"Othello." Act I.

Carlyle said the world consisted of "so many million people, _mostly
fools_"; and he was right, for to public credulity alone is due the immense
growth of the patent-medicine trade.

It was formerly thought that for each disease, a specific drug could be
found, but this idea is exploded. The doctor determines the exact condition
of his patient, considers how he best may assist nature or prevent death,
and selects suitable drugs. He carefully notes their action and modifies
his treatment as required. The use of set prescriptions for set diseases is
obsolete; the doctor of to-day treats the patient, not the disease.

A few patent medicines are of limited value; many are made up from
prescriptions culled from medical works, and the rest are frauds, like
potato starch. The evil lies in charging from three to four hundred times a
just price, in ascribing to a medicine which may be good for a certain
disorder, a "cure-all" virtue it does not possess, and in inducing ignorant
people to take powerful drugs, reckless of results.

Ephemeral patent-medicine businesses, run by charlatans, whose aim is
frankly to make money before they are exposed, spring up like mushrooms;
and their cunningly worded advertisements meet the eye in the columns of
every paper one opens for a few months; then they drop out, to reappear
under another name, at another address. These rogues buy a few gross pills
from a wholesale druggist, insert a small advertisement, and so lay the
foundations of a profitable business.

The lure of the unknown is turned to account. "The discoverer went back to
the Heart of Nature--and found many rare herbs used by Native Tribes." "The
"Heart of Nature" was probably a single-room office tucked away down a
Fleet Street alley, and analysis proves these medicines contain only common
drugs, one "_Herbal Remedy_" being _metallic_ phosphates.

A common procedure is to send a question form, and, after answering the
query, "What are you suffering from?" with "Neurasthenia", the company
"carefully study" this, and then inform you with a gravity that would grace
the pages of "Punch", "You are the victim of a very intractable type of
Neurasthenia", so intractable in fact that it will need "additional
treatment"--at an "additional" fee.

The quack's advertisements are models of the skilful use of suggestion, and
turn to rare account the half-knowledge of physiology most men pick up from
periodicals.