Page:Quackery Unmasked.djvu/254

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QUACKERY UNMASKED.

considerations, it may be made to labor to disseminate falsehood, contaminate the public mind, and spread delusion and error over the face of society, to the positive injury of the great mass of people; and this is the obvious effect of all the newspaper advertisements of quack practitioners and quack medicines. The public generally are not aware that the newspaper Press is everywhere thus subsidized and suborned, and therefore are easily deceived, It is supposed that there are about three thousand newspapers in the United States, and most of them advertise more or less nostrums; and I think we may safely say, that such advertisements are the chief support of at least one-half of the whole number of papers. The gross amount paid annually for such advertisements almost exceeds belief. There are many printing establishments in our large cities, each of which receives annually several thousand dollars for this service; and this is everywhere considered the most profitable part of the newspaper business. Not long ago, a single illiterate quack, in the city of Boston, paid one daily paper three thousand six