and the list gives the names of the "medicine company" or the
"medical institute" to whom they were addressed. Here is a
barter then, in 55,000 letters of a private nature, each one of
which, the writer was told, and had a right to expect, would be
regarded as "sacredly confidential" by the doctor or concern to
whom she had been deluded into telling her private ailments.
Yet here they are for half a cent each!

Another batch of some 47,000 letters addressed to five
"doctors" and "institutes" is emphasized because they were
written by women! A third batch is:

44,000 "Bust Developer Letters,"--letters which one man in a
patent medicine concern told me were "the richest sort of
reading you could get hold of."

A still further lot offers: 40,000 "Women's Regulator
Letters,"--letters which in their context any woman can
naturally imagine would be of the most delicate nature. Still,
the fact remains, here they are for sale.

Is not this contemptible?

In the same article is exposed the inhuman greed of patent
medicine concerns that turn into cold cash the letters of
patients afflicted with the most vital diseases.

To quote again: "All these are made the subject of public
barter. Here are offered for sale, for example: 7,000 Paralysis
Letters; 9,000 Narcotic Letters; 52,000 Consumption Letters;
3,000 Cancer Letters, and even 65,000 Deaf Letters. Of diseases
of the most private nature one is offered here nearly 100,000
letters,--letters the very classification of which makes a
sensitive person shudder."

The deeper one delves below the surface of this business the nastier it
gets. It is impossible to conceive of vipers and sharks being endowed
with more contemptible and brutish qualities than those which
characterize the vultures of the patent medicine and quack medical
concerns.

THE PATENT MEDICINE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

It is estimated that the newspapers of the United States get about
$100,000,000 per year from the advertisements of patent medicines and
fake medical concerns.

There is an association composed of the manufacturers of patent
medicines and the owners of advertising medical concerns. It was
primarily formed for the single purpose of strictly looking after the
"interests" of those concerned.

If we concede, as we must concede if we stud