to add that to combine extract of meat with port wine is simply to ignore its real use. The only intelligible basis for such an invention must be the wholly erroneous notion that extract of meat is a food."
The prices asked for "secret nostrums" are said by chemists to be ofttimes far beyond the value of the materials. Of one article the New Idea, a druggists' paper, says:—
"It retails at $1.50 per bottle. Such an article could be put up for less than fifteen cents, including bottle, leaving by no means a small margin for the profit of its manufacturers."
The same paper says of a cure for catarrh, neuralgia, etc. sold in the form of a small ball:—
"This cure costs $2.50 per ball. A handsome profit could be made upon it at 5 cents a ball."
Some proprietary preparations are not harmful, but are positively inert. The Mass. State Board of Health in report of 1896 gives Kaskine as an example of these. Although sold at a dollar an ounce it was found to consist of nothing but granulated sugar of the fine grade used in homeopathic pharmacy, without any medication or flavoring whatever.
Dr. Edward Von Adelung in an article in Life and Health, Dec., 1897, tells of a well advertised cure for consumption, the analysis of which showed it to be composed of water, slightly colored by the addition of a very small quantity of red wine, and two mineral acids, muriatic and impure sulphuric, in quantities just sufficient to lend it a taste! He says:—
