rather than to ignorance.

Fighting patent-medicine evils is a civic duty to be accomplished by
civic cooeperation, not private effort. It is impossible to organize
unofficial educational agencies that can offset the cumulative, lying
advertisement. Personal opposition is but the beginning. Official
machinery must be set running and kept running so as to protect the
public health against the commercial motive that preys upon ignorance
and easily inspired faith.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

HEALTH ADVERTISEMENTS THAT PROMOTE HEALTH

It is usually considered futile to attempt to defeat the devil with his
own methods, because he knows so much better how to use them. But abuse
does not do away with use, and the success of quacks in reaching the
people demands our respect. There is no reason why their methods, based
on a knowledge of human nature and human psychology, should not be
employed to appeal to needs rather than to weaknesses. A good thing may
lie unused because of lack of advertisement. Vitality is coming to be
the passion of the American people. It is on this sincere passion that
fakirs have so long traded.

There can be no doubt that advertisements of health-promoting goods are
quite as profitable as health advertisements that injure health, when
equally effective methods are used to make them reach the public. The
tradition has been repeatedly mentioned in this book that the better
the doctor, the less he advertises himself, except in medical and
scientific journals that notoriously fail to reach the people. The same
is too often true of reputable remedies and goods. The theory that
these things stand or fall on their merits is not borne out by
practical experience,--conspicuously in the case of "fake" remedies.
Purely philanthropic undertakings for the advancement of health fail,
if not placed before the people whom they aim to help in an attractive,
convincing form. Failure to advertise a worthy cause limits its
usefulness, and is therefore unjustifiable, whether we speak of
medicine, legal aid, or dental clinics.

An intensive study of the methods used to advertise patent medicines
will suggest means of extending the usefulness of health-promoting
goods. Aside from clever methods of suggestion that lead many people to
take medicine for imaginary ailments, especially seasonal ailments,
patent-remedy advertisers have employed (as an argument for the
efficiency of their cures) scientific theory, bacterial o