Rum Remedies. imum dose of a "German" tonic reaches nearly this and is equal to three pretty stiff drinks of ordinary whisky a day. A popular tonic that claims to be "a purely vegetable extract" contains 41.6 per cent. of the extract of corn. It is nearly as strong as the ordinary gin, whisky or brandy, and yet it is advertised as " a stimulus to the body without intoxication," and "inebriates struggling to reform." are told that they "will find its tonic and sustaining influence on the nervous system a great help to their efforts." In other words, a man whose appetite craves whisky may allay the craving by taking whisky under the notion that it is medicine. When we come to "tonic bitters," the quantity of alcohol is found to be ample to make incarnadine the largest town. Here hearty conviviality and hilarity and hiccough are served up by the tablespoonful. The maximum dose of one is as much as the most hardened" rounder" would care to take, with a decent respect for the condition of his head next morning. Another specimen contains 47.5 per cent of alcohol. Now that is the sort of tonic the maximum dose of which is likely to land the victim in the police station. There is a "wheat" bitters tonic the analysis of which leads to visions of tangled legs, blackened eyes, police court, and the zoological features of delirium tremens. If a man wants to take alcohol, and if he prefers it in combination with unknown but nauseous drugs, that settles it. The analyst has no message for him. He knows what he is about and if he disorders his stomach and impairs his brain power he does it deliberately. But those who have no wish to brace up on bad rum, disguised in a degree by bitter herbs of no sort of medicinal value, can afford to pay some attention to the reports of competent examiners who find nearly all the "patent" tonics and bitters made up with more alcohol than anybody should be allowed to take in ignorance. If topers like it, that is their concern. The chief objection is that it lures other people into a dependence on un wholesome stimulants. Persons who take these tonics Rum Remedies. say something like this: "The medicine seemed to help me as long as I was taking it." Of course it did. A sip of whisky occasionally when one is depressed from any cause is a temporary stimulant which makes one feel better. When the frequency of sipping increases the want grows, and so the appetite for pernicious artificial support is developed. It would be very strange indeed if this sipping of strongly alcoholic tonics did not often lead to the regular drinking of whisky. It is safe to accept the dictum of experienced observers that the continued use of alcoholic medicines poisons rather than purifies the blood. These great medical discoveries that promise so much for the blood, were not revealed to an intelligent captive by a dying Indian chief; they are not compounded after the prescription of a philanthropist whose sands of life have nearly run out and who leaves his priceless restorer to a suffering world. Nor are the compounders broad-browed, bald-headed men of profound attainments, who pore over the occult writings of imaginary scientists of the Middle ages and wrest from reluctant nature her dearest secrets. They are simply shrewd men whose name is Humbug and who know what dupes can be made of mankind. But shall we have no elixir of life? Surely and abundantly. It is within every man's reach. All "sinkings at the pit of the stomach," most palpitations of the heart, all "tremblings of the legs," most backaches, headaches and the other discomforts that lead to the taking of drugs, are the consequences of the failure of people to avail themselves of nature's sovereign prophylactic, fresh air. An abundant supply of fresh air, a proper amount of exercise, a rational attention to food, together with avoidance of excesses of any kind, will give a man all the health he can secure by any means, if he have no organic disease, and enough to carry him cheerfully if not painlessly to the end of the journey. Most persons magnify the slight ailments, easily traced to some fault in way of living, and imagine functional dis Rum Remedies. turbances to be organic disease.. A dietetic folly or a lack of fresh air is treated by infinite dosing for conscientious kidneys which are trying to work off the consequences of the bad living. Sleeplessness, due in most cases to a lack of fresh air, leads to the almost habitual use of drugs that should be taken only on rare occasions. The abuse of drugs is appalling. Because the disastrous effects are slow in showing themselves, the voice of authority falls on deaf ears, but nevertheless the voice of authority is vindicated in the long run by the early breaking down of persons who, under rational conditions of living and a contempt for dosing, might have enjoyed unbroken health to their last illness. The family medicine case is an immeasurable evil. For every slight discomfort, which is only a warning against some fault of living, the drug is ever ready and is given in a happy go lucky way, begetting the most foolish and dangerous habit of drug tippling. Even in the hands of the most experienced physicians, the action of drugs has an element of uncertainty. No man is competent to determine for himself the necessity for medicine and particularly of alcoholic medicine, the chief merit of which is that the patient never forgets to take it on time and in full quantity. If persons would take a rational view of the matter of health, there would be comparatively little drug-taking. The first demand of health is fresh air. This neglected, no amount of drugging can prove of the least benefit. If one is too indolent to meet the conditions of health, he should bear the penalty like a man. Bear it he must in spite of all the spiced gums of Araby and all the countless bottles that glitter on the shelves of the drug-seller. There is no remedy for poisoned lungs and shattered nerves with their infinite complaints, but in pure air. With fresh air, constant and abundant, the capacity of men for work would be vastly augmented. Most cases of brain-fag are due to indoor life and the absence of good air. If nine-tenths of the drugtakers should hurl their bottles at the midnight cats, resolve Rum Remedies. to live outdoors enough to bathe their lungs again and again in nature's great and free remedy, they would enter upon a life free from the vague and elusive discomforts which, along with the stupefying drugs they take, make irritable, peevish and whimsical rascals of them. Nature has put it in the power of every person who is free from organic disease to live a life of almost riotous health. Life may be a bubble, but there is a rainbow in the bubble which only those can see who are aggressively well. We can all be aggressively well. The ailing man, neither sick nor well, who must have his drugs, doomed to become self-centered and as attentive to every trivial pain as the wrapt philosopher is of every movement that agitates his brain cells is a nuisance at large and a master specimen of selfishness. If the deluded and deluding faith and other healers do some harm in the world, there is no doubt that they also do some good by dragging imaginary invalids from their beds and smashing the drug bottles, to the very great benefit of the imaginary invalids and their friends. But it is wiser to brace up under a rational view of the conditions of health and to enjoy the thought that whatever else one may be, he is not a dupe. THE CHARLATAN AND HIS METHODS. BY PROF. T. W. CHITTENDEN, OF APPLETON, WIS. In all ordinary circumstances when intelligent men and women have work to be done which requires special skill in whatever simple lines, they seek the services of an artisan of whose competence they have some reasonable assurance. The majority of sane and sensible people do not trust even the cobbling of their old shoes to a man of whom they know nothing whatever; certainly not to one of whom they do know that he has never learned the cobbler's trade. Still less does the owner of a valuable watch or time-piece of any kind which by chance has gotten out of order, confide it to the first traveling tinker who may present himself at the door, with the view of having it restored to a condition of usefulness. Nevertheless the man who if his watch or clock be out of repair seeks with sedulous care for an experienced mechanic, for one who has given time and attention to the study of time keepers and has mastered the principles involved in their construction, one whose competence to perform the necessary work is beyond all question, this very man will often confide the repair of a mechanism a thousand fold more intricate and delicate than any time-piece can possibly be to one of whose qualifications for the difficult task he is absolutely ignorant; more than this, he will entrust such a piece of work to one concerning whom he can have testimony, unimpeachable in character, showing conclusively his utter ignorance of the mechanism with which he proposes to tamper, as well as of the laws that govern its action. Need it be said that we refer to the employment of the charlatan in preference to the educated physician. The greatest physicians and surgeons that the world has seen, the men who, endowed by nature with more than com |