[The following article is reproduced, by permission, from Collier's Weekly, Nov. 17, 1906.]
"STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL."
What Becomes of Letters Written "In Confidence" to "Patent Medicine" Firms and Quacks.
When you write to a patent-medicine house or a quack doctor, whose advertisements solicit letters of inquiry about your health, the reply in nine cases out of ten will address you in an intimate personal way, as "Dear Friend," or "Esteemed friend." And the reply will be marked, in conspicuous letters, "Strictly confidential," even, in some cases, "Sacredly confidential." Every art is used to make the dupe believe his letters are kept safely locked in hidden archives, where the things he has said about his health, his affairs, and his person are carefully guarded from any eyes but the so-called "doctor's."
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Now the truth about what really happens to these letters is eloquently told by the documents reproduced herewith. When the patent-medicine man, or the quack, has, in the language of their shops, "jollied" the dupe along with false hopes and lying promises until even he becomes suspicious, and he can no longer be induced to send another dollar for another bottle of medicine, then his letter is sold to some other quack who pretends to cure the same disease. That quack coaxes as much money as he can from the victim, and then turns him over to a third; and so the dupe is passed along, in many cases, for several years.
To facilitate this exchange of letters among the quacks there are five or six so-called letter-brokers. They are really clearing-houses where patent-medicine frauds and quack doctors exchange, sell, and rent letters. On Vandewater street, New York, is a big warehouse owned by one of these letter-brokers, Frank B. Swett. In that warehouse are over seven million let-
