HEALINE TREATMENT.
This is advertised from a town in the south of England as follows:
Rupture cured
speedily and permanently, with inexpensive home treatment. A certain remedy for Man, Woman, and Child. Full particulars on receipt of two stamps.
Application to the address given brought a booklet of 28 pages, headed:
The following is a description of
Rupture,
Its causes, Symptoms,
Treatment, and Cure.
An extract from this booklet is here given:
The only possible way to effect a permanent cure is by taking a remedy that will fortify and strengthen the weakened vessels, and so enable them to bear an ordinary strain without injuring them. Healine Treatment No. 1 has been found by experience to perform this operation after all other so-called treatments have failed. External treatment cannot cure you, for the cause is internal; therefore to effect a cure the cause must be removed. By taking this remedy as directed, a cure may be expected from two to four months, according to description of complaint and length of time affected. From six to nine bottles of this preparation is generally sufficient to effect a cure, or the same quantity of pills. I do not guarantee to completely cure every case, but it will do as much good as nature will allow, and prevent strangulation in every case. I find, after a few years’ experience with this remedy, that it is able to absolutely cure ninety out of every hundred cases of rapture, where nine to a dozen bottles have been taken.
Other sections of the pamphlet are devoted to varicocele and varicose veins, for which it appears that “Healine No. 2” and “Healine No. 3” respectively are recommended.
The prices of the preparations (post free) were thus given:
Liquid Form.—3s. per bottle; Three for 8s. 9d.; or Six prepared bottles for 15s.
Pill Form (recommended).—2s. 9d. per box; Three for 8s.; or Six for 13s. 9d.
Healine Lotion (same price as Internal Healine) is always necessary for bad Ulcerated Legs and open or deep-seated Wounds, and never fails to cure when used as directed.
Consultation by appointment only, for which a fee of 2s. 6d. will be charged.
An application for a bottle of liquid “Healine No. 1,” with a remittance of 3s., brought in return a box of the pills, with an intimation that these were recommended in preference. The box contained 60 pills, two to be taken three times a day.
The pills were coated with talc, after removal of which they had an average weight of 4 grains. No metallic salts were present, and no alkaloid; about 1 per cent. of an oily liquid of acid nature, apparently oleic acid, was found; small quantities of a tannin, gum, and phlobaphene, a decomposition product of tannin, were present, and a bitter substance which showed no characters by which it could be identified; aloin and extract of cascara sagrada were absent, and all resinous substances, unless in minute quantity; the pill consisted chiefly of indefinite extractive, with about 20 per cent. of a vegetable powder, one ingredient of which was liquorice, a second appearing to be gentian, but it was not identified with certainty; a considerable portion of the vegetable powder had no identifiable properties.
CHAPTER XIX.
CURES FOR INEBRIETY.
For a good many years past cures for inebriety have been freely advertised in various ways, some of them commonplace and others showing a good deal of ingenuity. Some are advertised and sold in the same way as ordinary secret remedies, that is to say, the purchaser sends so much money and receives a box or bottle with directions for administering the contents. In other instances the inebriate is required to submit himself to inspection, and in certain cases must enter a home maintained by the proprietor or his agents. Between these two extremes there are intermediate plans, the methods followed shading off on the one hand into those of the ordinary nostrum seller, and on the other into the more elaborate system of the “treatments” with which transatlantic enterprise has made us familiar. The last of the remedies described by name below approximates very closely to this class.