Australia has been such a harvest field for patent medicine manufacturers that a government commission was appointed to study the subject. This commission presented a voluminous report to the parliament of 1907. This report gives an analysis of most of the extensively advertised medicines. Doan's Backache Kidney Pills are said to be made of oil of juniper 1 drop, hemlock pitch 10 grains, potassium nitrate 5 grains, powdered fenugreek (Greek hay) 4 grains, wheat flour 4 grains, maize starch 2 grains. The report says: "The stuff is the cheapest kind of skin-plaster made up into pills." The seeds of fenugreek are used mainly for poultices. Doan's Dinner Pills contain two drastic purgatives, podophyllin and aloin. Both of these are dangerous drugs. Aloin frequently produces hemorrhoids (piles). The _British Medical Journal_ says that the material in forty of the Kidney Pills and four Dinner Pills would cost one English halfpenny (one cent). Vitae-Ore is given as consisting of ordinary sulphate of iron (green vitriol) to which a little Epsom salts has been added. Munyon's Kidney Cure, which claims to cure Bright's disease, gravel, and all urinary diseases, is given as composed entirely of sugar. Dr. Williams' Pink Pills are said to be an iron pill much the same as the ordinary Blaud's Pills which are sold in drug-stores for half, or less than half, the price of the proprietary article. (Iron is said by recent investigators to be very injurious to the stomach.) The Committee on Pharmacy of the American Medical Association has analyzed many proprietary medicines; from their reports the following analyses are taken. "Health Grains," which are claimed to be a remedy for "Dyspepsia, Indigestion, Nervousness, etc.," were found to consist of 87.50 per cent. of coarse quartz sand, and 12.50 per cent. of rock candy and syrup. "Hoff's Consumption Cure consists essentially of sodium cinnamate and extract of opium, a mixture at one time suggested for the treatment of tuberculosis, but which has been discarded by physicians. A medicine which depends on opium for whatever therapeutic effect it may have is, when sold indiscriminately to the laity, inherently vicious." Sartoin Skin Food for "sunburn, and all skin blemishes" was made of Epsom salts colored with a pink dye. The government prosecuted the company sending out Epsom salts as a "food," and they were fined $20 for thus seeking to dupe silly women.