84 PUBLIC HEALTH 



every ten persons using such a remedy are not helped and may be 

 injured in health, as they surely are in pocket. 



In this class of nostrums must be ranked the various headache 

 powders, now for sale everywhere. Almost invariably these contain 

 drugs which should only be prescribed by physicians, and then 

 only with extreme caution. 



In another kind of nostrums the active principle is some powerful 

 drug or stimulant, the use of which speedily becomes a vice. For 

 example, many so-called catarrh cures have cocaine as their active 

 agent; others, again, which are advertised to cure every ill, or to 

 break the user of the liquor habit, are loaded with alcohol, which 

 produces a passing stimulation, but leaves the patient in worse 

 state than before. All these are swindles of the most dangerous 

 character, and it is the plain duty of the public health officer to 

 secure their suppression. 



The official chemist is called upon also to investigate and stop 

 the sale of impure and substituted drugs. It is not too much to say 

 that the drug trade is flooded with such deceptions on which the 

 public is being worse defrauded year by year, as the evil grows. 



The remedy is official control. Makers of patent medicines, 

 nostrums, pills, etc., should be required to place upon each bottle 

 or packet the exact ingredients it contains, and should be prose- 

 cuted for any deviation which can be shown to be detrimental to 

 the health of persons using the remedy, or designed to perpetrate 

 upon them a commercial fraud. Further, the Federal Government, 

 or local boards of health, or both, should institute a division for the 

 inspection of these goods, and for a more careful general inspection 

 of pharmacies, to determine whether all compounders of prescriptions 

 are duly licensed, whether a record is kept of all poisons sold, and 

 whether the drugs there offered to the public are pure and not 

 substituted. To start a work of this kind will mean a fight all along 

 the line. The manufacturers of nostrums and adulterated drugs are 

 a very wealthy and powerful class in the community, and they will 

 oppose all remedial legislation to the uttermost. The only thing 

 they cannot stand against is aroused public opinion; and the sani- 

 tary officer must see that an intelligent public opinion on this 

 important question shall be created. 



Any discussion of the present problems of the sanitarian, however 

 brief and superficial, would be incomplete without some mention of 

 the auxiliary forces at work. Chief of these is the wide and growing 

 public interest in sanitary problems and the evident desire of muni- 

 cipal and village communities everywhere to learn and apply the 

 most rational and effective methods to their particular circum- 

 stances and situation. When we recall that men still in the prime 



