The serum “cannot be made up by the barrel and sold at wholesale or retail”:
“If it could be bottled and stored and sold at retail like a patent medicine, the demand for it as a complexion beautifier alone would net the proprietor millions. More than one person a few days after taking the treatment has been wrongly accused of painting.”
Should any of The Journal readers decide to take the $100 mail-order course in “Auto-Hemic Therapy” he should realize that even after he has done so there are certain restrictions in the practice of this “therapy.” In no case must he administer “a course of Auto-Hemic Treatment” for “less than $100, paid in advance.” The only exceptions to this rule are “cases of absolute charity, expectant mothers and to persons positively unable to pay that amount.” Furthermore, Dr. Rogers says that for the reputation of his method, as well as for the good of all concerned, “I insist that the entire fee be paid in advance and that the course extend over a period of one year whether the patient needs few or many treatments.”
DOLLARS AND CENTS
For those who do not wish to take the mail-order course, Rogers offers to prepare individual specimens of the “serum” from blood that is sent to him by the physician. The cost of this “serum” is $5.00, “in advance,” of course.
Still emphasizing the commercial side, “Auto-Hemic Therapy” is especially recommended to “the general practitioner growing old and the physician who is ambitious to build up a creditable and lucrative practice” because “the health of four people out of five (old or young, whether they consider themselves sick or well) taken at random can be improved by this method of treatment”! An Ohio physician was said to have doubled his $3,000 practice in two years after starting the “Auto-Hemic” method. A Virginia physician is alleged to have “increased his income $10,000 a year.” A Pennsylvania physician urged by Rogers to send $150.00 for the mail-order course, was assured that this “is merely a nominal amount, as most of the doctors have been able to get this amount back the first month.”
But enough. The story, were it not for the tragic element that forms the background, would be amusing. But it is tragic!—(From The Journal A.M.A., Feb. 14, 1920.)