76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the nourishment prepared for next year's sprouts. This fungus 

 is a thief preying on the industry of the onion it is more than a 

 thief, for its ravages leave destruction and death in their wake. 



The warmth and moisture necessary for the growth of my 

 crops were not good for the onion. It developed untimely, sickly 

 sprouts from the interior layers, while the exterior became the 

 prey of swarms of those minute forms of life known as bacteria 

 forms that lie, as it were, in the border-land between plant life and 

 animal, and whose function it is to resolve complicated organic 

 structures into their original elements. Under this process my 

 onion sank into a mass of putrescence so ill-looking and ill-smell- 

 ing that, ere its original elements were reached, I committed it to 

 the swifter dissolution of the flames. 



-++- 



EVOLUTION OF PATENT MEDICINE. 



By LEE J. VANCE. 



" t I ^HIS wonderful remedy works like a charm " so reads a 

 -L bold advertisement now lying before me. Why should 

 any patent medicine work like a " charm " ? The modern notion 

 of a medical remedy working like a " charm " is a survival of the 

 belief that certain secret remedies are charms. This is the sav- 

 age's view of all medicines. He mixes his medicines with magic. ' 

 His remedies are magical remedies, his songs of healing are in- 

 cantations, his prayers for restoration to health are magic formula, 

 his doctors are magicians. 



Patent medicine had its origin in folk medicine. We are thus 

 enabled to examine patent medicine as a magical practice and art 

 of gradual development and of slow and subtle transformation. 

 We shall argue that the blind, unthinking faith in a secret com- 

 pound known as " patent medicine " is, for the most part, a sur- 

 vival. Further, we shall be able to show how magical practices, 

 as of the Indians, develop into the remedies of the folk, of the 

 people who share least in progress ; how folk practices, in turn, 

 in the hands of the mediaeval leech and alchemist, become " occult 

 science " ; how, finally, out of leechcraft and quackery was evolved 

 our curious system of patent medicine. The modern doctor is the 

 heir of the leech, apothecary, and alchemist. He too seeks the 

 elixir of life. He now makes a lymph more wonderful than the 

 witches' ointment, which enabled people to sail through the air. 



Briefly stated, patent medicines are drugs compounded of un- 

 known ingredients, and are intended for the relief or cure of the 

 various ills that flesh is heir to. They always have been, and 

 still are, prepared and put up in an entirely different way from 





