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Address * * * * * *
WEAK MEN
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The list of lewd and brazen manifestoes might be indefinitely extended, but as they all bear the same disgusting ear-marks, the foregoing must suffice. As for the pamphlets sent through the mails in "sealed envelopes" by these harpies, the following titles will sufficiently indicate their character: "The Friend in Need;" "A Medical Work on Marriage;" "The Tonic Elixir;" "The Silent Friend;" "Manhood;" "A Cure for All;" "The Self Cure of Nervous Debility;" "The Self-adjusting Curative;" "New Medical Guide;" "Debility, its Cause and Cure;" "A Warning Voice;" "Second Life," and scores of others of a similar stamp. This disgusting literature corrupts and pollutes the mind and morals of a large class of people who have not the courage to disbelieve its monstrous exaggerations, or the good sense to despise its revolting indecencies. Nor is this strange, when we reflect that the reading of even a standard medical work has a tendency to excite belief in the reader that he is afflicted with the malady whose grim description he is perusing. His apprehension being alarmed and his imagination excited, he has no difficulty in detecting all or a great many of the symptoms in himself, although at the same time none of them may exist. The quack, in his advertisements and publications, frequently warns the reader against quacks and quackery, as, for instance, take the following cheeky extract:
"The object in writing these pages is to teach the public at large to discriminate between the legitimate, duly-qualified practitioner and the legion of charlatans who infest every important city and town of the United States, and particularly New York. That this is a subject of the gravest importance cannot for a moment be doubted when it is considered that, dating from our entrance into the world, 'from the cradle to the grave,' we too often require the valuable services of the accoucheur, doctor, surgeon, or physician, in consequence of departing from Nature's laws, increased state of civilization, and overtaxed condition of the mental and bodily systems, necessitating from time to time the knowledge and attendance of the medical man. Under these circumstances it behooves each individual to be placed on his guard, so as to be made cognizant of the means to detect the nefarious, unqualified, and dishonest charlatans, in order to save the one in search of health from falling in their meshes, and thus jeopardize the welfare of his nearest and dearest objects. The laws of the country, public opinion, and private information, have and are doing much to save the reputations of those who have made choice of the medical profession, thereby exposing themselves to be placed on a level with some with whose names we will not soil our pages, nor indirectly offer the advantages of publicity, for it has well been remarked that to be mentioned with disparagement is to these preferable to not being mentioned at all, and thus it very often happens that the veil to hide a motive is so flimsy that even the uninitiated are unable to catch a glimpse at the mystery within."
Here are the strains of another disinterested Mentor in the same field, who once had an office on West Twenty-second street in New York City: