The use of drugs is, in some cases, so persistent and leads to such dire results that it is well worth while to enter a protest against such practices. The poor creatures who have become fast victims of the morphine habit or the opium habit or the cocaine habit, or of any one of a dozen which might be named, will not be affected by anything that may be said here. But a word of warning may serve to restrain those who are only at the beginning of this downward path of which the end is positive and certain. The use of drugs once begun is sure to increase until, stupefied by their action, the victim becomes a sot, unfitted for work and a burden to himself, his relatives, and his friends. Not less dangerous is the use of so-called patent medicines. In most cases, patent medicines are swindles, pure and simple, containing no remedial ingredients and acting only as stimulants. An advertisement some time since, which claimed to cure not only tuberculosis but also cancer, falling of the womb, hair, or eyelids, insanity, epilepsy, drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and pimples was printed in many newspapers. This remarkable remedy was found by analysis to contain ninety-nine parts of water to one part of harmless salts. Many of the vaunted remedies contain morphine or alcohol in such large quantities as to be dangerous, the more so because their presence is not suspected. Such remedies as Dr. Bull's Cough Syrup, Boschees German Sirup, Dr. King's New Discovery for Consumption, Shiloh's Consumptive Cure, Piso's Consumptive Cure, Peruna, Duffy's Malt Whisky, Warner's Safe Cure, and Paine's Celery Compound are all by analysis said to contain large amounts of morphine, chloroform, or alcohol. Consumptives cannot be cured by any drug now known, and any person who believes it is mistaken. Cancer still baffles the skill of the most clever and the best-trained scientists. It is perfect folly to believe that any drug or man can cure either disease by a few pills or by a few bottles of medicine. The wise man or woman will avoid patent medicines unless they carry their formula on their label _and unless they are prescribed by some reputable physician_. CHAPTER XIII _PERSONAL HYGIENE_ Whatever the conditions under which one lives, or whatever his abstract knowledge of foods and sanitation, the health of the individual resolves itself at last into a question of his personal habits; and some of these personal questions must be considered in a book of this character. _Exercise._