The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1943-09-18
Rv WESTBROOK PEGLER

!
By WESTBROOK PEGLER
NEW YORK.-If one may draw conclusions
from the number and variety of the remedies
fo- the ills that flesh is heir to which day
aner day and night, are dinned into the ears
of Americans by radio, then ours is eithee
nation OF hypochondriacs or suffering n
mass from complications of diseases and not
far from deaths door. This is not new con-
dition bet a return or relapse to old one
of about 4G years ago, when our elders, par
ticulary those who lived UP the back roads
dosed themselves religiously with long, nu-
mercal list Of sterling specifics and golden
discoveries for everything from phthlsis to
the bots, most of them having a stout alco-
holc base and some prepared from secret
formulas obtained from old Quaker ladies in
Pennsylvania or Indian SquaWs in Kansas
They include opium. tiger marrow fat and
snake oil among their ingredients and many
pious deacon in those days gave his written
testimony to impersonal doctors in the big
cities far away, recounting his marvellous cure
of what allied him only to discover, when
DR.. Harvey W. Wiley got busy, that he had
habitually been getting himself gently soused
or hoped with dope. There was some ex-
cuse for the gullibity of the simple citizen
that long ago for the medics themselves
were few in number and primitive in knowl-
edge and methods and when people fell to
alng it was a comfort to reach for the
bottle over the sink and drug their fears or
pains away with draughts which had the
soothing effect of tap the skull with
nickel ball bat but raised no lump.
Science, however, advanced a pa c and
journalism, under general pressure from the
Department of Justice helped to abolish the
practice Of home diagnosis and mail-order
therapy by rejecting the accounts of certain
patent medicines stpulating h t they
must not be represented as cures SO, having
thrown away the flyspecked bottles adorned
with steel engravings of fur-fearing doctors
of the same general mien the New Eng
land pets. people emerged into a period
of tolerable health which lasted until the
discovery of the packagegoods vitanin, at
which point the public health rate appears
to have gone over cliff.
Now that am not certain that know what
vitamins are but, like many, many others,
have yielded from time to time to insistent
urgingS that l consume few and | will give
my own testimony that, contrary to the Wheed-
lings Of many earnest high-pitch men, oper-
ating from the radio tailboard, they have
never made the slightest difference in my
energy pep, as they sometimes call it.
They make me feel no worse but certainly
no better and. as for injection of vitamins
into flour and the creation thereby Of
article of commerce known fortified bread,
my first report is that this is the worst trav-
esty on the staff of life that ever was de-
vised to mock mans honest hunger And my
second is that if the millers would refrain
from numbering the life Of flour it wouldn't
be necessary to attempt to revive it. Yet,
so clamorous are these exhortations and SO
couched that the inoffending citizen is made
to feel accused of slackerlsm II ne refused
to consume their vtanins either whole or
disguised in bread, chewing gum or certain
milk formulas the ground that whether
he knows it or not. he is run down, below
par and unable to give his best IN the com
mon effort to beat the Axis
People must be buying them in enormous
quantities and in their various guises or the
promoters would not have the money to main
tain the propaganda, but l think you VIII
agree that there has been no perceptble re-
inauguration Of the whole public and l dare
say that should not be perceptlbly worse
off for their total reputation except under
the doctors orders.
There is also an nsistent appeal to all of
us to dope ourselves with certain cures for
the headache which is not an illness OF Itself
but symptom, usually to be enoureo briefly
and cured by natural processes or, other
wise, to be investigated by a physician. One
of these little miracles. so cheap and pre-
pared in the handy package, contains an IN
gredient which is dangerous to cardlacs and
damn near killed one of my acquaintance,
and I make so bold as to state mat the an
nouncer who urges it on us between olurts
of actorish war bulletins IN Whlch boulogne
is variously pronounced Boolonyah and Bou-
loan, knows no more about bout medicine ned inc than
Charley Mccarthy and much less tnan any
farmer faced with occasional medlcal emer-
gencies in pigs, horses and dairy stock Nor
do 1 respect any more highly the scientific
qualification of those who recommend hang-
over.cure discussed as something for acid in
Digestion. Nothing but remorse and woe cures
hangover and in gastric trouble OF 1he viz
tuous sort, the judgment OF ooe'or' hot
an elocutonist, is preferable
But We and the British are 1q'k szss ever
for two-bit miracles in convenient sizes ana
we spend, in the course OF year On lrauds
and knockout pills enough to pay our noble
Of doctors all the eodsataons on adR Rse
and treatment in case of legltlhate heed'
Mere victory of power ov s;+;o anot tl
will end nothing if the black trao1 4 o1s tnat
feated.-H. G. Wells. autnof