philis handled with as little attention to the value of expert
knowledge. Expert service is expensive, and if the state wishes to
command the whole energy of progressive men, it must be prepared to pay
reasonably well for what it gets.

+Suppression of Quacks and Drug-store Prescribing.+--The suppression of
quackery is nowhere more urgent than in the control of syphilis. Every
important legislative scheme that has come into existence in recent
years has recognized this fact. The devil may well be fought by fire,
and reputable agencies should enter the field of publicity with some of
the vigor of their disreputable opponents. The brilliant success of this
scheme was admirably illustrated by the results of the recent efforts of
the Brooklyn Hospital Dispensary, which, by replacing the placards of
advertising quacks in public comfort and toilet rooms, and running a
health exhibit on Coney Island, attracted to a clinic where modern
diagnosis and treatment were to be had an astonishing number of young
people who would have fallen victims to quacks. The evil influence of
the drug store in perpetuating the hold of syphilis and gonorrhea upon
us is just being understood. The patient with a beginning chancre, at
the advice of a drug clerk, tries a little calomel powder on the sore,
and it either "dries up" and secondary symptoms of syphilis appear in
due course, or it gets worse or remains unchanged and the patient
finally goes to a doctor or a dispensary to find that his meddling has
lost him the golden opportunity of aborting the disease. If secondaries
appear, a bottle or two of XYZ Specific, again at the suggestion of the
all-knowing drug clerk, containing a little mercury and potassium iodid,
disposes of a mild eruption, and a year or so later a marriage with
subsequent mucous recurrences and the infection of the wife signalizes
the triumph of ignorance and public shortsightedness. The health
commissioner of one of the largest and most progressive cities in this
country stated before a recent meeting of the American Public Health
Association that he had sent a special investigator to twelve
representative drug stores in his city, and that simply on describing
some symptoms, without even the ceremony of an examination, he had
received from ten of them something to use on a sore or to take for
gonorrhea. It is only justice to say that occasionally one finds drug
stores which will refer a patient to a doctor or a dispensary. Dr