Vinegar Bitters by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 16, 1882

Vinegar Bitters.

By Editor

It is right that we make a statement concerning the "California Vinegar Bitters," as a notice of them appeared last week in our Temperance Department. Some months since we saw in Good Health a notice of different bitters, with the per centage of alcohol in each. The Vinegar Bitters were said to contain 7 per cent.

We immediately wrote to the editor, inquiring if he knew whether the statement was correct. He replied that the article was copied, and he could not vouch for its correctness, but would himself subject them to analysis as soon as opportunity was offered. Since then he tested them, and the result was given by him in a lecture at a temperance convention in Lake Bluff, Ill., and published in Good Health, from which the extract we published last week was taken.

This extract was put in type several weeks ago by our assistant, but we suspended its publication until the election was over, not wishing to have it affect the prohibition vote. Part of it appeared, however, in the Tribune of this city, before the election, so it was not entirely unknown in this vicinity.

Dr. McDonald has done some good service to the temperance cause, for which he has had our highest respect. We are well acquainted with the editor of Good Health, and can vouch for his ability and veracity. We are constrained to believe that the Vinegar Bitters do contain alcohol; not so much as is found in most other "Bitters," but enough to form the taste for stimulants in those who use them.

IN no year since 1852 has there been as much early rain in California as in 1882. Of late we have had some quite hard frosts. But the growth of vegetation is large; flowers will bloom in spite of the cold, and the country is fair to look upon.