Hughes & Hughes’s XL Reducing Pills and Ointment are advertised from an address in a seaside town. The pills are sold in boxes containing 28, price 2s. 9d. a box. The preparation was described, in a circular enclosed with the box, as:
A remedy at once safe, speedy, and efficacious, and of marked value from the health point of view, as it combats the special ills to which the corpulent have a liability. It is very easy to take, the pills being tasteless, and does not necessarily oblige any special course of diet.
The directions were:
2 pills, twice a day, after principal meals.
The pills were coated with French chalk, and coloured pink on the outside. After removal of the coating they had an average weight of 3 grains. Analysis showed them to contain a vegetable extract, powdered ginger, powdered liquorice, iron, potassium, phosphate, and iodide; in addition to the mineral constituents just named, the ash showed all the constituents of the ash of extract of bladderwrack; various other tests applied to the pills indicated this extract to be present, and failed to show any other ingredients. The quantities of the respective substances were determined as accurately as possible, and the formula found to be approximately:
| Potassium iodide | 0·15 | grain. |
| Iron phosphate | 0·35 | ” |
| Powdered ginger | 0·2 | ” |
| ”liquorice | 0·1 | ” |
| Extract of Fucus vesiculosus | 2·2 | grains. |
| In one pill. | ||
The estimated cost of the ingredients for 28 pills is 1¼d.
The Reducing Lotion for external use only with the XL reducing Pills is sold at 4s. 6d. a bottle, containing 2¼ fluid ounces.
Directions for Use.—To a little of the lotion add three or four times the amount of water (to a spoonful, three or four spoonfuls of water). The lotion is in a highly concentrated form, and equals a bottle four times the size. The lotion should be applied night and morning, gently, without rubbing, by means of the hand, or a piece of rag, to the part desired. Any part that is abnormally enlarged can be so treated, except the face, to which it should not be applied. The XL lotion will not irritate the most delicate skin, but it should not be used when there is any scratch or abrasion.
Analysis showed the presence of chloride, bromide, and iodide of potassium, glycerine, and a small quantity of a resinous substance in combination with alkali. The amount of the last constituent was very small, the resinous substance only amounting to 0·08 per cent.; it was somewhat bitter, with little colour, and showed no characteristic reactions or properties by which it could be identified. The proportions of the other ingredients were found to be: