“How long has this house been full of assorted poisons?” asked Mr. Clyde suddenly of his wife.
“Now, Tom,” she protested. “I’ve always been careful about using them for the children. Personally, I never touch patent medicines.”
But at this her mother, smarting under their caller’s criticism of her cough syrup, turned on her.
“What do you call those headache tablets you take?”
“Those? They aren’t a patent medicine. They’re Anti-kamnia, a physician’s prescription.”
“Yes; a fine prescription they are!” said the druggist. “Did you ever read the Anti-kamnia booklet? For whole-souled, able-bodied, fore-and-aft, up-and-down stairs professional lying, it has got most of the patent medicines relegated to the infant class. Harmless, they say! I’ve seen a woman take two of those things and hardly get out of the door before they got in their fine work on her heart and over she went like a shot rabbit.”
“Not dead!”
“No; but it was touch and go with her.”
“What’s in that; opium, too?” asked Mr. Clyde.
“No; a coal-tar chemical which puts a clamp on the heart action. One or another of the coal-tar drugs is in all the headache powders. There’s a long list of deaths from them, not to mention cases of drug-habit.”