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CHAPTER XXXVIII

HEALTH ADVERTISEMENTS THAT PROMOTE

HEALTH

It is usually considered futile to attempt to defeat the devil with his own methods, because he knows so much better how to use them. But abuse does not do away with use, and the success of quacks in reaching the people demands our respect. There is no reason why their methods, based on a knowledge of human nature and human psychology, should not be employed to appeal to needs rather than to weaknesses. A good thing may lie unused because of lack of advertisement. Vitality is coming to be the passion of the American people. It is on this sincere passion that fakirs have so long traded.

There can be no doubt that advertisements of healthpromoting goods are quite as profitable as health advertisements that injure health, when equally effective methods are used to make them reach the public. The tradition has been repeatedly mentioned in this book that the better the doctor, the less he advertises himself, except in medical and scientific journals that notoriously fail to reach the people. The same is too often true of reputable remedies and goods. The theory that these things stand or fall on their merits is not borne out by practical experience, — conspicuously in the case of "fake" remedies. Purely philanthropic undertakings for the advancement of health fail, if not placed before the people whom they aim to help in an attractive, convincing form. Failure to advertise a worthy cause limits its usefulness, and is therefore unjustifiable, whether we speak of medicine, legal aid, or dental clinics.

An intensive study of the methods used to advertise patent medicines will suggest means of extending the usefulness of health-promoting goods. Aside from clever methods of suggestion that lead many people to take medicine for imaginary ailments, especially seasonal ailments, patentremedy advertisers have employed (as an argument for the efficiency of their cures) scientific theory, bacterial origin of diseases, recent medical or physiological discoveries, and state and national movements for promoting health. In fact, they have turned to their own uses the very law that seeks to control them and the exposures that seek to exterminate them. Whatever may be the merits of Castoria, the "Don't Poison Baby" advertisement on the following page, printed just after the accompanying " Babies Killed by Patent Medicines," which appeared in a home journal, was surely a clever bit of advertising. Upon an editorial in a daily paper on the relation of eyeglasses to headache and indigestion, an optician based a promise of immediate relief for these ailments if he himself were patronized. The recent investigations of the Department of Agriculture, and of Professors Chittenden and Fisher in regard to foodstuffs, are proving helpful to food quacks and advertisers of pills for constipation and indigestion. Since the passage of the Pure Food Law one health food is advertised in a column headed "Pure Food."

When the season for pneumonia comes around numer ous medicines are "sure cures" for grippe and pneumonia. "Rosy teachers look better in the schoolroom than the sallow sort," is surely a good introduction to a new food. Woman's vanity sells many a remedy advertised to counteract the "vandal hand of disease, which robs her of her beauty, yellows and muddies her complexion, lines her face, pales cheek and lip, dulls the brilliancy of her eye, which it disfigures with dark circles, aging her before her time." Who in your town is as good a friend to "owners of bad breath" as the advertiser who tells them that they "whiff out odor which makes

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FOR ORTY YEARS AGO almost every mother thought her child must have PAREGORIO or laudanum to make it sleep. These drugs will produce sleep, and A FEW DROPS TOO MANY will produce the SLEEP FROM WHICH THERE IS NO WAKING. Many are the children who have been killed or whose health has been ruined for life by paregoric, laudanum and morphine, each

Babies Killed by "Patent Medicines"

Their Well-Meaning Parents Just "Gave Them a Little Something"
to Soothe Them or Make Them Sleep.-and They Slept!

IS bad enough to have peoJe who have reached years I discretion use "patent cines" recklessly; still, if come to grief it is their own

unless all the blame may airly charged to the manu rers. But what about the ts? Whose fault if they [?

yw many parents ever stop
ink whether there may be
harm in giving their little
any of the ready-made stuff
can be bought without the
er of asking a doctor what
children really need? How
y know that grave dangers
id such carelessness?
>parently few.

Enormous

atities of "patent medicines" sold year after year. Yet is more than one so-called dy for infantile diseases h has proved to be deadly. how deadly nobody will ever w, because, unfortunately, doctors show a strange un. ngness to make public those which ought to be known ses which have proved fatal

EAR the close of 1905 a baby in Baltimore appeared to be ring from indigestion. His her supposed she was doing sly, the right thing when took a bottle of "patent Scine" and administered the xer dose. Here was someg designed especially for little What need to send for a or when this was so conent and sure to cure? But what followed. It is the

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Mthree deaths in Cleve

ENTION has been ma

due to the use of one kin medicine, but that is not the one that has proved da ous in that city Last sur a doctor was called to atte girl eight months old who been restless all night. Qu his experienced eyes det evidence of the use of opiate. The parents, b questioned, said that they given the child a few dos [a "patent medicine"], lef trial by a woman agent, whe it would strengthen the 1 It did not; it killed her.

You

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YOU do not find these confined to one locality. iniquity extends across the nent, as shown by this ca Seattle, Washington. In Au 1905, a doctor was calle attend a six-months-old He found her in a deep e "What have you given b he asked the mother. known "patent medicine" mentioned The stuff cant sold in England unless is the word POISON printed spicuously upon the label. child had taken one dose i morning and another eleven or twelve o'clock, hour or two before the sig death alarmed the mothe caused her to summon aid, doctor did all he could, b baby died in fifteen or t minutes from "acute mor poisoning."

those standing near them turn their heads away in disgust"? The climax of effective educational advertising as well as of consummate presumption and villainy is reached in the notice. of an alcoholic concoction that uses the headline, "Medical Supervision Needed to Prevent the Spread of Consumption in the Schools." Thus grafting itself on the successful results of the medical examination in the Massachusetts schools, it enlists the aid of teachers, trades on the fear of tuberculosis, even indorses the fresh-air treatment. So convincing was this appeal that it was reprinted in the

news columns of a daily paper in New York as official advice to school children.

So clever are these methods of advertising and so successful are they in reaching great numbers of people, that if reputable physicians would take lessons of them, they might conduct a health crusade that would exterminate tuberculosis, diminish the use of alcohol and tobacco, and save thousands of babies that die unnecessarily. The theory of patentmedicine advertising is sound. It emphasizes the joys of health, the beauty of health, the earning power of health. It adapts its message to season, event, and need. It offers testimonials of real persons cured. It is all-appealing, promising, convincing, a fearful menace to health when the remedies offered are dishonest, a universal opportunity for promoting health if the cure is genuine.

A classic example of health advertising that promotes health is Sapolio. The various hygiene lessons that have promoted Sapolio have done much to raise the standard of living in the United States. Few eminent physicians have done so much for public health as the "Poor M.D. of Spotless Town who scoured the country for miles around, but the only case he could find was a case of Sapolio."

Recent press discussions about furnishing free eyeglasses to the children in the public schools have so enlightened people as to the need for expert examination of their eyes that opticians will be forced to employ competent oculists to make the preliminary examination and to see that the glasses are properly adjusted. In spite of the long miseducation by makers of corsets, the persistent advertising of good health" and "common-sense" waists has gained an increasing number of recruits from the ranks of the selfpersecuting. It is only a matter of time when the term stylish" will be transferred to the advocates of health, because advertisers who tell the truth will, if persistent, gain a larger patronage than advertisers of falsehoods; there

is profit in retaining old customers. The advertisement of a window device for "Fresh air while you sleep" will make prevention of tuberculosis more profitable than "sure cures " that lie and kill.

A man deserves profit who sends this message to millions of readers :

There are three kinds of cleanliness:

First, the ordinary soap-and-water cleanliness.
Second, the so-called "beauty" cleanliness.

Third, prophylactic cleanliness, or the cleanliness that "guards against disease."

But the man who sells soap ought to be the one to use this advertisement, not a man who sells toothwash that, when pure, is little better than water, that is seldom pure, and that always hurts the teeth. Many children and adults are being cured of flat foot by men who make money by selling shoes designed to strengthen the arch of the foot. Millions would never know how to discover the evil effects upon themselves of coffee and alcohol except for money-making advertisements. Little Jo's Smile taught a nation that the majority of crippled children are victims of neglect on the part of adult consumptives.

Certain it is that advertising is an art promoted by the severest competition of the cleverest brains. It is a force which we cannot afford to ignore. If we can harness it to the promotion of aids to health, it will do more good than all the hygiene books ever written. To this end we must educate ourselves to distinguish between goods which do what they profess to do and those which do not. A good eye opener would be to keep for a week clippings from a high-priced daily paper, a penny daily paper, and one or two representative magazines, including a religious paper. Teachers and parents can very easily interest children in such clippings. Moreover, they can use the bulletin method,

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