PATENT MEDICINES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 148, 11 November 1912, Page 4

PATENT MEDICINES.

Of all the races who, according to the fable of reliable of history, ever lived upon the face of the eartli, mankind is the most credulous. Probably the original i>rotoplasm never even dreamed of taking green globules if he happened to cut iiis finger while striving to evolve the genesis of a higher life. Nor did our simian ancestors, swinging by their tails in the highest gum trees, fly to "Umbody's Urgent Unguent" at such time as they chafed their candal appen-

WK, Ui.WJ CI4UI* WVUUftI cvyyciidages. Even .the succulent bi-valves, from whom most of the kissable girls have descended, neglected soothing syrup when threatened with paresis of the hinge and preferred to go to bed in blissful ignorance of the virtue of "Sea Salt's Severe Sleep Securer." We have come a long way since we were apes, and bivalves, and germs, and snakes, and other early English relics, and civilisation has now coralled us, "somewhat unbeknownst to ourselves" as Masheen Dyle has said, into the safe and certain haven of patent medicines, that panacea for every ailment under the sun that has grown so dear to the heart of every Billwilliam and Annamaryjane in our midst. It is' like desecrating the Cjarden of Eden or singing comic songs in a cathedral to suggest that all these much-vaunted remedies are not invariably what they are represented to be or provide even half a quid pro quo in monetary value for what we are prepared to give for them. There is more than a touch of hypoehondriaealism in the average man, who abhors a doctor as he adores a patent medicine, and whilst the writers for the comic papers perpetuate hoary jests concerning the private graveyards of the medical fraternity they carefully abstain from throwing bricks at those intelligent people who sell them two' pence worth of soap and sand and colored water at the philanthropic price of 3s liy 3 d. This is' simply one of those little failings of human nature, begotten of so-called civilisation, against which a Government, which is elected to look after the body politic, and dry ljurse its foibles, ought to legislate. It is well known that the selling price of many patent medicinfes is excessive in proportion to their commercial value. The old wife who gathers a pennyworth of herbs by the wayside would open her eyes in amazement if she could realise that her homely decoctions were being sold at Elsewhere, under some some pretentious pseudonym at a price that would pay a year's rent of her cottage. The vendors of these nostrums have, of course, heavy expenses to pay in placing them widely upon the market, and many of them are admittedly excellent remedies for the purposes for which they are pi escribed. But there should be some limit to the prices which, are charged for them, and as a comparatively heavy tariff does not seem to check their imposition it might be as well if the Government were to insist upon an analytical' formula being attached to every patent medicine, giving the quantities and values of the ingredients. The disclosures made in the Federal House on Thursday during the-discussion on the Patent Medicines Bill ought to make the public open their eyes and sit down and thinkquickly.