Patent medicines are a curse because of two very important reasons. First, in that so long as they are exploited by the power of wealth and press, it is practically an impossibility to get the ear or hearing of the masses, to teach the truth about matters concerning health; Truth being overwhelmed for the time being by Ignorance. Secondly, in that in the use of many of the patent medicines, drugs of a highly poisonous character are needlessly introduced into the system. These poisons may be alcohol, morphine, opium, or cocaine.

If all patent medicines contained nothing more harmful than colored water or sugar of milk, no great harm would ensue from their use, other than deluding the people; but unfortunately many of these medicines are loaded up or down, as you like it, with alcohol; others of them, particularly the cough mixtures, contain morphine or opium in some form or another, while another class of medicines contain cocaine.

Many aged persons take a little cough medicine, just to make them sleep well. In doing this they are ignorant of the risk incurred in their becoming so addicted to the use of the medicine, that they will be unable to stop its use. This is just what occurs in numberless instances, thousands of wrecks having resulted from the use of the patent medicine cough-cures, containing as they do morphine or opium.

Handling a loaded revolver would be safety itself in comparison with taking any of these remedies; yet the drugging goes merrily on.

If patent medicines have ever exercised any curative power whatever, it has been solely and entirely through the exercise of the imagination, or the faith of the one taking them. This might be called the Mind-Cure of the patent medicine. Any newspaper or periodical publishing the advertisements of many of the patent medicines necessarily fathers them, inferentially at least. A belief in advertisements claiming that Bright's disease, diabetes, tuberculosis or consumption, or cancer, are curable by certain medical nostrums, would take us back to the times when ignorance was rife - in fact it would turn the dial of time three thousand years backwards. Statements of this kind are not only criminal, but an insult to an intelligent or ignorant public, as you like to think of it.

It would be just as reasonable to make the claim for these medicines of their ability to replace lost arms, legs and eyes, as it is to claim the cure of certain diseases by medicines. The man with the wooden leg is as much justified in taking a medicine to replace it, as is the man who takes medicines to cure consumption; one is just as reasonable as the other. Lost legs or arms are just as easily replaced as are any of the other lost or diseased organs of the body - whether they be lost lungs or lost kidneys.

There may be some harmless patent medicines, but in the absence of one being able to differentiate the harmless from the harmful or poisonous ones, their use cannot be recommended under any circumstances.

Exceptions might be made in the case of external remedies, as liniments, ointments, etc. Home-made remedies of mint or catnip tea are far preferable to any remedy, the composition of which you are not fully familiar with.

The government should protect the people by passing a law prohibiting or restricting the sale of all patent medicines, used internally and containing dangerous remedies; just as exists regarding the sale of arsenic, strychnine, etc. This will be a thing of the milennium!

The point to be emphasized in all that has been said regarding the use of medicines, is that man should endeavor to live the laws of health as far as he possibly can. If guilty of an occasional dietetic or other indulgence, or over-indulgence, let him get back to his natural condition as quickly as possible. There are many simple and harmless medicines, which are as efficacious as any patent medicine in existence. Of these the old-fashioned senna tea, or epsom salts, or the immortal castor oil, happily now made palatable, occupy the front rank, while iron as a food-medicine is a sheet-anchor.

Then there are many other harmless drugs beautifully put up in pill or tablet forms, but these, as all other medicines, should only be taken on extraordinary occasions, and never as a routine practise.

In acute inflammatory conditions of the bowels, simulating appendicitis, no other remedies are so efficacious, at the very beginning of the attack, as a large sized dose of Epsom or Rochelle salts, or a palatable castor oil. These are indicated because of their quick action, a matter of say two or three hours. Other cathartic medicines, pills, tablets, etc., are too slow in action to be of service. Medicines must be regarded as temporary aids to nature. Used in this way they are invaluable and often of life-saving im-importance. What has been said as to the curse of patent medicines lies in the futility of their use in chronic and incurable diseases, when other means would be of greater benefit. Secondly, in their poisonous constituents which are responsible for drug enslaving habits.

Nature never forgives any violation of her laws. No individual can have from ten to twenty bilious attacks a year, for a series of years, without finally being made to realize the vengefulness of Nature; the same applies to the dyspeptic, and in fact to everyone else who violates natural laws. "It's a long lane that has no turning," and this is never better illustrated than in those who violate natural laws. Retribution is certain to come sooner or later to all such, in the form of chronic incurable disease. For this reason every individual should cultivate health, the possession of which is the greatest asset or wealth in existence. The individual who lives health has no occasion to use patent medicines, nor in fact medicine of any other kind. The wise man realizes that health is the first great wealth, contentment is the second, and wealth - monied wealth - in comparison with the others, is the least and last great wealth.

In this age of enlightenment we know that natural phenomena are a result of natural, not supernatural causes; that disease is a result of the violation of natural law, and is cured or arrested by an observance of this same law, and not by the systematic use of medicines or drugging.

The lesson to be learned from a general consideration of the Superstition of Medicine, is that there are no supernatural agencies whatever influencing health or disease conditions, but that the body makes its own blood continuously out of the air, food and water supplied to it. If the materials are insufficient or defective, the blood will be imperfect - lacking some elements, excessive in other elements, or loaded down with poisonous matters. This, in a nutshell, constitutes disease or health.