Yet we are told how "Sacredly Confidential" these letters are regarded and held. (The advertisement is from the Mail Order Journal, April, 1905.)
Says Mr. Sullivan: "One of these brokers assured me he could give me 'choice lots' of 'medical female letters'... Let me now give you, from the printed lists of these 'letter brokers' some idea of the way in which these 'sacredly confidential' letters are hawked about the country. Here are a few samples, all that are really printable:
"'55,000 Female Complaint Letters' Is the sum total of one Item, and the list gives the names of the "medicine company" or the "medical institute" to whom they were addressed. Here is a barter, then, in 55,000 letters of a private nature, each one of which, the writer was told, and had a right to expect, would be regarded as sacredly confidential by the "doctor" or concern to whom she had been deluded into telling her private ailments. Yet here they are for half a cent each!
"Another batch of some 47,000 letters addressed to five 'doctors' and 'institutes' is emphasized because they were all written by women! A third batch is:
"'44,000 Bust Developer Letters'—letters which one man in a "patent medicine" concern told me were "the richest sort of reading you could get hold of."
"A still further lot offers: '40,000 Women's Regulator Letters'—letters which in their context any woman can naturally imagine would be of the most delicate nature. Still, the fact remains, here thy are for sale."
Is not this contemptible?
In the same article Mr. Sullivan exposes the inhuman greed of patent medicine concerns that turn into cold cash the letters of patients afflicted with the most vital diseases.
To quote Mr. Sullivan again: "All these are made the subject of public barter. Here are offered for sale, for example: 7,000 Paralysis Letters; 9,000 Narcotic Letters; 52,000 Consumption Letters; 3,000 Cancer Letters, and even 65,000 Deaf Letters. Of diseases of the most private nature one is offered here nearly one hundred thousand letters—letters the very classification of which makes a sensitive person shudder."