Neither the public nor the patent-medicine
people paid much attention to the first attacks. But as they grew, and
the evidence multiplied, the public began to comment and the nostrum
makers began to get uneasy.
The magazine attacked the evil from every angle. It aroused the public
by showing the actual contents of some of their pet medicines, or the
absolute worthlessness of them. The Editor got the Women's Christian
Temperance Union into action against the periodicals for publishing
advertisements of medicines containing as high as forty per cent
alcohol. He showed that the most confidential letters written by women
with private ailments were opened by young clerks of both sexes, laughed
at and gossiped over, and that afterward their names and addresses,
which they had been told were held in the strictest confidence, were
sold to other lines of business for five cents each. He held the
religious press up to the scorn of church members for accepting
advertisements which the publishers knew and which he proved to be not
only fraudulent, but actually harmful. He called the United States Post
Office authorities to account for accepting and distributing obscene
circular matter.
He cut an advertisement out of a newspaper which ended with the
statement:
"Mrs. Pinkham, in her laboratory at Lynn, Massachusetts, is able to do
more for the ailing women of America than the family physician. Any
woman, therefore, is responsible for her own suffering who will not take
the trouble to write to Mrs.
Pages:
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357