454 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



phasize the prosecutions, and so their effect is lost. Similarly, the 

 postal department could, quite legally, I believe, stamp out the evil 

 alone, if it dared exclude from the mails every periodical containing 

 a single fraudulent quack advertisement; hut how prove its case, and 

 where is the administration which could survive the ensuing clatter 

 about ' usurpation of authority ' and ' freedom of the press ' ? 



Legislation, therefore, can only be secondary to ventilation and the 

 education of public opinion. But how educate public opinion, when 

 its educator, the press, is itself irretrievably allied with the forces of 

 evil? 



First, obviously, such papers as have not prostituted themselves 

 must agitate ; they should expose their brothers' shame and the people's 

 consequent losses. Editor Bolt's recent appeal (in The Ladies' Home 

 Journal) to the women of the land not to let their babies suck in with 

 their milk the alcohol or opium of ' motherhood ' nostrums, and to 

 tear down from fence and barn the quack's advertisement, is the kind 

 of measure that counts. Here, too, is a chance for those wealthy yel- 

 low journals, forever bruiting their own altruism, to whom a ' scoop ' 

 is more necessary than the quack's gold, to expose typical quacks; 

 they make easier handling than the gas and the beef trust, and the 

 attack, no doubt, would yield even richer sensations than the divorce 

 court. Then, public-spirited men of all professions should everywhere 

 organize— as has just been done in Germany — a systematic campaign 

 against quackery. The recent example of an English workingman's 

 society should be followed, and illuminating tracts be circulated by 

 unions and employers. Perhaps the school boards may be free also to 

 level a blow. I know the tendency is to overcram the curriculum, to 

 attempt to arm the child with a petty smatter against every need in 

 life; but if we are going to teach Ivygiene at all, if the possible conse- 

 quences of alcohol and tobacco are to be pointed out, why not lay some 

 stress on a curse just as extensive and no less harmful, one which rests 

 on no natural appetite, but on ignorance and absence of forewarning? 

 At any rate, superintendents of board of education free lectures can 

 include in their admirable courses a few talks on quackery by such 

 qualified experts as Champe S. Andrews, Esq. 



Against measures of this sort the press hardly dares raise its voice, 

 and effective legislation will soon follow as the expression of the pop- 

 ular will. 



Such procedure, it is hoped, may limit the future annals of quack- 

 ery, and hasten that golden age when even the doctors can almost agree 

 with Mrs. Eddy that there is no such matter as disease. 



