WORTHLESS CURE-ALLS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 196, 17 August 1906, Page 3

WORTHLESS CURE-ALLS.

CHIEF HEALTH OFFICER'S LECTURE.

CRUSADE AGAINST CREDULITY AND QUACKS(By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. The Chief Health Officer (Dr. Mason) haa lectured to a Wellington audience on the popular weakness for "Cure-alls." "That tired feeling," and symptoms of over-eating, generally referred to in nicer terms, must be a gold mine to patent medicine vendors. Not that all preparations ready-made and picturesquely labelled are bad. Dr. Mason., chatting with a "Star" reporter, said that a number — not a large number —of remedies on the market were excellent. They were the result of industry and research on the part of the manufacturer, who should be protected and encouraged, as against the unscrupulous firms who dupe the public with well-advertised but worthless, and even harmful, nostrums. The gap between civilisation and the medicine man of old. who mixed mystery with his potions, was nowhere smaller than in New Zealand.

Dr. Mason declared in his lecture that "hundreds of scoundrels are living, nay, making fortunes, out of such unimaginable fools as we seem to be." How much suffering was caused the victims of cancer and consumption by paying heed to wily tempters. These individuals were always "professors." A person afflicted with cancer hoped to escape the surgeon's knife by applying an ointment. Thus valuable time was lost., and the patient was not only robbed of money, but robbed of every possible hope of cure. The same thing applied to consumption. The "quack" assured the victim he had a "short cut" to health, which he alone sold, and the patient trusted in these "curealls," despite the fact that tiieir potency had been disproved. The lecturer accused some medicine vendors of worse than : simple frauds. Sufferers from that vague disease, "general debility," which might arise from improper modes of living, are, he stated, often blackmailed by threats to publish what has been disclosed to them under a well-worded promise of strict secrecy. When the quack has extorted all the money he can from the writer, he hands the letter on. Thus people read of "360.000 general debility letters being hawked about in America-" The maiden kdVs desire to hold back the hands of time, and communications of even a more secret nature, are treated in the same way. The only safety lies in not answering such a letter. The same man runs a number of cures under different addresses. The man who originally assured you from the distance of New York that he would cure you of inebriety is identical with the man who is willing to send you a newly-discovered remedy, but who hails from Paris. The label '"A cure registered by Government" does not mean tnat the British Government had analysed the article and found it good, but only that the package bears the patent medicine stamp issued by the Govern as a means of raising revenue."' Dr. Maeon strongly emphasised the iipcnssity for the formula of all preparations being plainly stated on the bottles. Hβ believes that the honest medicine vendor has nothing to fear from the disclosure, because methods of manufacture and the actual order in which ingredients are mixed, to say nothing of well adjusted quantities, axe of the utmost importance. Judging by the manner in wnich the doctnr spoke, I should not bo surprised to find that the Foods and Drugs Adulteration Bill of 1905. which failed to pass, will be resuscitated. Public interest in food preparations has hern strongly aroused by American happenings, and if legislation is wanted it would receive attention now.