llars was brought
by the patent-medicine company against The Curtis Publishing Company,
and, of course, it was decided in favor of the former. But so strong a
public sentiment had been created against the whole business of patent
medicines by this time that the jury gave a verdict of only sixteen
thousand dollars, with costs, against the magazine.

Undaunted, Bok kept on. He now engaged Mark Sullivan, then a young
lawyer in downtown New York, induced him to give up his practice, and
bring his legal mind to bear upon the problem. It was the beginning of
Sullivan's subsequent journalistic career, and he justified Bok's
confidence in him. He exposed the testimonials to patent medicines from
senators and congressmen then so widely published, showed how they were
obtained by a journalist in Washington who made a business of it. He
charged seventy-five dollars for a senator's testimonial, forty dollars
for that of a congressman, and accepted no contract for less than five
thousand dollars.

Sullivan next exposed the disgraceful violation of the confidence of
women by these nostrum vendors in selling their most confidential
letters to any one who would buy them. Sullivan himself bought thousands
of these letters and names, and then wrote about them in the magazine.
One prominent firm indignantly denied the charge, asserting that
whatever others might have done, their names were always held sacred. In
answer to this declaration Sullivan published an advertisement of this
righteous concern offering fifty thousand of their names for sale.

Bok had now kept up the fight for over two years, and the results were
apparent on every hand. Reputable newspapers and magazines were closing
their pages to the advertisements of patent medicines; legislation was
appearing in several States; the public had been awakened to the fraud
practised upon it, and a Federal Pure Food and Drug Act was beginning to
be talked about.

Single-handed, The Ladies' Home Journal kept up the fight until Mark
Sullivan produced an unusually strong article, but too legalistic for
the magazine. He called the attention of Norman Hapgood, then editor of
Collier's Weekly, to it, who accepted it at once, and, with Bok's
permission, engaged Sullivan, who later succeeded Hapgood as editor of
Collier's. Robert J. Collier now brought Samuel Hopkins Adams to Bok's
attention and asked the latter if he should object if Collier's Weekly
joined him in his fight. The Philadel