The Patent-Medicine Evil
By L. A. S.
Few people have any proper conception of the magnitude of the patent-medicine evil in this country. Some idea of the truth on the subject may be gained, however, from the fact, now well established, that through this agency thousands of innocent, unsuspecting people are every year made slaves to the use of body- and soul-destroying drugs, such as alcohol, morphine, and cocaine, not to mention those whose lives are cut short by the taking of poisonous patent “remedies.” If these patent nostrums were merely frauds, so that purchasers of them merely threw away their money, the evil would not be so great; but while they have no potency for good whatever, they do have great power for harm, and it is this which makes the patent-medicine business profitable to the manufacturer. If it were not for the injury which such “medicines” do, in creating an appetite for poisonous stimulants and narcotics, they would quickly disappear from the market. There is a reason why there is not more said to expose this worse than fraudulent business, and not more done to prevent it. The patent-medicine manufacturers are leagued together to force their advertisements upon the newspapers, and to prevent repressive legislation. Advertisements are the mainstay of a newspaper, financially, hence the interest of newspaper managers in keeping the good will of the patent-medicine man. Legislation against this evil is prevented by the usual lobbying methods at the State capitals. The patent-medicine evil, in other words, represents a form of the “graft” which has become universal in this money-seeking age. It has the love of money at its root. Seventh-day Adventists, with the light which they have on the subject of healthful living, ought not only to be free from this dangerous evil themselves, but to exert a very strong influence everywhere against it. It is a case of the people perishing for lack of knowledge, and for just such knowledge as the third angel’s message, with its gospel of salvation for both soul and body, supplies. If people understood the uselessness and the danger of drug-taking in general, and knew more of the science of healthful living, as Christianity reveals it, and of the simple remedies which God has placed within the reach of all for the relief of ordinary ills, they would not have the credulity upon which the patent-medicine business depends absolutely for success. Recently a series of articles by Mr. Samuel H. Adams, thoroughly exposing the patent-medicine fraud, was published in Collier’s Weekly. From these we will give, in succeeding articles, some quotations relating to the most prominent of the patent-medicine preparations now upon the market. Speaking of the patent-medicine business in general, and of the criminal newspaper alliance with it, Mr. Norman Hapgood makes these observations:— “Is there any difference in principle between gold-brick doctors and gold-brick medicine vendors? No man is allowed to practise medicine without a license. If he does, he can be arrested. If, however, he puts up a certain amount of wood alcohol and gives it an alluring name, he is allowed by our enlightened government to prescribe it to people all over the country whom he has never seen. In this enterprise he is assisted by newspapers of every grade. “Thousands use patent medicines, in perfect ignorance, for the most serious complaints, as well as for purely imaginary ills created by reading symptoms. The ideal writer of patent-medicine advertisements is able so to frighten the typesetter that he stops work to buy a bottle. A philosopher judges for himself whether he has cancer or indigestion, and chooses a concoction which has no better effect than a drink of whisky straight. Babies who cry are fed with laudanum under the name of sirup. Women are led to injure themselves for life by reading in the papers about the meaning of backache. There is a bureau at Washington for the acquirement of testimonials to various drugs. When Massachusetts was about to pass a bill regulating the patent-medicine trade, this ‘patent-medicine lobby,’ as it is called, is reported to have telegraphed to the Massachusetts newspapers with which it had contracts, and the bill was killed. Testimonials are secured in various other ways. Often they are merely forged. Sometimes five dollars and ten dollars are paid for them, with twenty-five cents for each letter of inquiry personally answered. Actresses give them for advertisement, Congressmen in order to conciliate the newspaper men who work for the bureau. The newspaper crimes extend even to blackmail by threatened exposure of those concerns which do not advertise. “The press has rather more ethics about fraudulent doctors than about patent-medicine swindles, but even in this more disreputable branch some papers go any distance. Several New York newspapers receive more than one hundred thousand dollars a year apiece from enabling dangerous quacks to carry on their swindles. One ‘Doctor’ Kane and an assistant named Hale took nine thousand dollars from one poor carpenter. They frightened their victims with ‘impending death,’ and then sold them an ordinary prescription at twelve hundred dollars per thimbleful as radium. These two creatures were finally arrested, and are now in the penitentiary, but the papers which abetted them are, of course, at large. “A prominent magistrate of New York calculates that many times as much money is secured under false pretenses through grossly fraudulent publications in newspapers as is secured by burglary. Innocent people, especially the kind who support sensational papers of the Hearst type, believe whatever they read. They make no difference between the advertisements and the news columns, and indeed there is no reason why they should. The Canadian papers13are even worse than ours. In both countries those papers are worst which make a great fuss about protecting the people and the interests of the poor. They all, to quote Mr. Champe S. Andrews, counsel for the New York Medical Society, ‘throw up their hands in horror at the thought of a policeman protecting vice.’ He argues that, as there seems to be no hope that newspapers will voluntarily give up such iniquitous sources of revenue, the time has come for an appeal to the legislature. Michigan already punishes by law both the quacks and the newspapers who print their advertisements.” “It sounds high-minded for journalism to bark ferociously against the reign of graft in politics or in high finance, but it can practise a little real reform, if it chooses, by canceling some of the most profitable results of its own limberness of conscience. It hides behind the separation of editorial and business offices, even as members of a corporation hide behind the fictitious entity which they compose. Reform would have greater permanence and value if it sometimes began at home. Hypocrisy is no foundation for spiritual improvement. Newspapers will more successfully reform the world when they have turned against those species of graft which are of peculiar profit to themselves.”