ud on'y call him in
befure they got sick he'd abolish ivry disease in th' ward except
old age and pollyticks.

Thus Mr. Dooley with his usual wit and insight tells the American
people why they spend over two hundred million dollars annually on
patent medicines. Americans consume more drugs and use more patent
medicines than the people of any other country on the civilized globe.
Self-medication has grown to tremendous proportions. Everywhere--in
cars, on transfers, on billboards, in magazines, in newspapers, in the
mails--are advertised medicines to cure disease and devices to promote
health. When we consider that electric cars contain from thirty-two to
fifty-two advertisements each, three fourths of which are directly or
indirectly concerned with health; when we multiply these by the number
of cars actually in use in American cities; when we consider the number
of advertisements in magazines and daily papers, and the enormous
circulation of these papers and magazines; when we consider that an
increasingly large proportion of advertising space is devoted to
health,--we begin to realize the cumulative power for good or for evil
that health advertisements must have.

To illustrate advertisements devoted to health to-day, I have kept
clippings for one week of news items, editorials, and advertisements in
a penny and a three-cent paper, and had them classified according to
the subjects treated:

===================+=========================+========================
| PENNY PAPER | THREE-CENT PAPER
+------+---------+--------+-----+---------+--------
| News |Editorial| Adver- | News|Editorial| Adver-
| Item | |tisement| Item| |tisement
-------------------+------+---------+--------+-----+---------+--------
Milk | 3 | -- | 2 | 3 | -- | 2
Teeth | -- | 1 | 2 | -- | -- | 1
Shoes | -- | -- | 4 | -- | -- | 1
Food | 1 | -- | -- | 1 | -- | 4
Alcohol | 1 | -- | 5 | 3 | -- | 7
Tuberculosis | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | -- | --
Patent medicine | -- | -- | 17 | -- | -- | --
Constipation cures | -- | -- | 4 | -- | -- | 5
Eyes | 3 | -- | 5 | 1 | -- | --
Beauty