Patent Medicines and the Liquor Habit
AMONG the many objections urged against patent medicines, none is more serious than the latest one advanced; namely, that it panders to the vice of alcoholism. It From an analysis made by the Massachusetts State Board of Health we learn that Peruna was found to contain 23.46 per cent, by weight, of alcohol; Vinol, 15.33 per cent; Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable ‘Compound, 16.77 per cent, and Swamp Root, 5.87 per cent. These analyses were made upon the request of Mrs. Martha W. Allen, an energetic worker in the W. C. T. U., and the community owes her its thanks for having taken this action. Strange to say, the proprietors of Peruna claim that among its friends Peruna can count many of the leading temperance workers in the country, who give it unstinted praise, which may account for the case that is cited of a young lady who has been taking large doses of this compound, and found it so, exhilarating that she has become a sort of walking advertisement for it. Many of the advocates of Peruna would no doubt shrink in horror if asked to indulge in a cocktail; yet it is a positive fact that the majority of cocktails do not contain so large a percentage of alcohol as this much-lauded remedy, indorsed by temperance workers. It has been frequently asserted that the drinking habit is on the increase among the women of this country. Is it to be wondered at, when their taste is vitiated and their will power undermined by having alcohol surreptitiously administered in excessive quantities, under the guise of a beneficial medicine? It is the meanest kind of hypocrisy to practice liquor selling, and to evade the license fee by calling it a remedy; and although it is necessary in many of these preparations to employ alcohol to preserve it, it should be the duty of the legislature to limit the percentage that should be used, so that this snare and temptation should be removed from the path of the young and unsuspecting.—Health.