(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.
Adams-Great-American-Fraud
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
?
? ? 77
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
:
? 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-
? 80
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-
:
? 81
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-
? 84
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
? 86 "^
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. "
"Suppose I look him up at the Broadway address given in the advertise- ment. "
"You wouldn't be likely to find him," was the hasty response. "He only gets his mail there. He lives somewhere in Long Island City. "
Another name he gave me was that of a very prominent and high-^ standing New York physician. This physician, in reply to my query,- stated that he had taken two cases of the Avaters for rheumatism, anct had experienced not the slightest benefit. If Isham desires a testimonial to this effect, I dare say he can get it for the asking. Fifteen or twenty fairly prominent Philadelphia business men and financiers appear on the Isham list of names "used by permission. " Several of these were asked whether they belieA^ed that Isham was divinely inspired, that his "Waters of Life" were the identical waters that gushed from the smitten rock of Moses, and that the. waters would cure cancer in thirty days, all these statements having been publicly used by the Wizard to push the sale of his product.
Isham's Medicine Makes Good Ice-Water.
Some of the recipients of my inquiry became alarmed, and sent the letter to Isham. Those who replied answered the questions in the nega- tive. One bank president loftily characterized the queries as "absurd. " Apparently the initial absurdity of his lending his name to the purposes of a preposterous quack like Isham had not occurred to him. At the close of my interview Avith Isham, after he had fervently harangued me on the supernal A^rtues of his Avater, declaring that it Avould make the drunkfird a model of sobriety, reform the A'icious and restore youth to the senilev he exhorted me to be fair and dispassionate in my judgment of him and his product. I shall try to be. As to the "Waters of Life," they are prob- ably a fairly good mineral Avater, as useful perhaps in minor stomach, kidney or uric-acid troubles as the average mineral spring Avater, and no more useful. They Avill no more cure cancer, Brighf^s disease, diabetes or paralysis than Avill Croton Avater. To Isham himself I giA^e the benefit of the doubt. I belieA'e him to be mentally unsound. On any other premise he is the most arrant and blasphemous faker noAV before the public.
Isham may perhaps find food for thought in the career of a felloAv-Avizard, "Dr. " Theodore H. White of Baltimore, AA^ho has recently relinquished the presidency of "Dr. WTiite's College of Science" to serA'e a three years' sentence in a, J'ederal jail for fraudulent i;se of the mails. The "doctor's"
? 88
qualifications for the headship of the college were derived from his previous career as an oyster-shucker, spiritualist medium and "patent-medicine" agent. By ingenious advertising of a sort of book of knowledge he worked up a business which produced from 500 to 1,000 letters of inquiry per day. This book "tells you how to heal yourself and others of all dis- eases," and to perform various other useful and surprising functions, and is, also, "the key of everlasting life, a godsend to suffering humanity. "
C. J. THACHER, M. D. King of the Magnetic Quacks.
The Post-Office Gets After White.
In the course of time the Post-Office Department became interested in "Dr. " White and his scheme, to the extent of instituting inquiries, which the "doctor" was unable to answer. A fraud order stopped his mail, and his prosecution and conviction followed. The book which was the Col- lege of Science's main stock in trade is a fearsome hash of old witch-lore and alchemy, and modern spiritualism, stolen from various sources. Apparently the ex-oyster-shucker's mantle has fallen upon Prof. F. T.
? 89
I\rclntyre of 12G West 34tli Street, New York City, who exploits the world as his bivalve througli a system bearing the esoteric and hypnotic title of "Ucchatana and Bidwesana," whereby the "eminent exponent of the occult and psychic" (meaning Mclntyre) teaches all and sundry "to heal the sick and suffering without doctors or drugs. " This he pretends to do free, and he will doubtless continue the pretense until the over- worked fraud-order section of the Post-Office Department attends to him.
Some months ago the Post-Office authorities descended, with blighting result, upon "Prof. " Thos. J. Adkin, sometime of Rochester, where he established the "New York Institute of Physicians and Surgeons" for the practice of "Vitaopathy," whatever that may be. Judging from external evidence it consists chiefly in persuading, by some mysterious influence, the business managers of not-too-particular newspapers to print as "spe- cial correspondence" such headings as the following:
DEAD MEX TALKED BACK TO LIFE.
Rescued ou Way to Grave--Professor Stops Funeral--Restores Woman to Life^ Does He Possess Divine Power?
The most eminent physicians and specialists in the Avorld were, accord- ing to Professor iVdkin, his associates in the practice of Vitaopathy. In addition to his professional qualifications, the professor seems to have been a truly hynotic financier, since he succeeded in securing his world- beating physicians at a maximum wage of $. 30 a week, while the most that any "specialist," called in from without to treat extraordinary cases, was able to wrest from the New York Institute cf Physicians and Surgeons was about $5 a month.
"In Prof. Adkin's laboratory his chemists are daily engiged in extract- ing the life-and-health-giving principle from rare vegetables, fruits and plants. "
Thus one of the Vitaopathist's advertisements. \Vhen called upon to give details. Professor Adkin could produce neither laboratory, chemists, vegetables, fruits nor plants. Under pressure he bashfully explained that his "treatment" consisted of tablets put up to his order by Parke, Davis & Co. of Detroit. This testimony should be interesting to phvsicians, since Parke, Davis & Co, are the largest manufacturers of "ethical" prepara- tions advertised to the medical profession in the country, and are earnest claimants of high professional standing. How their ethics comport with this acting as supply to a proven and self-convicted quack, I leave for them to explain. In the general stir that accompanied the Post-Office Department's action against Adkin, resulting in his retirement from public life, the regular medical profession of Rochester did not come off unscathed. One of the allegations against the Vitaopathist was that he diagnosed and prescribed for cases by mail. Believing that the local medical profession was the agent of his discomfiture (a misapprehension on his part) and keen for revenge, Adkin sent out decoy letters to a considerable number of local physicians in good and regular standing, and got responses from a dozen or more agreeing to prescribe by mail for cases they had never seen. This unpleasant evidence the "Professor" usedinamannerverytryingtotheethicalpractitioners. Asharplesson for them, but a salutary one. There will be very little of the long-dis- tance-diagnosis form cf quackery practiced by the regular profession in Rochester for some time to come, I fancy. On the records of the fraud- order hearing, there is noted as being present (doubtless with a fellow- feeling for the defendant) Gen. James R. O'Beirne, who has held several posts of honor in New York City, and one of conspicuous dishonor, the presidency of the Force of Life Company, a swindle so open and bold
? 90
that its recent whitewashing by a prominent Federal official of New York has been a source equally of amazement and speculation to these who followed the proceedings against it. One of its fakes was a "Life-Ray Capsule," said to contain radium, but in reality simply a mixture of corn starch and calcium sulfid.
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BLASPHEMY COMBINED WITH QUACKERY.
The "Professor" Hadley is also Medical Director of the Force of Life fake.
Science, ingeniously perverted, is made the agent of the miracle-work- ing quack. Should some scientist authoritatively announce to-morrow a method of conserving the light and heat of the sun, within a few weeks we should read in the papers that "Bottled Sunlight" is a sure cure for
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? 91
any and all ills. So radium, having occupied the public mind and excited the public fancy, has furnished material for the lively commer- cial imagination of the quacks. Eupert Wells, ? M,. D. , early perceived its possibilities, and appointed himself Professor of Radio-Therapy in the "Post-Graduate College of Electro-Therapeutics of St. Louis," a chair which has no existence, in a college which is purely mythical.
Religious Rupert, the Fireside Faker.
Rupert Wells, M. D. , is very religious--in his advertisements. He loves tlie church papers. The weeklies with smug and pious editorials, and no conscience whatever in the matter of paid advertising, are his green pastures. He is a home-and-fireside cuddler, is Rupert. He is also ^ grcand-and-lofty liar of the most complete and soul-satisfying description, Yju can read whole pages of his literature and not come upon one single statement tainted with truth. To illustrate, by a brief capitulation of the main points of one of his "come-on" letters: By virtue of his pro- found studies in radium-administration (lie No. 1) at the college wherein he is professor (compound lie, No. 2) he can cure consumption (lie No. 3) and cancer (No. 4) by a method which he wishes to tell you about free (No. 5), consisting of the internal and external application of Radol, which is radium in fluid form (No. 6), which he himself has discovered (No. 7), and by which he has effected many cures (No. 8), as follows
(Nos. 9, 10, 11, etc. , to the extent of the testimonials). Recently a Philadelphia woman emulating the anxious gentleman in Mr. Wallace Irwin's engaging poem,
"/ wrote Dr. Rharho and got as an answer: 'The loart on your thumh is incipient cancer,'
consulted Rupert Wells, M. D. , by mail. He sent her a form letter, ingeniously devised so that besides date, name and address only one word need be written in. This word gives the location of the alleged cancer, and the sentence is: "Your letter convinces me that you have cancer of the . " In this instance the word "temple" was obviously typed in. Of course, the symptoms, whatever they may be, will always "con- vince" Rupert, M. D. , that his correspondent has cancer (unless the reply is to a consumption advertisement), to be cured only by Radol. Of late the Professor of Radio-Therapy has grown quite painfully cautious. Attempts to purchase Radol of him direct, have proved rftiavailing; he will send it by mail alone, and then only after receiving a diagnosis blank. However, the Lederle Laboratories succeeded by a roundabout process in obtaining the precious fluid for analysis, which showed that Radol contains exactly as much radium as dishwater does, and is about as efficacious for cancer or consumption.
More Radio-Quackery.
Some time ago I received a circular inviting me to become rich without effort by investing in the stock of the Dr. Warner Remedy Co. of Chicago, 111.
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
?
? ? 77
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
:
? 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
? 79
"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
? 86 "^
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. "
"Suppose I look him up at the Broadway address given in the advertise- ment. "
"You wouldn't be likely to find him," was the hasty response. "He only gets his mail there. He lives somewhere in Long Island City. "
Another name he gave me was that of a very prominent and high-^ standing New York physician. This physician, in reply to my query,- stated that he had taken two cases of the Avaters for rheumatism, anct had experienced not the slightest benefit. If Isham desires a testimonial to this effect, I dare say he can get it for the asking. Fifteen or twenty fairly prominent Philadelphia business men and financiers appear on the Isham list of names "used by permission. " Several of these were asked whether they belieA^ed that Isham was divinely inspired, that his "Waters of Life" were the identical waters that gushed from the smitten rock of Moses, and that the. waters would cure cancer in thirty days, all these statements having been publicly used by the Wizard to push the sale of his product.
Isham's Medicine Makes Good Ice-Water.
Some of the recipients of my inquiry became alarmed, and sent the letter to Isham. Those who replied answered the questions in the nega- tive. One bank president loftily characterized the queries as "absurd. " Apparently the initial absurdity of his lending his name to the purposes of a preposterous quack like Isham had not occurred to him. At the close of my interview Avith Isham, after he had fervently harangued me on the supernal A^rtues of his Avater, declaring that it Avould make the drunkfird a model of sobriety, reform the A'icious and restore youth to the senilev he exhorted me to be fair and dispassionate in my judgment of him and his product. I shall try to be. As to the "Waters of Life," they are prob- ably a fairly good mineral Avater, as useful perhaps in minor stomach, kidney or uric-acid troubles as the average mineral spring Avater, and no more useful. They Avill no more cure cancer, Brighf^s disease, diabetes or paralysis than Avill Croton Avater. To Isham himself I giA^e the benefit of the doubt. I belieA'e him to be mentally unsound. On any other premise he is the most arrant and blasphemous faker noAV before the public.
Isham may perhaps find food for thought in the career of a felloAv-Avizard, "Dr. " Theodore H. White of Baltimore, AA^ho has recently relinquished the presidency of "Dr. WTiite's College of Science" to serA'e a three years' sentence in a, J'ederal jail for fraudulent i;se of the mails. The "doctor's"
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qualifications for the headship of the college were derived from his previous career as an oyster-shucker, spiritualist medium and "patent-medicine" agent. By ingenious advertising of a sort of book of knowledge he worked up a business which produced from 500 to 1,000 letters of inquiry per day. This book "tells you how to heal yourself and others of all dis- eases," and to perform various other useful and surprising functions, and is, also, "the key of everlasting life, a godsend to suffering humanity. "
C. J. THACHER, M. D. King of the Magnetic Quacks.
The Post-Office Gets After White.
In the course of time the Post-Office Department became interested in "Dr. " White and his scheme, to the extent of instituting inquiries, which the "doctor" was unable to answer. A fraud order stopped his mail, and his prosecution and conviction followed. The book which was the Col- lege of Science's main stock in trade is a fearsome hash of old witch-lore and alchemy, and modern spiritualism, stolen from various sources. Apparently the ex-oyster-shucker's mantle has fallen upon Prof. F. T.
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I\rclntyre of 12G West 34tli Street, New York City, who exploits the world as his bivalve througli a system bearing the esoteric and hypnotic title of "Ucchatana and Bidwesana," whereby the "eminent exponent of the occult and psychic" (meaning Mclntyre) teaches all and sundry "to heal the sick and suffering without doctors or drugs. " This he pretends to do free, and he will doubtless continue the pretense until the over- worked fraud-order section of the Post-Office Department attends to him.
Some months ago the Post-Office authorities descended, with blighting result, upon "Prof. " Thos. J. Adkin, sometime of Rochester, where he established the "New York Institute of Physicians and Surgeons" for the practice of "Vitaopathy," whatever that may be. Judging from external evidence it consists chiefly in persuading, by some mysterious influence, the business managers of not-too-particular newspapers to print as "spe- cial correspondence" such headings as the following:
DEAD MEX TALKED BACK TO LIFE.
Rescued ou Way to Grave--Professor Stops Funeral--Restores Woman to Life^ Does He Possess Divine Power?
The most eminent physicians and specialists in the Avorld were, accord- ing to Professor iVdkin, his associates in the practice of Vitaopathy. In addition to his professional qualifications, the professor seems to have been a truly hynotic financier, since he succeeded in securing his world- beating physicians at a maximum wage of $. 30 a week, while the most that any "specialist," called in from without to treat extraordinary cases, was able to wrest from the New York Institute cf Physicians and Surgeons was about $5 a month.
"In Prof. Adkin's laboratory his chemists are daily engiged in extract- ing the life-and-health-giving principle from rare vegetables, fruits and plants. "
Thus one of the Vitaopathist's advertisements. \Vhen called upon to give details. Professor Adkin could produce neither laboratory, chemists, vegetables, fruits nor plants. Under pressure he bashfully explained that his "treatment" consisted of tablets put up to his order by Parke, Davis & Co. of Detroit. This testimony should be interesting to phvsicians, since Parke, Davis & Co, are the largest manufacturers of "ethical" prepara- tions advertised to the medical profession in the country, and are earnest claimants of high professional standing. How their ethics comport with this acting as supply to a proven and self-convicted quack, I leave for them to explain. In the general stir that accompanied the Post-Office Department's action against Adkin, resulting in his retirement from public life, the regular medical profession of Rochester did not come off unscathed. One of the allegations against the Vitaopathist was that he diagnosed and prescribed for cases by mail. Believing that the local medical profession was the agent of his discomfiture (a misapprehension on his part) and keen for revenge, Adkin sent out decoy letters to a considerable number of local physicians in good and regular standing, and got responses from a dozen or more agreeing to prescribe by mail for cases they had never seen. This unpleasant evidence the "Professor" usedinamannerverytryingtotheethicalpractitioners. Asharplesson for them, but a salutary one. There will be very little of the long-dis- tance-diagnosis form cf quackery practiced by the regular profession in Rochester for some time to come, I fancy. On the records of the fraud- order hearing, there is noted as being present (doubtless with a fellow- feeling for the defendant) Gen. James R. O'Beirne, who has held several posts of honor in New York City, and one of conspicuous dishonor, the presidency of the Force of Life Company, a swindle so open and bold
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that its recent whitewashing by a prominent Federal official of New York has been a source equally of amazement and speculation to these who followed the proceedings against it. One of its fakes was a "Life-Ray Capsule," said to contain radium, but in reality simply a mixture of corn starch and calcium sulfid.
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BLASPHEMY COMBINED WITH QUACKERY.
The "Professor" Hadley is also Medical Director of the Force of Life fake.
Science, ingeniously perverted, is made the agent of the miracle-work- ing quack. Should some scientist authoritatively announce to-morrow a method of conserving the light and heat of the sun, within a few weeks we should read in the papers that "Bottled Sunlight" is a sure cure for
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any and all ills. So radium, having occupied the public mind and excited the public fancy, has furnished material for the lively commer- cial imagination of the quacks. Eupert Wells, ? M,. D. , early perceived its possibilities, and appointed himself Professor of Radio-Therapy in the "Post-Graduate College of Electro-Therapeutics of St. Louis," a chair which has no existence, in a college which is purely mythical.
Religious Rupert, the Fireside Faker.
Rupert Wells, M. D. , is very religious--in his advertisements. He loves tlie church papers. The weeklies with smug and pious editorials, and no conscience whatever in the matter of paid advertising, are his green pastures. He is a home-and-fireside cuddler, is Rupert. He is also ^ grcand-and-lofty liar of the most complete and soul-satisfying description, Yju can read whole pages of his literature and not come upon one single statement tainted with truth. To illustrate, by a brief capitulation of the main points of one of his "come-on" letters: By virtue of his pro- found studies in radium-administration (lie No. 1) at the college wherein he is professor (compound lie, No. 2) he can cure consumption (lie No. 3) and cancer (No. 4) by a method which he wishes to tell you about free (No. 5), consisting of the internal and external application of Radol, which is radium in fluid form (No. 6), which he himself has discovered (No. 7), and by which he has effected many cures (No. 8), as follows
(Nos. 9, 10, 11, etc. , to the extent of the testimonials). Recently a Philadelphia woman emulating the anxious gentleman in Mr. Wallace Irwin's engaging poem,
"/ wrote Dr. Rharho and got as an answer: 'The loart on your thumh is incipient cancer,'
consulted Rupert Wells, M. D. , by mail. He sent her a form letter, ingeniously devised so that besides date, name and address only one word need be written in. This word gives the location of the alleged cancer, and the sentence is: "Your letter convinces me that you have cancer of the . " In this instance the word "temple" was obviously typed in. Of course, the symptoms, whatever they may be, will always "con- vince" Rupert, M. D. , that his correspondent has cancer (unless the reply is to a consumption advertisement), to be cured only by Radol. Of late the Professor of Radio-Therapy has grown quite painfully cautious. Attempts to purchase Radol of him direct, have proved rftiavailing; he will send it by mail alone, and then only after receiving a diagnosis blank. However, the Lederle Laboratories succeeded by a roundabout process in obtaining the precious fluid for analysis, which showed that Radol contains exactly as much radium as dishwater does, and is about as efficacious for cancer or consumption.
More Radio-Quackery.
Some time ago I received a circular inviting me to become rich without effort by investing in the stock of the Dr. Warner Remedy Co. of Chicago, 111.
