ay be taken freely to advantage.

THE PATENT MEDICINE EVIL

CHAPTER XXX

THE PATENT MEDICINE EVIL

What Mothers Should Know About the Patent Medicine
Evil--Tonics--Used by Temperance People Because it Could
"Stimulate"--Stomach Bitters--Blood
Bitters--Sarsaparilla--Celery Compounds--Malt Whisky--Headache
Remedies--Pain Powders--Anti-headache Powders--Headache
Powders--Soothing Syrups--Baby's Friends--Catarrh
Powders--Kidney Pills--Expectorant--Cough Syrup--Lithia
Waters--Health, Wealth and Happiness for a Dollar a Bottle--New
Discovery for Consumption--Consumption Cure--Cancer
Cures--Pills for Pale People--Elixir of Life.

WHAT MOTHERS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE PATENT MEDICINE EVIL

Much has been written about the patent medicine evil during the past few
years. One very thorough crusade has been instituted and efficiently
carried through, exposing the evils of the patent medicine business.
Whatever legislation is in force to-day which has for its object the
regulation of the evil, is largely a product of that crusade.
Notwithstanding these efforts, it is a fact that scarcely any of the
great majority who should be interested in the subject, because they are
its victims, have any knowledge of the nature or extent of the evil, or
appreciate its far-reaching and pernicious influence. For two reasons I
regard it as peculiarly fitting, that the subject should be given
adequate consideration in this book:--

First, because mothers should be told the whole truth about all
conditions that have any influence on the health of the members of the
home.

Second, because though we are the victims of many evils and many forms
of "graft," which directly or indirectly affect our pockets and our
morals, we submit to them because they have no bearing on the physical
well-being of the race. As mothers, however, and as the conservers of
the fitness of the family and the home, we are directly and rightly
interested in an evil which deeply affects the health and the efficiency
of members of the family as the patent medicine evil does. It is through
the mothers of the race that this enemy of the home must be finally and
completely overthrown. If every mother in the land could be taught to
understand even a fraction of the truth of the insidious wrong hidden
under the mask of the nostrum advertisement, we would witness a
righteous resentment that could only be satisfied by l