But how much avail am I to the ignorant young rounder, who comes out of a night’s debauch with a big head, and who still half drunk wanders from drug store to drug store and asks for his effervescent? No one guilty because the busy clerk or proprietor did not know that he had had another just 5 minutes previous. With all this knowledge before me I have been guilty of openly pushing the sale by the distribution of literature lauding these remedies, but no more for me.
And I ask my brother druggists not to put out any advertising which may contain on one of its pages a recommendation for a coal tar remedy. I also hope to soon see upon the statutes of every State a law similar to the one concerning Cocaine of our own State.
For I maintain that Opium or Cocaine are not one-half so deadly as Coal Tar, for while they openly show what they can do, the other works silently till the end is near. For our part, we have quit putting up a remedy of our own, and I have in mind the adoption of a label, to go on the outside of all packages sold, to read something like this:
“All remedies containing acetanilid, acetphenetidin or like product of coal tar are dangerous, and should be used with caution, in extreme cases only, and never habitually.” Considering the effect on myself, on the people I have sold to, the evidence of many physicians who have found out the pernicious effects and have felt themselves compelled to abandon or modify its use, I venture the opinion that, while it is bad medicine for any one for regular use, on those who are extremely susceptible to it, it soon vitiates the blood, and deprives them of their full powers of resistance, when sudden shock or disease o’er takes them.
Gentlemen, if by the reading of this paper, I have converted one person to my point of view I shall feel amply rewarded for the hours spent in its preparation.
PAT’S INDIGNATION.
Patrick, lately over, was working in the yards of a railroad. One day he happened to be in the yard office when the force was out. The telephone rang vigorously several times, and he at last decided it ought to be answered. He walked over to the instrument, took down the receiver, and put his mouth to the transmitter, just as he had seen others do.
“Hillo!” he called.
“Hello!” answered the voice at the other end of the line. “Is this eight-six-one-five-nine?”