The Great American fraudPress of the American Medical Association, 1905 - 95 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
acetanilid adver alcohol anthrax Antikamnia Association of America bill bottle BOTTLED IN BOND Bright's disease Bromo-Seltzer cancer Catarrh Cure catarrh powders cent CHENEY MEDICINE Chicago claim Cleveland Press cocain COLLIER'S WEEKLY Compound Consumption Cure containing cure consumption daily dangerous disease doctor dollars dose druggist Duffy's Malt Whiskey dyspepsia editorial Epilepsy exploitation fake firm fraud germ harmful headache powders heart Hydrozone indorsements insertions J. C. Ayer Company label legislation Legislature letter Liquozone Company Lydia Lydia Pinkham makers manufacturers Massachusetts medi medical journals Meningitis newspapers North Dakota nostrum opium Orangeine organization Ozomulsion Paine's Celery paper patent medicine patent-medicine association Peruna Peruna Company physician Pierce Pinkham poison printed profit prominent Proprietary Association proprietary medicines published red clause REPRINTED FROM COLLIER'S rheumatism sample SARSAPARILLA Senator soothing syrups statement suffering Swamp-Root testimonials throat tion to-day trade tuberculosis witch hazel writes York
Popular passages
Page 78 - In the State of Illinois a few years ago they wanted to assess me three hundred dollars. I thought I had a better plan than this, so I wrote to about forty papers and merely said: Tlease look at your contract with me and take note that, if this law passes, you and I must stop doing business, and my contracts cease.
Page 64 - Now observe the same citizen seeking to buy the most precious of all possessions, sound health. Anybody's word is good enough for him here. An admiral whose puerile vanity has betrayed him into a testimonial; an obliging and conscienceless senator; a grateful idiot from some remote hamlet; a renegade doctor or a silly woman who gets a bonus of a dozen photographs for her letter — any of these are sufficient to lure the hopeful patient to the purchase. He wouldn't buy a second-hand bicycle on the...
Page 77 - It is hereby agreed that should your State, or the United States Government, pass any law that would interfere with or restrict the sale of proprietary medicines, this contract shall become void.' ... In the State of Illinois a few years ago they wanted to assess me three hundred dollars. I thought I had a better plan than this, so I wrote...
Page 3 - Gullible America will spend this year some seventy-five millions of dollars in the purchase of patent medicines. In consideration of this sum it will swallow huge quantities of alcohol, an appalling: amount of opiates and narcotics, a wide assortment of various drugs ranging from powerful and dangerous heart depressants to insidious liver stimulants (and, I might add, gastric.
Page 3 - For fraud, exploited by the skillfulest of advertising bunco men, is the basis of the trade. Should the newspapers, the magazines, and the medical journals refuse their pages to this class of advertisements, the patent medicine business in five years would be as scandalously historic as the South Sea Bubble, and the nation would be richer not only in lives and money, but in drunkards and drug-fiends saved.
Page 9 - Whisky (advertised as an exclusively medical preparation); the catarrh powders, which breed cocaine slaves; and the opium-containing soothing syrups which stunt or kill helpless infants; the consumption cures, perhaps the most devilish of all, in that they destroy hope where hope Is struggling against bitter odds for existence...
Page 66 - Here shall the Press the People's Rights maintain, Unawed by Influence, and unbribed by Gain; Here Patriot Truth her glorious precepts draw, Pledged to Religion, Liberty, and Law.
Page 17 - Bottle Free. If you need Liquozone, and have never tried it, please send us this coupon. We will then mail you an order on a local druggist for a full size bottle, and we will pay the druggist ourselves for it.
Page 67 - ... members of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts gravely tippling Peruna and passing the bottle around to their encircled neighbors, that practical knowledge should be the basis of legislative action? I take it if any man should assert that there is one subject upon which the newspapers of the United States, acting in concert and as a unit, will deny full and free discussion, he would be smiled at as an intemperate fanatic. The thing is too incredible. He would be regarded as a man with...
Page 66 - March there was a debate which lasted one whole afternoon and engaged some twenty speakers, on a bill providing that every bottle of patent medicine sold in the state should bear a label stating the contents of the bottle. More was told concerning patent medicines that afternoon than often comes to light in a single day. The debate at times was dramatic — a member from Salem told of a young woman of his acquaintance now in an institution for inebriates as the end of an incident which began with...