The Origin of the word Ghost is curious.

"The first significance of the word, as well as 'spirit,' is breath, or wind." It is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is from gust, the wind. Hence, a gust of wind. The Irish –word goath, wind, comes nearer to the modern English pronunciation, and shows how easily it could have been corrupted to ghost.

The Great American Fraud

GULLIBLE America will spend this year some seventy-five millions of dollars in the purchase of patent medicines. In consideration of this sum it will swallow huge quantities of alcohol, an appalling amount of opiates and narcotics, a wide assortment of varied drugs ranging from powerful and dangerous heart depressants to insidious liver stimulants; and, in excess of all other ingredients, undiluted fraud. For fraud, exploited by the skilfulest of advertising bunco men, is the basis of the trade. Should the newspapers, the magazines and the medical journals refuse their pages to this class of advertisement, the patent medicine business in five years would be as scandalously historic as the South Sea Bubble[1], and the nation would be the richer not only in lives and money, but in drunkards and drug-fiends saved. The Great American Fraud, October 7, 1905

Samuel Hopkins Adams ( 1871 –  1958 ) was an American writer, best known for his investigative journalism.

Nostrums and Quackery.

Saturday, May 7, 2011 I wrote: Quackery.

Nostrums and quackery; articles on the nostrum evil and quackery ([1911]-36) @ http://archive.org/details/nostrumsquackery00amerrich has more neat stuff:

Reproduction of a typical "bust developer" advertisement of the
Aurum Company. The address 79 Deaborn Street was also that
of the defunct "Physician's Institute."