The Menace, an Exposition of Quackery Nostrum Exploitation and Reminiscences of a Country Doctor Page: 57

Chas. D. Dixon, M. D.

FEMALE FAKE CURES.
A study of the multitudes of mail order medical fakes
makes plain one fact: few of such concerns are owned by
the renegade physicians whose names adorn the stationery
of the companies. Most companies of this kind are organ-
ized and capitalized by shrewd and often unscrupulous busi-
ness men. These companies are run solely and only for
money; the health or well being of the victim who seeks
their aid is a matter of indifference. It is not the state
of the patients health that concerns these scoundrels, but
the condition of his pocket book. It is not his suffering they
seek to relieve him of, but his money. The business is a
commercial one; pills and tablets bought by the millions
from pharmaceutical houses; form letters skilfully de-
signed to immitate handwriting or typewriting; testimon-
ials; lists of names of "easy marks" purchased from letter
brokers; unscrupulous physicians whose incompetency has
made them failures in the honorable practice of medicine,
and who are willing to sell their birthright of professional
honor for a miserable mess of pottage, these are the stock
in trade of mail order medical fakers.
In a great many instances, the fake concerns are run in
the name of some woman, as for instance, Dr. Bertha C.
Day, Dr. Julia D. Godfrey, Mrs. Cora B. Miller and many
other such institutes too numerous to mention. In nearly all
the cases the women in the case is only a stool pigeon for a
lot of unscrupulous business men. In all cases the doctor
so and so, will advertise in those cheap and nasty maga-
zines that are the sheet anchor of the advertising medical
faker. They also have an occasional advertisement in the
less particular newspapers. She will advertise that she is
"a woman, a wife, a mother, a successful physician, a spec-
ialist on diseases of women." She puts great stress on her
"long and varied experience." We read some of their ad-
vertisements as follows:
"Her vast experience as a physician is only one of the
qualifications she possesses. Her training and vast ex-
perience as a physician enables her to do more for suffer-
ing women than any woman can who is not a physician.
During several years of active life as a general practitioner

57