your 'repeats'? You want to get up a medicine that's full of dope, so the more they take of it the more they'll want."--From "The Inside Story of a Sham," _Ladies' Home Journal_, January, 1906. PATENT MEDICINES AND TESTIMONIALS. In the January, 1906, issue of the _Ladies' Home Journal_ Mark Sullivan contributes an article on the business of securing from well-known people testimonials indorsing and praising nostrums. Mr. Sullivan learned that three men, rivals in trade, make a business of securing these indorsements. They are known as "testimonlal-brokers." A representative of a patent medicine who was anxious to exploit his preparation through the press approached one of these brokers and made arrangements for the delivery of one hundred signed testimonials from members of {094}congress, governors and men high in the Army and Navy. The following is the memorandum of the agreement as drawn up by the broker: