GULLIBILITY AND GREED

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1798, 22 August 1906, Page 60

GULLIBILITY AND GREED

HOW PATENT MEDICINES HOB AND SLAY. DR MASON’S INDICTMENT OF FRAUD AND MURDER, “ Since the beginning of thingjs there havo always been those who have sought to appeal to the emotions and ignorance of the people rather than to their intelligence. The medicine man in all ages has judiciously blended mystery with action. The gap between savagedom and so-called civilisation is nowhere smaller than it is in our own colony. Year in, year out, we find those reformers who, forgetting the lessons of the past, push on and explaim against the practices of the Maori tohunga. His incantations, his spells, and his enchanted potato are held up to scorn, and the authorities are urged to stop all such quackery and obvious deception. The mote in our brown brother’s eye is large; his ignorance is dense; he must bo protected from the sorcerer in the flax mat girdle, with his dangerous mummery. Doubtless these workers are honest, if impatient; but while we lament this willingness to be deceived on the part of our Maori friends, while we should certainly fight the tohunga whenever and wherever we find him, let our pity for the ignorance, our disgust at the hypocrisy, not blind us to the fact That there are tohungae and dupes amongst ourselves.” This message which Dr Mason (Chief Health Officer) has for us —in short, that we are fools, and worse than to-hunga-riddeu—is not a pleasant one for any to listen to; but the doctor not only filled the Concert Chamber at the Town Hall on August 15, where he lectured, but carried his audience with him all the way. It was a terrible exposure of robbery, sly grog-selling, blackmail, and manslaughter, if not murder. The lecturer was introduced by Mr John Duthie, who said that Dr Mason was performing a public duty in laying before the people what many patent medicines consisted of, and their effect on the community. “ GUILTY OF MURDERING.”

From the comparison with the tohunga,- which aroused applause, the lecturer passed on to the electric belts, which do not generate electricity, but which are to bring back to the “ roue ” his pristine vigour; to the man who smears his bald head with an ointment in the vain hope of bringing back the lost hair; to the scraggy individual, who is assured that “ Venustro ” will develop her bust; and to the man who believes that by a nostrum he can increase his. height so as to supplant his rival in his sweetheart’s affections. Nonsense all—yet “the fact remains that thousands of scoundrels are living, nay, making fortunes out of such unimaginable fools as I have indicated.” Then from the ludicrous the lecturer passed to the tragic; from the flattering of vanity, to the cruel deception of those seized with deadly disease. Take the cancer patient whom a doctor lias told that the only cure is the knife. While lie believes the doctor, he yet hopes for another “ way out.” He seeks to find it in some advertised and impossible “ cancer cure ” ; wastes money and months of valuable time, and then returns to the surgeon —but Ills chance is gone; the surgeon’s verdict is now “ too late.” “ I don’t know how it appears to you,” said Dr Mason, “ but I find no difficulty in deciding that the holder out of this ‘ cure ’ has been guilty of murdering his poor victir... ’ (Loud applause.) So it is with sufferers from consumption.

BREACH OF TRUST AND BLACKMAIL. A remark about remedies ‘-boosted U n by paid testimonial give)® and suborned newspapers met with the approval of the house, which then lieaid how ‘"secrecy” is broken and ‘■confidential” communications are betrayed. When the quack has extorted all the money he can from, the writer he liands the letter on. Thus, people read of ‘•SbOjQOO ‘general debility letters being hawked about.” The maiden lady s desire to hold back tho hands of time, and communications of even a more secret nature are treated in the same way. After being bled by a man, say, in Christchurch, the victim suddenly receives a communication from someone in Melbourne, expressing regret that the writer has learned that the person addressed is suffering from a certain disease, and offering a cure for a consideration. The only safety lies in not answering such a letter. But many write to the Melbourne man to say they are suffering as stated, whereupon he writes back in a fatherly way to say that with his expert knowledge he is sure they can’t be well — and so the thing goes on. The same man runs a number of cures under different addresses. “The man who originally assured you from the distance of New York that lie would cure you of inebriety is identical with the man who is willing to send you a newly discovered remedy, but who hails from the Rue Royal of Paris. The label, ‘a cure registered by Government/ did not mean that the British. Government

liad analysed the article and found it good, but only that the package bears the patent medicine stamp issued by the; Government as a means of raising revenue.” ELECTRIC BELTS ARE FRAUDS. Speaking of electric belts, Dr Mason condemned both the McLaughlin and the dry-cell (“it seems to me the word should be spelt with an ‘s’ ”). “A series of small pieces of zinc and copper are covered over by stout jean, the total cost being probably something under, five shillings. The man who lias been foolish enough to invest his £3- —that is the price of the cheapest quality—is advised to-soak the belt in vinegar and wear it next his skin. The result cf locking in the fumes of the vinegar,, combined with the acid in the wearer's perspiration, is to produce an irritation and redness. The irritation naturally occupies a considerable amount of the* patient's attention—(laughter)—and for tiie time lie forgets his “fulness after meals,’ and has little time to devote to the study of the specks which float before his eyes when he stoops. . . ~

He dare not wash himself, for if he does the belt ceases to act.” In July, 1905, in the Court of Session at Edinburgh, Lord Ardwell said* about “Bile Beans”: —“It is founded entirely upon fraud, impudence, and advertisement.” Little or no trade in this system of fraud and deceit could be carried on without the help of tho press, which should carefully scrutinise advertisements before inserting them. (Applause.) Leading journalists in this, country, speaking to him, admitted the wrong, “but those vendors pay well, and there is such a man as a business manager who usually has no soul.” Many of our leading papers liad, however, taken the bit in their teeth, and were doing good. (Applause). NO INJUSTICE. The lecturer divided patent medicines into three , classes —(1) Bad, useless drugs, inducing drug habits,, such as “ Pevuna,” and the host of preparations containing cocaine, morphia, etc. (2)' Harmless: may be good, but are simply formulae or recipes which *the advertiser has stolen or bought from some chemist or doctor. (3) Good, and the result of real original research on the paid; of the inventor or maker. No. 1 are frauds, and should he swept off the market entirely. To No. 2 much the same treatment should he meted out; there was no reason why the public should continue to pay exorbitant prices for ordinary articles. With regard to the third, perhaps 5 or 6 per cent., no injustice would he done by a regulation requiring that the contents (and not the process of manufacture) should be stated on the outside of the label. Why should not “ infant foods ” and “ soothing syrups ” containing soporifics be treated in this way? A mother would hesitate to continue dosing her little one if she saw “ poison ” in clear type was marked on the bottle. Dr Mason is not under the delusion that any regulation will turn the fool from his folly or prevent the mad search for a cure-all. But contents should be stated, and people stricken Avith dire disease should not be robbed by the statements of “ these frauds and scoundrels.”

CONTAINING ALCOHOL AND COCAINE. The lecturer stated that “Peruna” contained 28 per cent, of alcohol—wood alcohol —while whisky in this colony contained not more than 15 per cent. ; “Peruna” contained more alcohol than champagne, claret, or beer, and in Brisbane the other day a firm was convicted for selling it without a lioense. Besides alcohol, “Peruna” contained a little gum and colouring matter, and the rest was water. Pain’s “Celery Compound” had 21 per cent, alcohol, “Hochstetter’s Bitters” 24 per cent! alcohol. The lecturer showed a number of lantern slides indicating proportions of alcohol in various patent medicines. Dr Somebody’s “Catarrh Cure” was nothing more than cocaine, and led to the awful cocaine habit. Trilene, for reducing fat. was a most potent "and dangerous drug to use. The lecturer’s list of slides included reproductions of advertisements and the advertised photographs of people who wrote testimonials, and a “fraud’s gallery” of nostrums declared to be fraudulent. One of the moststriking reproductions was that of au agreement- between American medicine advertising people—tho Cheney Company—and certain newspapers, under which the company advertised for four years, the contract to determine if the State in which the papers published passed any law restricting or prohibiting the sale of patent medicines. Last year, when a regulation such as he lia-d proposed some time ago in New Zealand came up before the State Legislature, the company cracked the whip-, and thirty to forty newspapers, toed the line and protested against the poor backwoodsman being robbed of his patent medicine. The last slide was a reproduction of a picture by an American artist, depicting a woman spending “her last, dollar” on a worthless patent medicine for her doomed husband. The lecturer received, on the motion of Mr W. J. He Iyer, a hearty voteof thanks.