The Menace, an Exposition of Quackery Nostrum Exploitation and Reminiscences of a Country Doctor Page: 13
128 p. : ill., ports. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this book.
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Chas. D. Dixon, M. D.
blood money he has taken as toll from the poor unfortunate
victim.
A congressman whose purile 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 or a dozen photographs
for her letter, any of these are sufficient to lure the hopeful
patient to try the wonderful treatment.
He would not buy a second-hand bicycle on the affidavit
of any of them, but he will give up his money and take his
poison on a mere newspaper statement which he does not
even investigate. Take from these frauds the means by
which they influence the millions, and they will pass to the
limbo of pricked bubbles, a fraud whose flagrancy and im-
pudence are of minor import compared to the coldhearted
greed with which it grinds out its profits from the suffer-
ings of the duped and eternally hopeful ignorant. How
much longer will these frauds and scoundrels be tolerated?
Their continued existence will depend on two things: the
gullibility of the public, and the willingness of the press to
share the blood money by accepting advertisements of these
frauds.
It is little less than criminal that a man without even the
pretence of medical training and with more capital than
conscience should be free to exploit a valueless nostrum
that he claims to have discovered as a cure for a disease
that no drug can cure. It is hoped that the physicians will
do their best to enlighten the public to these facts.
When one of these frauds goes out of business there still
remain scores of others just as vicious and just as cruel.
And as they, too, die, others will spring up to take their
places. So long as the credulity of ignorance is a human
trait so long will the "consumption cure" and "cancer cure"
and all other medical fakers thrive.
The only remedy is enlightenment, and it is a fact, as
notorious as it is pathetic, that a vast portion of the public
is densely ignorant of the limitations of drugs. Unfortu-
nately, the medium through which the public could be so
easily reached and enlightened, the newspapers, is to a large
degree unavailable. Many of these publications are still13
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Dixon, Chas. D. (Charles D.). The Menace, an Exposition of Quackery Nostrum Exploitation and Reminiscences of a Country Doctor, book, 1914; San Antonio, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth143569/m1/23/?rotate=270: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting University of Texas Health Science Center Libraries.