The Menace, an Exposition of Quackery Nostrum Exploitation and Reminiscences of a Country Doctor Page: 58
128 p. : ill., ports. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this book.
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The Menace
she acquired a vast amount of valuable experience that very
few ever possess." From our investigation we find most
of these women's experience has been acquired treating
people through the mail and whom they have never seen.
So much for the methods of all these female treatment
frauds. The dishonesty of the claims, the fraudulence of
the methods, and the general way in which their business
is conducted, are all typical concerns which make a business
of capitalizing suffering and defrauding the sick. Could
that vast army of women whose gullibility permits these
frauds to flourish, but learn the hollow pretense on which
such business is founded, all such frauds would close shop
and go out of business.
There are doubtless hundreds and thousands of men and
women who really believe that the skilfully printed letters
sent to them by mail order quacks are special, personal, and
private communications. They doubtless believe too, that
the "diagnosis" which the fakers furnish have actual value.
They probably believe also, that the pills of many shapes
and colors that are sent out by these reprobates have some
peculiar potency, and value, not possessed by the drugs pre-
scribed by the family physician.
They must believe all these things or the medical fraud
business would not be profitable. Did the victims of these
sharks really know that the letters are printed by the hun-
dreds of thousands and are "filled in" by girls who have no
more medical knowledge than the average Mexican senorita
on the border would have. Did they know that the "diag-
nosis" is always worthless and sometimes dangerous; did
they know that the medicines furnished are often the cheap-
est of cheap drugs bought in enormous quantities from the
least reputable of drug houses; did they know too, that
often they had been bled to the point where they are un-
willing to part with any more money, their letters would
be sold to other animals of the bad smell variety in the same
business; did they know all these things, the firms that pre-
tend to cure diseases about which they know nothing with
drugs about which they know less, in patients which they
have never seen, would soon be forced into some more
reputable, if less profitable, lines of business. Evidently
the business of selling worthless nostrums to ailing women58
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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/m1/72/?rotate=90: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting University of Texas Health Science Center Libraries.