24 MASS. EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETIN 342 



THE QUACKS AND HOW THEY OPERATE 



Morris Fishbein, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, 

 has said that there is a sucker born every minute and a quack every hour to 

 take care of the sixty suckers; that the old patent medicine quack used to 

 reach his 10,000 while the modern food quack, using high-pressure methods, 

 reaches his 100,000. The accuracy of these statements may be questioned but 

 the implications are correct and worthy of attention. The public today is 

 being exploited by food advertisers more than ever before. Laws can never 

 control the situation completely; the consumer must be well informed and 

 intelligently skeptical if he would protect himself. 



The food quack today uses many of the same devices, modernized, which 

 Wiley 44 encountered in fighting the patent medicine vendors a generation ago. 



Patent medicine makers and sellers hit upon every passing whim and 

 fancy to advertise their goods. The microbe created quite a furor in the 

 public mind, and the nostrums glibly guaranteed to cure the microbe in 

 whatever form he might be or in whatever hiding place this monstrous 

 creature might be found. Germs and bacteria replaced the microbe in 

 the public interest and medicines sallied forth to attack germs and 

 bacteria. 



Wiley also encountered difficulties which are remarkably modern in tone. 



One of my hardest tasks in fighting the fake medical fraternity was to 

 overcome the support given them by their own dupes and by the press. 

 Testimonials were easily obtained for a price, as they are today for var- 

 ious products. Obscure and little-known doctors as well as preachers, 

 teachers, and men and women in all walks of life, were exploited as 

 endorsers of nostrums. The patent medicine manufacturers furnished a 

 great bulk of the average newspaper's advertising, and therefore its 

 income. Advertising contracts were held as clubs over the heads of the 

 editors and publishers, and many newspapers were definitely under the 

 influence of the quacks. 



The typical food quack lecturer or pseudo health promoter usually has poise, 

 personality and persuasion, which qualities assure him of a hearing and a goodly 

 number of converts. His plausible arguments and glib use of scientific terms 

 inspire false confidence. The letters usually found after his name may be fake 

 degrees given by third-rate institutions sometimes founded for the express 

 purpose of conferring the degree, or bona-fide degrees given by reputable insti- 

 tutions whose professional and ethical standards he has long since forsaken. 

 His pseudo-scientific explanations of nutrition and physiology abound in quo- 

 tations from authentic sources, sometimes misinterpreted, sometimes used 

 correctly along with misleading statements to give the whole an air of authority. 

 The insidious mixture of the true and false is always more difficult to interpret 

 correctly than the glaringly false. The clever quack is well aware of popular 

 interest in the scientific and he works accordingly. Of all quacks the food 

 faddist is the most prolific because he gets the biggest following — his is a profit- 

 able business. He makes converts faster than scientific knowledge can be 

 broadcast because the scientist is conservative and tries to be accurate — the 

 food faddist quite the opposite. Put out of one state, he starts in another; put 

 off the air in the United States, he starts up his own high-powered broadcasting 

 station in another country and keeps on selling his products in the United 

 States. There is less provision for censorship of radio advertising than of 

 printed material sent through the mails. 



Wiley, H. \V. Autobiography, Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis, 1°30. 



