=Claiming Exhilaration.=--These medicines, by their insidious character, constitute a particularly dangerous variety. They depend, for their effect, upon the amount of alcohol that they contain. Many conscientious temperance workers have not only unsuspectingly taken them, but have actually indorsed them. Recently the published analyses of several State Boards of Health and the investigations made by Samuel Hopkins Adams, and published in his series on "The Great American Fraud" have shown that a majority of the "tonics," "vitalizers," and "reconstructors" depend for their exhilarating effect upon the fact that they contain from seventeen to fifty per cent of alcohol; while beer contains only five per cent, claret eight per cent, and champagne nine per cent. Pure whisky contains only fifty per cent of alcohol, yet few people would drink "three wineglassfuls in forty-five minutes"[14] as a medicine pure and simple. The United States Government has prohibited the sale of one of these medicines to the Indians, simply on account of the fact that as an intoxicant it was found too tempting and effective.[15] If one must have a stimulant it is better to be assured of its purity. These medicines are not only costly, but contain cheap, and often adulterated, spirits. Their worst feature is that they often induce the alcoholic habit in otherwise upright people. Commencing with a small dose, the amount is gradually increased until the user becomes a slave to drink. Could the true history of these widely used medicines be written, it would undoubtedly show that many drunkards were started on their downward career by medicinal doses of these "tonics" and "bracers." =Claiming Pain-relieving or Soothing Qualities.=--The properties of this class of remedies depend generally upon the presence of cocaine, opium, or some equally subtle and allied substance. It should be needless to state that such powerful drugs should be taken only upon a physician's prescription. Habit-forming and insidious in character, they are an actual menace. When present in cough syrups, they give by their soothing qualities a false sense of security, and when present in "soothing syrups" or "colic cures" for babies, they may be given with fatal result. Never take a medicine containing these drugs without a full understanding of their dangerous character, and a realization of the possible consequences.