532 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



It may be said, I think with propriety, that the passage of 

 this Act was a distinct indication of the scientific progress 

 made in the United States in applying science to sanitation 

 and public morality. The passage of this law — in which I took 

 an active part — and its enforcement — in which I have played 

 a subordinate part — have called to my attention the different 

 obstacles which had to be overcome, in the first place, in the 

 enactment of the law and which still remain to be overcome 

 to secure its full enforcement. The way of scientific progress 

 will become more obvious if the obstacles which have been 

 and are being encountered are pointed out. The first great 

 obstacle to legislation of this kind was individual and corporate 

 greed. People who were making money by misrepresentation 

 and by the addition of drugs to foods did not at all fancy a 

 public discussion of their methods nor legal regulation of their 

 business. This was true as regards trade in both foods and 

 drugs. It was especially true of that very large class of 

 Americans that makes money by selling drugs to the laity 

 or by practising medicine in absentia. There are many people 

 in our country, more perhaps than in any other, without any 

 medical training whatever or only of the most superficial kind, 

 who venture to practise medicine by advertising in the news- 

 papers and magazines and by circulars distributed through the 

 mails to the people at large. These advertisements and circulars 

 depict in the most vivid and horrible manner those symptoms of 

 insidious diseases, those symptoms which perhaps are but the 

 common slight departures from an ordinary state of health. In 

 this way they work upon the fears of the uninformed and easily 

 find access to their pockets. A law which proposed in any 

 way to restrict practices of this kind and to require vendors 

 of the so-called remedies to cease misrepresenting them excited 

 most violent and vigorous opposition from this class of our 

 citizens. Banded together in compact organisation, being also 

 in command of abundance of money and able to patronise 

 the press of the country by advertising liberally in the 

 papers, they held a vantage ground from which it was 

 difficult to dislodge them. Up to the very end, the lobby 

 representing their interests was to be found in Washington ; 

 every means known to them of modifying or minimising the 

 requirements to be made of their trade was resorted to up to 

 the last moment. 



