about Rupture]

Neither the drug clerk nor the druggist knows enough about _rupture_ to
know what kind of _truss_ you _need_.

And, usually, his knowledge of _trusses_ is confined to the difference
in _prices_-- he'd rather sell you a $10 truss than a $3 truss.

His knowledge of _fitting_ is not much greater.

If you measure 36 inches around the hips, he gives you a 36-inch
truss-- which, in everything except size, would be exactly like the
truss he'd sell at the same price, to a man with a rupture only _half_
as bad as yours, or to a man with a rupture _twice_ as bad as yours.

A drug-store sells trusses in exactly the same way that the
old-fashioned shoe store sold shoes.

It was solely a matter of how much the customer wanted to _pay_, and the
_style_ the customer _wanted_-- _not_ what the customer _needed_.

Thousands of people have been "all crippled up" because their shoes were
too _short_, or too _narrow_, or the _wrong shape_. The old-fashioned
shoe clerk knew his _stock_, but he didn't know enough about the
customer's _feet_ to know when the customer was _properly fitted_.

Just as thousands of people have trouble with their glasses because they
were fitted by an _optician_-- "over the counter,"-- instead of having
an _oculist prescribe_ for them.

And, partly because improperly fitted at drug-stores, and partly because
drug-store trusses are usually mere makeshifts, thousands of people are
to-day wearing trusses which are doing immense _harm_ instead of
good-- trusses which cause the rupture to grow constantly worse.

Even if there is any druggist in the country who _does_ happen to know
much about rupture and about fitting trusses, he'd have to be a mighty
bright man to be able to fit you at all properly with the kind of
trusses sold in the average drug-store.

Practically all the drug-store trusses are simply some form of the
old belt or springs and leg-strap truss-- though sold under hundreds
of different names as "improvements." They are usually cheaply
constructed-- turned out by machinery in immense quantities.

And they are always ready-made "stock" trusses. Each kind made in only
one model or style, and the pads in only a few different shapes and
sizes.

Making mighty scant provision for the wide variation between the
ruptures of different people; making mighty little allowance for the
fact that what will do for one man won't do at all for another.

[Sidenote: Each Man Requires Somet