No More Learning

? &i-j''S'
^-''? y^'
72
ally accepted and adopted by the leading medical authorities, and by the medical profession as a whole. " His one argument was that he could produce testimonials, and his one plea, that the Institute ought not to be "pounded," as it was going out of business in a few months, anyway. This means that the field is exhausted; that, as invariably will happen,* the accumulated force of exjicricnfo. ])rovino- the Alpha Medical Institute to be
cBenj. FJy-e,Ii. D.
y A riiir OF THE old block.
The youngest Bye sends out letters to his patients warning them against quackery in the cancer cure business.
a, fraud, has finally overcome the counter-force of its advertising. Prob- ably its proprietors (I understand that Dr. Graydon's sons have got rid Df the business as a baneful influence upon their social aspirations) will presently start up under some other name.
i
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New York has had a flourishing concern of this kind, the Koch Con- sumption Cure, with branches in the principal cities of the country, some of which still survive. Reuben X. Mayfield was the presiding genius of this hopeful scheme. Untrammeled by any meager considerations of the law, he copyrighted the famous Koch's picture for his own use, forged a document or two, and was doing famously when the County Medical So- ciety descended upon him and he hastened to parts unknown to avoid forcible removal to a large sanatorium for the treatment of moral ail- ments at Sing Sing. The "Secretary" of his outfit, P. L. Anderson, is now running an X-Ray Consumption Cure swindle at 50 West Twenty-second Street, Xew York. "Koch Institutes" still flourish in other cities.
Somewhat on the Koch concern order is a scheme conducted by "Dr. " Derk P. Yonkerman at Kalamazoo, Mich. "Dr. " Yonkerman is one of
Dr. B. F. Bye's "down-town" office and laboratory, as represented in his booklets, surrounded by broad lawns and shade trees--which exist in Dr. Bye's mind only.
those altruists who take "a personal interest in your case. " He adver- tises a two hundred-page free medical book on consumption, wiiich will prove to the dissatisfaction of any reasonable person that he's got it. The reader is urged to fill out a symptom blank, in reply to which he gets a letter from John Adam May, ]\I. D. , "consulting physician" and "specialist in tuberculosis," diagnosing that disease, and advising the use of Tuberculozyne (Yonkerman's remedy) at once. This letter, of course, is a form letter. I tested John Adam May, M. D. , by sending him a list of symptoms that even a quack could hardly have regarded as possibly indicating tuberculosis, if he had considered them; but John Adam hadn't the wit to see the patent trap, and walked in by advising me that "your symptoms indicate the presence of the poisonous toxins generated by the consumption germ. " "Tuberculozyne" is one of those vicious morphin
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concoctions which dull the patient's perceptions, render him insensible of the augmented progress of the disease, and keep him the unconscious and profitable slave of the dispenser until death puts an end to the gruesome farce.
The Woman's Mutual Benefit Company of Joliet, 111. , has a scheme for swindling consumptives that works pretty well. It maintains women agents in various towns who personally canvass the sick. To the pastor of an lola (Kan. ) church I am indebted for an illuminating instance of the company's methods:
"A very poor man with a wife and tw^o children is dying of consump- tion here. The doctors have said he will live about two months. The local agent of this 'medicine company' went to see him and aroused his hope of recovery by telling him of the wonders this stuff will do. A lodge to
THE QUACKS CAN NOT HELP LYING, EVEN ABOUT SELF-EVIDENT FACTS.
Dr. B. F. Bye's office as it actually is at 301 North Illinois Street, Indian- apolis. The brick building in the rear is a hotel, in no way Connected with Dr. Bye's establishment.
which he belongs raised about $10 to pay for one month's treatment. He is now weaker than ever. About a week ago he sent for me, and I, thinking the end was at hand, hurried to him. He wanted to get $12 from me to buy more Phosphozone! I sent for the agent and told her to treat the man on the basis of the guarantee on the label, and that if any physician of standing pronounced him cured, I would pay the bill. Needless to say, she wanted the money first. "
Consumption Cure Frauds.
The man is since dead, and his family is penniless. "Phosphozone" is guaranteed by the Woman's Mutual Benefit Company to cure consump-
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tion. Being a practically inert mixture of creosote and sugar, it will cure consumption just as it "cured" the poor dupe in lola. It is a fake,
*
pure and simple.
INIechanical devices and new "discoveries" for curing consumption abound.
The Cabinarc Institute of New York City advertises a Finsen-ray treat- ment which is no more the real Finsen ray than is a tallow-candle, being merely ordinary electric light passed through blue glass. There are "X- Ray" and Violet-Ray "cures," atomizers, vaporizers, the Bensonizer treat- ment, which is admitted to some supposedly particular magazines, the Condor Inhalation, and other specious devices for the relief of consump- tives. The only thing they actually relieve any consumptive of is money. One and all, they are impotent to cure. Equally to be shunned are the concerns which exploit private medicines, such as the Lung Germine Company of Jackson, Mich. , and the Sacco Institute, which "cures" hemor- rhageintwenty-fourhoursbyacombinationofSouthAfricanherbs. One
rule can be set down for the whole field of tuberculosis remedies; every advertisement of a consumption cure cloaks a swindle.
The Cancer Vampire.
The same is true of cancer cures. In this department of quackery the Bye' family is preeminent. The family practice has split, owing to busi- ness differences, the father and one son conducting separate and rival establishments in Indianapolis and the two other sons operating from KansasCity. Thefountain-headoftheByefakeryisD. M. Bye,president of the Dr. D. M. Bye Combination Oil Cure Company of Indianapolis. What kind of a "doctor" "Dr. " Bye is, I do not know, but he is not an M. D. Perhaps he is a D. D. He has founded a little church in Indianapolis with the money extracted from his dupes, a type of financial penance made familiar by men of more conspicuous standing in the world. Dr. Bye slavers with piety in his "literature. " "Surely God's blessing attends
the oil cure. " "We ask the prayers of God's people that we may keep humble, meek and lowly in heart like Jesus would have us. So we pray. " After which, this Uriah Heep of the quack business turns to and swindles the credulous patients who are misled by his religious pretenses, contributing a tithe of the blood-money to his private church. Quite frequently I heard in Indianapolis that whatever might be said of "Dr. " Bye's business, he was "such a good man, and so unassuming; runs tliat church at his own expense. " Truly it pays Uriah to be 'umble and pious.
It is against the Bye principle to use the knife. Such is the inference from the advertising. "The knife, even in the hands of the most skilled operators, proves as deadly as the disease. " What would be the advan- tage of undergoing surgical operation, anyway, when "our treatment gives universal satisfaction," and is declared to meet with "almost uni- versal success? "
"Almost universal success" is rather an elastic term, if one may credit Dr. L. T. Leach, the present manager of the "Dr. " D. M. Bye Company. Dr. Leach, apparently forgetful of his advertising, frankly stated to me that the Bye treatment cured about 10 per cent, of the cases of genuine, malignant cancer, and he wished to exclude from this sarcoma, one of the commonest and the most deadly form, on the ground that it was not cancer at all! Asked to reconcile his 90 per cent, of cases lost with his
claim of "almost universal success," he found no answer. "We do as well as anybody can do," he said.
Even if this were so--and I leave to the reader's judgment young Dr. Leach's implied claim of equality with the most eminent surgeons in the country--the fact remains that the Dr. D. M. Bye Combination Oil treat- ment is built on charlatanry, since, by the admission of its manager,
76
it performs at most only a small percentage of what it promises. As for the surgeon's knife, the knife which "proves as deadly as the disease," etc. , it is habitually used in the Bye establishment. This, on the explicit admission of Dr. LeaCh.
From Bye to Bye.
Across the street from the Dr. D. ]\I. Bye oHices is the "down-town office and laboratory" of Dr. B. F. Bye. In the circulars this is pictured
O. A\. CIJRRV, M. U,
Member of State Medical 5at;icnts of Ohirj and Kentucky; ^
United States Pension Hxaminer;
Surgeon for the later,Urban Raihvay and Terminal Co,, of Cincinnsli, O.
Examining- Piiyskian lor
The Royal Arcanum, New York ;T5iiluaJ, Washington lite, Massachusetts Mutual and Prudential insurance Companies;
Ex-Meaith Officer ol Lebanon, Ohio, etc. , etc.
A STRONGLY ENDORSED QUACK.
Of the ten statements which Dr. Curry prints under liis picture, three are true, one other is probably true, and the remaining six are lies.
as a large and commodious brick building, standing far back in an im- posing shaded yard. The picture is purely imaginary. So is, that of the doctor's "Sanatorium" in the same pamphlet. The B. F. Dye outfit is
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ensconced in a shabby wooden hoii^e dose to the street, and the "office ai^d laboratory'' are liltle more iniposiiifr inside than outside. The younger Bye makes the pre]io5lerous claim of 82 per cent, of "complete recover- ies. " His "remedy*^ consists of a sort of paste of clay, glycerin, salicylic acid and oil of wintergreen ; a mixture of cathartics for internal use; a vaseline preparation; and the oil itself, which is ordinary commercial cottonseed oil with an infusion of vegetable matter, probably hyoscyamus. And with this combination he proposes to remove cancer and cure the condition that causes it
!
^ His treatm. ent wouldn't remove a wart or cure
a mosquito bite.
Dr. B. F. Bye's correspondence is rep'. ete wth unconscious humor; vide
this sample from his ''hurry-up" form-letter: ''When I pause and consider the amount of quackery and humbugger}- practiced all- over the country, it is not difficult to understand why the afflicted hesitate to accept new treatment, no matter how logical it may be. "
He belongs to most of the fake medical organizations in the country, whose diplomas (purchased) he proudly displays on his Avails. The remain- ing two members of this estimable clan do a "soothing, balmy oil" busi- ness, under the title "The Dr. Bye Company, Kansas City. " They make the same ridiculous claims, and, from the bulk of their advertising, would seem to be prospering beyond the other branches at present.
Another quack family with a cancer branch is the Kilmer family of Binghamton, N. Y. Kilmer's Swamp Root, one of the most blatant of the "patent-medicine" swindles, was devised by Dr. S. Andral Kilmer, who sold out years ago (although Swamp Root dupes are still urged to write him), and is now proprietor of a "CanCertorium," and an itinerant charlatan. "Cancer's First Conqueror" is his modest description of himself. He "itinerates" through the large towns and small cities of New York State, advertising like Barnum's circus. - Free consultation, remedies at $3 a week, and treatment at $2 a v/eek, constitute his traveling plan. At his Can- Certorium at Binghamton, N. Y. , the charges are higher. A campus care- taker at Hamilton College, afflicted with facial cancer, went to Dr. Kil- mer's Cancertorium on a fund raised for him among the undergraduates, whodidnotknowofthenatureoftheinstitution. Hewasprovidedwith all the liquor he could drink, evidently with a view to keeping him drugged, until Kilmer had extracted $800 from him, when the progress of his disease was so marked that he became frightened and left, going to a reputable surgeon, wdio at once operated. He is now back at work. This man kept track of seven of the CanCertorium patients whom he came to know well, of whom, so he tells me, five died and the other two are apparently going the same way. Dr. S. Andral Kilmer represents an old, picturesque and fast-disappearing tribe of bunco-artists, and when his side-whiskers disappear from the pages of the small city dailies, those publications will be the less amusing, though the more respectable for the loss.
An Ananias of Quackdom.
Much more up to date in his methods is Dr. G. M. Curry of Lebanon, Ohio. I don't want to overrate Dr. Curry in his own department of human activity, but he seems to me, on the whole, one of the most eminent all- around liars I have encountered anywhere in Quackdom. According to his own statements Dr. Curry has discovered not only the germ of cancer, but also a sure cure for it. Any kind of cancer is easy for him. "Worst cases cured in twenty days. To use other treatment simply invites death. " Thus his advertising, which seems hardly fair to his fellow-fakers.
The fact is, of course, that Dr. Curry can not cure cancer, -and he knows that he can not. He has not found and identified "the real cancer
:
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organism/' as he claims, and his statement to this effect is a deliberate falsehood.
He exploits himself as a member of the Ohio and Kentucky State Med- ical Societies, which he is not, and Surgeon for the Inter-Urban Railway Company of Cincinnati, which writes me that he is not in their employe also examining physician for the Xew York Mutual Life Insurance Com- pany, the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, the Prudential Life Insurance Company, and other similar organizations. His commiS' gion with the latter company was terminated in 1897, the New York Mutual got rid of him as soon as the nature of his business became
FAKE HOME OP A FAKE MEDICINE.
This picture is taken from the Alpha Medical Institute's booklet, which
asserts that this is their headquarters at 316, 318, 320, and 322 East 6tk St. , Cincinnati, Ohio. The photograph on page 80 shows the houses at 316 and 318 East 6th St. , in that City.
known to them, and the Massachusetts Mutual informs me that he hasn't done any work for them for nearly ten years. One of his principal adver- tised connections,- however, is sound; he is a pension examiner for the United States Government, and makes use of the prestige attaching to his office for the furtherance of his disreputable business. In his enter-, prise he has the support of Lebanon's "best citizens," including County Treasurer Lewis, Sheriff Gallaher, Recorder Spence, Auditor Stillwell, Judge O'Neall, Attorneys Wright and Runyan, Bankers Wood ? ind Eulass, and several other prominent inhabitants.
Hear their pronunciamento
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"Dr. Curry is no quack. His remedy is no fake. Both are entitled to the fullest confidence of cancer sufferers, and Lebanon is proud of his success. "
To controvert such a galaxy of expert testimony as this, is risky. Yet, on the strength of Dr. Curry's own testimony in letter and advertisement', I will adventure it. Dr. Curry is sl quack. His remedy is a fake. And the highly respectable citizens who bolster it are, giving them the benefit of the doubt, the dupes of an arrant swindler.
I can do no more than mention, by way of warning, a scoundrel who endeavors to frighten women into taking his treatment by advertising in the papers "In woman's breast any lump is cancer. " He calls himself S. R. Chamlee, M. D,, Ph. S. , and conducts his business from St. Louis. "Dr. " Ohliger of Toledo is also a faker to beware of. He is something of a ghoul, too, since he uses the name of the late President Harper of Chicago University as a case that could have been saved by his treatment.
The Ascatco Lie.
In one of the "patent-medicine" articles I touched briefly on a product known as Ascatco. Properly Ascatco belongs to the domain of quackery, since it is not sold, like "patent medicine," through the drug stores, but is "dispensed" from the Austrian Dispensary, on West Twenty-fifth Street, New York City. It makes claim to being a sure cure for catarrh and asthma, and its newspaper advertising, which is all of the "paid reading matter" variety, masquerading as telegraphic or cable news, exploits it as an Austrian product, tlio discovery of distinguished savants, endorsed by leading European scientists and by the United States Consular reports. One Leonard Hill is the presiding genius of the Austrian Dispensary. He wished to exhibit to me an extensive collection of testimonials, but did not wish to answer certain questions regarding the nature of Ascatco. Here are some of the points on which he declined to enlighten me,- Whereabouts in Austria Ascatco is made? by whom it is made? what
European savants endorse it? whence emanate the "cablegrams" as to its virtues, printed in the newspapers and paid for by the Ascatco company? As he would not answer my queries I must do my best to answer them myself. Ascatco is not made in Austria; it is made in this country to the order of the Ascatco company. Its "cablegrams" are manufactured by the company. It is not endorsed by any European savants^ As to consular support of the stuff, the only available consular report on it (to the use of which it is perfectly welcome) is a statement made, on the author- ity of two of the leading offiicial pharmacists of Austria, by Mr. INIcFar- land, American Consul at Reichenberg, Austria:
"Both [official pharmacists] state that 'Ascatco' is not an Austrian prod- uct, does not appear on any official list, is not on sale in Austria, and is by name or otherwise utterly unknown. "
Minor Quackery.
The product itself is a strong solution of arsenious oxid, one twenty- fifth of a grain to a seven-drop dose, and is by no means a safe thing for an uninstructed layman to experiment on himself with. My visit to the Austrian Dispensary opened up a minor and quite unexpected vista of quackery. From time to time a curious little publication calling itself the "National Advertiser" has been indulging in "canned editorial" argu- ments, attacking Collier's for its "patent-medicine" articles, and uphold- ing the Proprietary Association's interests. In my innocence I had sup- posed that the little magazine was merely defending the principle of fraudulent advertising for the sake of its own profits. How directly these were involved I discovered only when I found that the "National Adver-
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tiser" is issued from the top floor of the Ascatco building, by one of the "Ascatco" Hills, and is praeticalh^ an Ascatco concern.
The kidney cures are a large and growing class; conspicuous among them are the Pape Company of Cincinnati; Dr. Irving S. Mott of the same city, who used the name of the Harvard Medical School, Avhich he has never seen, against its protest, until the magazines and newspapers being warned, refused his advertisements; the Church Kidney Cure crowd, the Fulton Company of San Francisco, and many others make unfulfillable promises to cure Bright's disease and diabetes. This type of enterprise, at its worst (and it is equally typical, in its general Avorkings, of all quack institutions), is well described by a young physician who took em-
Actual appearance of the buildings at 316-318 East 6th St. . Cincinnati, where the Alpha Medical Institute's "laboratory" is supposed to stand.
ployment in a "kidney-cure" concern, but "got disgusted and quit," to use his own phrase, and is now a reputable practitioner in a southern city. Driven by necessity, shortly after graduating from a medical college of standing, he became "case-taker" (alleged diagnostician) in one branch of the St. John's Medical Institute, which operated bunco factories in Baltimore, St. Paul and Kansas City.
"I remember the 'great laboratory,'" he writes, "where the remedies were prepared in lots labeled No. 1, 2, 3, 4 up to 72, and the great case- taker (myself) made the diagnoses in the front office and prescribed 1, 2, or 3, as required for the case. These valuable remedies cost 1 cent each bottle, except 72, which cost 2 cents. In no case must the cost of treat-
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ment be more than 10 cents per month per patient. On one occasion the genius who got up our advertising had failed to get from the engraver some fierce uric-acid crystal illustrations to fit the story of how they ground through tissues, tearing up heart, lung, kidneys, etc. In reality the pictures were borrowed from a publisher of school-books, and Avere not uric-acid crystals at all, but starfish^'
Motto: "Keep 'em Sick! "
When the St. John's ? ]\Iedical Institute changed hands (transferring its patients to the new management as one of the chief assets) the "case- taker" left and took a position with the Copeland Medical Institute of Des Moines, Iowa (which pretends to cure nearly everything), where to quote his own words, "the office girl made the diagnoses and the labora- tory was presided over by an expert chemist at $7 per week, who was a graduate from the Chamberlain Remedy Company, where he had taken a course in bundle-wrapping. "
"Under our treatriient," he writes, "there were hopeless incurables who had given up a fee every month for periods varying from one month to eight years in one case. The policy was, when you couldn't keep the sucker under treatment any longer, to tease a testimonial out of him by some means. Well, we were a sweet bunch of philanthropists, and our motto was, 'A cured ]nitient pays no fee. Keep 'em sick! ' which was done by ? 'suggestion' for longer or shorter periods. Over . 30,000 people were treated from this office. "
This gives a fair notion of the class of service furnished by the med- ical outlaws.
Various publications, lecturers, renegade physicians, hospitals and insti- tutes batten parasitically on the vested interests of quackerv. A fake concern, called the Viavi Comnany, which preys on impressionable women, has organized an elaborate "lecture bureau," mostly women and clergy- men, to spread its doctrines, the chief of which is that every woman his somethincr wrong with her, and that whatever it is. A^iavi preparations alone will cure it. A Chicago woman, who received an invitation to one of these lectures, through a friend, lays bare the whole "game" in a few sentences
"i\fter the lady lecturer finished her course, it became evident to me that there was no one present Mdio was exen^pt from the need of "Viavi,' from the actions and words of the lecturer, and also, I am sorry to say, from the Avords of the ladies. "
The Special Agents of Quackery.
The same old "skin game;" get your victim to worrying and she'll buy your medicine. "Viavi Hygiene," of course, is based on the fallacy of diagnosing and treating bj^ mail.
Two alleged publications have for some time been making a living as special agents of quackery. One, the "New York Health Journal," has lately quit the field, by reason of the death of its "editor. " It got out a number whenever enough quacks and fraud-medicines could be found to pay for its editorial space. It had no real existence as a magazine, and its "professional contributors" were myths. Anything was grist to its mill; it even printed solemn editorial endorsements of such roaring farces as Liquozone and Vitse Ore. The "United States Health Reports" belongs to this same category. It, of course, is a fake imitation of the "United States Public Health Reports," published by the United States Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service, which would very much like to lay hands on the proprietors of the scheme. They sell "official commendations"* to beer, patent foods, quack medicines or anything else that will buy.
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Just how to list certain medical journals, which profess to uphold the standards of the medical profession, and yet more or less openly defend mendaciously advertised nostrums, is difficult to determine; they seem entitled to a niche somewhere in the Quack Hall of Fame. Certainly such
FRONT PAGE OF FAKE CANCER CURE PUBLICATION.
a publication as the St. Louis "Medical and Surgical Journal," which is run openly as a defender of "patent medicines," performing the unsavory work of the Proprietary Association with the Proprietary Association's approved methods of falsehood and fraud, leaves no doubt as to its
? S3
nature. No intellitjent man defends qnackevy under a misapprehension, and when A. H. Ohmann-Dumesnil, AM. , M. D. , acting under the order of the Anti-Kamnia fraud factory, deliljerately prostitutes his editorial pages to the purposes of the nostrum trader, he l3ecomes, at the best, an accomplice of quackery. For his wages, see his advertising columns. The owners of the "Western Druggist," a Proprietary Association organ, also control the "Medical Standard," which, less openly, is a nostrum-defending publication under the pretense of an ethical- attitude. To the medical profession the handling of such journals as these may safely be left: the deception has already worn transparently thin.
Medical directories can be so conducted as to take a profit of quackery, Galen, Gonsier & Company go about getting doctors to subscribe to state rosters. They have left a sore crowd of regulars in Ohio, for, after listing all the respectable members of the profession, they included in their list of "Cincinnati Specialists" all the notorious quacks in the city, and sold their advertising pages to "Cancer Cure" Curry and "Dr. " Annie Florein, whose hospital is most widely, if not most favorably, known as an abortion resort. "Dr. " Annie has been at least once convicted for illegal practice. The Suffolk Hospital and Dispensary of Boston has already been men- tioned as living largely from the sale of donated "patent medicines," for which it pays in testimonials. St. Luke's Hospital, at Niles, Mich. , has an equally ingenious scheme; it sells diplomas to quack doctors. Most of those whom I have visited have its parchment framed on their walls, not- withstanding that the institution has passed out of existence, its two founders being at present fugitives from justice.
I had thought to have finished with Peruna in the "patent-medicine" series, but as the Peruna Company labors under the delusion that it has been harshly treated, and floods me with correspondence, claiming that its testimonials will bear the severest scrutiny, I revert to them long enouoh to show their support by a quack doctor who apparently makes a busi- ness of selling endorsements. Several months ago, a picture of one. Dr. Patrick F. Maley, in the attitude of making an affidavit endorsing the "wonderful remedy," Peruna, appeared conspicuously in the papers. The accompanying matter recited Dr. Maley's record; graduate of a regular medical college. Army and Navy surgeon, ex-alderman of Cincinnati, ex- coroner of Hamilton County, and ex-pension examiner. (And, by the way, if the Pension Bureau will go over its list of examiners, it will, I believe, find opportunities to improve its personnel by a little judicious "muck- raking. ") What the Peruna Company did not state was that their eminent medical endorser is an ex-convict, having served a year in the Dayton jail for embezzling a ])ension fund from a helpless old soldier. The evidence was readily available had any effort been made to investigate Dr. Maley's record. Dragging forth an old crime into the light of day to blight an ex- convict's career is a measure which I should not employ but for the fact that Dr. Maley is to-day in an enterprise as fraudulent, if not as crim- inal, as thievery, the selling of testimonials to "patent-medicine" com- panies, for not in the Peruna list alone do I find his name. He endorses Juniper Tar and other fakes. I can not prove that the Peruna Company paid him for his picture and affidavit; but will any one, knowing his past record and his present occupation of providing this kind of matter, believe that he presented this valuable evidence to Dr. Hartman's "booze," free? Quite a number of physicians eke out their incomes by this dis- graceful method. Most of them are themselves quack practitioners, or ig-
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norant backwoods graduates of some medical night school; a few are abortionists.
HoAv shall the public protect itself against quackery? A few A^ery simple rules, while not all-embracing, will pretty thoroughly cover the field. Any physician who advertises a positive cure for any disease, who issues nostrum testimonials, wdio sells his services to a secret remedy, or who diagnoses and treats by mail patients whom he has never seen, is a quack. Any institution which publishes other than in a medical journal, testimonials or endorsements, is a quack institution. Any publication,
medical or otherwise, which editorially or otherwise endorses secret or dis- honest remedies or methods of cure, is a quack publication. Shut your eyes to the medical columns of the newspapers, and you will save your- self many forebodings and symptoms. Printer's ink, when it spells out a doctor's promise to cure, is one of the subtlest and most dangerous of poisons.
? riEPRIXTED FROM COLLIER's WEEKIA', AuG. 4, 1000
II. THEMIRACLEWORKERS.
Popular credulity movos in waves. Now it takes financial form, and some 620-per-cent. Miller buys himself a suit of striped clothing, govern- ment pattern, with his profits. Again, religious fervor is its fuel, and '? 'Francis Truth," fortified with press-agent and advertising man, passes across the field of public notice like a meteor, and, like a meteor, vanishes into the darkness. Just at present the public is much concerned with its individual health, a condition which has bred innumerable parasites of the "healer" type. Profiting by the general hypochondriacal tendency, for which the profession of medical advertising in the newspapers is larsrely responsible, and employing a curious pseudo-science of their ow^n devising, these charlatans are conducting a sort of magic saturnalia of healing.
Family Resemblance of the Fakes.
What is true of one of this class is true of all the "doctors," "healers," "medical institutes," "homes of science," and various fresh-coined "opathys," which advertise to cure diseases by "special knowledge," "mar- velous inventions," "startling discoveries in the realm of science," or "miraculous powers. " Their schemes are, essentially, the same. One and all, they are frauds, operating by a shrewd and cunningly developed system, in which the sole essential of success is to bait the hook so as to attract the human gudgeon. Once he has nibbled, he's the charlatan's fish. Lucky, indeed, may he count himself if he come oflf depleted in purse alone, and not in his chances of cure or of life.
Once on a time--this is a recognized and proper form for beginning a tale of magic--there was born a young wizard named Isham. In the nat- ural course of growth he reached that point in life w^here he desired to turn his wizardry to financial account. Less ingenious representatives of his ilk take to side-shows on country circuits, and either "eat-'em-alive" or become the Beautiful Mile. Astralette, Seer and Prophetess, according to sex and inclination. Isham had a soul above canvas. He has yearned for something permanent and high-sounding; so he devised "Humanity Baking Powder," which, by a complicated scheme too long for detail here, was not only to raise the human race to heights hitherto undreamed of, but was even to extend their thoughts to the stars by means of a mighty telescope to be established from the dividends. The "Humanity Baking Powder" advertising was a thing to thrill the soul; but the sodden and materialistic American mind (feminine) declined to respond with that spontaneity w^hich Avas expected, so Isham dropped the scheme and came East to settle in that spot where, as every bunco man in this country knows, the Permanent Convention of Jays and Come-ons is always in session--New York City. Isham's device for alienating the Innocents of New York from their money was the "California Waters of Life. " These waters flow from a spring near San Diego, Cal. , having come a long way to reach that spot, since they are, so Isham assures me, the identical waters wdiich gushed from the Scriptural rock when Moses smote it.
"How tlo you know that they are? " I inquired when this interesting statement was made to me.
"How do you know they aren't? " demanded the Wizard triumphantly, and while I was dazedly feeling for some means wherewith to cope with this resilient brand of logic, he continued Avith an argument too profound for me to grasp in detail. The gist of it seemed to be, however, that all the waters of the earth, being in constant motion, eventually find their
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way to all parts of the earth, and thgtt his spring was just as likely to be the Mosaic article as any, other; a process of reasoning which I cheerfully leave to persons fond of' dialectics. Whatever the source of the waters, Isham, in the course of time, came out with htfge advertisements in the New York papers, in which he exploited himself And his spring about equally, declaring that he had a scheme for abolishing poverty and suffer-
RUPERT WELLS, M. D.
A prop of the religious journals.
ing, that he had been in personal consultation with the Deity about it,
and, further, that the Isham spring water would cure rheutnatism in ,
seven days, cancer in thirty days, Bright's disease and diabetes in thirty days, would stop hair from falling out in three days, and would grow a luxuriant hirsute crop on the most sterile cranium. Wlien San Fran-
cisco was destroyed, the thrifty Isham, eager to make capital out of calamityj rushed into print with the following head-lines:
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OUT OF THE AWFUL EARTHQUAKE ZONE.
ANSWERING THE AVALANCHE OF ANXIOUS INQUIRIES ABOUT ISHAM SPRING, CALIFORNIA.
Then followed the ourative claims. When I called on Isham in his office in the Flatiron Building, New York City, to ask al30ut the cancer cases, he loaded me down with testimonials of various kinds, most of which, however, related to thin hair, or to indeterminate ailments, rangmg from indigestion, through supposed kidney trouble, to a bump on the spine sustained in a trolley accident. To investigate all that he producedin the way of testimonials (most of them obviously not worth investigation, as seriously supporting his claims) Avould have taken weeks, perhaps months.
A few interested me because they suggested technical knowledge on the part of the patient. One of these was a "Professor" Fogg, by whom Isham seemed to set great store.
"What is he Professor of? " I asked.
"Well, I don't exactly know," said Isham, hesitatingly. "He calls him- self Professor.