QUACKS AND PARENT MEDICINES 501 
Many hotels, public institutions, and well-run house¬ 
holds insist that a prospective servant shall be examined 
by a competent physician before being engaged for work. 
In this way carriers may be detected, and persons with 
germ diseases, like tuberculosis, for instance, are prevented 
from spreading disease either in the food or in the air. 
Children in the schools frequently, have diphtheria germs 
living in their nasal passages or throats, but are not ill. 
After a time a number of children are stricken with the dis¬ 
ease. A doctor then takes a sample of the contents of the 
throat and nose of each child. The bacteria in the mucus 
from the nasal passages- are allowed to grow for twenty-four 
hours in a special preparation called a culture (page 312). 
At the end of that period the cultures are stained and ex¬ 
amined with a high power microscope, and if diphtheria germs 
are present, they are easily seen. If one of the well children 
has these germs, he is treated until they disappear. 
384. Quacks and Patent Medicines. — The term quack is 
applied to a person who pretends to skill or knowledge which 
he does not possess. Technically, a patent medicine is a 
medicine whose composition is a matter of public record, and 
for which letters-patent have been granted which give 
the patentee the exclusive right to the manufacture and 
sale of this product for seventeen years. Colloquially, 
however, a “ patent medicine ” is a remedy, usually secret 
in composition, to which a fancy name has been given and 
that name trade-marked. Such a trade-mark gives to the 
owner a perpetual monopoly on the name while it imposes no 
restrictions on the composition of the product that goes 
under that name. Most so-called patent medicines are of 
the latter type and are really not patented at all. Many 
millions of dollars are spent annually in advertising special 
“ cures ” and mechanical contrivances guaranteed to cure 
diseases for which they can do nothing, or even to cure such 
diseases as cancer, tuberculosis, epilepsy, etc. 
