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Properly, a "cure" known as Bioplasm belongs in this list, but so ingenious are its methods that it deserves some special attention. In some of the New York papers a brief advertisement, reading as follows, occupies a conspicuous position:
"After suffering for ten years the torture that only an ataxic can know, Mr. E. P. Burnham, of Delmar, N.Y., has been relieved of all pain and restored to health and strength, and the ability to resume his usual pursuits, by an easily obtained and inexpensive treatment which any druggist can flourish. To any fellow-sufferer who mails him a self-addressed envelope Mr. Burnham sends free this prescription which cured him.—Adv.
Now, people who give away something for nothing, and spend money advertising for a chance to do it, are as rare in the patent medicine business as out of it, and Delmar, N.Y., is not included in any map of Altruria that I have learned of. E. P. Burnham, therefore, seemed worth writing to. The answer came back promptly, inclosing the prescription and explaining the advertiser's purpose:
"My only motive in the notice which caught your attention is to help other sufferers. You owe me nothing. I have nothing to sell. When you are benefited, however, if you feel disposed and able to send me a contribution to assist me in making this great boon to our fellow-sufferers better known it will be thankfully received and used for that purpose."
I fear that Mr. Burnham doesn't make much money out of grateful correspondents who were cured of locomotor ataxia by his prescription, because locomotor ataxia is absolutely and hopelessly incurable. Where Mr. Burnham gets his reward, I fancy, is from the Bioplasm Company, of 100 William Street, New York, whose patent medicine is prescribed for me. I should like to believe that his "only motive is to help other sufferers," but as I find, on investigation, that the advertising agents who handle the "Burnham" account are the Bioplasm Company's agents, I am regretfully compelled to believe that Mr. Burnham, instead of being of the tribe of the good Samartian, is probably an immediate relative of Ananias. The Bioplasm Company also proposes to cure consumption, and is worthy of a conspicuous place in the Fraud's Gallery of Nostrums.
Even the skin of the Ethiop is not exempt from the attention of the quacks. A colored correspondent writes, asking that I "give a paragraph to these frauds who cater to the vanity of those of my race who insult their Creator in attempting to change their color and hair," and incloses a typical advertisement of "Lustorene," which "straightens kinky, nappy, curly hair," and of "Lustorone Face Bleach," which "whitens the darkest skin" and will "bring the skin to any desired shade or color." Nothing could better illustrate to what ridiculous lengths the nostrum fraud will go. Of course, the Lustorone business is fraudulent. Some time since a Virginia concern, which advertised to turn negroes white, was suppressed by the Postoffice Department, which might well turn its attention to Lustorone Face Bleach.
There are being exploited in this country to-day more than 100 cures for diseases that are absolutely beyond the reach of drugs. They are owned by men who know them to be swindles, and who in private conversation will almost always evade the direct statement that their nostrums will "cure" consumption, epilepsy, heart disease and ailments of that nature. Many of them "guarantee" their remedies. They will return your money if you aren't satisfied. And they can afford to. They take the lightest of risks. The real risk is all on the other side. It is their few pennies per bottle against your life. Were the facile patter by which they lure to the bargain a menace to the pocketbook alone, one might regard them only as ordinary
