It is not unusual, for instance, for “proprietary” preparations to be foisted on the medical profession until a certain number of testimonials (of doubtful value, it is true, but still testimonials) have been ingeniously wheedled out of physicians and the product rather generously prescribed. When this objective point has been reached the manufacturer comes into the open and advertises the nostrum to the public direct and the testimonials previously given for the “proprietary” are used as advertising assets for the “patent medicine.”
Then again there are certain preparations which are “proprietaries” or “patent medicines” according to the location. On one side of the Atlantic the product is advertised to physicians only, while on the other side it runs indiscriminately on the billboards and in the newspapers. One of the best examples of this last class is Kutnow’s Powder. In England, where it originated, this preparation, which “dissolves and eliminates uric acid,” is consistently lined up with Beecham’s Pills and Pink Pills for Pale People. Full-page newspaper advertisements announce the fact that free samples will be
“SENT TO ALL APPLICANTS”
In the United States, however, Kutnow’s have learned from their wide advertising experience that a cheaper and surer way of introducing a nostrum to the public is to advertise it to the medical profession only. By means of advertisements in medical journals (whose space is much less expensive than that of the daily papers) and the liberal distribution of samples which are
“SENT FREE TO PHYSICIANS ONLY”
the medical profession becomes the unpaid “barker” for the nostrum manufacturer. At present, therefore, Kutnow’s Powder is—in the United States—an ethical (!) “proprietary.”
There exists in this country, as most of our readers know, an organization of “patent medicine” manufacturers whose “reason for being” is to get full value received for the $40,000,000 paid annually in advertising nostrums in the newspapers of the country. This organization is known as the Proprietary Association of America. The now familiar “red clause” in the advertising contracts by which the newspaper forfeits its contract if state laws are enacted that are inimical to the “patent medicine” interests, is a creation of this organization and has been most effective in making the newspapers the unpaid lobbyists of the nostrum interests. The “silence clause” is another “joker” in the contracts by which the agreement is canceled if matter detrimental to the nostrum “is permitted to appear in the reading columns” of the paper. It is little wonder that with such weapons the “patent medicine” manufacturer has assumed an arrogance that is as disgusting as it is serious.
Great Britain, too, has its “patent medicine” men’s organization, which is known as the Proprietary Articles Trades Association. Of both these honorable bodies Mr. S. Kutnow of Kutnow Brothers, Ltd., is, or was, a conspicuous member. At a recent meeting of the British organization, Mr. Kutnow worked himself into a fine frenzy of indignation because of some articles that had appeared in the Pharmaceutical Journal of London on the subject of “Secret Remedies and Proprietaries.” As these articles did not specifically mention Kutnow’s Powder, and as evidence was directed against only those preparations as were most disreputable, it is evident that Mr. Kutnow now appraises his own product at its face value. He gave his opinion of the Pharmaceutical Journal and told the meeting that when the advertising man for that journal solicited advertising he refused to have any more dealings with him owing to the articles that had appeared in the Pharmaceutical Journal. He declared that he was quite independent of any newspaper or journal, and was able to take care of himself.
Therein Mr. Kutnow is mistaken; he is not independent of newspapers and journals. On the contrary, he and others of his ilk are most subserviently dependent on them. Let reputable papers and medical journals refuse, for but one year, to carry the high-flown advertisements of his Anglo-American Patent-Proprietary, and his firm would perforce seek some worthier, if less profitable, line of business.