OCR Text |
Show PATENT MEDICINE AND BLACKMAILING. Many of the blackmailing cases that crop up in all parts of the country can be traced directly to patent medicine advertisements. Most of the patent pat-ent medicine mongers belong to a combination that sells or exchanges the names and addresses of patients. When a person is weak enough to answer one of the advertisements, a series of so-called so-called medical questions is forwarded. Filled out and signed, this "information blank" contains statements that a man or woman would hesitate to intrust to a father confessor or a family physician. With this information which cannot be disputed as it is in the handwriting of and signed by the patient the advertiser is In a position to demand hush money. Then, by comparing and conjoining the "Information blanks" from persons living in the same town or neighborhood, the materials for social scandals are obtained. One advertiser receives re-ceives a "blank" from a husband; another in a different city, professing to cure a different disease dis-ease secures a "blank" from a wife. Put together togeth-er at the headquarters of the combination, nere is a stoiy which those concerned will pay liberally to keep out of the papers. This explains why many patent medicine advertisers offer to give their treatment free; they can well afford the cost of the alleged medicine if they can get possession of the "information blanks." Send for a doctor when you are ill is old, but sound advice; if you have lost faith m physicians, send to the best drugstore and take your chances of alleviation or cure in the remedy prescribed by the pharmacy clerk. To deal with the patent medicine combination is to invite blackmailing. But the majority of the victims are not persons who are ill, but who are suffering from the natural nat-ural results of old age, and this makes the blackmailing black-mailing business more easy and more dangerous. Town Topics. |