applicant to
send him a minute description of the symptoms, with two Stamps (6
cts) to pay the return letter, in which he will return his _advice
prescription_, with directions for preparing the medicines &c.

_The Old Doctor_ hopes that those afflicted will not, on account of
delicacy, refrain from consulting him because he makes _No Charge_.
His sole object in advertising is to do all the good he can, before
he dies. He feels that he is justly celebrated for cure of
Consumption, Asthma, Bronchitis, Nervous Affections, Coughs, Colds,
&c.
Address

DOCT. UNCAS BRANT
Box 3531, P.O., New York

This type of an apparently free diagnosis of medical ills, prompted
solely by the benevolence of some elderly or retired person, was a
familiar petty swindle around the middle of the last century. The
newspapers carried many such announcements from retired clergymen, old
nurses, or Indian doctors, frequently persons who had themselves
triumphed over dread diseases and had discovered the best remedies only
after years of search and suffering, always offering to communicate the
secret of recovery to any fellow sufferer. The victim would receive in
reply a recipe for the proper medicine, always with the advice that
great care must be taken to prepare it exactly as directed, and with the
further advice that if the ingredients should not prove to be
conveniently available the benevolent old doctor or retired clergyman
could provide them for a trifling sum. Invariably, the afflicted patient
would discover that the ingredients specified were obscure ones, not
kept by one druggist in a hundred and unknown to most of them. Thus, he
would be obliged, if he persisted in the recommended cure, to send his
money to the kindly old benefactor. Frequently, he would receive no
further reply or, at best, would receive some concoction costing only a
few cents to compound. The scheme was all the safer as it was carried on
exclusively by mail, and the swindler would usually conclude each
undertaking under any given name before investigation could be
initiated.

Besides participating in such schemes, Force apparently devoted a large
part of his energy in collecting accounts due him or, in turn, in being
dunned by and seeking to postpone payment to newspapers with whom he was
delinquent in making settlem