CHAPTER XVIII.. The Advertising of Proprietary Medicines.

THE ADVERTISING OF PROPRIETARY MEDICINES.

The methods of advertising adopted by the proprietors of secret medicines are many and various. Some employ big posters on hoardings, others--an increasing number--have fringed the chief railway lines of the country with great boards bearing the names of their nostrums; almost all agree in making large use of newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals, and of copious distribution, through various agencies, of circulars and pamphlets. It is impossible to read any of the popular newspapers or magazines without seeing that the extent of such advertising is very great. As a particular example, there lies before us a letter recently sent to retailers by the makers of certain proprietary medicines, in which it is stated that

We have already largely increased our advertising, and over 800 newspapers and magazines, embracing the whole of Great Britain, are regularly carrying very effective advts.

Ten million leaflets have been ordered to be insetted in all the principal periodicals and magazines during the next three months.

Booklets will be distributed from house to house throughout the Country during the whole summer.

In the case of another nostrum, a single article, which was before the courts a few years ago, it was proved in evidence that in five years 83 million pamphlets had been issued, and that, in the words of the judge, “they had flooded the English-speaking world with their advertisements.”

While the undifferentiated “man (and woman) in the street” represents the millions of potential customers to whom the nostrum maker wishes to appeal, both the number and nature of the advertisements of proprietary medicines in any given periodical do not by any means depend only on its circulation, and the operation of certain general rules may easily be traced. There is an obvious relation between the intelligence and education of the readers on the one hand, and the extent to which they can be appealed to by such advertisements as we are considering on the other, these varying in inverse ratio. A striking illustration of this may be seen by comparing the established reviews and the monthly magazines, or the Times and some of the halfpenny dailies. A reference to the current issues of the Fortnightly Review, the Quarterly Review, and Blackwood’s Magazine shows one advertisement of a proprietary medicine in each of the first two, and none in the last; while a single one of the illustrated magazines--the Strand Magazine--provides twenty-six, and a Christmas number of the same contained sixty-three. Similarly, on an arbitrarily chosen day, the Times contained one such advertisement occupying one column, while the Daily News contained eight occupying four columns, the Daily Mail four occupying three columns, the Daily Express eleven occupying three and a-quarter columns, the Evening News four occupying two-thirds of a column, and the Star five occupying two columns. A close connection may easily be traced, also, between the number of advertisements of patent medicines and the character of the other advertisements, the fact that a large amount of credulity on the part of the readers can be counted on being as evident from the one as the other. For example, advertisements of clairvoyants, palmists, “astrologers” who offer to foretell a person’s future from the date and hour of his birth, preparations for removing superfluous hair, preventing blushing, or developing the bust are frequent in those publications most favoured by the proprietary medicine maker.

Some of the Sunday papers which have very large circulations show a very full share of advertisements of nostrums; an unselected copy of one of these which is before us contains no less than forty-one such advertisements, occupying nearly seven columns. Some of these papers have gained a good deal of notoriety for the large amount of space which they devote to reports of divorce suits and sensational crimes, and it is not surprising therefore to find the majority of proprietary nostrums advertised in them belonging to the most undesirable classes. For example, out of the forty-one just referred to, seventeen are of medicines for “female complaints,” five for “lost manhood,” and two for diseases of the urinary organs. Such advertisements are also abundant in the low-class “comics”; one of these taken at hazard contained eleven of female remedies, along with advertisements of “rubber preventives,” “chic female pictures,” and the like.

“Religious” papers appear to be a fairly good hunting-ground for the advertisers of nostrums. In one of these--a weekly--we find eighteen advertisements of such preparations, along with “galvanic rings for rheumatism,” “1s. for £1,” “£2 weekly made by selling remnants,” “blushing cured,” “superfluous hair removed,” etc.; and on another page the announcement, “The prayers of the readers of this journal are requested for the blessing of God upon those who conduct it, and also upon the sermons and narratives which are printed in it.” The smaller provincial papers are in a good deal of favour for advertisements of secret medicines; as a rule a few local products of this kind are advertised as well as those of wider sale. A feature which is often to be noticed in such papers is that advertisements are accepted which from their headings and general appearance look like news paragraphs, and they are sometimes so worded that an ordinary reader might never suspect their real significance, and no warning “[Advt.]” or other indication appears at the end.

The feelings of disgust and annoyance which are aroused when advertisements of this kind are met with in such abundance in newspapers are of very little importance in comparison with the far greater evil of the power over the press which thus passes into the hands of the owners of the various quack medicines. Certainly one of the most effective ways of preventing people being imposed on by such articles is to publish as widely as possible authentic information as to their composition and real value; but in this task little assistance is to be obtained from the lay press, on account of the large pecuniary interest which such advertisements give it in supporting the trade. The great concentration of the ownership of newspapers, magazines, etc., in the hands of a comparatively small number of companies, is not without influence in the matter; for a newspaper which does not obtain enough advertisements of medical nostrums to give it an interest in supporting them is effectually prevented from printing anything adverse to their interests if it is the property of a firm or company owning other papers which do receive such advertisements largely. The importance of this consideration can be at once seen in connexion with any proposals for legislation; if there should appear any likelihood of an Act of Parliament being passed which would interfere with the liberty to fleece the public by means of secret remedies, the proprietors of such things can practically order the greater part of the press of the country to misrepresent what is proposed, and in every way to stir up hostility to such a measure. This consideration should not be lost sight of in judging of the proceedings or the findings of the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into the subject of “patent” medicines.