that advertising, but about 60 to 70 per cent comes from indirect causes-from Mrs. Jonés telling Mrs. Smith the benefits she has received. In looking back thirty-five years I can see many wrecks on the shore, and some of them were, in their day, as largely advertised as any of the present time. They did not have merit and could not maintain their claims and the confidence of the people.

The people who use proprietary remedies care nothing for the formula-all they desire is relief from pain and distress. Cure their ailments and they are loyal; and from generation to generation they carry words of praise and commendation for any good remedy, and thus by keeping our advertisements constantly in the press, as a reminder, they will do the rest.

Again in regard to publishing the formula, I will ask in all sincerity how many of you here today believe that we could have built up the business we have if our formula had been published from the start and all competitors allowed to make and sell it to those who might call for it? How much advertising could a man afford to do under such conditions? While it is true the name is protected by trade-mark, that would not prevent a druggist putting up the remedy and selling it, when asked to do so by a customer.

If it is advisable that people should know what medicine they are taking, why should not the physician write his prescription in English? Why should withholding the components of a remedy be a virtue in one case and a sin in the other?

I do not think the people demand this, as they are only interested in that which will benefit them. In order for them to understand the therapeutic effect of drugs they would have to be educated in chemistry, and this, it will be conceded, would be impossible.

You may say to me that many successful remedies that are now on the market have always published their formulas. In reply to this I will say that there never has been to my knowledge, a remedy of any kind that retailed for 75 cents or over that ever did publish its formula successfully. A 10, 15, 25, or possibly 35 cent article could be sold under these conditions, as it would hardly pay the customer to substitute for this price.

Is the Life of Trade.

You may question, if we get 60 to 70 per cent of the benefits from indirect advertising, why do we not stop this continual large annual expenditure. In reply to this I will say we advertise for the same reason that the large and reputable jobber has for sending out his salesmen. No matter how honest and reputable the jobber may be or how long he has been in the business, let him discard his solicitors and his house would soon go out of business, for the life and energy of the business would be gone. You could not sell gold dollars for 90 cents unless the people knew you had them for sale, so the solicitor is the same to the jobber that the advertisement is to the proprietor; and we would no more think of stopping our advertising than the ambitious jobber would of taking his men off the road. For this same reason flours, baking powders and a hundred and one other things are continually advertised. The longer you advertise a good article the easier it is to sell it, for you always have the 60 to 70 per cent as witnesses who are always testifying in your favor.

The advertising, proposition is often misunderstood. Many people are spending thousands of dollars annually with apparently no knowledge or understanding of the real meaning of the art of advertising. They do not seem to grasp the idea, or take in the situation, or understand their relative position to the purchaser. Many seem to think that all they have to do is to furnish copy to the press and the press will do the rest; and if the copy sent fails to draw, they blame the press, and never think themselves at fault.

The press in advertising is merely a common carrier from the advertiser to the purchaser. It carries the advertising matter just the same as a train carries coal or as the mails carry letters. It merely delivers the message that is sent, and never should be held responsible for failure or success of anything advertised. I am not a believer in circulation being the only guide for the advertiser. The character of the medium should be considered as well, and is one of the greatest factors in making the advertisement successful.

The way this advertising problem appears to me is this: My products are on trial, the people of the world are the jury. I appear before this jury in the endeavor to convince them that the article I offer is good, and that they should purchase. Now, it is not necessary to use adjectives, and large sounding names, indecent language or bewildering, evasive statements to convince the jury of the fact. A plain statement made in a plain, straightforward way, backed by disinterested evidence, such as testimonials from people who have no financial interest in my welfare, is much better. When I present my case in this way and the jury believe me, I win my case through the people purchasing my goods.

I carry this testimony to them in the columns of the press. If they have no con fidence in the honor or character of the medium I use, then my advertising falls flat, and it would have been better for me not to have used it. But on the other hand, if the medium is of a high character or known reliability, and it presents my evidence to the jury, it carries weight and confidence with it; so I say that circulation is not the only guide that the advertiser should use in placing his evidence.

Danger Greatly Overestimated.

In this crusade against those proprietary medicines which contain alcohol, the lleged danger is greatly overstated and overestimated and the crusade is conducted for a purely selfish purpose by a few alleged reformers. If their efforts were equally strong against the manufacturer who makes fluid extracts and tinctures and the physician who prescribes them. I would say that they were acting in good faith, and for moral effect; But when they ignore these and turn their energies toward the proprietary medicines alone, it shows a motive not wholly unprejudiced.

When you consider that nearly all liquid proprietary medicines are nothing but fluid extracts and tinctures, made upon the scientific principles laid down in the United States Dispensatory and used by the druggist, physician and proprietor alike—when you consider this and condemn one and not the other, it is unjust.

These agitators do not realize what they are doing for they surely would not wish to destroy all the fiuid extracts and tinctures. This would be a total destruction of all pharmaceutical preparations, a grasping from the physician of his only means of defense against disease, a destruction of the drug trade of this country, a breaking down of all the principles of medicine and an impeachment of the high honor of all the chemists and scientists of the world—a calamity indeed!

The Association which I have the honor to represent is on record as being opposed to the use of alcohol, except in so far as alcohol is absolutely necessary as a solvent and preservative. The doctor, in prescribing fluid extracts and tinctures, never takes into consideration the amount of alcohol contained in them. All he thinks of is the drug they contain and he prescribes them for the physiological effect of said drug; and so it is with the proprietor.

For generations the rural people have relied almost entirely upon the proprietary medicines for good health, and I will ask you in all fairness if you lived in the country, many miles from a doctor, would you be without these remedies? Would you think it right and safe for these people, in raising families, to be where they could not get them.

Go with me, gentlemen, into the country and take a view of things just as they are. Leave your comfortable homes for a few minutes; leave the paved streets, the street cars, the telephone, your luxurious surroundings and your doctor, who lives but one square away. Leave them all and go to another home-the home of a man who is just as much entitled to protection by the laws of the country as you are, and who is just as liable to love his wife and little children as you are, and who does love them. But he lives in the country, many miles from a physician, where there are no paved streets, but impassible roads, no telephone, no communication with the outside world, no way to get immediate help.

His child is taken sick with indigestion, bowel trouble, fever or one of the hundred and one disease that flesh is heir to. These people are in a little world by themselves, boxed in by the four walls of their home, without a remedy or means of defense against disease, except the pure air of heaven or an appeal to the Deity. Here they are boxed

in, suffering and dying with no help. Their only hope and comfort is in their own love and devotion.

Take this Lesson into Your Home.

Think, gentlemen! Put yourselves in their places just for one night, with your sick and dying child upon a cot, crying for help. As you hear its feeble and sickly calls for assistance is there one among you but what would curse the law that would prevent you from giving the help? Is there a man who would not violate every law under such conditions?

Can you look upon this scene and then say that you are in favor of driving all the proprietary medicines out of the market? Can you say that the law should deprive these people of the privilege of getting specifics, many of which originated with eminent physicians and chemists? Should you force these people to wait until they can get a doctor? Should you say to them that they should sacrifice their lives because they do not live in cities within reach of the physician? Would you say that it is right that they should be deprived of all the necessities of life and that you are entitled to all because you are more fortunate and live in the city?

I am a believer in law-in laws which benefit humanity-but I am not in sympathy with laws based upon imaginary conditions, as pointed out by some ultra ethical professor. If one could take their statement for it, there would be nothing pure or fit to eat or drink in the whole country.

For instance, the pure food commission of Minnesota ruled against Lea & Perrin's Worcestershire Sauce because it contained a trace of salicylic acid. No doubt the acid was added to prevent fermentation. A slight trace of it was all he could find, but the sauce was thrown out of the state. One could take thirty grains of salicylic acid with impunity.

When I see cases of this kind carried to such extremes, I can not help but wonder how any of us live; and when I consider that I was brought up in the country, and lived on cornbread and bacon and grew fat, I feel sometimes as if I ought to apologize for living. The chemists who are advocating these extreme measures are not practical. They are political chemists, working upon the imagination of the people to assure themselves of a lucrative position.

To continue: Many a life has been saved by the timely use of proprietary medicines. They are specialists going into every household, as you can readily see when I explain to you what a proprietary remedy is. The great majority of proprietary remedies were originally prepared by some eminent physician or chemist. A physician, for instance, has a compound which he finds will cure a certain disease, and so he continues to prescribe it. He finds that this particular formula will cure, or at least greatly benefit, many cases, and is really a specific. As time goes on and the demand increases, the doctor or chemist puts his prescription up in a form convenient for the consumer. Formerly, when this prescription or specific had a large demand, the manufacturer, in order to protect himself and the people who took the remedy, had the prescription patented and therefore these prescriptions were called "patent medicines"; but since the laws on trade-marks have been improved and made perpetual, the majority of manufacturers have covered their rights and names by the trade-mark, and the remedies are properly called "proprietary medicines." Under the patent laws their protection lasted only seventeen years. There is practically no such a thing as a "patent medicine," which is advertised to the general public today.

Have Had to Stand the Test.

From the very inception of these proprietaries, they have had to stand the test. They must cure the sick or they cannot succeed, and their efficacy is the reason why the people rely upon them for their good health. The people are not demanding restrictive legislation, and never will demand it as long as these remedies continue to relieve them of their ailments at a nominal expense.

I hear much about the damage done by these remedies, but the facts do not support the allegation. I quote from the "National Druggist," published in St. Louis, one of the most reliable and conscientious drug journals in this country. In a tabulation of 697 cases of injury or death from the use or accidental misuse of drugs, poisons or

medicines for four months, including 108 different poisons-from acids to varnish— you will see that matches have caused three deaths, rat poison two, Florida water nine, printer's ink one, lye three, Paris green four, carbolic acid fifty-two, and proprietary medicines of all kinds_five.*

The "National Druggist" says in part:

They are on the market in the United States each with more or less sale, more than 30,000 different proprietary medicines, and there are 40,000 drug stores from which they are dispensed or sold. It is, of course, impossible to determine the number of sales of such articles made by these 40,000 druggists in a day, but an average of 25 sales daily by each drug store seems a conservative estimate. Based on this estimate it would appear that the sales of proprietary or patent medicines of all kinds, in all of the drug stores of the country, will foot up to something like 1,000,000 a day or 120,000,000 for the full period of four months under review. Out of all these sales of proprietary medicines, made to all kinds of people, and taken under all kinds of circumstances, only five deaths in four months can be traced. This includes, of course, cases where careless parents have left these articles within the reach of children, mistakes made by adults in taking the wrong remedy, overdoses of the right remedy, etc., etc., although, let it be noted, not one single case is recorded of injury or death where the directions of the manufacturers, which are always on the package, were followed.

This gentleman, is from very high authority, Not one death in 120,000,000 sales! Neither would there have been in 120,000,000 times these sales if the directions had been followed! This virtually stops all argument about the danger that lurks in these remedies.

There is no law or caution label that will guard against all mistakes or prevent people from taking overdoses of medicine; and the same negligence and carelessness will prevail alike in taking proprietary medicines as in taking medicine prescribed by the physician.

The causalties from Florida water were 9, nearly 100 per per cent more than caused by all the proprietaries. Why should there not be a law passed prohibiting the sale of Florida water-a toilet article never intended for any other purpose? Why not legislate against rat poison? This destroyed three lives, and yet is always labeled poison. Paris green has four deaths and is always labeled poison. Carbolic acid stands at the head of the list with 52 deaths. Why not stop the manufacture of that? Fly poison has taken five lives-the same number as all the proprietaries—and you hear nothing about legislating fly poison out of the market. Gasoline has three on the list. Why not stop its sale? Matches, a common household article, killed three. Why not compel the makers of matches to publish their compounds and divulge their secret process of making, which is protected by patent.

You will find in this list that while there were five deaths from overdoses of proprietary medicines, there were two from vaccination. Now, the physicians are almost universal in the opinion of the usefulness of vaccination, and yet two deaths resulted from the use of that agent. Now, I estimate that there are 120,000,000 sales of patent medicines in the United states in the four months under review There is no way of getting exactly at these sales or at the number of injections of vaccine virus in four months. But I should say that an estimate of 100,000 persons vaccinated in the United States was above, rather than below, the estimate. In other words, that only 100,000 injections of vaccine virus were made in that period.

Now there were 120,000,000 sales of patent medicines. Suppose we say that each sale of a patent medicine was enough to make four doses (this seems a conservative estimate). This would make 480,000,000 doses of patent medicines, on the basis of these figures. If you will take your pencils and figure it out on that basis you will find that the danger to human life from vaccination, which most physicians agree is a good thing, is nineteen hundred and twenty times as strong as the argument against patent medicines, if the danger to human life is a correct criterion to go by.

Criminal Malpractice in Chicago.

The "Chicago News" of December 7, 1905, says there are thirty-eight thousand cases of criminal malpractice and thirty-eight deaths from this cause, in one year in

A subsequent statement, for two years ending June 30, 1907, records 4,292 cases of accidental poisoning of which 1,749 were fatal (see page 3). Of this total, 90 cases and 43 fatalities were due to the misuse of "patent" medicine.

the city of Chicago. From this statement I quote you what Dr. Henry G. W. Rheinhart, coroner's physician of that city, says: “I think it is a conservative estimate that there are thirty-eight thousand cases of malpractice a year in Chicago."

What could be more appalling in this free and enlightened country? And the same condition will exist as long as this class of doctors are allowed to sign the death certificates of their patients, which they can do under the laws of Illinois, Ohio, and in fact every state in the Union.

I do not say, gentlemen, that this statement is true. I read it to you as I saw it in the paper and verified by the coroner's physician. But, allowing it is true—every word of it-is' that any reason why the certificates to practice medicine should be taken away from all the doctors in this country? Does it necessarily follow that all proprietary medicines are dangerous because a few, if taken in excessive doses, may do harm?

If it is for the good of humanity to know what medicine it is taking, why not compel the doctor to give his prescription in English? That is the question, gentlemen. The few publications that are carrying on this crusade against proprietary medicines hope that publishing the formula will destroy the business. Total annihilation is their war-cry, and its echo is carried down the line by some of the dispensing doctors.

If the legislators are working in good faith for the good of all the people, and will take these facts into consideration, they will not be prejudiced by misstatements made by those who advocate the destrucion of all proprietary medicines.

Gentlemen, I am no iconoclast, and am in full accord with the honorable chemists, physicians and cress of this country. I am a believer in them and I am merely trying to point out the njustice done by some of them to an honorable industry, which has for its foundation the widespread necessity for valuable remedies at reasonable cost, calculated to promote-and which do promote the health and happiness of millions.

CHAPTER VII.

A COMMON SENSE POINT OF VIEW.

"Patent Medicines" Constitute Half the Medicines Used In Every Farmhouse "Mother's Medicine Chest"-Agitators Would Deprive People of Right to Buy Medicines-Best Proprietary Medicines Obtained at Fraction of Cost of Same Medicines if Obtained from Doctor-Twaddle About Cheap Drugs"-An Importer's Statement-Present System Meets a Necessity and Will Remáin.

In considering the question raised by recent attacks upon proprietary medicines, every reasonable man will admit that there is a wide and legitimate field for the manufacture and sale of medicines already prepared and easily obtainable. More than half of all the medicines used in this country are of this character. The majority of the people depend upon them for all simple ailments and, notwithstanding the constant effort of many physicians to create a prejudice against them, it is a notable fact that the millions of people who use such remedies are making no complaint nor are they asking for any legislation to interfere with their use or to destroy their sale.

When we consider the millions of people who live remote from physicians, and the still greater number in all parts of the country who find it difficult under the most favorable circumstances to pay actual living expenses, there can be no difference of opinion between honest men as to the absolute need of some system of medication similar to if not identical with that which now prevails if the welfare of the people is to be considered rather than the financial necessities of the medical profession. This widespread need is today mainly supplied by the use of proprietary medicines popularly (but erroneously) called "patent" medicines.

Ordinarily, when laws are proposed for the benefit of any particular class of people, it is the people needing relief who ask for such laws. If it is a law proposed to benefit labor, the workingmen ask for it. If it is needed to protect farmers, it is the farmers who ask for it, etc., etc. The only exception is in the case of laws which are urged for the protection of young children, idiots, lunatics and others incapable of speaking effectively for themselves. In the case of legislation against proprietary medicines the very people for whose benefit the legislation is ostensibly demanded, are not asking and never ask for it. The agitation all comes from people who do not use proprietary medicines and who profess not to want to use them. Of course if the