e writes
about her health, her affairs, and her person, are to be read by an
experienced medical adviser and by no other. The truth, as we have
shown, is that she writes her secrets to a man, who is not even a
physician, who in turn passes the letter over to be answered by an
office clerk.

When the fake doctor, or the patent medicine man, has exhausted his
"jollying" tactics, his lies, and his promises, and he can no longer
induce the victim to send more money, he sells the victim's letters to
another quack in the same business. These harpies, knowing what ails the
individual, begin sending her their specious and insinuating literature.
The woman reads, becomes interested, and, having bitten before,
concludes to try once again, and so the story goes--one after another
trying to drain the life-blood of an ailing, irresponsible foolish
woman.

The selling of letters has become a business, so much so that there are
regularly established medical letter brokers from whom you can buy these
letters by the thousands. In a single medical letter broker's office in
New York City there are upwards of seven million of these confidential
letters for sale to the highest bidders. This incidentally gives one a
slight idea of the tremendous business this is, and of the hundreds of
thousands of dupes and victims there have been.

The following extracts are taken from a well-known woman's journal,
which at various times has been interested in this subject, and are of
special interest in this connection:

One of the most disgusting and disgraceful features of the
patent medicine business is the marketing of letters sent by
patients to patent medicine firms. Correspondence is solicited
by these firms under the seal of sacred confidence. When the
concern is unable to do further business with a patient it
disposes of the patient's correspondence to a letter broker,
who, in turn, disposes of it to other patent medicine concerns
at the rate of half a cent for each letter.

One of these brokers assured the writer that he could give me
"choice lots" of "medical female letters." ... Let me now give
you, from the printed lists of these letter brokers, some idea
of the way in which these "sacred confidential" letters are
hawked about the country. Here are a few samples, all that are
really printable:

55,000 "Female Complaint Letters" is the sum total of one item,