Читать книгу The Great American Fraud - Samuel Hopkins Adams - Страница 11

The control is as complete, though exercised by a class of nostrums somewhat differently exploited, but essentially the same. Only "ethical" preparations are permitted in the representative medical press, that is, articles not advertised in the lay press. Yet this distinction is not strictly adhered to. "Syrup of Figs," for instance, which makes widespread pretense in the dailies to be an extract of the fig, advertises in the medical journals for what it is, a preparation of senna. Antikamnia, an "ethical" proprietary compound, for a long time exploited itself to the profession by a campaign of ridiculous extravagance, and is to-day by the extent of its reckless use on the part of ignorant laymen a public menace. Recently an article announcing a startling new drug discovery and signed by a physician was offered to a standard medical journal, which declined it on learning that the drug was a proprietary preparation. The contribution was returned to the editor with an offer of payment at advertising rates if it were printed as editorial reading matter, only to be rejected on the new basis. Subsequently it appeared simultaneously in more than twenty medical publications as reading matter. There are to-day very few medical publications which do not carry advertisements conceived in the same spirit and making much tin same exhaustive claims as the ordinary quack "ads" of the daily press, and still fewer that are free from promises to "cure" diseases which are incurable by any medicine. Thus the medical press is as strongly enmeshed by the "ethical" druggers as the lay press is by Paine, "Dr." Kilmer, Lydia Pinkham, Dr. Hartman, "Hall" of the "red clause" and the rest of the edifying band of life-savers, leaving no agency to refute the megaphone exploitation of the fraud. What opposition there is would naturally arise in the medical profession, but this is discounted by the proprietary interests.