Chapter III: Preface (3)

Yankee or Irish, English or Scotch, French or German, they all rush to the drug store for pills, for powder, for whiskey (?), for tobacco, for patent medicines, and the druggists flourish.

From the window near which I write this, I overlook a wholesale drug store on a "retail street." The front windows contain only _patent medicines_, and the flashy signs that announce their virtues. Few prescriptions are dispensed within. Before the door, piled nearly a story high, I have just counted ninety-eight boxes, and some barrels. There are hundreds of these drug houses scattered over this city; and every other city of America has its quota.

Yes, the Irishman had the right of it; "the Yankees _do_ bate the divil for swallowing drugs." Further, it is my positive opinion that his infernal majesty beats a good many of them by the encouragement of their purchase; and, kind reader, if you have the ghost of a doubt of the truth of our intimation, don't, I pray, promulgate it, but, like a wise judge, withhold your decision until the evidence is in; until you hear our exposition of "patent medicines."

A patient comes to the city for the purpose of consulting some experienced physician for a certain complaint. Probably he gets a prescription, with instructions to go to a certain respectable druggist or apothecary in town to have the necessary medicines put up. Of course a respectable physician knows of a reliable apothecary. The patient, in nine cases out of ten, desires to retain the prescription, and often does so. He goes to another drug store, more convenient, for a second quantity of the same; and now let me ask the patient,--no matter who or where he is,--did you ever get the same kind of medicine, in _look_, color, quantity, and taste,--all,--the second time, from the same prescription? I have often heard the patient complain that he could not get the same put up at the very store where he got the original prescription compounded.

I once was called to visit a lady who was laboring under great prostration; "sickness at the stomach," with constipation.

"What is the disease?" inquired the anxious husband, who had previously employed two regular physicians for the case, and discharged them both.

"Nux vomica," was the reply.

I gathered up three of the vials on the table, and, taking them to the designated apothecary's, I demanded the prescriptions corresponding with the numbers on the vials. These were duplicates.

He had made a mistake! that's all. He had compounded an ounce of tincture of nux instead of a drachm! Not that a drachm could be taken at a dose with impunity; but whatever the dose was, the patient was continually taking eight times as much as the physician intended to prescribe.

Another reason of the failure of the prescribing physician meeting the expectation anticipated, is the use of old and inert medicines.

Where a man's treasure is, his heart is also. An apothecary's interest is more in nostrums, tobacco, _soda_, etc., than in medicines; how, then, can he follow the excellent advice of Dr. Bullyn, in article "14, that he peruse often his wares, that they corrupt not."

But the greatest cheat is in the "substituting" business; the "_quid pro quo_." Horse aloes may be bought for ten cents a pound. Podophyllin costs seventy-five cents an ounce. They each act as cathartic, and I have detected the former put in place of the latter. How is the physician to know the cheat? How is the patient to detect it? Perhaps the former _stuff_--aloes--may have given the victim the hemorrhoids. One dose may be quite sufficient to produce that distressing disease. This only calls for another prescription! So it looks a deal like a "you tickle me, and I'll tickle you" profession, at best. Thus the patient becomes disgusted, and resorts to our next--"Patent Medicines."

In closing this chapter on Apothecaries, I must relate a little scene to which I was an eye-witness. Meantime, let me say to the "respectable druggist," Don't be offended if I have slighted you by leaving you out, in my description of the various kinds of apothecaries enumerated above. There is a respectable class of druggists whom I have not mentioned, and doubtless you belong to that order.

On going home one evening, not long since, I observed several boys, loud and boisterous, surrounding a lamp post. As I approached, I heard, among the cries and vociferations,--

"Howld to it, Jimmy; it'll be the makin' of ye."

I drew nearer, and discovered a sickly-looking lad leaning up against the lamp post, with the stump of a cigar in his mouth, and a taller boy endeavoring to hold him up by his jacket collar, while a short-set urchin was stooping behind to assist in the task. They were evidently endeavoring to teach "Jimmy" to smoke. The poor fellow was deathly sick, and faintly begged to be let off.

"O, no, no. Stick to it, Jimmy; it'll be the makin' of yese," was repeated.

"Sure, ye'll niver do for a _sample clark in a potecary shop_," said another, as he blew a cloud of smoke from his own cigar stump into the pale face of the victim to modern accomplishments.

"General Grant smokes, Jimmy, and you'll never be a man if you don't learn," added a voice minus the brogue.

A policeman here interfered, and rescued the wretched "Jimmy."

"What is a sample clerk, my lad?" I asked of the boy who had used the above expression.

"O, sir, he's the divil o' the 'potecary shop; the lean, pimply-faced urchin what tastes all the pizen drugs for the boss. If his constitution is tough enough to stand it the first year, then they makes a clark of him the nixt."

III.

PATENT MEDICINES

"Expunge the whole."--POPE.

"These are terrible alarms to persons grown fat and wealthy."--SOUTH.

PATENT MEDICINES.--HOW STARTED.--HOW MADE.--THE WAY IMMENSE FORTUNES
ARE REALIZED.--SPALDING'S GLUE.--SOURED SWILL.--SARSAPARILLA
HUMBUGS.--S. P. TOWNSEND.--"A DOWN EAST FARMER'S STORY."--"WILD
CHERRY" EXPOSITIONS.--"CAPTAIN WRAGGE'S PILL" A FAIR SAMPLE OF THE
WHOLE.--HOW PILL SALES ARE STARTED.--A SLIP OF THE PEN.--"GRIPE
PILLS."--SHAKSPEARE IMPROVED.--H. W. B. "FRUIT SYRUP."--HAIR
TONICS.--A BALD BACHELOR'S EXPERIENCE.--A LUDICROUS STORY.--A WOLF IN
SHEEP'S CLOTHING.

In the former chapters are shown some of the causes which led to the present immense _demand_ for proprietary nostrums, or patent medicines. The conflicting "_isms_" and "_opathies_" of the medical fraternity, their quarrels and depreciations of one and another, their expositions of each other's weaknesses, frauds, and duplicities, disgusted the common people, who finally resorted to the irregulars, to astrologers, and humbugs of various pretensions, and to the few advertised nostrums of those earlier periods.

"While there is life there is hope," and invalids would, and still continue to seize upon almost any promised relief from present pain and anticipated death. Speculative and unprincipled men have seldom been wanting, at any period, to profit by this misfortune of their fellow-creatures, and to play upon the credulity of the afflicted, by offering various compounds warranted to restore them to perfect health. At first such medicines were introduced by the owner going about personally and introducing them; subsequently, by employing equally unprincipled parties, of either sex, to go in advance, and tell of the wonderful cures that this particular nostrum had wrought upon them. And to listen to these lauders, one would be led to suppose that they had been afflicted with all the ills nameable, adapting themselves to the parties addressed,--yesterday, the gout; to-day, consumption, etc.,--regardless of truth or circumstance. The physician created the apothecary. The two opened the way for the less principled patent medicine vender.

"Are not physicians and apothecaries sometimes owners of patent medicines?" is the inquiry raised. Yes, certainly; but the true physician, or honorable apothecary, is then sunk in the nostrum manufacturer. Next we have the mountebanks. These were attendant upon fairs and in the marketplaces, who, mounted upon a bench,--hence the name,--cried the marvellous virtues of the medicine, and, by the assistance of a _decoy_ in the crowd, often drove a lucrative business.

Finally, upon the general introduction of printing, physician, apothecary, mountebank, speculator, all seized upon the "power of the press," to more extensively introduce their "wonderful discoveries."

When you notice the name--and, O, ye gods, such names as are patched up to attract your attention!--to a new medicine, systematically and extensively advertised in every paper you chance to pick up, you wonder how any profit can accrue to the manufacturer of the compound after paying such enormous prices as column upon column in a thousand newspapers must necessarily cost. "If the articles cost anything at the outset," you go on to philosophize, "how can the manufacturers or proprietors make enough profit to pay for this colossal advertising?" The solution of the problem is embodied in your inquiry. They cost nothing, or as near to nothing as possible for worthless trash to cost. This is the secret of the fortunes made in advertised medicines.

When we _know_ the complete worthlessness of the majority of the articles that are placed before the public,--yea, their more than worthlessness, for they are, many of them, highly injurious to the user,--the fact of their enormous consumption is truly astonishing. The drug-swallowing public has grown lean and poor in proportion as the manufacturers and venders of these villanous compounds have grown fat and wealthy.

Said the proprietor of "Coe's Cough Balsam" and "Dyspepsia Cure" to the author, "If you have got a _good_ medicine, one of value, don't put it before the public. I can advertise _dish water_, and sell it, just as well as an article of merit. It is all in the advertising." As the above preparations were advertised on every board fence, and in every newspaper in New England at least, did his assertion imply that those articles were mere "_dish water_"?

"SPALDING'S GLUE."

I was informed by a Mr. Johnston, who engineered the advertising of the preparation, that it cost but one eighth of a cent per bottle. If you want to make a liquid glue, dissolve a quantity of common glue in water at nearly boiling point, say one pound of glue to a gallon of water; add an ounce or less of nitric acid to hold it in solution, and bottle. The more glue, the stronger the preparation.

The pain-killers and liniments are the most costly, on account of the alcohol necessary to their manufacture; and, in fact, the principal item of expense in all liquid medical articles put up for public sale, is in the alcohol essential to their preservation against the extremes of heat and cold to which they may be subjected.

SOURED SWILL.

There is an article which "smells to heaven," the acidiferous title of which glares in mammoth letters from every road-side, wherein the audacious proprietor obviates the necessity of alcohol for its preparation or preservation. It is merely fermented slops--"dish water," minus the alcohol. Take a few handfuls of any bitter herbs, saturate them in any dirty pond water,--say a barrel full,--add some nitric acid, and bottle, without straining! Here you have _Vinegared Bitters_! The cheeky proprietor informs the "ignorant public" that, "if the _medicine_ becomes sour (ferments), as it sometimes will, being its 'nature so to do,' it does not detract from its medical virtues." True, true! for it never possessed "medical virtues."

The cost of this villanous decoction is _scarcely half a cent a bottle_! Soured swill! It is recommended to cure fifty different complaints! It sells to fools for "one dollar a bottle," and will go through one like so much quicksilver. "Try a bottle," if you doubt it. The "dodge" is in advertising it as a temperance bitter. Having no alcoholic properties, it in no wise endangers the user in becoming addicted to _stimulants_.

Sarsaparilla humbugs are only second to the above. But a few years since an immense fortune was realized by a New York speculator in human flesh on a "Sarsaparilla" which contained not one drop of that all but useless medicine; nor did it possess any real medical properties whatever.

THE DOWN EAST FARMER'S STORY.

To illustrate this point, we introduce the following conversation between the author and a "down east" farmer, in 1852:--

"It's all a humbug, is saxferilla!" exclaimed the old farmer, rapping his fist "hard down on the old oaken table."

"Why, no; not _all_ sarsaparilla; you must admit--"

"No difference. I tell you it's a pesky humbug, all of it."

Withdrawing his tobacco pipe from his mouth, he laid it on the table, and standing his thumb end on the board, as a "point of departure," he turned to me, and said,--

"Why, in the medical books it has been analyzed, and they say it's nothin' but sugar-house molasses, cheap whiskey, and a sprinkling of essence of wintergreen and saxafras. Git the book, and see 'Townsend's Saxferilla,' and that is the article! But they are all alike. Let me tell you about the great New York saxferilla speculation. One man, S. P. Townsend, started a compound like this here--nothin' but molasses and whiskey, and essence to scent it nicely. When he had got it advertised from Texas to the Gut of Canser (Canso, Provinces), from the Atlantic to the Specific, and was about to make his fortune off on it, some speculators see he was doin' a good thing, and, by zounds! they put their heads together, and their dollars, to have a finger in the pie; and they done it. This is the way they circumscribed him. They hired an old fellow,--I believe he was a porter in a store when they found him,--named Jacob Townsend, and a right rough old customer he was, all rags and dirt, hadn't but one reliable eye, and a regular old rumsucker.

"Well, they fixed him up with a fine suit of clothes, and, by zounds! they palmed him off for the original, Simon Pure saxferilla man. So they advertised him as the real ginuine Townsend, and started a 'saxferilla,' with his ugly old face on the bottles, and said that the other was counterfeit, you see; and there he sat, with his one eye cocked on the crowd of customers that crowded round to see the ginuine thing, you know. So they blowed the other saxferilla as counterfeit, and finding in a store a bottle or two that had _fomented_, they made a great noise about the bogus saxferilla, 'busting the bottles,' and all that, and again asserting that the Jacob Townsend was the true blue, Simon Pure; and it took, by zounds! Yes, the public swallowed the lie, the saxferilla, old Jacob, and all. I hearn that both the parties made a fortune on it."

Stopping to take a whiff at his neglected pipe, he resumed:--

"Saxferilla is all a humbug!"

S. P. Townsend, as is well known, amassed a fortune, at one time, on the profits of the "sarsaparilla," put up, as the reader may remember, in huge, square, black bottles. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. XL. p. 237, says, "Townsend's Sarsaparilla, Albany, N. Y., in nearly black bottles," is "composed of molasses, extract of roots _or_ barks (sassafras bark is better than essence, because of body and color), and _probably_ senna and sarsaparilla. A. A. HAYES, State Assayer."

The medical properties are all a _supposition_, even though Dr. Hayes was _hired_ to give the analysis of it to the public, in the interest of the proprietor, and consequently he would not detract from its _supposed_ merits.

Pectorals, wild cherry preparations, etc., are cheaply made. Oil of almonds produces the _cherry_ flavor, _hydrocyanic acid_ (prussic acid, a virulent poison) and morphine, or opium, constitute the medical properties. I have not examined the exception to the above.

_Pills._ The bitter and cathartic properties of nearly every pill in the market,--advertised preparation,--whether "mandrake," "liver," "vegetable," or what else, are made up from aloes, the coarsest and cheapest of all bitter cathartics. One is as good as another. You pay your money, however; you can take your choice.

One holds the ascendency in proportion to the money or cheek invested by the owner in its introduction. A great Philadelphia pill, now sold in all the drug stores of America, was introduced by the following "dodge": The owner began small. He took his pills to the druggists, and, as he could not sell an unknown and unadvertised patent pill, he left a few boxes on commission. He then sent round and bought them up. Their ready sale induced the druggists to purchase again, for cash. The proprietor invested the surplus cash in advertising their "rapid sale," as well as their "rare virtues," and by puffing, and a little more buying up, he got them started. He necessarily must keep them advertised, or they would become a _drug_ in market.

Wilkie Collins, Esq., in "No Name," has the best written description of the _modus operandi_ of keeping a "pill before the people," and I cannot refrain from quoting Captain Wragge to Magdalen in this connection.

"My dear girl, I have been occupied, since we last saw each other, in slightly modifying my old professional habits. I have shifted from moral agriculture to medical agriculture. Formerly I preyed on the public sympathy; now I prey on the public's stomach. Stomach and sympathy, sympathy and stomach. The founders of my fortune are three in number: their names are Aloes, Scammony, and Gamboge. In plainer words, I am now living--on a pill! I made a little money, if you remember, by my friendly connection with you. I made a little more by the happy decease (_Requiescat in pace_) of that female relative of Mrs. Wragge's. Very good! What do you think I did? I invested the whole of my capital, at one fell swoop, in advertising a pill, and purchased my drugs and pill boxes on credit. The result is before you. Here I am, a grand financial fact, with my clothes positively paid for, and a balance at my banker's; with my servant in livery, and my gig at the door; solvent, popular, and all on a pill!"

Magdalen smiled.

"It's no laughing matter for the public, my dear; they can't get rid of me and my pill; they must take us. There is not a single form of appeal in the whole range of human advertisement which I am not making to the unfortunate public at this moment. Hire the last novel--there I am inside the covers of the book; send for the last song--the instant you open the leaves I drop out of it; take a cab--I fly in at the windows in red; buy a box of tooth-powders at the chemists--I wrap it up in blue; show yourself at the theatre--I flutter down from the galleries in yellow. The mere titles of my advertisements are quite irresistible. Let me quote a few from last week's issue. Proverbial title: 'A pill in time saves nine.' Familiar title: 'Excuse me, how is your stomach?' Patriotic title: 'What are the three characteristics of a true-born Englishman?--his hearth, his home, and his pill;' etc.

"The place in which I make my pill is an advertisement in itself. I have one of the largest shops in London. Behind the counter, visible to the public through the lucid medium of plate glass, are four and twenty young men, in white aprons, making the pill. Behind another, four and twenty making the boxes. At the bottom of the shop are three elderly accountants, posting the vast financial transactions accruing from the pill, in three enormous ledgers. Over the door are my name, portrait, and autograph, expanded to colossal proportions, and surrounded, in flowing letters, the motto of the establishment: 'DOWN WITH THE DOCTORS.' Mrs. Wragge contributes her quota to this prodigious enterprise. She is the celebrated woman whom I have cured of indescribable agonies, from every complaint under the sun. Her _portrait_ is engraved on all the wrappers, with the following inscription: 'Before she took the pill,' etc."

[In this country we are familiar with the ghostly looking picture of a man, the said proprietor of a medicine, "before he took the pill" (aloes), and "after;" the "after" being represented by a ridiculous extreme of muscular and adipose tissue.]

"Captain Wragge's" is the style in which most medicines are placed before the public. We take up our morning journal: its columns are crowded by patent medicine advertisements. We turn in disgust from their glaring statements, and attempt to read a news item. We get half through, and find we are sold into reading a puff for the same trashy article. We take a horse-car for up or down town, and opposite, in bold and variegated letters, the persistent remedy (?) stares you continually in the face. We enter the post office: the lobbies are employed for the exposition, perhaps sale, of the patent medicines. We open our box: "O, we've a large mail to-day!" we exclaim; when, lo! half of the envelopes contain patent medicine advertisements, which have been run through the post office into every man's box in the department. And so it goes all day. We breakfast on aloes, dine on quassia, sup on logwood and myrrh, and sleep on morphine and prussic acid!

"The humors of the press" sometimes inadvertently tell you the truth respecting this or that remedy advertised in their columns.

A religious newspaper before me says of a proprietary medicine, "Advertised in another column of our paper: It is a _hell-deserving_ article." Probably the copy read, "Well-deserving article."

Said a certain paper, "A correspondent, whose duty it was to 'read up' the religious weeklies, has concluded that the reason of those journals devoting so much space to patent medicine announcements is, 'that the object of religion and quackery are similar--both prepare us for another and better world.'"

The proprietor of a pill,--not Captain Wragge,--threatened recently to prosecute a New Hampshire newspaper publisher for a puff of his "Gripe Pills."

As every fool, as well as some wise people, read the "personals" in the papers, an occasional notice of a tooth-paste, bitter, or tonic is inserted therein, thus:--

"AUGUSTUS APOLPHUS: I will deceive you no longer. My conscience
upbraids me. Those pearly white teeth you so much admire are false!
false! They were made by Dr. Grinder, dentist. I use Dr. Scourer's
tooth-paste, which keeps them clean and white. 'O, how sharper than a
serpent's thanks it is to have a toothless child.'

SUSAN JANE."

Great and public men are sometimes induced or inveigled into recommending a patent medicine. In London, one Joshua Ward, a drysalter, of Thames Street, about the year 1780, introduced a pill, composed of the usual ingredients,--aloes and senna,--which, owing to some benefit he was supposed to have derived from their use, Lord Chief Baron Reynolds was led to praise in the highest terms. The result of this high dignitary's patronage was to give prominence to Ward and his pills, which subsequently sold for the fabulous price of 2s. 6d. a pill! General Churchill added his praise, and Ward was called as a physician to prescribe for the king. Either in consequence, or in spite of the treatment, the royal malady disappeared, and Ward was _re_warded with a solemn vote of the House of Commons protecting him from the interdiction of the College of Physicians. In addition to the liberal fee, he asked for and obtained the privilege of driving his carriage through St. James Park! Notwithstanding the pill, Reynolds died of his disease not long afterwards.

Henry Fielding subscribed to the wonderful efficacy of "Tar Water," a nostrum of his day, but died of the disease for which it was recommended.

Some time prior to 1780 there was published in the newspapers a list of the patent nostrums, or advertised remedies, in London, which numbered upwards of two hundred.

Now there are known, in the United States alone, to be upwards of three hundred differently named hair preparations.

Dr. Head, of whom we have made mention, "realized large sums from worthless quack nostrums," while at the same time another popular physician, with a Cambridge (England) diploma in his office, was proprietor of a "gout mixture," which sold at the shops for two shillings a bottle.

Some of these shameless scoundrels, owners of advertised nostrums, with little or no sense of honor, have published the recommendations of great men, without the knowledge or permission of the parties whose names were so falsely affixed to their worthless stuff. A New York quack recently used the name of Henry Ward Beecher in this manner. Mr. Beecher published him as a thief and forger of his name, which only served to bring the doctor (?) into universal notice. Only to-day I read his impudent advertisement in a newspaper, with Mr. Beecher's name affixed as reference. If you prosecute one of the villains for issuing false certificates, even for forging your own name, it does him no great injury, you get no satisfaction, and in the end it only serves to call public attention to a worthless article, thereby increasing its sale.

In the London _Medical Journal_ of 1806, Dr. Lettsom attacked and exposed a "nervous cordial," stating that it was a deleterious article; "that it had killed its thousands;" and further asserted that Brodum, its proprietor, was a Jewish knave, having been a bootblack in Copenhagen, and a wholesale murderer. Brodum at once brought an action against the proprietor of the _Journal_, laying the damages at twenty-five thousand dollars. Brodum held the advantage, and the _Journal_ proprietor asked for terms of settlement. Brodum's terms were not modest. He, through his attorney, agreed to withdraw the action provided the name of the author was revealed, and that he should whitewash the quack in the next number of the _Journal_, over the same signature! Dr. Lettsom consented to these terms, paid the lawyers' bills and costs, amounting to three hundred and ninety pounds, and wrote the required puff of Brodum and his nostrum.

SOOTHING SYRUPS, nervous cordials, etc., owe their soothing properties to opium, or its salt--morphine.

From "OPIUM AND THE OPIUM APPETITE," by Alonzo Calkins, M. D., we are informed that an article sold as "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup," for children teething, contains nearly _one grain of the alkaloid_ (morphine) _to each ounce of the syrup_! Taking one teaspoonful as the dose (that is, one drachm), and there being eight drachms to the ounce, consequently about one eighth of a grain of morphine is given to an infant at a dose! Do you wonder it gives him a _quietus_? Do you wonder that the mortality among children is greatly on the increase? that so many of the darling, helpless little innocents die from dropsy, brain fever, epileptic fits, and the like?

FRUIT SYRUPS FOR SODA WATER.

Perhaps you take yours "plain." No! Then you may want to know how the pure fruit syrup, which sweetens and flavors the soda, is made. The "soda" itself is a very harmless article.

BUTYRIC ETHER is usually taken for a basis. Butyric ether is manufactured from rancid butter, old rotten cheese, or Limburger cheese. The latter is the "loudest," and affords the best flavor to the ether. The cheese is treated with sulphuric acid. Old leather is known to give it a particularly fine flavor. Any old boots and shoes will answer.

PINEAPPLE SYRUP is made from butyric and formic ether. The latter is manufactured from soap or glycerine. Sulphuric acid and red ants will do as well.

STRAWBERRY is made of twelve parts of butyric ether and one of acetic ether, alcohol, and water. Color with cochineal--a bug of the tick species, from Mexico. Sometimes a little real strawberry is added, but it is not deemed essential.

RASPBERRY is made from the same articles. If convenient, the druggist adds a little raspberry jam or syrup. If not, color a little deeper, add some strawberry, and change the label to raspberry.

VANILLA SYRUP is made of Tonqua beans, such as boys sell on the street.

PEACH is made from bitter almonds. WILD CHERRY the same.

NECTAR is formed by a compound of various syrups and Madeira wine. You can easily make the Madeira of neutral spirits, sugar, raisins, and logwood to color it.

SARSAPARILLA. Take the cheapest and nastiest molasses obtainable. Strain it to remove dead bees, sticks, cockroaches, etc. Flavor with essence sassafras and wintergreen. Little extract sarsaparilla will do no harm if added to the mixture. It is very harmless.

LEMON is made of citric acid and sugar.

COFFEE is made mostly of chiccory, burnt livers, sometimes a little coffee bean. Horses' livers are said to be the best, giving it a _racy_ flavor, and more _body_.

"They are all very good," the vender tells you; he takes his plain, however. You see how much cheaper these are than the _real_ fruit syrup itself; and as neither you nor I can tell the difference by _taste_, what inducement has the dealer in soda water to use the costlier articles?

I have a friend who sells the "pure syrups," and I presume the reader has also; but I respectfully decline drinking soda water with "pure fruit syrups."

POISONOUS HAIR TONICS AND COSMETICS.

Extract from the report of Professor C. F. Chandler, Ph. D., chemist
to the Metropolitan Board of Health. This report, which presents the
results of the examination of a few of the articles in general use,
was printed in full in the Chemical News (American reprint) for May,
1870. We present the following list of dangerous preparations, which
gives the number of grains of lead, etc., in one fluid ounce.

I. HAIR TONICS, WASHES, AND RESTORATIVES.

Grains of lead in
one fluid ounce.

1. Clark's Distilled Restorative for the Hair, 0.11
2. Chevalier's Life for the Hair, 1.02
3. Circassian Hair Rejuvenator, 2.71
4. Ayer's Hair Vigor, 2.89
5. Professor Wood's Hair Restorative, 3.08
6. Dr. J. J. O'Brien's Hair Restorer, America, 3.28
7. Gray's Celebrated Hair Restorative, 3.39
8. Phalon's Vitalia, 4.69
9. Ring's Vegetable Ambrosia, 5.00
10. Mrs. S. A. Allen's World's Hair Restorer, 5.57
11. L. Knittel's Indian Hair Tonique, 6.29
12. Hall's Vegetable Sicilian Hair Renewer, 7.13
13. Dr. Tebbet's Physiological Hair Regenerator, 7.44
14. Martha Washington Hair Restorative, 9.80
15. Singer's Hair Restorative, 16.39

II. LOTIONS OR WASHES FOR THE COMPLEXION.

_Perry's Moth and Freckle Lotion._

Mercury in solution, 2.67 gr. }equiv.{ Corrosive Sub., 3.61 gr.
Zinc in solution, 0.99 " } to { Sulphate of Zinc, 4.25 "

The sediment contains mercury, lead, and bismuth.

III. ENAMELS FOR THE SKIN.

Grains of lead in one fluid
ounce, after shaking.

Eugenie's Favorite, 108.94 grains.
Phalon's Snow-white Enamel, 146.28 "
Phalon's Snow-white Oriental Cream, 190.99 "