_Alcohol in Vague Affections_.--The suggestive influence of the effect of alcohol is unconsciously obtained in a number of vague and rather chronic affections. Among these the most noteworthy are women's diseases. Various alcoholic home remedies, gin and whiskey, usually disguised by some bitter, used to be popular. But the known presence of alcohol in these discredited them. Then the nostrum vendors proceeded to supply something just as good. They were, in fact, the same things under another name. Many of the much-advertised remedies that are supposed to cure the ills the weaker sex is liable to, have been found to be little more than dilute whiskey, for in alcoholic strength they were about equal to whiskey diluted once with water, and the other substances were added only to disguise the taste and the odor of this principal ingredient. Many of these remedies have elicited innumerable flattering testimonials and not all of these were fraudulent or obtained by questionable means, but many of them were given because of results secured through the remedies. The alcohol gave the well-known sense of well-being, and the suggestive influence of this increased the appetite, tempted the patient to move around more, and to get more into the air than before, and the consequence was an improvement in the general health, in the midst of which many symptoms that seemed to the excited imaginations of run-down individuals to be serious were relieved. In a great many cases, however, the result was the {32} formation of a whiskey habit; hence the crusade which has discredited these remedies. Other patent medicines, and, indeed, some of the proprietary preparations, commonly recommended as nutrients and the like, and supposed to be ethical, are found to owe whatever efficiency they have to their alcoholic content. Here once more the suggestive elements were the more important, and enabled substances of little physical efficiency to produce effects that seemed to indicate the presence of powerful energizing materials.