64 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 10,02. 



Fortunately in the condimental foods offered, injurious drugs 

 are not found. In addition to common feeding stuffs they con- 

 sist for the most part of old-time simple remedies of mildly cura- 

 tive powers. The claims made for these materials are as ridicu- 

 lously extravagant as those made for patent medicines designed 

 for the use of man. The absurd testimonials used in their sup- 

 port are doubtless genuine, but are made by people who can not 

 or do not understand the relations of cause and effect. 



These condimental foods are sold in prices ranging from 12 

 to 25 cents a pound. "As foods pure and simple such prices 

 ($240 to $500 a ton) are ridiculous and prohibitive." If in large 

 lots they can be bought at half or quarter these prices "even such 

 a discount would make them twice as costly as our most expen- 

 sive standard foods, and no one of them is as concentrated a feed 

 as either cottonseed meal, linseed meal, or gluten meal. There 

 is absolutely no sense in buying at a very high price a lot of drugs 

 of rather mild medicinal properties of unknown kinds and 

 unknown proportions, which claim to take the place of a 

 part of the food and to cure almost every ill and defect 

 that cattle and fowls* are heir to. Salt, charcoal, Epsom 

 salts, sulphur, fenugreek, gentian, cayenne and ginger ; they can 

 all be bought in any village, they are already in the stables of 

 many dairy farmers and are used by them. Their value is well 

 known, and also their uselessness for the treatment of serious 

 illnesses." 



* " It is interesting to note that the poultry foods are very like the cattle foods, 

 both in chemical composition and in materials used, so that were the claims of 

 the manufacturers all valid, a condimental food which would cure gaps in 

 chickens might be expected to increase the flow of milk of cows and also to cure 

 hog cholera." 



