The Old Doctor hopes that those afflicted will not, on account of
delicacy, refrain from consulting him because he makes No Charge. 
His sole object in advertising is to do all the good he can, before
he dies.  He feels that he is justly celebrated for cure of
Consumption, Asthma, Bronchitis, Nervous Affections, Coughs, Colds,
&c. 

          Address

DOCT.  UNCAS BRANT
Box 3531, P.O., New York

This type of an apparently free diagnosis of medical ills, prompted solely by the benevolence of some elderly or retired person, was a familiar petty swindle around the middle of the last century.  The newspapers carried many such announcements from retired clergymen, old nurses, or Indian doctors, frequently persons who had themselves triumphed over dread diseases and had discovered the best remedies only after years of search and suffering, always offering to communicate the secret of recovery to any fellow sufferer.  The victim would receive in reply a recipe for the proper medicine, always with the advice that great care must be taken to prepare it exactly as directed, and with the further advice that if the ingredients should not prove to be conveniently available the benevolent old doctor or retired clergyman could provide them for a trifling sum.  Invariably, the afflicted patient would discover that the ingredients specified were obscure ones, not kept by one druggist in a hundred and unknown to most of them.  Thus, he would be obliged, if he persisted in the recommended cure, to send his money to the kindly old benefactor.  Frequently, he would receive no further reply or, at best, would receive some concoction costing only a few cents to compound.  The scheme was all the safer as it was carried on exclusively by mail, and the swindler would usually conclude each undertaking under any given name before investigation could be initiated.

Besides participating in such schemes, Force apparently devoted a large part of his energy in collecting accounts due him or, in turn, in being dunned by and seeking to postpone payment to newspapers with whom he was delinquent in making settlement.

Other forms of advertising employed over the years included finely engraved labels, circulars and handbills, printed blotters, small billboards, fans, premiums sent in return for labels, a concise—­very concise—­reference dictionary, and trade cards of various sorts.  One trade card closely resembled a railroad pass; this was in the 1880s when railroad passes were highly prized and every substantial citizen aspired to own one.  Thus, almost everyone would have felt some pride in carrying what might pass, at a glance, as a genuine pass on the K.C.L.R.R.; although it was signed only by “Good Health” as the general agent, entitled the bearer merely to ride on foot or horseback and was actually an advertisement of Kingsland’s Chlorinated Tablets.  Another card played somewhat delicately but still unmistakably on the Indian Root Pills’ capacity to restore male virility.  This card pictured a fashionably dressed tomcat, complete with high collar, cane and derby, sitting somewhat disconsolately on a fence as the crescent moon rose behind him, with these reflections: