Then there is the "reward for proof" that the proprietary will not perform the wonders advertised. The Liquozone Company offer $1,000, I believe, for any germ that Liquozone will not kill. This is a pretty safe offer, because there are no restrictions as to the manner in which the unfortunate germ might be maltreated. If the matter came to an issue, the defendants might put their bacillus in the Liquozone bottle and freeze him solid. If that didn't end him, they could boil the ice and save their money, as thus far no germ has been discovered which can survive the process of being made into soup. Nearly all of the Hall Catarrh Cure advertisements offer a reward of $100 for any case of catarrh which the nostrum fails to cure. It isn't enough, though one hundred times that amount might be worth while; for who doubts that Mr. F. J. Cheney, inventor of the "red clause," would fight for his cure through every court, exhausting the prospective $100 reward of his opponent in the first round? How hollow the "guarantee" pretence is, is shown by a clever scheme devised by Radam, the quack, years ago, when Shreveport was stricken with yellow fever. Knowing that his offer could not be accepted, he proposed to the United States Government that he should eradicate the epidemic by destroying all the germs with Radam's Microbe Killer, offering to deposit $10,000 as a guarantee. Of course, the Government declined on the ground that it had no power to accept such an offer. Meantime, Radam got a lot of free advertising, and his fortune was made.

No little stress is laid on "personal advice" by the patent-medicine companies. This may be, according to the statements of the firm, from their physician or from some special expert. As a matter of fact, it is almost invariably furnished by a $10-a-week typewriter, following out one of a number of "form" letters prepared in bulk for the "personal-inquiry" dupes. Such is the Lydia E. Pinkham method. The Pinkham Company writes me that it is entirely innocent of any intent to deceive people into believing that Lydia E. Pinkham is still alive, and that it has published in several cases statements regarding her demise. It is true that a number of years ago a newspaper forced the Pinkham concern into a defensive admission of Lydia E. Pinkham's death, but since then the main purpose of the Pinkham advertising has been to befool the feminine public into believing that their letters go to a woman—who died nearly twenty years ago of one of the diseases, it is said, which her remedy claims to cure.