To begin with, varicocele is a surgical disease and is only cured by
an operation. Yet the daily papers teem with advertisements offering
cures by drugs, appliances and external washes.
It is needless to say that all of these are fakers. Chicago has more
than twenty specialists who profess to cure varicocele. Only two of
them fulfill their promises. The rest take your money and render you
no service.
Nearly every paper advertises these men, such headlines as "Cured in
Five Days," "Cured Without Pain."
"Five-day varicocele cure" meets the eye of the reader on nearly every
page. It is true that varicocele can be cured in five days; it can and
is cured in one treatment, but always by surgical means. The headlines
above are simply baits for the afflicted.
The main idea of the so-called specialist is to get the victim into
his office. Here he will tell him that he has two methods of cure. One
is an operation, which necessitates the patient going to a hospital,
remaining there for five days in order to effect the cure. The other
is a suspensory and a liniment which, applied daily, will do just as
well, but it requires three or four months to get the cure.
The patient wishes, of course, to avoid an operation. He is always
told there is some danger from the chloroform. He usually takes the
"slow cure," parting at the same time with a good, fat fee, usually a
good deal more than he would have had to pay a reputable man for an
operation. At the end of the period fixed for the cure the patient
finds himself no better and finally in disgust places himself in the
hands of a man who does operate and is promptly cured.
Among the many men engaged in the cure of varicocele is Dr. Mark
K----, of Cincinnati and Denver. This man's advertisements adorn every
page of papers that will take them. His fee is $2.00; his remedy a
suspensory and a wash. Both are utterly useless. After you have paid
your money your name or original letter is sold to someone in the same
business.
In a little while you are surprised to receive mail from all parts
of the country--all wanting you to purchase a varicocele cure. This
applies to vacuum pumps, the superior system, the Parisian system and
other fakes of a like nature. They are all frauds. In the past few
years I have raided their places many times, seized their literature,
which is always obscene and indecent, and arrested the proprietors.
The game, however, still goes on.