CHAPTER XV.
REMEDIES FOR EAR DISEASE
AND DEAFNESS.
Some of the advertisements most frequently seen headed “Deafness cured,” “Eyes and Ears,” “Eye Diseases cured,” etc., do not refer to nostrums obtainable in the usual way through patent medicine dealers. The reader of the announcement is invited to write to the address given for particulars of special remedies, or an “interesting and convincing book post free,” dealing with the cure of diseases without operation, etc. Application for particulars brings much printed matter recommending the advertiser’s method, accompanied by a set of questions to be answered by the sufferer. If these answers are supplied and the fee demanded paid, medicine of some sort is sent. Medicines sold in this way, of which many other instances have been given in previous chapters, form a special class of “secret remedies,” and might be said, perhaps, to come rather under the head of prescribing at a distance, but it is, to say the least, very doubtful whether the composition of the medicines supplied is modified according to the answers given to the questions, and the two kinds of quackery are not sharply separated. In the case of the preparations now to be described, one or two belong more nearly to the class just referred to than to that of ordinary “patent medicines.”
We meet again the benevolent gentleman who having cured himself offers “to send particulars of remedy free,” but eventually sells his treatment at a price which would seem to represent no bad profit on the outlay for materials.
We also meet the dealer who to encourage the possible buyer sends a reduced price coupon only asking in return for the names and addresses of two or three friends who suffer in like manner.
ALFRED CROMPTON’S SPECIFIC
FOR DEAFNESS.
This so-called specific, prepared in a town in the north of England, is sold in a bottle containing half a fluid ounce, and costing 1s. 1½d.
The label on the outside of the package was headed:
Deafness Cured!
and continues:
Alfred Crompton’s Specific for Deafness, Noises in the Ears, &c., is decidedly the best remedy out for this most annoying complaint. A single Bottle has in most instances effected a speedy and permanent cure.