He claimed to be able to cure any human ill, and particularly emphasized his ability to cure consumption, Bright's disease, diabetes, epilepsy, asthma, stomach troubles, nervous prostration, blindness, female diseases, paralysis, heart and kidney diseases.
He, of course, does not state the nature of his remedy. It consists of a liquid which is dropped into the eye, and the procedure is the same, no matter what disease afflicts the patient. It is not essential to write at length his explanation of the way in which this "marvelous discovery" effects its cures. Suffice it to say, that it is a tissue of anatomical and physiological misrepresentation. He admittedly is uneducated and possesses absolutely no knowledge of even elementary medicine. His explanation is, therefore, to a medical mind, a ludicrous and an absurd attempt to tell what he does not understand. Of course, his explanation is not supposed to fall into the hands of a physician, and to a lay person, who understands as little as he does, it sounds all right. We must again fall back on the foolish claims he makes and on the basis of common sense we fail to understand how anyone can believe such stuff. Yet the woman who firmly believes that her cough was cured by this man has enthusiastically recommended the nostrum to a number of other women who have various ailments, all of whom are using it under her experienced instructions.
This is a very good illustration of how these impostors and charlatans succeed. This woman was approached at the psychological moment and was influenced to buy. It did not necessarily have to be these drops. It might just as well have been any other patent medicine, or any fake cure. It would have worked just the same for the reason that it was the climate of Florida that did the work. It is absurd to devote time even to consider the probability of the drops having aided in the cure. This man's whole scheme is a fake, pure and simple. No part of it has any merit. In other words, his remedy is no remedy at all, it is simply the mildest, ordinary eye wash, which may be bought in any drug store for ten cents. He charges $5.00, but think of the story he writes, think of the promises he gives and the claims he makes, and the paper he prints,—these all cost money and time and labor, and you must pay for them. And I know a woman who is putting these drops in her eye twice daily in the hope of correcting a displaced womb. Could the brain of the most facile weaver of romance conceive a more utterly absurd and pitiful condition of affairs than that an adult human being should be guilty of doing what an intelligent ant would not do under any circumstances?
When the "professor" claims that he refuses to "give up" his secret unless the State of Kansas adequately remunerates him for it, which, of course, it rightly refuses to do—he demonstrates how absolutely devoid of horse sense he is. No man with a "cure" for consumption—without mentioning the many other equally remunerative "cures" which this wizard owns, and which may be appended to the consumption "cure" just as the side-shows journey in the wake of the big circus—need waste his precious time dickering with the unappreciative State of Kansas. If his "cure" is anywhere near twenty-four carat gold he can own the State of Kansas and he may add another one to it for good measure. Any man capable of doing one-thousandth part of what this wily "professor" claims to be able to do, would make so much money that it would embarrass him all the rest of his life. One of his claims is that he can cure epilepsy. If he could cure epilepsy he wouldn't be allowed to stay twenty-four hours in the State of Kansas. Every civilized country on the face of the earth would bid for his services as an economic necessity because as an investment he would be cheap at any price.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE PATENT MEDICINE EVIL—Continued
The —— Consumption Cure—Personals to Consumptives—Nature's Creation—Female Weakness Cures—Various Compounds and Malt Whiskies.