The Menace, an Exposition of Quackery Nostrum Exploitation and Reminiscences of a Country Doctor Page: 66
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The Menace
VIAVI HYGIENE.
Let us see what may be gleaned from the publications
which we obtained from their agents in San Antonio. These
consist of ten leaflets or pamphlets, one entitled, "Health
Book for Mothers and Daughters," and a volume of over
600 pages entitled, "Viavi Hygiene." The work of wading
through this great mass of stuff, required a great deal of
patience and labor. As we wend our way through "Viavi
Hygiene," we are ever confronted with references to the
joys and pleasures of "marital obligations," the terrific
effect of the affection of the husband which follows on the
wife's loss of personal beauty, and we are continually in-
formed that, as nine women out of ten are lacking in health
and strength, if not positively ill, the former pleasures
will surely be lost and the affection wane, unless the un-
fortunate woman uses "Viavi." When, of course, the de-
sired result which follows on health, is speedily secured.
Think of such literature as this going to your pure, innocent
daughters, to be read and pondered over.
For loathsome and gratuitous indecency, for leering ap-
peal to the basest passions, this kind of advertisement and
all others of like nature sound the depths. Under the cap-
tion of "Leucorrhea" we learn, this is a complaint from
which almost every woman suffers at some period of her
life, it is the very life force ebbing away, strangely like the
phraseology of the "men's diseases only" quack in his
literature "relating to spermatorrhea." She cannot bear
healthy children, they will be liable to total weakness (what-
ever that awful condition may be). They may have scro-
fula or even consumption. The horrors are piled up and
we learn that, there are deep rings under her eyes; her
complexion is yellow, she grows irritable and inexplicably
melancholy. If she is a wife, those duties that were once a
pleasure, become obnoxious. No matter how much she
may love her husband, her marital obligation becomes dis-
tressing. Of course, Viavi dispells this all-embracing gloom,
restores her "pleasures," removes the awful sentence from
her unborn offspring, and renders the "marital obligation"
once more delightful.66
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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/m1/82/?rotate=90: 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.