One of the most disgusting and disgraceful features of the patent
medicine business is the marketing of letters sent by patients to patent
medicine firms. Correspondence is solicited by these firms under the
seal of sacred confidence. When the concern is unable to do further
business with a patient it disposes of the patient's correspondence to
a letter-broker, who, in turn, disposes of it to other patent medicine
concerns at the rate of half a cent, for each letter.
This Information was made public by Mark Sullivan in the _Ladies' Home
Journal_ for January, 1906.
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An advertisement showing how the names to orders sent to "Patent
Medicine" concerns are offered for sale or rent to be used by others.
Yet we are told how "Sacredly Confidential" these letters are regarded
and held. (The advertisement is from the _Mail Order Journal_, April,
1905.)
Says Mr. Sullivan: "One of these brokers assured me he could give me
'choice lots' of 'medical female letters'... Let me now give you, from
the printed lists of these 'letter brokers' some idea of the way in
which these {093}'sacredly confidential' letters are hawked about the
country. Here are a few samples, all that are really printable:
"'55,000 Female Complaint Letters' Is the sum total of one Item, and
the list gives the names of the "medicine company" or the "medical
institute" to whom they were addressed. Here is a barter, then, in
55,000 letters of a private nature, each one of which, the writer
was told, and had a right to expect, would be regarded as sacredly
confidential by the "doctor" or concern to whom she had been deluded
into telling her private ailments. Yet here they are for half a cent
each!
"Another batch of some 47,000 letters addressed to five 'doctors' and
'institutes' is emphasized because they were all written by women! A
third batch is:
"'44,000 Bust Developer Letters'--letters which one man in a "patent
medicine" concern told me were "the richest sort of reading you could
get hold of."
"A still further lot offers: '40,000 Women's Regulator Letters'--letters
which in their context any woman can naturally imagine would be of the
most delicate nature. Still, the fact remains, here thy are for sale."
Is not this contemptible?
In the same article Mr. Sullivan exposes the inhuman greed of patent
medicine concerns that turn into cold cash the letters of patients
afflicted with the most vital diseases.
To quote Mr. Sullivan again: "All these are made the subject of public
barter. Here are offered for sale, for example: 7,000 Paralysis Letters;
9,000 Narcotic Letters; 52,000 Consumption Letters; 3,000 Cancer
Letters, and even 65,000 Deaf Letters. Of diseases of the most private
nature one is offered here nearly one hundred thousand letters--letters
the very classification of which makes a sensitive person shudder."
An Appeal To The American Woman.
"If the American woman would withhold her patronage from these secret
nostrums the greater part of the industry would go to pieces. I do
not ask any woman to take my word for this. Let me give her a personal
statement direct from one of these manufacturers himself--a 'doctor' to
whom thousands of women are writing to-day, and whose medicines they are
buying by the hundreds of thousands of bottles each year. I quote his
own statement, word for word:
"'Men are "on" to the game; we don't care a damn about them. It is the
women we are after. We have buncoed them now for a good many years, and
so long as they remain as "easy" as they have been, and we can make them
believe that they are sick, we're all right. Give us the women every
time. We can make them feel more female troubles In a year than they
would really have if they lived to be a hundred.' ".--From "Why 'Patent
Medicines' are Dangerous," Edward Bok, Ladies' Home Journal, March,
1905.
"REPEATERS."
It is the "repeat" orders that make the profit. Referring to a certain
patent medicine that had gone to the wall a nostrum agent said that It
failed because "it wasn't a good repeater." When these men doubt whether
a new medicine will be a success they say: "I'm afraid it wouldn't be a
'repeater.'"
"_Cure_ rheumatism" said a veteran patent medicine man considering
the exploitation of a new remedy; "good Heavens, man, you don't want a
remedy that _cures_ 'em. Where would you get your 'repeats'? You want to
get up a medicine that's full of dope, so the more they take of it the
more they'll want."--From "The Inside Story of a Sham," _Ladies' Home
Journal_, January, 1906.