"Cough mixtures as a rule, do more harm than good. Nine times out of ten the principal ingredient is opium. It is true that opium may lessen the tendency to cough, but it does great damage by arresting the normal secretions, and the system becomes affected by the poisons from the kidneys, skin, stomach, intestines and the mucous membrane lining the upper air passages. Not only do these mixtures arrest every secretion in the body, but they also show their deteriorating and degrading effect through the stomach. They contain substances which tend to disorder and derange digestion." Several years ago the Post-Office Department at Washington was led to take an interest in the question of fraudulent "patent" medicines, and an examination of many of these nostrums was undertaken by government chemists. Fraud orders were issued against some of the most flagrant offenders, forbidding them the use of the mails. This has not done away with the evil, however, for they usually move to another city, and begin business again under another name. The examinations made for the Post Office Department revealed the fact that a great many of the so-called medicines on the market were intoxicating beverages in disguise. The Internal Revenue Department then took up the matter and a long list of these beverage medicines was sent out to internal revenue agents with instructions that these must not be sold henceforth unless by persons paying a special tax for the sale of alcoholic beverages. Some of the manufacturers of these nostrums availed themselves of opportunity given to add a recognized medicinal agent to their flavored alcohol and water and such preparations were stricken from the list of those requiring a whisky license for their sale. Peruna and Hostetter's Bitters were the best-known of these. Peruna had been up to this time what government chemists called "a cheap cocktail." The report of the pure food commissioner of North Dakota for 1906 gives on page 157 an analysis of it as now upon the market: "Alcohol by volume, 21.25 per cent.; total solids, 3.846 per cent.; ash, .158 per cent." The report says:-- "The only thing of a medicinal nature that we could find in this preparation appeared to be a small amount of senna combined with a bitters of some kind." Proprietary "Foods" have not escaped attention from chemists. Dr. Charles Harrington, for several years secretary of Massachusetts Board of Health, was the first to publish an analysis of these preparations showing their alcoholic strength and their small nutritive content. He lists "foods" examined by him as follows:--