It cures the most aggravated cases of hawking and spitting of mucus, stuffy or oppressed feeling in the head, dryness or scabs in the nose, gloomy, dull spirits, difficulty of breathing, dropping of mucus from the head into the throat, and liability to take cold easily.
The directions are:
Take four pellets every hour. Half quantity for children.
The average weight of the pilules was ½ grain. On first opening the bottle containing them a slight smell of alcohol was noticeable, but the loss of weight on drying was only 0·08 per cent. No medicament of any kind could be detected, nor any substance but sugar; determination of the amount of the latter showed 100 per cent. to be present.
From the odour of alcohol observed it is not unlikely that the pilules had been “medicated” by treatment with some dilute tincture, but if so, the amount of medicament so imparted was infinitesimal.
The estimated cost of 460 pilules is one-tenth of a penny.
BIRLEY’S ANTI-CATARRH.
The price charged for this fluid, sold by a London Company, is 1s. 1½d. a bottle, containing nearly 3 fluid ounces.
The bottle was accompanied by four pages of printed matter headed “The Birley Monthly Report,” in which the “Anti-Catarrh” was included in a “List and Prices of Dr. Birley’s Compounds of Free (or Unoxidised) Phosphorus,” and described as “Special Remedy for Catarrh and Influenza.” The following extracts are from the same circular, under the heading “The Wonders of Phosphorus.”
Free (or unoxidised) Phosphorus, whose chief seat or situation is in the brain, is one of the most important elements contained in our bodies. Without Free Phosphorus there can be no thought, and very probably no life....