Yet this poison is being recommended every day by people who know nothing of it and nothing of the susceptibility of the friends to whom they advocate it. For example, here is a testimonial from the Orangeine booklet:

"Miss A. A. Phillips, 60 Powers street, Brooklyn, writes: 'I always keep Orangeine in my desk at school, and through its frequent applications to the sick I am called both "doctor and magician."'"

If the school herein referred to is a public school, the matter is one for the Board of Education; if a private school, for the Health Department or the county medical society. That a school teacher should be allowed to continue giving, however well meaning her foolhardiness may be, a harmful and possibly fatal dose to the children intrusted to her care seems rather a significant commentary on the quality of watchfulness in certain institutions.

Obscurity as to the real nature of the drug, fostered by careful deception, is the safeguard of the acetanilid vender. Were its perilous quality known, the headache powder would hardly be so widely used. And were the even more important fact that the use of these powders becomes a habit, akin to the opium or cocain habits, understood by the public, the repeated sales which are the basis of Orangeine's prosperity would undoubtedly be greatly cut down. Orangeine fulfills the prime requisite of a patent medicine in being a good "repeater." Did it not foster its own demand in the form of a persistent craving, it would hardly be profitable. Its advertising invites to the formation of an addiction to the drug. "Get the habit," it might logically advertise, in imitation of a certain prominent exploitation along legitimate lines. Not only is its value as a cure for nervousness and headaches insisted on, but its prospective dupes are advised to take this powerful drug as a bracer.

"When, as often, you reach home tired in body and mind... take an Orangeine powder, lie down for thirty minutes' nap—if possible—anyway, relax, then take another."

"To induce sleep, take an Orangeine powder immediately before retiring. When wakeful, an Orangeine powder will have a normalizing, quieting effect."

It is also recommended as a good thing to begin the day's work on in the morning—that is, take Orangeine night, morning and between meals!

These powders pretend to cure asthma, biliousness, headaches, colds, catarrh and grip (dose: powder every four hours during the day for a week!—a pretty fair start on the Orangeine habit), diarrhea, hay fever, insomnia, influenza, neuralgia, seasickness and sciatica.

Of course, they do not cure any of these; they do practically nothing but give temporary relief by depressing the heart. With the return to normal conditions of blood circulation comes a recurrence of the nervousness, headache, or what not, and the incentive to more of the drug, until it becomes a necessity. In my own acquaintance I know half a dozen persons who have come to depend on one or another of these headache preparations to keep them going. One young woman whom I have in mind told me quite innocently that she had been taking five or six Orangeine powders a day for several months, having changed from Koehler's powders when some one told her that the latter were dangerous! Because of her growing paleness her husband had called in their physician, but neither of them had mentioned the little matter of the nostrum, having accepted with a childlike faith the asseverations of its beneficent qualities. Yet they were of an order of intelligence that would scoff at the idea of drinking Swamp-Root.

IMAGE ==>