The legislatures of many of the states are now in session, and we hear on all sides of attempts at legislation whose ostensible purpose is to protect the people against the aggressions of charlatanism, fraud and imposition. In so far as this is the purpose of legislation, there can be no objection to it. If it be possible to protect the public against medical imposters it should be done. All reasonable legislation along this line will receive the approval of all good citizens. On this subject it seems to us the legislatures should consider the question of the wholesale traffic in patent nostrums, many of which from every standpoint are deleterious and misleading in the extreme.
Many persons are led to rely upon these concoctions, which are worse than worthless, who, uninfluenced by the naming advertisements which lead to their use, would apply to other and safer sources, and thereby, in many cases, escape the evil consequences of this sort of "medicine."
It seems to us also that it would be well for the legislators, in their wisdom, to consider the matter of abridging, if not indeed prohibiting, the advertisement of these nostrums in public print. No one who is in the least familiar with mental operations, is ignorant of the fact, that advertisements, and often long articles in the most conspicuous parts of many of our magazines and daily newspapers, recounting the ailments of humanity and in exaggerated and sensational form, warning against them, frighten thousands of people into the belief that they are laboring under many, if not all, of the troubles so graphically depicted in such advertisements. We know of one old gentleman who informed the one upon whom he called for help, that he did not know what ailed him until he read his symptoms in an almanac.
