The following paragraph appeared on the covering of the bottle:
A trial bottle will convince the most skeptical of the real merit of Hood’s Sarsaparilla, and will enable everybody to test its wonderful power in restoring and invigorating the whole system, in renovating and enriching the blood, in giving an appetite and a tone to the stomach, in eradicating and curing Scrofula, Scrofulous Humors, Scald Head, Syphilitic Affections, Cancerous Humors, Ringworms, Salt Rheum, Boils, Pimples and Humors on the Face, Catarrh, Headache, Dizziness, Faintness at the Stomach, Constipation, Pains in the Back, Female Weakness, General Debility, Costiveness, Biliousness, and all diseases arising from an impure state or low condition of the blood. Hood’s Sarsaparilla is designed to act upon the blood, and through that upon all the organs and tissues of the body. It has a specific action also upon the secretions and excretions, and assists nature to expel from the system all humors, impure particles and effete matter through the lungs, the liver, the kidneys, and the skin. It effectually aids weak, impaired, and debilitated organs, invigorates the nervous system, tones and strengthens the digestive organs, and imparts new life and energy to all the functions of the body. The peculiar point of this medicine is that it strengthens and builds up the system while it eradicates disease.
In a pamphlet enclosed with the bottle it was stated:
It is carefully prepared from Sarsaparilla, Dandelion, Mandrake, Dock, Pipsissewa, Juniper Berries, and other valuable vegetable remedies, in such a peculiar manner as to retain the full curative value of each ingredient used.
The dose was given as:
Adult, ½ to 2 teaspoonfuls; usual dose 1 teaspoonful three times a day; children, less, according to age.
Analysis showed it to contain, in 100 parts by measure, potassium iodide 1·7 parts (7½ grains in 1 fluid ounce), and sugars (partly inverted) 9·1 parts; the total solids amounted to 12·8 parts, thus leaving 2·0 parts of vegetable extract per 100 fluid parts. The concentrated compound solution of sarsaparilla in the British Pharmacopœia contains about 21 parts of solids in 100 fluid parts, so that it may be concluded that the amounts of extracts of “Sarsaparilla, Dandelion, Mandrake, Dock, Pipsissewa, Juniper Berries, and other valuable vegetable remedies” in this mixture were not large. The liquid had a somewhat aromatic odour and taste, in which oil of juniper could not be detected, nor was it recognizable on distillation; none of the other ingredients mentioned is capable of being identified in such a mixture. No alkaloid was present, and careful search for other likely ingredients gave only negative results. The mixture contained 19·6 per cent. by volume of alcohol.
HUGHES’S BLOOD PILLS.
These pills, made in Wales, are sold in boxes, price 1s. 1½d., containing 30 pills.
They were described on the label as “For all Blood, Skin, and Nerve Diseases.” In a circular enclosed with the box there was a dissertation on the functions and composition of the blood, from which the following extracts, with all their capital letters, are taken: