ve's Balsamic Elixir 25.5%
Steven's Consumption Cure 21.3%
Hood's Sarsaparilla 19.6%

There are also other compounds such as Crosby's Balsamic Cough Elixir,
Townsend's American Sarsaparilla, and Warner's Safe Cure, which contain
from 8 to 10-1/2 per cent. of alcohol. As the _British Medical Journal_
justly points out, in a mixture of which a table-spoonful is to be taken
five or six times a day a proportion of 10 per cent. of alcohol is by no
means negligible.

Let it be noted further that though most malt extracts are free from
alcohol, that which is called "bynin" contains 8.3 per cent, and
"standard liquid" 5 per cent. The _British Medical Journal_ has also
shown that there is at least one "inebriety cure" in Great Britain which
consists of a liquid containing just under 30 per cent. of alcohol.

On this whole subject it is impossible to speak too strongly, more
especially when one is concerned with the interests of woman and
womanhood. It is true that in consequence of the labours of those few
keen workers whom the impotent and the meaningless and the selfish call
fanatics, we are making a beginning in the matter of education on
Temperance. But apart from that, which amounts only to very little as
yet, it is the lamentable truth that the State does absolutely nothing
whatever to protect the community and especially its women from the
manifold evils which are involved in such figures as those here quoted.
The State wants money, and life is a trifle. Anything that can pay toll
to the State may therefore go without further question. A tax has been
paid on all the alcohol in these things. In many cases, also, a further
tax has been paid for the government stamp on patent medicines. That the
medicine may be dangerous, that it may be a cruel swindle, that it may
take from consumptives and others money which is sorely needed for air
and food, and give them in return what is worse than nothing--all these
things are nothing to the State if the tax is paid.

Preparations such as those which have been mentioned above have no place
or status whatever in scientific medicine. Their constituents are known
and their action is known. The public pays for sarsaparilla, for
instance, and simply gets a 20 per cent. solution of flavoured alcohol,
and there is no one to inform it that sarsaparilla has been exhaustively
studied by pharmacologists, employing every means of observation and
experiment in their power, and