The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-03-26

fines, nor have any interest in the sale of them. I am simply user. like the rest of you.
 Patent medicines are friends of my youth. and friends of my family. They have helped me when l needed help; and if they need help now feel like defending them. It is only fair reel procity.
 The fact is that the term patent medicines" as~ applied to advertised comedies, Is a misnomer. Very few Of lhe remedies advertised to the laity are patented. The real patent medicines are advertised to physicians alone They are brought into use almost sole. ly through physeians' prescriptions
 Practically all the snythetic 'chemi calls produced in late years are pro- tected by patents. The most valuable products used by modern physicians are patented. The coal tar prepara- sions which gre most widely used. and the most effective germicides, are among them. All physicians prescribe these remedies, yet they know that their owners control a monopoly. r,
 The largest pharmaceutical houses are not those which make remedies ad- Nertised in the newspapers. They
  tised to physicians alone. and they coli trol those remedies absolutely by a patent or trademark. If the medical profession ceased to use these patent cd remedies, half the prescriptions which are written would need to be ale fered
 This does not bear out MT. Bok's theory that the discoverer of a remedy of real value gives it freely to the 1rA vent such remedies today Is to patent the man who invents a new machine, And the medical profession recognize and approve the method. for every modern physician prescribes patented remedies more frequently than any others. And enormous enterprises are built solely on this fact.
 The mere fact. therefore. that a man controls a remedy, either by a patent or trademark, does not argue against it. It is rather evidence that the man has something which he considers worth controlling.
 If the, man. in addition, spends large sums inl advertising. whether to physl- clans or to the laity, it forms to me further evidence of value. Nothing is more certain than the fact that a worthless article cannot be advertised profitably.
 Those who know advertising know that the cost of selling a bottle or package to new user j@ several times the profit made on it. The only hopN of profit comes through continued use; and. without merit, continued use can not be expected. When a man has made success in Advertising a medi- cine. 1t Is to me the best evidence pos- eible that he has something good.
 A physician may put up a prescrip- tion for some individual case without giving much thought to 1t. But If that physician Is going to spend a fortune on advertising, with no possibility of getting his money back unless he sat- isf1es millions of users, he is naturally going to put up the best prescription get the best prescriptions for his pur- pose that any man can make.
 Then there is the question of, alcohol which Mr. Box seems to consider such h perilous one. All the fluid extracts and tinctures used in medicine must employ alcohol as a solvent and pre- pervative. Prohibit a physician from using alcohol in his prescriptions and you would make the practice of medi- zine impossible. If a physician must use alcohol in certain prescriptions, shall we complain that a ready made medicine employs 1t for the same pur- poser
 If we are going to akoid the use of alcohol we must banish the extracts knd essences used in our kitchen Fluid extracts. whether they are medl-