The power of promising cure, let alone eternal life, would have been only too familiar to Claude Hopkins, the former preacher. His copy for Dr. Shoop's, now over a century old, is worth reading carefully, as it follows a still familiar formula of anticipating doubts and the likelihood that the sufferer may have been let down many times before. One might even detect the influence of Matthew's Gospel, specifically the story of "a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse" (9:25-26). Hopkins may have had the parable in mind when he wrote Some sick one may say:-"But I've tried about all medicines, consulted many physicians, and spent a great deal of money.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 92