this
alarm."

After giving a description of the diseases peculiar to the sex it is
stated that all of these are curable by using eight dollars worth of
this wonderful medicine.

_New Idea_ continues:--

"The _cure_ consists, according to our examination, of nothing
but flour, made into a paste and allowed to harden in the form
of small oblong blocks. Evidently the quack relied upon the
faith-cure principle, and his auxiliary treatment, as set forth
in the rules of living given in the circular."

While these inert preparations are of the nature of frauds, they will
not injure the health, nor make drunkards, or opium fiends, as the
disguised preparations of whisky and morphine are likely to do.

That the use of patent medicines has made many drunkards is a fact well
attested. The American Association for the Study of Inebriety appointed
a committee several years ago to investigate the various nostrums
advertised especially for the benefit of alcohol and opium inebriates.
The report of this committee, prepared by Dr. N. Roe Bradner, late of
the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, in speaking of the marvelous
cures advertised in connection with the use of these mixtures, calls
them "volumes of gilded falsehood, designed for an innocent,
unsuspecting public," and adds:--

"The use of such nostrums would do more toward confirming than
eradicating the habit, if it existed, and would invite and
create addiction to an almost hopeless fatality, where the habit
had not previously existed. Insanity, palsy, idiocy, and many
forms of physical, moral and mental ruin have followed the sale
of these nostrums throughout our land."

Dr. E. A. Craighill, President of the Virginia State Pharmaceutical
Association, is quoted in the July (1897) _Journal of Inebriety_, as
saying:--

"In my experience I have known of men filling drunkards' graves
who learned to drink taking some advertised bitters as
legitimate medicine. It would be hard to estimate the number of
young brains ruined, and the maturer opium wrecks from nostrums
of this nature. I could write a volume on the mischief that is
being done every day to body, mind and soul, all over the land,
by the thousands of miserable frauds that are being poured down
the throats of not only ignorant people, but, alas, intelligent
ones, too."

A lady informed the writer recently that her brother had t