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Part III

SPECIAL IMMIGRANT PROBLEMS

VIII

THE MEDICAL QUACK

WHEN the immigrant falls seriously sick the first hope of a cure is apt to come to him through the promises of a medical quack. This would-be friend reaches the immigrant in his home through the foreignlanguage paper and, like most things in this new land, is taken on faith.

In nearly all foreign-language newspapers medical advertisements appear. A few of them are the legitimate professional business cards of ethical foreign-born doctors, announcing their presence to people of their own race. Most of them, however, are inserted by quack doctors, quack companies, chemical companies or laboratories, for a purely commercial purpose, which is to amass fortunes by cheating the immigrant.

To be sure, “quackery and the love of being quacked are in human nature as weeds are in our own fields," and quacks conduct a certain amount of business among our native-born and English-speaking people. But their activities among native born have been checked somewhat by exposure of their methods in certain papers and magazines, and they have turned their attention to the fertile field of our immigrant population. Quack advertising in American newspapers has decreased, while in the foreign

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language newspapers it has enormously increased, during the past five years. Let us remember that to the immigrant newspapers are to some extent organs of authority as they are not to the native born. Abroad, it is not so easy for private individuals to perpetrate frauds upon fellow citizens through the medium of the press. A Russian doctor in Chicago writes: 1

Foreigners, as a rule, do not differentiate between the regular physician (in America) who does not advertise and the advertising quack. Quite the opposite; they look upon the advertising charlatans with considerably greater respect than upon the regular physician, as in their childish simplicity they look upon everything printed in the newspapers as absolute truth. They do not understand even that an advertisement is written and paid for by the advertiser, and innocently think it is the newspaper that praises those physicians because they are so good.

If the immigrants could follow in imagination the stream of their money as it flows past the newspaper publishers, past the men who furnish the drugs, past the quacks themselves in their comfortable automobiles and mansions, seeing them all grow rich as they grow poor, they would read with harder hearts and more active brains the glowing promises of the "doctors."

We must inquire what really happens when the sick or ailing immigrant reads in his own language, in the newspaper of his own people, in his adopted land (remember it is the promised land of his ideals), the advertisement of the quack. How much is he

1 Henry R. Krasnow, M.D., The Foreigner a Prey of Medical Quacks, Illinois Medical Journal, 32: 342 Nov. 1917.

helped or injured, how much is he doped and bled by the quack doctor, the fraud office, the worthless or harmful nostrum bought at the drug store or ordered by mail?

UNSCRUPULOUS METHODS

Twelve hundred and thirty-three of the newspapers published in the United States are printed in some language other than English. Think of it! In 1828 only eight hundred newspapers all counted were published in our country. And now the American foreign-language press is half again as great in numbers and probably has as many readers as there were then people in the whole United States.

In August, 1918, we wrote to about a hundred foreign-language newspapers asking: (1) for copies of their latest issues, (2) for their advertising rates for medical advertisements, and (3) whether they published an almanac or calendar. The price of the papers was inclosed.

Most of the newspapers sent the desired copies, and a few other foreign-language papers were bought, adding to the number examined. About twenty-six returned advertising rates. A few replied that they published no medical advertisements. One publisher asked to see copy before quoting prices, as he did not accept all medical advertisements. Eight almanacs and calendars were secured.

All the medical advertisements were clipped from these foreign-language newspapers. They amounted to over seven hundred and were printed in eighteen languages. This is a cross section of the medical advertisements in more than one hundred leading

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