N.B. The trial of the Riga Balsam is this: Take a hew or a ram, drive a nail through its skull, brains and tongue, then pour some of it into the wound, it will directly stop the blood and cure the wound in eight or nine minutes, and the creature will eat as before.
A stoop costs two dollars, and it is sold in smaller portions; at the sale every person gets a direction which describes its surprising virtues and how it is to be used. The glasses, jars and bottles, are sealed up with this seal (A. K. Balsam) to prevent counterfeits.
Ecclesiasticus, chap. xxxiii. ver. 4. The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth, and he that is wise will not abhor them.
Which forcibly reminds us of an equally wonderful specific which was known in Holland about a century ago, if we may believe the Dutch Mercurius for January 1772, which states that “on December the 30th, 1771, Mr Tunnestrik experimented in the presence of the Prince Stadholder and sundry professors, by driving an iron spike into a horse’s head, and afterwards pulling it out with a pair of pincers. Hereupon he poured certain oils by him invented into the wound, by means of which the horse within six minutes was whole again, and not even a scar remained to be seen.” This horse, like the celebrated leg which was cured of its fracture with tar-water and oakum, must have been made of wood. With regard to the Riga Balsam, we might swallow that statement with the assistance, say, of another wonderful American potion, the Plantation Bitters, which, if we are to judge by the following, could help anything down:—
S. T.—1860.—X.
TO be, or not to be, that is the question.
Whether to suffer with mental anguish,
Feverish lips, cracking pains, dyspeptic agonies,
And nameless bodily suffering;
Or whether, with sudden dash,
Seize a bottle of Plantation Bitters,
And, as Gunther swears, be myself a man again.
Gunther said my eyes were sallow,
My visage haggard, my breath tremendous bad,
My disposition troublesome—in fact,
He gently hinted I was fast becoming
Quite a nuisance.
Four bottles now beneath my vest have disappeared:
My food has relish, my appetite is keen,
My step elastic, my mind brilliant, and
Nine pounds avoirdupois is added to my weight.
The formula “S. T.—1860.—X.” appears at the top of every advertisement of the bitters, and the first two portions doubtless refer to the name of the inventor and the date of the invention, while x may be the unknown quantity which has to be taken before the promises held forth in the advertisement are fulfilled. A good instance of the difference between precept and practice is shown by the annexed, which comes well from a firm in no way disdainful of the uses of advertising:—
S. T.—1860.—X.
SOME of our contemporaries seem to think that the triumph of their cause depended, like the fate of Jericho, upon the amount of noise made. In these days of refinement and luxury, an article of real intrinsic merit is soon appreciated, hence the unbounded and unparalleled success of
Plantation Bitters.