THE PATENT MEDICINES REGULATIONS. Some Soothing Syrup Applied.

Free Lance, Volume V, Issue 235, 31 December 1904, Page 6

THE PATENT MEDICINES REGULATIONS. Some Soothing Syrup Applied.

PEOPLE with pills and potions to sell saw a large field of industry fading away. They made up their minds there was bound to be a decline in the New Zealand profits when the Health Department quietly remarked that imported proprietary medicines must m future have their ingredients set out on the cover. It roused the lion m his lair. The man with the liver wrote columns to the papers, the injustice to trade and all the rest of it was talked about, and the country was going to the dogs because of it. * * ■* Some people issued threats that they wouldn't send any more of thenrenowned remedies to> New Zealand Well, if they hadn't the death-rate wouldn't have been much greater possibly Maybe it .would even have declined. But it was pointed out that the poor, lone bushman couldn't always get a prescription made up — which might be a very good thing for the poor, lone bushman — and that he and other backcountry people were to be deprived of their cure-alls So Sir Joseph Ward came to the rescue * * * Thos-e awful regulations have been considerably toned down. The formulae of patent medicines need only now be deposited with the Health Department, and they are not to appear on the bottle. This will possibly satisfy the public generally, and the Health Department particularly, although why isn't quite apparent, for the Health Department is easily able to ascertain the ingredients of any medicine without a deposition by the manufacturers 1 * » • We do not believe that makers of remedies of repute trouble a scrap about the new regulations, or would have troubled even if they had not been modified. However, as amended they will furnish the public with the necessary protection, and will, at the same time, be. of advantage to the owners of proprietary medicines. The mere fact that their formulae have been submitted to, and passed by, the Health Department, may be quoted by them as a kind of official certificate that their goods are all right.

A chemical analysis of the average bottle of beer, the average flask of whisky, same imported condensed milks, spices, patent foods, and tinned goods generally — especially those tinned foods that come to us in a finely "mashed" condition — would be extremely interesting to the average consumer. Inquiries into the ingredients of many articles of common consumption would do as much good as the regulations under notice.