QUACK MEDICINES.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 1, Issue 4, 15 December 1910, Page 1

QUACK MEDICINES.

" The Maoriland Worker " was started with the definite announcement that no quack medicine advertisements of any kind would be inserted, and that means would be taken to expose some of the more fraiidulent nostrums foisted upon an unthinking, unknowing public. No other newspaper or magazine in New Zealand has ever taken up this attitude. The attitude of editors and proprietors in regard to the quack has been : " Take his money, advertise his cure, be an accomplice, don't tell the public what you do know, or could easily know, just stand steady o:;i the old fable that there is no connection between the advertising columns and the editorial columns of the daily Press. Give the people what they think they want!"

And so the game goes on. Newspaper editors condemn shoddy clothes and shoddy boot.s, becaiise the makers, forsooth., charge, let us say, 10/- for what is fairly worth 5/-. But when the quack charges 2/9 for what is worth, say, one-tenth of a penny, as in the case of l>r Williams' Pink Pills, dealt with in another column, they have not a word of protest to make. On the contrary, they are ready and eager to tell all sorts of stories of the wonderful euros effected within their own knowledge !

Bat, after all, this is not to be ivondered at, for according to the evidence of Dγ J. M. Mason (then Chief Health Officer for New Zealand), before the Quackery Prevention Bill Committee, 1907, about one-fourth of the advertising space in the daily and weekly newspapers was devoted to quack medical advertisements of various kinds (p. 12-13 of Report) ; and in referring to the attempts made to control the newspaper Press of the world, the same witness gave the following evidence: "The proprietors of these medicines issued, a circular to the New Zealand papers, just as they do in America, threatening to withdraw their advertisements if any legislation was allowed to pass restricting their sale. Mr Han an : Or supporting an Anti-quackery Bill ? Witness : Yes. It stated that if at any tima ' any law was passed in your State interfering with the sale of our goods our contract with you ceases.' Mr Hanan : I saw one circular in which the vendor of a patent medicine pointed out that if the paper supported these regulations they would withdraw their advertisement, and they should consider the great loss it would be in the way of fees for advertising ? Witness : Yes. I have been able to stop, except in one or two papers, a good many quack concerns, but there is one going on which I think should not be allowed, and that is the Viavi treatment." These are some of the reasons which have induced us to attack this evil, and in the January and February issues of " The Maoriland Worker " we shall publish copious extracts from the Report referred to above and from " Secret Remedies," published by the British Medical Association. As far as possible these extracts will deal with medications advertised at the present time by the leading newspapers in New Zealand—papers which the workers are expected to believe are never venal, never bribable, never the tools of large landowners and capitalists, never anything but the protectors of the public purse, and the purifiers of the public morals.