note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see 16977-h.htm or 16977-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/6/9/7/16977/16977-h/16977-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/6/9/7/16977/16977-h.zip) food and health do women read our little books which come so regularly to their homes? indeed they do, and if only one is left at a two-family house we are asked to send another at once. we feel sure that they are read from cover to cover. * * * * * lydia e. pinkham's medicines lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound the original pinkham medicine and best known of all. it has been on the market for nearly fifty years and is put up in the following forms: liquid. dose--one tablespoonful every four hours through the day. dry (tablets). dose--one tablet every four hours through the day. lydia e. pinkham's sanative wash. for leucorrhoea and inflammation liquid, a concentrated extract, ready to dilute and use at once, the most convenient form. use daily as a vaginal injection. add one teaspoonful (in severe cases two teaspoonfuls) of the sanative wash to one pint of warm water, mix thoroughly and it is ready for use. (can be had, if preferred, in dry form, to steep.) lydia e. pinkham's blood medicine. for poor blood we recommend this as a good blood medicine for either men or women. dose--one tablespoonful three times a day, half an hour before eating. lydia e. pinkham's liver pills. for constipation dose--take three the first night, two the second, and one the third; and unless there is a regular and healthy movement of the bowels continue taking one every night. for sale by druggists generally send for lydia e. pinkham's private text book upon ailments peculiar to women, mailed free on application to the lydia e. pinkham medicine co. lynn, mass., public inspection of our laboratories cordially invited. hints for mealtime how often do we hear women exclaim, "oh dear, what shall i have for the next meal?" this little book will aid you in answering that troublesome question. the recipes are carefully selected and we hope you will find them helpful. more important to you than the question of food is that of health. therefore, in this book we show you many letters from women who have received great benefit by taking lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. you have heard of this splendid medicine, for it has been used by women for nearly fifty years. it is a woman's medicine for women's ailments. it is prepared from medicinal plants that are especially adapted for the treatment of the troubles women so often have. as you read these letters remember these women are stating for the benefit of other women who are sick just how they felt and just how the vegetable compound restored them to health. you know it is bad enough to worry over the various duties of life when you are well and strong. it is a serious matter when you are half sick and all tired out most of the time. so in the following pages you will find suggestions for the next meal that may help you, but more important by far are the letters recommending lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound as the splendid medicine for the ailments of women. you will read letters from many classes of women, young and old, mother and daughter. they are genuine expressions of gratitude from one woman to another. thousands of women by word of mouth and by letter highly praise lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. "of all the world's wealth the best treasure is health, for without it there's nothing worth while." baking of bread and rolls [illustration] the pans should be well oiled and the loaves should never more than half fill them. bread should be put into a hot oven and loaves should rise during the first fifteen minutes. it should continue browning for the next twenty minutes then reduce the heat somewhat. small loaves require 45 minutes, large ones 1 hour. biscuits and rolls require a hotter oven than bread. they should rise for the first five minutes and then should begin to brown. after 15 minutes reduce the heat and at 30 minutes the biscuits should be golden brown and thoroughly baked inside. remove bread from the pans as soon as it comes from the oven. keep covered with a clean cloth until cool then place in a stone jar or tin box. what does your druggist say when you ask him if he can recommend any good medicine to you because you are nervous and run-down and not able to get your work done? he suggests that lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound is a well-known and well-made medicine and that he knows many women who take it and recommend it. "could not work half the time" "for many years i have had troubles with my nerves and have been in a general run down condition for some time. i could not do my work half the time because of troubles every month. i was told of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound by friends and advised to try it. it has done me good and i strongly recommend it. since i have taken it i have been able to do all my own work, and i also know friends who have found it good. you can use these facts as a testimonial." mrs. ellen flatters, box 761, cobourg, ontario. white bread [illustration] ingredients 1 tablespoon lard 1 tablespoon butter 1-1/2 teaspoons salt 1 tablespoon sugar 1 cup scalded milk 1 cup boiling water 1 yeast cake in 1/4 cup lukewarm water 6 cups sifted flour method--put lard, butter, salt and sugar into large bowl. pour over them the scalded milk and boiling water. when this is lukewarm add the yeast cake dissolved in luke-warm water. sift in flour gradually, beating with a spoon. toss on a floured board and knead until smooth. allow it to rise over night in a moderately warm place or until it doubles its original size. cut down or knead and allow it to rise until light, then form into loaves or biscuits. allow these to rise until light, then bake. the amount of yeast used will depend on the length of time the bread is allowed to rise. what do girls do who don't have mothers to advise them about their health? "she was unable to attend school" "lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound was recommended to me for my daughter. she had trouble every month which left her in a weak and nervous condition, with weak back and pain in her right side. she had these troubles for three years and frequently was unable to attend school. she has become regular and feels much better since she began taking the vegetable compound and attends school regularly. she is gaining steadily and i have no hesitancy in recommending lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound and lydia e. pinkham's blood medicine." mrs. john toms, ball st., cobourg, ontario. corn cake [illustration] ingredients 2 cups indian meal 1 cup flour 1/2 cup sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1 egg 1 teaspoon soda 2 cups sour milk method--sift the dry ingredients together except the soda. add egg slightly beaten. dissolve the soda in sour milk, stir into the dry ingredients quickly and pour into a greased pan. bake for half an hour in a moderate oven. every true mother realizes the fact that her baby's health depends upon her own, that the very vitality of her child is influenced by her own physical condition. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has brought health and strength to thousands of others. "i could not do a single bit of work" "i was troubled with weak feelings, headache all the time, a cough, fainting spells and pains in my back and side. i could not do a single bit of work and had to be helped out to the hammock where i lay in the fresh air from morning until night and i had to be carried up and down stairs. after other medicines had failed a friend advised me to take lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound as she said it was excellent for any one in the family way. before the first bottle was taken i could walk alone and as i kept on with it i got stronger until i was able to do all of my work. my baby is now six weeks old and is a big fat healthy fellow. i am sure lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has done wonders for me and i recommend it to any woman in that condition." mrs. murray j. barton, r.r. no. 1, cumberland bay, new brunswick. tea biscuit [illustration] ingredients 2 cups bread flour 4 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 to 2 tablespoons shortening 3/4 cup milk method--sift the dry ingredients together, mix in fat with the tips of fingers, then add the milk a little at a time or cut it in with a knife. the dough should be as soft as can be easily handled. roll lightly until one inch thick, cut in rounds and bake in a hot oven for 15 or 20 minutes. an evidence of confidence in a friend is to follow her advice, especially if it is not hearsay evidence but something which she has tried out on herself and proved. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound merits such confidence. women all over canada as well as in the united states take our medicine and tell its worth. "saved me from an operation" "i took lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound at the change of life for troubles women often have. i had not been well for a year and was not really able to do my work. a friend who had taken the vegetable compound herself recommended it to me and i think its use saved me from an operation. i highly recommend to all women with troubles like mine." mrs. daniel j. tracey, knightington, ontario. "a friend recommended it" "a friend in rose valley recommended lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound to me, and it has been a great help to me. i recommend it, and you can use this letter as a testimonial if you wish." mrs. peter nordin, wadena, saskatchewan. omelet [illustration] ingredients 1 egg 1 tablespoon hot water 1 salt spoon salt few grains of pepper method--separate the white from the yoke of the egg and beat it until stiff. beat the yolk until thick and add the hot water and salt. fold the beaten white of the egg in and put into a buttered pan. cook slowly until puffed and brown. scrambled eggs ingredients 1 egg 1 tablespoon milk or water 1/2 salt spoon salt few grains of pepper method--beat the eggs slightly and add liquid and seasonings. pour into a warm buttered pan and cook slowly over water. as the egg coagulates on the bottom and sides of the pan lift it with a spoon. continue until thickened and creamy but not dry. serve immediately. only a few bottles of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound are needed to give surprising results, as so many women tell us. "had no ambition" "i suffered greatly from weakness, seemed to be tired all the time, and had no ambition to do anything or go any place. my nerves were in bad shape, i could not sleep at night and then came a breakdown. i read of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound in the newspapers and several of my friends advised me to use it. it surely put new life into me and now i am quite able to do all my own work." mrs. chas. wakelin, 272 christie st., toronto, ontario. sweet milk griddle cakes [illustration] ingredients 3 cups flour 2 tablespoons sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 4 tablespoons baking powder 1 egg 2 cups milk 2 tablespoons melted fat method--mix and sift dry ingredients. add beaten egg, milk and fat to make a thin batter. drop on a hot oiled griddle and brown on both sides. savings save all the waxed paper that crackers and bread come wrapped in. it is very handy to roll out pie-crust or biscuits on, also doughnuts and cookies, and saves washing the pastry board. if you have to work you must have good health in order to do your work well. besides this, you want to be able to play afterwards and both work and play require good health. it is a great handicap to be lacking in energy when you are young and should be strong. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound will help that tired feeling which many girls have. "i had to stay in bed" "i suffered for three years with troubles women often have. about every three weeks i had to stay in bed four or five days. i nearly went crazy with pains in my back, and for about a week at a time i could not do my work. i saw lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound advertised in the 'hamilton spectator' and i took it. now i have no pain and am quite regular unless i overwork or stay on my feet from early morning until late at night. i keep house and do all my own work without any trouble. i have recommended the vegetable compound to several friends." mrs. emily beecroft, 16 douglas st., hamilton, ontario. vinegar [illustration] a spoonful of vinegar added to the water when cooking corned beef will make it more tender. to make pie-crust flaky try adding one-half a spoonful of vinegar to the cold water before mixing. add vinegar to the water in which you soak wilted vegetables and they will revive quickly and any little bugs in them will come out. add vinegar to the water when washing windows or paint or cleaning floors. if paint or varnish is on a window, wet it with hot vinegar and rub it off with a cent. to take the shine from clothing, sponge the shiny places with boiling hot vinegar, rubbing vigorously, then press as usual. it is perfectly safe for any one to take lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound whenever such a medicine is needed. it contains no narcotics nor harmful drugs and is made in the most accurate and sanitary manner. can a medicine be a fraud that is compounded from nature's own remedies, the roots and herbs of the fields, that has stood the test of time by restoring health and happiness to thousands of suffering women? "for women's troubles" "i saw lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound advertised for women's troubles, and when a friend recommended it to me i tried it, and it has done me so much good in the two years in which i have been taking it that i find i am a different woman since then. i recommend your vegetable compound as much as i can and you may use my letter as a testimonial." mrs. wm. j. thomas, melaval, saskatchewan. casserole of rice and meat [illustration] ingredients 2 cups steamed rice 2 cups chopped seasoned meat 1 cup gravy or tomato sauce 1/2 cup buttered crumbs method--place in a baking dish a layer of rice, over this sprinkle a layer of chopped meat and repeat until the dish is nearly filled; then pour gravy or tomato sauce over the meat. cover with the buttered crumbs and bake until brown. helpful hints to keep the daily paper from blowing away when it is left on the porch, get the carrier to snap it into a spring clothes-pin which is tied to the railing. when a woman knows that a certain medicine is good she wants no substitute or makeshift. the women who take lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound are of this class. they know what they want and they will take nothing else. "could not sleep" "i took lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound for weakness of the female organs. i had pains in the back and bearing-down pains in the abdomen and was in a general run-down condition. i could not sleep, rest or work, and was quite unfit to do even light household tasks. a friend told me about your vegetable compound and i in my turn truly recommend it, as my severe symptoms vanished and i am better in every way. i do my own work, look after my children and see to chickens, a cow, and my garden. i also recommend it for young girls who are weak and rundown, as my 16-year-old daughter has taken it and is quite her own gay self again." mrs. fred. wiley, viscount, saskatchewan. filipino roll [illustration] ingredients 1 sweet green pepper 2 onions 1 lb. hamburg steak 1 cup bread crumbs 1 egg 2 teaspoons salt 1 tablespoon worcestershire sauce 5 or 6 slices of bacon sauce 1 cup tomato soup 1 tablespoon flour 1 teaspoon sugar 1/2 cup water method--wash the pepper and remove the seeds, add onions and chop together. mix with meat, breadcrumbs and well beaten egg. add seasonings and form into a roll. cover with bacon and bake 45 minutes in a moderately hot oven. remove to platter, add water to make gravy and strain into it the thickened tomato soup. let it boil a few minutes then pour around the roll. a few minutes of any woman's time is well spent if she will read what lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound does for sick and ailing women. "one of your little books" "i took lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound for weakness and female disorders. i was so weak at times that i could not stand up. i had been this way for nearly three years, and the different medicines i had taken had not done me any good. i found one of your little books at my door one day and thought i would give your medicine a trial. i am now on my fifth bottle and it is wonderful the way it has helped me. i am feeling much better, have no weak spells, and can do all my work now. i am recommending your vegetable compound to all i know." mrs. casey lemery, 176 abbott st., brockville, ontario. mock meat cakes [illustration] ingredients 1/2 cup dried peas or beans 5 medium potatoes 1/2 cup grated cheese 1/2 cup fine breadcrumbs 1 egg (beaten) 1 tablespoon melted bacon fat salt and pepper method--soak peas or beans over night, then boil until very tender. boil and mash potatoes. add mashed beans, grated cheese, bread-crumbs, beaten egg, bacon fat and seasonings. when cool shape into cakes, dip into cornmeal and fry. why are some women happy, beloved, and successful, while others drag out a negative existence, of no use to themselves or anyone else? except in a few cases the answer is to be found in a state of freedom from the troubles known as "female." the well woman radiates cheerfulness and serenity, while the ailing one repels you with her despondency. it is not necessary, however, to harbor aches and pains, and the "blues," which make one a detriment to society. the use of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has brought relief to such women, and given them a new lease of life. "a general run-down condition" "i was in a general run-down condition, with a weak back and tired feeling, so that i did not feel like working. my mother was taking lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound and recommended it to me, so i have taken it, and my back is better and i am now able to do my work. i recommend the vegetable compound to my neighbors and you may publish this letter." mrs. josephat a. grenier, hesketh, alberta. dry bean chowder [illustration] ingredients 1 cup dried beans 2 slices bacon (diced) 1 can corn 1 can tomatoes salt and pepper cracker crumbs method--soak the beans over night and boil until tender. drain into a fire-proof casserole. try out the fat from the bacon until it is perfectly crisp, care being taken that it is not burned. then add corn, seasoning and tomatoes. mix all and add to beans. sprinkle cracker crumbs over the top and bake twenty-five minutes. serve from the casserole. in this generation it is 'the style' to be healthy. our heroines no longer languish and faint. they are all healthy girls and women who do a day's work or play just as a man does. if some of us are not so healthy as this, we try to be and take lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound when we feel the need. "i was a total wreck" "before using lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound i was a total wreck. i had terrible pains in my sides and was not regular. finally i got so weak i could not go upstairs without stopping to rest halfway up. i saw your medicine advertised in the newspapers and gave it a trial. i took four bottles of the vegetable compound and was restored to health. i am married, am the mother of two children, and do all my own housework, milk eight cows and do a hired man's work and enjoy the best of health. i also found the vegetable compound a great help for my weak back before my babies were born. i recommend it to all my friends." mrs. henry janke, marmion, ontario. cooking hints [illustration] never throw away the feet of a fowl as they are excellent for making soups, broths and jellies. you can buy extra feet from the butcher. dip them in boiling water for a few seconds and they may be readily skinned. boil with the chicken until they fall to pieces, then strain the broth. before baking potatoes let them stand in hot water for fifteen minutes. they will require only half the time to bake. pour boiling water on oranges and let them stand for five minutes. this will make the white lining come away from the skin and they will be easier to prepare for a pudding. any hospital experience is painful as well as costly and frequently dangerous. many women have avoided this experience by taking lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound in time, thereby relieving the present distress and preventing the development of conditions that might require an operation. "they said i needed an operation" "i suffered from the time i was a schoolgirl until i had taken your medicine with pain in my left side and with cramps, growing worse each year until i was all rundown. i was so bad at times that i was unfit for work. i tried several doctors and patent medicines but was only relieved for a short time. some of the doctors wanted to have an operation, but my father objected. finally i learned through my mother of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, and how thankful i am that i tried it. i am relieved from pains and cramps and feel as if it has saved my life. you may use my letter to help other women, as i am glad to recommend the medicine." mrs. h.a. goodman, 14 rockvale ave., toronto, ontario. hints and helps [illustration] the common nut-cracker makes a splendid little household wrench for cans and bottles with screw tops. even glass stoppers will yield to it. a pair of scissors in the pantry to cut up raisins, suet, citron, etc., is easier to use then the chopper. a metal shoe-horn that has a hole in the top to hang it up by, makes a good kettle scraper. use a bicycle pump to clean such parts of the sewing machine as you cannot reach with a cloth or with an old tooth brush. save the sand-paper which comes on the match-boxes and use it for scraping, cleaning, etc. ammonia water will remove the cloudy appearance from the preserve jars in which vegetables have been canned. the best advertised medicine in the world is the medicine which has the most friends. "it has done so much for women" "i took lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound for years, and it is the only patent medicine i ever recommend. i am a nurse, and if i find a woman is in poor health i always tell her to take it. although you know doctors and nurses do not use patent medicines i must say that i think there is nothing better than your vegetable compound. when i first took it many years ago, i was that tired when i got up in the morning that i was weak and i could not eat nor sleep. my mother-in-law told me that lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound was just what i wanted, so i tried it, and only took two bottles when i felt better. since then i have found that there is nothing that makes me feel so well, for it seems to build my system right up. i don't know any other medicine that has done so much for women." mrs. w.h. parker, 19 wellesley ave., toronto, ontario. dutch cheese [illustration] ingredients 1 quart sour milk 1/3 to 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup sour or sweet cream (or 1 large tablespoon butter) method--the milk should be freshly sour to get the best flavor. this is best obtained by adding a little sour milk to five or six times the amount of sweet milk. it should be kept in a warm place (the back of the stove) until the curd of the milk is thick and smooth and the whey is watery and has risen to the top. drain in a cheese cloth bag until dry. add cream (or butter) and salt. if the process needs to be hurried stir into the milk a cup full of nearly boiling water. leave to settle before draining. as the cheese is very rich in protein it easily becomes tough by overheating. for the same reason it is very nourishing. the continued success of a medicine depends entirely upon its merit. for nearly fifty years lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has been demonstrating its worth among women as a valuable medicine for the treatment of female ills, and the tremendous volume of letters on file in the pinkham laboratory at lynn, massachusetts, from grateful women in all parts of the united states and canada is ample proof of its merit. "a lot of good" "i had female troubles for two years. i always had a headache and a pain in my side, and sometimes i felt so weak that i could not do my work. a friend advised me to take lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound and i have taken six bottles of it. it has done me a lot of good and i am still taking it. i will tell my friends of your medicine and hope they will try it." mrs. camille desroche, miscouche, prince edward's island. cake-making success in cake-making depends on careful combining of ingredients, accurate measurements and careful baking. to make cake light and close in texture, thorough beating is necessary. baking--small and layer cakes require a hot oven for 10 to 20 minutes. loaf cakes need a moderate oven from 40 to 60 minutes. in the beginning the oven should be hot enough to cause the cake to rise and then to form a crust which holds the gases. when the cake has risen to its full height decrease the heat so that the cake may finish baking without becoming too brown. if the oven is too hot at first a crust will be formed before the cake is risen. if not hot enough, gas will not be retained in the cake. either of these conditions will make the cake heavy. testing--the cake is baked if, when pressed lightly upon the top in the middle, it springs back again. it usually shrinks from the sides of the pan. a deep cake may be tested with a clean straw. methods of work--first grease and flour the pans. collect all materials and utensils needed and make sure that the oven will be ready. do this before combining any materials. we read a good deal about "pre-natal care"--the care of the mother before her child is born--and we all agree that a healthy and happy mother is the one to have the best babies. "so smart and healthy" "when i would get out of bed in the morning i could hardly stand on my feet for weakness and a bearing-down pain. i heard of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound and tried it with lydia e. pinkham's liver pills and used lydia e. pinkham's sanative wash for the white flow, and was doing fine. this was before my little girl was born. she is so smart and healthy and good-natured that i think the compound must have made her that way." mrs. richard williams, milltown, new brunswick. plain cake for loaf or layer cake [illustration] ingredients 2 eggs 1 cup sugar 3 teaspoons oleo or butter 1/2 cup milk 1/2 teaspoon salt 1-1/2 cups flour 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon vanilla method--beat eggs light, add sugar, butter, milk, salt and all but 2 tablespoons of the flour. beat well, add vanilla, then add the remainder of the flour with the baking powder, sifted together. bake in loaf or layer cake pans. brownstone cake filling ingredients--1/2 cup sugar, 1 square of chocolate, 1 tablespoon cornstarch, a few grains of salt, 1/2 cup of milk. method--mix dry ingredients. add liquid gradually. cook in double boiler until thick and creamy. weakness may show in early girlhood and if attended to at that time and not allowed to develop into serious troubles by carelessness or overwork, girls will grow stronger as they grow older. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound is what many mothers give their girls in these early years. "my mother-in-law told me" "i took lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound for female troubles. i would have headaches, backache, pains between my shoulders and under my shoulder-blades, and bad feelings in the lower parts on each side, in the groins. i was sometimes unable to do my work and felt very badly. my mother-in-law told me about the vegetable compound and i got some right away. it has done me more good than any other medicine i ever took, and i recommend it to my neighbors." mrs. edgar simmons, r.r. no. 2, pine grove, ontario. sponge cake [illustration] ingredients 2 eggs 1/2 cup sugar 1 teaspoon cold water 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice 1 salt spoon salt 1/2 cup flour method--beat yolks until thick and add sugar gradually. add water and lemon juice. sift flour and salt into yolk mixture and beat thoroughly. fold in the stiffly beaten whites of eggs and bake in a moderate oven. crispettes ingredients--2 eggs, 1/2 cup white sugar, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup chopped walnuts or cocoanut, 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, 1/2 teaspoon salt. method--beat eggs very light, add sugar and remaining ingredients. beat well and drop by tablespoonfuls on a buttered pan 2 inches apart. bake in a moderately hot oven. always use a tin pan. a little care when one is young is not much to pay for good health afterwards. take lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound for any weakness you may have. this well-known medicine is recommended by mothers to their daughters, by sisters to one another, and by friends and neighbors to the woman whose loved ones are far from her when she needs them most. "am perfectly satisfied" "when my husband was called back to england in 1914, i took lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound to strengthen me so that i could work. my periods were twice a month and used to make me so weak, but i am able to do my work now and am perfectly satisfied with your medicine. i still get it at the chemist's, and strongly recommend it to any one i hear of suffering as i did." mrs. e. hornblower, 899 yonge st., toronto, ontario. war cake [illustration] ingredients 1 cup brown sugar 1 cup water 2 cups raisins 1/3 cup fat 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg 1 teaspoon ground cloves few grains salt. method--boil the above ingredients together for three minutes. let cool. when cold add 1 teaspoon soda dissolved in 2 tablespoons hot water. add 2 cups flour in which 1 teaspoon baking powder has been sifted. bake in a moderate oven. pantry helps if butter is too hard to serve, heat a bowl with boiling water and turn the empty bowl over the butter. this will not waste or impair the taste of the butter. are you interested in a letter from a woman in south africa who takes lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound? "one of your little books" "i took lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound for weakness and because i felt run down. i tried a lot of medicine before i tried yours. one day i was standing on my stoop when a boy came up to me and handed me one of your little books. i read the book, and the next day my husband went to a chemist and bought me a bottle of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. i have taken the medicine ever since and i feel quite strong and well now as i am on the sixth bottle. i have written to my sister and told her all about the wonders it has done for me, and i am quite willing for you to use my name, as i cannot thank you enough for what it has done for me." mrs. w.f. rush, 128 6th avenue, mayfair, fordesburg, johannesburg, south africa. chocolate cake [illustration] ingredients 5 tablespoons butter 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 1/2 cup milk 1-1/2 cups flour 2 squares chocolate 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 1/2 teaspoon salt 2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder. method--cream butter and sugar. add yolks of eggs beaten until thick, then milk, and all but 2 tablespoons of the flour. beat thoroughly, add melted chocolate and vanilla. add remaining flour, salt and baking powder sifted together. fold in stiffly beaten whites of eggs. bake in moderate oven. a proprietary medicine like everything else that comes before the public, has to prove its merits. the law of the survival of the fittest applies in this field as in others. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has been used by women for nearly fifty years. "i know women who have been helped" "my mother had taken lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, and when i needed something for my periods i took it and got good results. i recommend it to women with any female troubles, and i know other women who have been helped by it." mrs. max retzer, lumsden, saskatchewan. "i used to have very bad pains in my back and sides and often was not fit for work. i tried many medicines before i took yours. i saw lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound advertised in the 'toronto globe,' and now that it has helped me i recommend it to all my neighbors." elizabeth campbell, 13 st. paul st., lindsay, ontario. chocolate frosting [illustration] ingredients 1-1/2 squares chocolate 1 cup sugar 1 cup boiling water method--cut chocolate into small pieces, add sugar and water and stir until blended. boil until a soft ball forms when dropped into ice-water. cool. beat until creamy and spread on cake. white frosting ingredients 1 egg white 1 cup confectioner's sugar 1/2 teaspoon flavoring method--beat the white of egg until stiff. stir in the sugar and flavoring and beat until creamy. when a man comes home from work at night, he wants to find his home clean and comfortable, his supper ready, his children happy and his wife smiling a welcome to him. these are only natural feelings and when things are the reverse and he has to help do the work, he looks for the cause of the trouble and its remedy. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound will help women keep strong and well. "with my husband's help" "i used lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound for pains across the small of my back. they bothered me so badly that i could do my work only with my husband's help. one day we saw the 'ad' in our paper telling what lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound is doing for women so i began to take it. it has helped me wonderfully. i am feeling fine, do all my housework and washing for seven in the family. i had been irregular too, and now i am all right. i am telling my friends what it has done for me and am sure it will do good for others. i will stand up for lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound any time." mrs. wm. juhnke, foster, oregon mocha frosting [illustration] ingredients 3 tablespoons butter 1 cup confectioner's sugar 2 tablespoons cold boiled coffee 2 tablespoons cocoa 1/2 teaspoon vanilla method--cream the butter and sugar, add the remaining ingredients and enough more sugar to make it creamy. plain icing may be made by moistening confectioner's sugar with milk or water (either hot or cold) and adding flavoring. either this or white frosting may be used as a foundation for nuts or chopped fruit. orange frosting may be made by moistening the sugar with orange juice. however busy a woman is she always finds time to read the daily papers. and she may read the bargains first and the weather report last, but she always reads the testimonial letters advertising lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. she wants to know what experience other women have had with this great medicine. "when my daughter was thirteen" "when my daughter was thirteen and until she was fifteen she suffered every month so that she could hardly move around the house and when she would have the pains in school she would have to be carried home. she also had headache, dizzy and faint spells, and soreness in her back. i saw your advertisement in the 'hamilton spectator' and got lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound for her. she does not have the least bit of trouble now, and we both recommend your medicine. she works in a candy-shop now and seems well and strong. i give you permission to publish this letter as a testimonial." mrs. i.p. clause, 83 oxford st., hamilton, ontario. lemon pie with meringue [illustration] ingredients 3/4 cup sugar 3 tablespoons cornstarch 1 cup boiling water 3 tablespoons lemon juice and grated rind 1 tablespoon butter 2 egg yolks method--mix sugar and corn starch thoroughly, pour boiling water over them, stirring constantly. cook until thick and until starch is well done. add lemon juice and butter. cool slightly and add egg yolks. pour into plate lined with pastry and bake until paste is cooked. or pour into crust already baked. meringue ingredients--2 egg whites beaten stiff, 2 to 4 tablespoons of powdered sugar, a few drops of vanilla. add sugar gradually to stiffly beaten whites of eggs. add flavoring. spread over top of pie and cook until golden brown in a slow oven. "man may work from sun to sun, but woman's work is never done." women continually overdo and drift along from bad to worse. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound is a standard medicine for women's troubles. "we have to do our own work" "i saw in the newspapers where lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound was doing so much good to women, and as i needed something i began to take it. i used to be very sick, but i am not now. i live on a farm in the homestead district and we have to do all our own work. i tell all the women i see what lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound does for me. i think it saves me from going to a doctor and is the best medicine women can take." mrs. william coultas, fork river, manitoba. pie crust [illustration] ingredients 1-1/2 cups flour 3 tablespoons lard 1/2 teaspoon salt cold water 3 tablespoons butter method--wash butter and squeeze until water and salt has been removed. chill the lard then chop it into the flour, with two knives. add salt and moisten it to a dough with cold water. (ice water is not essential but is desirable in summer.) toss on a floured board and roll out. fold to make three layers and put the butter between the layers. turn half way round, pat, and roll out. cut off the sides of it and roll into shape for the plate. roll the center for the upper crust, cutting slits in it to let out steam. fold the upper crust under the edge of the lower crust. bake in a moderately hot oven 40-50 minutes. pastry may be used immediately or chilled before using. it must not come in contact with the ice. if there is one thing more than another that a woman should care about it is her health. she may be cheated in her happiest hopes because she does not know that lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound can be safely taken by all women. "my back seemed the worst" "i was so weak that i could hardly do anything and my back seemed the worst. i read so much about lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound for women that i thought i would try it. i feel that it did help me. i am looking after my own home now and seem quite strong again. i have recommended your vegetable compound to quite a few friends and you can use my name if you wish to do so." mrs. h. porter, box 440, meaford, ontario. apple pie [illustration] ingredients 4 or 5 sour apples 1/3 cup sugar 1/4 tablespoon grated nutmeg 1/8 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon lemon juice few gratings lemon rind 1 tablespoon butter method--line pie-plate with pastry. pare, core, and cut apples into eighths. put row of slices around the plate 1/2 inch from the edge working towards the center until the plate is covered. then pile on the remainder. mix sugar, nutmeg, salt, lemon juice and grated rind and sprinkle over the apple. dot all with butter. wet the edges of the under crust, cover with the upper crust and press together. bake for 40-45 minutes in a moderate oven. do you feel broken-down, nervous and weak sometimes? lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound is excellent to take at such a time. it always helps and if taken regularly and persistently will relieve this condition. "as if i must scream" "i cannot speak too highly of what lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has done for me. i was a nervous wreck and i just had to force myself to do my work. even the sound of my own children playing made be feel as if i must scream if they did not get away from me. i could not even speak right to my husband. the doctor said that he could do nothing for me owing to my condition. my husband's grandmother advised me to take lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. i started it right away and everyone noticed what a different woman i was in a short time. i was able to do my work once more, and it was a pleasure, not a burden." mrs. emily davis, 721 mcgee st., winnipeg, manitoba. baked fruit pudding [illustration] prepare fruit--apples, peaches,--and sprinkle with sugar, also with cinnamon or nutmeg if apples are used. place fruit in baking-dish to within one inch of the top. crust ingredients 1 cup flour 1 salt spoon salt 1 teaspoon baking powder 2 tablespoons butter 1/3 cup milk method--mix and sift the dry ingredients, cut in butter with knife and add milk. roll the crust to fit the baking-dish, keeping it 1/2 inch thick and place over the fruit. press edges of the crust to the rim of the dish and make a small opening in the crust near the center. bake in a moderate oven 30 minutes. serve with vanilla sauce. the right road to health is what every ailing woman is looking for and when one woman gets on that road she is always ready to direct some other woman to it. "it had helped my sister" "i was a sufferer for three years, not able to do my housework. my husband was discouraged for i was no better and had the doctor all this time and nothing had helped me. i was always sleepy, had no appetite and suffered with my left side. my mother, in england, recommended lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound because it had helped my sister, so i have been taking it. i am now able to do my housework and i cannot praise your vegetable compound too highly, as i have great hopes for the future. i will tell anyone who writes to me what good it has done me." mrs. henry masson, st. henry p.o., montreal. vanilla sauce [illustration] ingredients 1 cup boiling water 2 teaspoons corn-starch 1 tablespoon butter 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 teaspoon vanilla little salt method--mix the corn-starch with a little cold water and stir into the hot water, boiling five minutes. put butter, sugar, flavoring and salt into a bowl and pour the thoroughly cooked cornstarch over it, stirring until the sugar and the butter are dissolved. lemon jelly ingredients--2 oranges, 1 lemon, the rind of one orange grated fine, 1 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon gelatine, 2 cups boiling water. method--mix the juices and the fruit gratings with the sugar. soak 1 tablespoon gelatine in 1 cup of cold water until soft. stir in 2 cups of boiling water and add the sugar and fruit juices. stir until the gelatine is dissolved, then pour into a mold to harden. "women's troubles and women's work" "i was weak and had some troubles women often have and usually i was unfit to do my work. i saw your advertisement and decided to try lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. i am very much pleased with the result and recommend your vegetable compound whenever i have a chance." mrs. wandless, 360 church st., fredericton, new brunswick. "i have taken lydia e. pinkham's medicines and they have done me a lot of good. since then i have been able to do my housework, and i have a lot to do as we live on a farm. seeing your advertisement in the papers was what made me think of writing to you." mrs. wm. b. keiver, upper new horton, new brunswick. chocolate bread pudding [illustration] ingredients 2 cups bread crumbs 4 cups of milk (or 2 of water and 2 of evaporated milk) 2 squares chocolate 2/3 cup sugar 1 salt spoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla method--soak bread crumbs in milk until soft. melt the chocolate over hot water and add the sugar to it. beat eggs well and add with the remaining ingredients to the crumbs and milk. mix well and bake in a buttered pudding-dish in a moderate oven, until thick and firm. a meringue (see page 23) of egg white and sugar may be spread over the top about 15 minutes before it is done, or it can be served with cream, hard, or foamy sauce. hard sauce--1/3 cup butter, 1 cup powdered sugar, 1/3 teaspoon lemon extract, 2/3 teaspoon vanilla. cream the butter, add sugar gradually, and flavoring. lack of energy or 'pep' makes a woman feel old while she is yet young in years and general appearance. "no serious trouble" "i had no disease only i felt tired and had headache very often and thought i needed a tonic, so i got lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound and the liver pills. i am now on the third bottle and have not had headache for over two weeks. of course i have not had any serious trouble at all." mrs. m.a. watson, victoria st., cobourg, ontario. "i was weak and run down, had no appetite and was nervous. the nurse who took care of me told me to try lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, and now i am getting strong. i recommend your medicine to my friends." mrs. d. maxwell, r.r. no. 2, bothwell, ontario. cup custards [illustration] ingredients 1 quart milk 4 eggs 4 tablespoons sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt few grains nutmeg method--scald one quart of rich creamy milk. beat four egg yolks, add sugar and salt and beat until thick like cream. beat the four egg whites until foamy, not stiff, mix well with the yolks and sugar and add scalded milk. stand the cups in a shallow pan, stir the foam down, and fill the cups to overflowing or nearly so. put hot water in the pan and bake in a hot oven, watching them carefully that they do not scorch. lay buttered paper over if needed. test with a knife as soon as they begin to puff up and if the blade comes out clean, not milky, they are done. do women read our little books which come so regularly to their homes? we feel sure that they are read from cover to cover. "i seemed to be smothering" "i suffered with irregular periods, was weak and run-down, could not eat and had headaches. the worst symptoms were dragging down pains, so bad i sometimes thought i would go crazy and i seemed to be smothering. i was in this condition for two or three years and could not seem to work. i tried all kinds of remedies but received no benefit. i found one of your booklets and felt inclined to try lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. i received the best results from it and now i keep house and go out to work and am like a new woman." mrs. j.f. peasey, 387 king st. west, toronto, ontario. substitutes [illustration] use jelly tumblers to bake custards in. use soldier's long wristers to make gaiters for a baby; just sew an elastic band at the bottom. use cold cream jars to keep pepper, allspice, and other spices in, and label with a sticker or a piece of surgeon's plaster. instead of the usual dust cap, cut a three-cornered piece of cheese-cloth, hemming the two sides without selvedge and tie around the head with the point at the back of your neck. to avoid giving out fresh napkins at every meal, write each name on a spring clothes-pin and pin to the napkin. you can name your face towel in this way when camping out. when cleaning fish use scissors in place of a knife and if it is to be scaled dip it first into boiling water. do you keep on taking your medicine when you begin to improve, or do you stop taking it, trusting that you are on the road to recovery and no more medicine is needed, even if you have been sick for months and are having your first hours of relief from pains and nervousness? "have taken it faithfully" "for five years i suffered with pains in my back and from other troubles women often have. all of this time i was unfit for work and was taking different medicines that i thought were good. i saw the advertisement in the papers of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound and have taken it faithfully. i am now in good health and do all my own work. i recommend it to others and give you permission to publish this letter in your little books and in the newspapers as a testimonial." mrs. d. cassady, box 461, paris, ontario. house-cleaning hints [illustration] to clean a painted wall wash it with saleratus water; about one tablespoonful of saleratus to a quart of warm water. a piece of zinc placed on the glowing coals will clean the chimney of soot. a little lye put in paste will make wall-paper stick. to drive a nail into plaster, heat it very hot and the plaster will not break. to drive nails or screws into hard wood always rub them over with soap and they will go in easily and will not split the wood. shellac the inside of all drawers and they will be easy to clean. when you remove the waste from your carpet-sweeper, carefully cut the lint and hair from the revolving rolls and brushes. then with a cloth dipped in kerosene rub the bristles and the inside of the box clean, and the oil will prevent the dust from rising when you sweep. have you ever thought of writing to us about what lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has done for you? "i am stronger and feel fine." "i took lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound because i was tired and run down. i had headaches and no appetite and was troubled for two years with sleeplessness. i tried many medicines but nothing did me any real good. while i was living in washington i was recommended by a friend to take the vegetable compound. i am stronger and feel fine since then and am able to do my housework. i am willing for you to use these facts as a testimonial." mrs. j.c. greaves, 771 hornby st., vancouver, british columbia. first aids [illustration] for a rusty nail accident pour turpentine at once on the afflicted parts. for burns put on scraped raw potato instantly and change as often as it gets warm, until the pain is relieved. olive oil will remove gum from a child's hair as if by magic. when a child puts a bean in his nose, don't try to dig it out. put a little cayenne pepper upon his upper lip and he will sneeze it out. to extract splinters, fill a wide-mouthed bottle almost to the top with very hot water and place the injured part over the mouth of the bottle and press lightly. suction will draw the flesh down and steam will extract the splinter. table of measures (dry and liquid) 4 salt spoons 1 teaspoonful 3 teaspoonfuls 1 tablespoonful 16 tablespoonfuls 1 cup 2 cups 1 pint all measures are level. to measure dry materials, take up all a spoon or cup will hold and level it with a knife. to measure liquids, take up all the spoon or cup will hold. "after being married sixteen years" "seven years ago i took lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound and after being married sixteen years became the mother of a sweet little girl. i had longed for children all the while and wept many a day and envied every woman with a child. i was thirty-six years old when my baby was born. i recommend lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound to any woman who is ailing with female weakness." mrs. j. naumann, 1517 benton st., st. louis, mo. attention! an attractive present will be forwarded you free if you will return this page with answers to the following questions: designate your choice by checking one of the following: tape measure manicure set lydia e. pinkham medicine co. lynn, mass. * * * * * questions how many copies of this book were left for you where you found this one? where did you find this copy? have you seen other copies of this book in stores or otherwise wasted? if so, please explain what you have seen? would you like us to send you, with the present, a free copy of lydia e. pinkham's private text-book upon ailments peculiar to women? name street address town * * * * * * transcriber's notes: inside front cover: added period after pinkham's blood medicine. page 2. added " after: facts as a testimonial. page 5. reversed order of mrs. peter nordin, <--> wadena, saskatchewan. page 6. until [added space] puffed page 11. changed to title case from upper, for consistency: method page 14. "it has done so much for women" corrected case of t to upper page 17. liqiud corrected to liquid page 19. corrected double word: one one page 27. corrected buttter to butter contributions from the museum of history and technology: paper 10 old english patent medicines in america _george b. griffenhagen_ and _james harvey young_ origins of english patent medicines 156 english patent medicines come to america 162 complex formulas and distinctive packages 166 source of supply severed 168 philadelphia college of pharmacy formulary 174 english patent medicines go west 176 the patent medicines in the 20th century 179 old english patent medicines in america _by george b. griffenhagen and james harvey young_ _bateman's pectoral drops, godfrey's cordial, turlington's balsam of life, hooper's female pills, and a half-dozen other similar nostrums originated in england, mostly during the first half of the 18th century. advertised with extravagant claims, their use soon spread to the american colonies._ _to the busy settler, with little time and small means, these ready-made and comparatively inexpensive "remedies" appealed as a solution to problems of medical and pharmaceutical aid. their popularity brought forth a host of american imitations and made an impression not soon forgotten or discarded._ the authors: _george b. griffenhagen, formerly curator of medical sciences in the smithsonian institution's u.s. national museum, is now director of communications for the american pharmaceutical association. james harvey young is professor of history at emory university. some of the material cited in the paper was found by him while he held a fellowship from the fund for the advancement of education, in 1954-55, and grants-in-aid from the social science research council and emory university, in 1956-57._ in 1824 there issued from the press in philadelphia a 12-page pamphlet bearing the title, _formulae for the preparation of eight patent medicines, adopted by the philadelphia college of pharmacy_. the college was the first professional pharmaceutical organization established in america, having been founded in 1821, and this small publication was its first venture of any general importance. viewed from the perspective of the mid-20th century, it may seem strange if not shocking that the maiden effort of such a college should be publicizing formulas for nostrums. adding to the novelty is the fact that all eight of these patent medicines, with which the philadelphians concerned themselves half a century after american independence, were of english origin. hooper's female pills, anderson's scots pills, bateman's pectoral drops, godfrey's cordial, dalby's carminative, turlington's balsam of life, steer's opodeldoc, british oil--in this order do the names appear in the philadelphia pamphlet--all were products of british therapeutic ingenuity. across the atlantic ocean and on american soil these eight and other old english patent medicines, as of the year when the 12-page pamphlet was printed, had both a past and a future. origin of english patent medicines when the philadelphia pharmacists began their study, the eight english patent medicines were from half a century to two centuries old.[1] the most ancient was anderson's scots pills, a product of the 1630's, and the most recent was probably dalby's carminative, which appeared upon the scene in the 1780's. some aspects of the origin and development of these and similar english proprietaries have been treated, but a more thorough search of the sources and a more integrated and interpretive recounting of the story would be a worthy undertaking. here merely an introduction can be given to the cast of characters prior to their entrances upon the american stage. [1] unless otherwise indicated, the early english history of these patent medicines has been obtained from the following sources: "proprietaries of other days," _chemist and druggist_, june 25, 1927, vol. 106, pp. 831-840; c. j. s. thompson, _the mystery and art of the apothecary_, london, 1929; c. j. s. thompson, _quacks of old london_, london, 1928; and a. c. wootton, _chronicles of pharmacy_, london, 1910, 2 vols. the inventor of anderson's scots pills was fittingly enough a scot named patrick anderson, who claimed to be physician to king charles i. in one of his books, published in 1635, anderson extolled in latin the merits of the grana angelica, a pill the formula for which he said he had learned in venice. before he died, anderson imparted the secret to his daughter katherine, and in 1686 she in turn conveyed the secret to an edinburgh physician named thomas weir. the next year weir persuaded james ii to grant him letters patent for the pills. whether he did this to protect himself against competition that already had begun, or whether the patenting gave a cue to those always ready to cut themselves in on a good thing, cannot be said for sure. the last years of the 17th century, at any rate, saw the commencement of a spirited rivalry among various makers of anderson's scots pills that was long to continue. one of them was mrs. isabella inglish, an enterprising woman who sealed her pill boxes in black wax bearing a lion rampant, three mallets argent, and the bust of dr. anderson. another was a man named gray who sealed his boxes in red wax with his coat of arms and a motto strangely chosen for a medicine, "remember you must die." [illustration: figure 1.--the philadelphia college of pharmacy in 1824 set forth in this pamphlet formulas for eight old english patent medicines. (_courtesy, philadelphia college of pharmacy and science, philadelphia, pennsylvania._)] competition already had begun when godfrey's cordial appeared in the record in a london newspaper advertisement during december 1721. john fisher of hertfordshire, "physician and chymist," claimed to have gotten the true formula from its originator, the late dr. thomas godfrey of the same county. but there is an alternate explanation. perhaps the cordial had its origin in the apothecary shop established about 1660 by ambroise (hanckowitz) godfrey in southampton street, london.[2] according to a handbill issued during the late 17th century, ambroise godfrey prepared "good cordials as royal english drops." [2] "how the patent medicine industry came into its own," _american druggist_, october 1933, vol. 88, pp. 84-87, 232, 234, 236, 238. [illustration: figure 2.--anthony daffy extolled the virtues of his elixir salutis in this pamphlet, published in london in 1673. (_courtesy, british museum._)] with respect to his rivals, the 18th-century hertfordshire vendor of the cordial warned in the _weekly journal_ (london), december 23, 1721: "i do advise all persons, for their own safety, not to meddle with the said cordial prepared by illiterate and ignorant persons, as bakers, malsters, [sic] and goldsmiths, that shall pretend to make it, it being beyond their reach; so that by their covetousness and pretensions, many men, women, and especially infants, may fall as victims, whose slain may exceed herod's cruelty...." in 1726 king george i granted a patent for the making and selling of dr. bateman's pectoral drops. the patent was given not to a doctor, but to a business man named benjamin okell. in the words of the patent,[3] okell is lauded for having "found out and brought to perfection, a new chymicall preparacion and medicine..., working chiefly by moderate sweat and urine, exceeding all other medicines yet found out for the rheumatism, which is highly useful under the afflictions of the stone, gravell, pains, agues, and hysterias...." what the chemicals constituting his remedy were, the patentee did not vouchsafe to reveal. [3] benjamin okell, "pectoral drops for rheumatism, gravel, etc.," british patent 483, march 31, 1726. the practice of patenting had begun in royal prerogative. long accustomed to granting monopoly privileges for the development of new industries, the discovery of new lands, and the enrichment of court favorites, various monarchs in 17th-century europe had given letters patent to proprietors of medical remedies which had gained popular acclaim. in france and the german states, this practice continued well through the 18th century. in england, where representative government had progressed at the expense of the personal prerogative of the sovereign, parliament passed a law in 1624 aimed at curbing arbitrary actions like those of james i and charles i. the statute declared all monopolies void except those extended to the first inventor of a new process of manufacture. to such pioneers the king could grant his letters patent bestowing monopoly privileges for a period of 14 years. that the machinery set up by this law did not completely curb the independence of english sovereigns in the medical realm is indicated by the favor extended dr. weir, who successfully sought from james ii a privileged position for anderson's scots pills. this kingly grant is not included in the regular list, and the glorious revolution of 1688 brought an end to such an exercise of royal power without consent of parliament. a list of patents in the medical field later published by the commissioners of patents[4] includes only six issued during the 17th century, four for baths and devices, one for an improved method of preparing alum, and one for making epsom salts. the first patent for a compound medicine was granted in 1711, and only two other proprietors preceded benjamin okell in seeking this particular legal form of protection and promotion. as early as 1721, bateman's pectoral drops were being regularly advertised in the _london mercury_. the advertisements announced: "dr. bateman's pectoral drops published at the request of several persons of distinction from both universities...." the drops, priced at "1 s. a bottle," were "sold wholesale and retail at the printing-house and picture warehouse in bow churchyard," and likewise "in most cities and celebrated towns in great britain." "each bottle seal'd with the boar's head." so stated the advertisement, which itself contained a crude cut of this boar's head seal.[5] elsewhere in this issue of the _mercury_, we learn that john cluer, printer, was the proprietor of the bow churchyard warehouse. this same john cluer, along with william dicey and robert raikes, were named in the 1726 patent as "the persons concerned with the said inventor," benjamin okell, who, with him, should "enjoy the sole benefit of the said medicine." it was this partnership which was to find the field of nostrum promotion especially congenial and which was to play an important transatlantic role. soon after securing their patent, the proprietors undertook to inform their countrymen about the remedy by issuing _a short treatise of the virtues of dr. bateman's pectoral drops_.[6] [4] british patent office, _patents for inventions: abridgements of specifications relating to medicine, surgery, and dentistry, 1620-1866_, london, 1872. [5] _london mercury_, london, august 19-26, 1721. [6] _a short treatise of the virtues of dr. bateman's pectoral drops_, new york, 1731. a 36-page pamphlet preserved in the library of the new york academy of medicine. this is an american reprint of an english original, date unknown. it was the 18th century, and the essay was in fashion. the proprietors prepared a didactic introduction to their treatise, phrased in long and flowery sentences, in which modesty was not the governing tone. the arguments ran like this: that the "universal good of mankind" should be the aim of "every private member"; that nothing is so conducive to this general welfare as "health"; that no hazards to health are more direful than diseases such as "the gout; the rheumatism; the stone; the jaundice," etc., etc.; that countless men and women have succumbed to such afflictions either because they received no treatment or suffered wrong treatment at "the hands of the learned"; that no medicine is so sure a cure as that inexpensive remedy discovered as a result of great "piety, learning and industry" by one "inspir'd with the love of his country, and the good of mankind," to wit. "dr. bateman's pectoral drops." then followed seven chapters treating the multitude of illnesses for which the drops were a specific. finally, the pamphlet cited "some few, out of the many thousands of certificates of cures effected by these drops...." even so early was the testimonial deemed a powerful persuader. no more could okell, cluer, dicey, and raikes escape competition than could the proprietors of other successful nostrums. in 1755 they went to court and won a suit for the infringement of their patent, but the damages amounted to only a shilling. even after the patent expired, the tide of publicity flowed on.[7] [7] a broadside, issued in london, _ca._ 1750, advertising "dr. bateman's drops," is preserved in the warshaw collection of business americana, new york. later reprints of this same broadside are preserved in the private collection of samuel aker, albany, new york, and in the smithsonian institution. competition was also lively in the 1740's among some half a dozen proprietors marketing a form of crude petroleum under the name of british oil. early in the decade michael and thomas betton were granted a patent for "an oyl extracted from a flinty rock for the cure of rheumatick and scorbutick and other cases." the source of the oil, according to their specifications, was rock lying just above the coal in mines, and this rock was pulverized and heated in a furnace to extract all the precious healing oil.[8] this betton patent aroused one of their rivals, edmund darby & co. of coalbrook-dale in shropshire. darby asserted that it was presumptuous of the bettons to call their british oyl a new invention.[9] for over a century darby and his predecessors had been marketing this self-same product, and it had proved to be "the one and only unrivall'd and most efficacious remedy ever yet discovered, against the whole force of diseases and accidents that await mankind...." for the bettons to appropriate the process and patent it--and even to claim in their advertising cures which really had been wrought by the darby product--was scandalous. worse than that, said darby, it was illegal, for in 1693 william iii had granted a patent to "martin eele and two others at his nomination for making the same sort of oyl from the same sort of materials." evidence to substantiate his belief in the betton perfidy was presented by darby to george ii, who had the matter duly investigated.[10] being persuaded that darby was right, the king and his councillors, in 1745, vacated the betton patent. this victory seems not to have boomed the darby interests, and this defeat seems not to have ruined the bettons. during the succeeding century, the betton patent was published and republished in advertising, just as if it had never fallen afoul the law. from their battles with the oil from coalbrook-dale and other british oils marketed by other proprietors, the bettons emerged triumphant. in the years to come, patent or no, the bettons british oil was to dominate the field. [8] michael and thomas betton, "oil for the cure of rheumatic and scorbutic affections," british patent 587, august 14, 1742. [9] edmund darby & co., _directions for taking inwardly and using outwardly the company's true genuine and original british oil; prepared by edmund darby & co. at coalbrook-dale, shropshire_, ca. 1745. an 8-page pamphlet preserved in the library of the college of physicians, philadelphia, pennsylvania. [10] _london gazette_, london, march 1, 1745. the year after the bettons had secured their patent, another was granted to john hooper of reading for the manufacture of "female pills" bearing his name.[11] hooper was an apothecary, a man-midwife, and a shrewd fellow. this was the period in which the british government was increasing its efforts to require the patentee to furnish precise specifications with his application.[12] when hooper was called upon to tell what was in his pills and how they were made, he replied by asserting that they were composed "of the best purging stomatick and anti-hysterick ingredients," which were formed into pills the size of a small pea. this satisfied the royal agents and hooper went on about his business. in an advertisement of the same year, he was able to cite as a witness to his patent the name of the archbishop of canterbury.[13] [11] john hooper, "pills," british patent 592, july 21, 1743. [12] e. burke inlow, _the patent grant_, baltimore, 1950, p. 33. [13] _daily advertiser_, london, september 23, 1743. much less taciturn than hooper about the composition of his nostrum was robert turlington, who secured a patent in 1744 for "a specifick balsam, called the balsam of life."[14] the balsam contained no less than 27 ingredients, and in his patent specifications turlington asserted that it would cure kidney and bladder stones, cholic, and inward weakness. he shortly issued a 46-page pamphlet in which he greatly expanded the list.[15] in this appeal to 18th-century sensibilities, turlington asserted that the "author of nature" has provided "a remedy for every malady." to find them, "men of learning and genius" have "ransack'd" the "animal, mineral and vegetable world." his own search had led turlington to the balsam, "a perfect friend to nature, which it strengthens and corroborates when weak and declining, vivifies and enlivens the spirits, mixes with the juices and fluids of the body and gently infuses its kindly influence into those parts that are most in disorder." [14] robert turlington, "a specifick balsam, called the balsam of life," british patent 596, january 18, 1744. [15] robert turlington, _turlington's balsam of life_, ca. 1747. a 46-page pamphlet preserved in the folger shakespeare library, washington, d.c. [illustration: figure 3.--label for stoughton's elixir as manufactured by dr. jos. frye of salem, massachusetts. (_courtesy, essex institute, salem, massachusetts._)] testimonials from those who had felt the kindly influence took up most of the space in turlington's pamphlet. in these grateful acknowledgments to the potency of the patent medicine, the list of illnesses cured stretched far beyond the handful named in the patent specifications. just as for bateman's pectoral drops and the darby brand of british oil, workers of many occupations solemnly swore that they had received benefit. most of them were humble people--a porter, a carpenter, the wife of a gardener, a blanket-weaver, a gunner's mate, a butcher, a hostler, a bodice-maker. some bore a status of greater distinction: there were a "mathematical instrument-maker" and the doorkeeper of the east india company. all were jubilant at their restored good health. the balsam's well-nigh sovereign power could not protect it from one ailment of the times, competition. various preparations of similar composition, like friar's balsam, already were on the market, but before long even the turlington name was trespassed upon, and the inventor's niece was forced to advertise that she alone had the true formula and that any person who took a dose of the spurious imitations being offered did so at great hazard to his life. a quarter of a century after the patenting of the balsam, there appeared for sale to british ailing a remedy called dr. steer's celebrated opodeldoc. dr. steer is a shadowy rider of a vigorous steed, for although the doctor has left but a faint personal impact upon the historical record, opodeldoc has pranced through medical history since the time of paracelsus. this 16th-century continental chemist-physician, who introduced many mineral remedies into the materia medica, had coined the word "opodeldoc" to apply to various medical plasters. in the two ensuing centuries the meaning had changed, and the _pharmacopoeia edinburgensis_ of 1722 employed the term to designate soap liniment. it is presumed that dr. steer appropriated the edinburgh formula, added ammonia, and marketed his proprietary version. in 1780, a london paper carried an advertisement listing the difficulties for which the opodeldoc was a "speedy and certain cure." these included bruises, sprains, burns, cuts, chillblains, and headaches. furthermore, the remedy had been "found of infinite use in hot climates for the bite of venomous insects."[16] dr. steer seems not to have secured a patent for his slightly modified version of an official preparation. he died in 1781, but opodeldoc, indeed steer's opodeldoc, went marching on.[17] [16] _daily advertiser_, london, february 18, 1780. [17] broadsides, _ca._ 1810-1822, advertising "steer's chemical opodeldoc, for bruises, sprains, rheumatism, etc., etc.," are preserved in the american antiquarian society, worcester, massachusetts; the library of the new york academy of medicine; and the warshaw collection of business americana, new york. about the same time that dr. steer began advertising, newspaper promotion was launched in behalf of another remedy, called dalby's carminative. the inventor, j. dalby, was a london apothecary, and his unpatented concoction was designed to cure "disorders of the bowels." one early advertisement[18] added details: "this medicine, which is founded on just medical principles, has been long established as a most safe and effectual remedy, generally affording immediate relief in the wind, cholocks [_sic_], convulsions, purgings, and all those fatal disorders in the bowels of infants, which carry off so great a number under the age of 2 years. it is also equally efficacious in gouty pains in the intestines, in fluxes, and in the cholicky complaints of grown persons, so usual at this season of the year." dalby, like steer, failed long to survive the appearance of his medicine on the market. [18] _daily advertiser_, london, january 4, 1781. such were the origins of the eight remedies which the philadelphia pharmacists were to take account of in 1824. besides these eight, two other patent medicines, both elixirs, were destined for roles of such special interest that a brief look at their english background is warranted. one of them, daffy's elixir, was the invention of a clergyman, rev. thomas daffy soon after 1650. daffy had his troubles during that troubled century, losing a pastorate because he offended a powerful countess. when the rector first sought to minister unto men's bodies as well as to their souls is not known. according to a pamphlet issued in 1673, after the rev. daffy had passed from the scene, the formula had been "found out by the providence of the almighty." by this time a london kinsman of the inventor, named anthony daffy, was vending the remedy. the full name of the medicine, according to the pamphlet's title, was "elixir salutis: the choice drink of health, or health-bringing drink," and among the ailments for which it was effective were gout, the stone, colic, "ptissick," scurvy, dropsy, rickets, consumption, and "languishing and melancholly." the elixir salutis proved immensely popular. it was too much to expect that anthony should hold the field uncontested; in the 1673 pamphlet one false fabricator was called by name, and in 1680 anthony advertised to warn against "diverse persons" who were not only counterfeiting the medicine but spreading the malicious rumor that anthony was dead. early in the new century, catherine, the daughter of the original rev. daffy, insisted that she as well as her cousin anthony had received the valuable formula. but it was anthony's line that was to prove the more persistent. in 1743, one susannah daffy advertised the "original and famous elixir," asserting that she had a brother anthony who also knew the secret.[19] this anthony died in 1750 and willed the formula to his niece. but there were others outside the family who long had been making and selling the medicine. for example, the bow churchyard warehouse advertised daffy's elixir in the _london mercury_ during 1721. without hiding the fact that others were also compounding this "safe and pleasant cordial ... well-known throughout england, where it has been in great use these 50 years," the advertisement concluded: "those who make tryalof that sold at this [bow churchyard] warehouse will never buy anywhere else."[20] [19] _ibid._, september 7, 1743. [20] _london mercury_, london, august 19-26, 1721. although once lauded by a physician to king charles ii, daffy's elixir was never patented. the elixir invented by richard stoughton was, in 1712, the second compound medicine to be granted a patent in england.[21] stoughton was an apothecary who had a shop at the sign of the unicorn in southwark, surrey. it was evidently competition, the constant bane of the medicine proprietor's life, that drove him to seek governmental protection. in his specifications he asserted that he had been making his medical mixture for over twenty years. stoughton was less precise about his formula; indeed, he gave none, but was generous in indicating the remedy's name: "stoughton's elixir magnum stomachii, or the great cordial elixir, otherwise called the stomatick tincture or bitter drops." in a handbill, the apothecary did tip his hand to the extent of asserting that his elixir contained 22 ingredients, but added that nobody but himself knew what they were. the dosage was generous, 50 to 60 drops "in a glass of spring water, beer, ale, mum, canary, white wine, with or without sugar, and a dram of brandy as often as you please." this, it was said, would cure any stomach ailment whatever.[22] [21] richard stoughton, "restorative cordial and medicine," british patent 390, 1712. [22] from a broadside, _ca._ 1750, advertising "dr. stoughton's elixir magnum stomachum," preserved in the american antiquarian society, worcester, mass. the inventor died in 1726, and his passing precipitated a perfect fury of competitive advertising. as in the case of daffy's, there was a family feud. a son of stoughton and the widow of another son argued vituperously in print, each claiming sole possession of richard's complicated secret, and each terming the other a scoundrel. the daughter-in-law accused the son of financial chicanery, and the son condemned the daughter-in-law for having run through two husbands and for desperately wanting a third. in the midst of this running battle, a third party entered the lists as maker of the elixir. she was no stoughton--though a widow--and her quaint claim for the public's consideration lay in this, that her late husband had infringed stoughton's patent until restrained by the lord chancellor. these ten medicines--stoughton's and daffy's elixirs and the eight which the philadelphia pharmacists were later to select--were by no means the only packaged remedies available to the 18th-century englishman who resorted to self-dosage for his ills. between 1711, when the first patent was granted for a compound medicine, and 1776, some 75 items were patented in the medical field.[23] and, along with godfrey's cordial and daffy's elixir, there were scores of other remedies for which no patents had been given. a list of nostrums published in _the gentleman's magazine_ in 1748 totaled 202, and it was admittedly incomplete.[24] the proprietor with a patent might do his utmost to keep this badge of governmental sanction before the public, but the distinction was not great enough in such a crowded field to make things clear. the casual buyer could not keep track of which electuary had been granted a patent and which lozenge had not. they were all bottles and boxes upon the shelf. in use they served the same purpose. one term arose in common speech to apply to both, and it was "patent medicine." [23] british patent office, _op. cit._ (see footnote 4). [24] poplicola, "pharmacopoeia empirica or the list of nostrums and empirics," _the gentleman's magazine_, 1748, vol. 18, pp. 346-350. english patent medicines come to america when the first english packaged medicine, patented or unpatented, came to the new world, cannot be told. some 17th-century prospective colonist, setting forth to face the hazards of life in jamestown or baltimore or boston, must have packed a box of anderson's scots pills or a bottle of daffy's elixir to bring along, but no record to substantiate such an incident has been encountered. it would seem that the use of english packaged remedies in america was most infrequent before 1700. samuel lee, answering questions posed from england in 1690 about the status of medicine and pharmacy in massachusetts, mentions no patent medicines.[25] neither does the 1698 account book of the salem apothecary, bartholomew brown.[26] [25] george l. kittredge, "letters to samuel lee and samuel sewall relating to new england and the indians," _colonial society of massachusetts, transactions_, 1913, vol. 14, pp. 142-186. [26] bartholomew brown, apothecary day book, salem [1698]; manuscript original preserved in the library of the essex institute, salem, massachusetts. [illustration: figure 4.--patrick anderson, m.d., from a box of anderson's scots pills. from wootton's _chronicles of pharmacy_, london, 1910. (_smithsonian photo 44286-c._)] in the _boston news-letter_ for october 4, 1708, nicholas boone, at the sign of the bible, near the corner, of school-house-lane, advertised for sale: "daffy's elixir salutis, very good, at four shillings and sixpence _per_ half pint bottle." this may well be the first printed reference in america to an english patent medicine, and it certainly is the first newspaper advertisement for a nostrum. preceding the _news-letter_ in colonial america, there had been only one paper, the _publick occurrences both foreign and domestic_.[27] this journal had lasted but a single issue. then its printer had returned to england, where he took up the career of a patent medicine promoter, vending "the only angelical pills against all vapours, hysterick fits." the _news-letter_ had begun with the issue of april 27, 1704, about 4 years before boone's advertisement for daffy's remedy made its appearance, but during that time, only one advertisement for anything at all in the medical field had appeared, and that was for a home-remedy book, _the english physician_, by nicholas culpeper, doctor of physick.[28] this volume was also for sale at boone's shop. [27] frank l. mott, _american journalism_, new york, 1941, pp. 9-10. [28] _boston news-letter_, boston, february 9, 1708. patent-medicine advertising in the _news-letter_ prior to 1750 was infrequent. apothecary zabdiel boylston, who a decade later was to earn a role of esteem in medical history by introducing the inoculation for smallpox, announced in 1711 that he would sell "the true lockyers pills."[29] this was an unpatented remedy first concocted half a century earlier by a "licensed physitian" in london. the next year boylston repeated this appeal,[30] and in the same advertisement listed other wares of the same type. he had two varieties, golden and plain, of the spirit of scurvy-grass; he had "the bitter stomach drops," worm potions for children; and a wonderful multipurpose nostrum, "the royal honey water, an excellent perfume, good against deafness, and to make hair grow...." the antecedents of this regal liquid are unknown. boylston also announced for sale "the best [daffy's] elixir salutis in bottles, or by the ounce." this is a provocative listing. it may mean merely that the apothecary would break a bottle to sell a dose of the elixir, which was often the custom. but it also may suggest that boylston was making the elixir himself, or was having it prepared by a journeyman. this latter interpretation would place boylston well at the head of a long parade of american imitators of the old english patent medicines. [29] _ibid._, march 12, 1711. [30] _ibid._, march 24, 1712. other such shipments of the packaged english remedies may have come to new england on the latest ships from london during the next several decades, but they got scant play in the advertising columns of the small 4-page _boston news-letter_. another reference to "doctor anthony daffey's original elixer salutis" occurs in 1720.[31] ten years later, stoughton's drops were announced for sale "by public vendue," along with feather beds, looking glasses, and leather breeches.[32] nearly a decade more was to pass before bateman's pectoral drops showed up in the midst of another general list, including cheese, and shoes, and stays.[33] not until 1748 did an advertisement appear in which several of the old english nostrums rubbed shoulders with each other.[34] then silvester gardiner, at the sign of the unicorn and mortar, asserted that "by appointment of the patentee" he was enabled to sell "genuine british oyl, _bateman's_ pectoral drops, and _hooper's_ female pills, and the true _lockyer's_ pills." [31] _ibid._, november 14, 1720. [32] _ibid._, march 12, 1730. [33] _ibid._, january 4, 1739. [34] _ibid._, november 14, 1748. although nearly a century old, anderson's scots pills were not cited for sale in the pages of the _boston news-letter_ until august 23, 1750, two months after the much more recent turlington's balsam of life first put in its appearance.[35] during the same year, the british confusion over british oil was reflected in america. boden's and darby's variety preceded the betton brand into the _news-letter_ pages by a fortnight.[36] it was the latter, however, which was to win the day in boston, for almost all subsequent advertising specified the betton oil. godfrey's cordial was first mentioned in 1761.[37] thus, of the ten old english patent medicines which are the focus of the present study, eight had been advertised in the _boston news-letter_. the other two, steer's opodeldoc and dalby's carminative, did not reach the market before this colonial journal fell prey to the heightening tensions of early 1776. [35] _ibid._, june 7, 1750. [36] _ibid._, may 24, 1750. [37] _ibid._, december 31, 1761. by the 1750's, the names of several old english nostrums were appearing fairly frequently in the advertising of colonial apothecaries, not only in boston but in other colonial towns. in williamsburg, for example, a steady increase occurs in the number of references and the length of the lists of the english patent medicines advertised in the _virginia gazette_ from their first mention into the early 1760's.[38] this journal--which later had competing issues by different editors--was launched in 1736, and the next year george gilmer advised customers that, in addition to "all manner of chymical and galenical medicines," he could furnish, at his old shop near the governor's, "bateman's drops, squires elixir, anderson's pills."[39] the other remedies appeared in due time, stoughton's and daffy's elixirs in 1745, turlington's balsam in 1746, godfrey's cordial in 1751, hooper's pills in 1752, and betton's british oil in 1770. [38] lester j. cappon and stella f. duff, _virginia gazette index, 1736-1780_, williamsburg, 1950, 2 vols. [39] _virginia gazette_, williamsburg, may 27, 1737. a spot check of newspapers in philadelphia and new york reveals a pattern quite similar. residents of the middle colonies, like those to the north and the south, could buy the basic english brands, and it was during the 1750's that the notices of freshly-arrived supplies ceased to be rare in advertising columns and became a frequent occurrence. thomas preston, for example, announced to residents of philadelphia in 1768 that he had just received a supply of anderson's, hooper's, bateman's, betton's, daffy's, stoughton's, turlington's, and godfrey's remedies.[40] not only were these medicines for sale at apothecary shops, but they were sold by postmasters, goldsmiths, grocers, hair dressers, tailors, printers, booksellers, cork cutters, the post-rider between philadelphia and williamsburg, and by many colonial american physicians. [40] _pennsylvania gazette_, philadelphia, december 1, 1768. it is a matter for comment that american newspaper advertising of the english packaged medicines was singularly drab. in the mother country, the proprietors or their heirs were faced with vigorous competition. it behooved them to sharpen up their adjectives and reach for their vitriol. in america the apothecary or merchant had no proprietary interest in any of the different brands of the imported medicines which were sold. moreover, there was probably no great surplus of supply over demand in america as in britain, so the task of selling the stock on hand was less difficult and required less vigorous promotion. also, advertising space in the few american weeklies was more at a premium than in the more frequent and numerous english journals. with rare exceptions, therefore, the old english patent medicines were merely mentioned by name in american advertising. seldom did one receive the individual attention accorded by samuel emlen to godfrey's cordial in benjamin franklin's _pennsylvania gazette_ for june 26, 1732. the ad ran like this: "dr. godfrey's general cordial. so universally approved of for the cholick, and all manners cf pains in the bowels, fluxes, fevers, small-pox, measles, rheumatism, coughs, colds, and restlessness in men, women, and children; and particularly for several ailments incident to child-bearing women, and relief of young children in breeding their teeth." [illustration: figure 5.--pamphlet, dated 1731, on behalf of bateman's pectoral drops. it was published by john peter zenger in new york. original preserved in the new york academy of medicine library. (_smithsonian photo 44286-d._)] emlen's venturesomeness may have lain in the fact that he was not only a retailer, but also an agent for the british manufacturer, for he cited the names of those who sold godfrey's cordial in nearby towns. even at that, this appeal, consisting merely of a list of illnesses, lacked the cleverness of contemporary english nostrum advertising. in the whole span of the _boston news-letter_, beginning in 1704, it was not until 1763 that a bookstore pulled out the stops with half a column of lively prose in behalf of dr. hill's four unpatented nostrums.[41] it seems a safe assumption that not only the medicines but the verbiage were imported from london, where dr. hill had been at work endeavoring to restore a greek secret which "converts a glass of water into the nature and quality of asses milk, with the balsamick addition...." [41] _boston news-letter_, boston, november 24, 1763. the infrequency of extended fanciful promotion in behalf of the old english nostrums in american newspaper advertising may have been compensated for to some degree in broadside and pamphlet. a critic of the medical scene in new york in the early 1750's asserted that physicians used patent medicines which they learned about from "london quack bills." this doctor complained, these were often their only reading matter.[42] such a judgment may be too severe. certainly it is difficult to validate today. such pamphlets and broadsides do appear in american archival collections. the historical society of pennsylvania contains a 2-page turlington broadside,[43] while the folger shakespeare library in washington has an earlier 46-page turlington pamphlet with testimonials reaching out toward america.[44] one such certificate came from "a sailor before the mast, on board the ship britannia in the new york trade," and another cited a woman living in philadelphia who gave thanks for the cure of her dropsy. [42] james j. walsh, _history of the medical society of the state of new york_, new york, 1907. [43] robert turlington, "turlington's balsam of life," 1755-1757. a later reprint of this same circular is preserved in the warshaw collection of business americana. [44] _turlington's balsam of life_ (see footnote 15). a broadside in the warshaw collection touting bateman's drops noted that "extraordinary demands have been made for maryland, new-york, jamaica, etc. where their virtues have been truely experienced with the greatest satisfaction."[45] that such promotional items are extremely rare does not mean they were not abundant in the mid-18th century, for this type of printed matter, then as now, was likely to be looked at and thrown away. a certain amount of nostrum literature was undoubtedly imported from britain. for example, in 1753 apothecary james carter of williamsburg ordered from england "3 quire stoughton's directions" along with "1/2 groce stoughton vials."[46] these broadsides or circulars served a twofold purpose. not only did they promote the medicine, but they actually served as the labels for the bottles. early packages of these patent medicines which have been discovered indicate that paper labels were seldom applied to the glass bottles; instead, the bottle was tightly wrapped and sealed in one of these broadsides. [45] "dr. bateman's drops" (see footnote 7). [46] james carter, apothecary account book, williamsburg [1752-1773]. manuscript original preserved at colonial williamsburg, virginia. american imprints seeking to promote the english patent medicines were certainly rare. the most significant example may be found in the library of the new york academy of medicine.[47] in 1731 james wallace, a new york merchant, became american agent for the sale of dr. bateman's pectoral drops. to help him with his new venture, wallace took a copy of the london promotional pamphlet to a new york printer to be reproduced. the printer was john peter zenger, not yet an editor and three years away from the events which were to link his name inextricably with the concept of the freedom of the press. this 1731 pamphlet may well have been the earliest work on any medical theme to be printed in new york.[48] [47] _a short treatise of the virtues of dr. bateman's pectoral drops_ (see footnote 6). [48] gertrude l. annan, "printing and medicine," _bulletin of the medical library association_, march 1940, vol. 28, p. 155. now and then a physician might frown on his fellows for reading such literature and prescribing such remedies, but he was in a minority. colonial doctors, by and large, had no qualms about employing the packaged medicines. it was a doctor who first advertised anderson's pills and bateman's drops in williamsburg;[49] it was another, migrating from england to the virginia frontier, who founded a town and dosed those who came to dwell therein with bateman's drops, turlington's balsam, and other patent medicines.[50] [49] wyndham b. blanton, _medicine in virginia in the eighteenth century_, richmond, virginia, 1931, pp. 33-34. [50] maurice bear gordon, _aesculapius comes to the colonies_, ventnor, new jersey, 1949, p. 39. complex formulas and distinctive packages indeed, the status of medical knowledge, medical need, and medical ethics in the 18th century permitted patent medicines to fit quite comfortably into the environment. as to what actually caused diseases, man knew little more than had the ancient greeks. there were many theories, however, and the speculations of the learned often sound as quaint in retrospect as do the cocky assertions of the quack bills. pamphlet warfare among physicians about their conflicting theories achieved an acrimony not surpassed by the competing advertisers of stoughton's elixir. the aristocratic practitioners of england, the london college of physicians, refused to expand their ranks even at a time when there were in the city more than 1,300 serious cases of illness a day to every member of the college. the masses had to look elsewhere, and turned to apothecaries, surgeons, quacks, and self-treatment.[51] the lines were drawn even less sharply in colonial america, and there was no group to resemble the london college in prestige and authority. medical laissez-faire prevailed. "practitioners are laureated gratis with a title feather of doctor," wrote a new englander in 1690. "potecaries, surgeons & midwifes are dignified acc[ording] to successe."[52] such an atmosphere gave free rein to self-dosage, either with an herbal mixture found in the pages of a home-remedy book or with daffy's elixir. [51] fielding h. garrison, _an introduction to the history of medicine_, philadelphia, 1924, pp. 405-408; and richard h. shryock. _the development of modern medicine_, new york, 1947, pp. 51-54. [52] kittredge, _op. cit._ (footnote 25). in the 18th century, drugs were still prescribed that dated back to the dawn of medicine. there were theriac or mithridatum, hiera picra (or holy bitters), and terra sigillata. newer botanicals from the orient and the new world, as well as the "chymicals" reputedly introduced by paracelsus, found their way into these ancient formulas. since the precise action of individual drugs in relation to given ailments was but hazily known, there was a tendency to blanket assorted possibilities by mixing numerous ingredients into the same formula. the formularies of the middle ages encouraged this so-called "polypharmacy." for example the _antidotarium nicolai_, written about a.d. 1100 at salerno, described 38 ingredients in confectio adrianum, 35 ingredients in confectio atanasia, and 48 ingredients in confectio esdra. theriac or mithridatum grew in complexity until by the 16th century it had some 60 different ingredients. it was in this tradition of complex mixtures that most of the patent medicines may be placed. richard stoughton claimed 22 ingredients for his elixir, and robert turlington, in his patent specification, named 27. although other proprietors had shorter lists or were silent on the number of ingredients, a major part of their secrecy really lay in having complicated formulas. even though rivals might detect the major active ingredients, the original proprietor could claim that only he knew all the elements in their proper proportions and the secret of their blending. not only in complexity did the patent medicines resemble regular pharmaceutical compounds of the 18th century. in the nature of their composition they were blood brothers of preparations in the various pharmacopoeias and formularies. indeed, there was much borrowing in both directions. an official formula of one year might blossom out the next in a fancy bottle bearing a proprietor's name. at the same time, the essential recipe of a patent medicine, deprived of its original cognomen and given a latin name indicative of its composition or therapeutic nature, might suddenly appear in one of the official volumes. for example, the formula for daffy's elixir was adopted by the _pharmacopoeia londinensis_ in 1721 under the title of "elixir salutis" and later by the _pharmacopoeia edinburghensis_ as "tinctura sennae composita" (compound senna tincture). similarly the essential formula for stoughton's elixir was adopted by the _pharmacopoeia edinburghensis_ as early as 1762 under the name of "elixir stomachium," and later as "compound tincture of gentian" (as in the _pharmacopoeia of the massachusetts medical society_ of 1808). only two years after turlington obtained his "balsam of life" patent, the _pharmacopoeia londinensis_ introduced a recipe under the title of "balsamum traumaticum" which eventually became compound tincture of benzoin, with the synonym turlington's balsam. on the other hand, none of these early english patent medicines, including stoughton's elixir and turlington's balsam, offered anything new, except possibly new combinations or new proportions of ingredients already widely employed in medicine. formulas similar in composition to those patented or marketed as "new inventions" can in every case be found in such 17th-century pharmacopoeias as william salmon's _pharmacopoeia londinensis_. [illustration: figure 6.--bottles of bateman's pectoral drops, 19th century (left) and early 20th century (right), from the samuel aker, david and george kass collection, albany, new york. (_smithsonian photo 44287-a._)] whatever similarities existed between the canons of regular pharmacy and the composition of patent medicines, there was a decided difference in the methods of marketing. although patent medicines were often prescription items, they did not have to be. the way they looked on a shelf made them so easily recognizable that even the most loutish illiterate could tell one from another. as the nostrum proprietor did so much to pioneer in advertising psychology, so he also blazed a trail with respect to distinctive packaging. the popularity of the old english remedies, year in and year out, owed much to the fact that though the ingredients inside might vary (unbeknownst to the customer), the shape of the bottle did not. this was the reason proprietors raised such a hue and cry about counterfeiters. the secret of a formula might, if only to a degree, be retained, but simulation of bottle design and printed wrapper was easily accomplished, and to the average customer these externals were the medicine. this fundamental fact was to be recognized by the committee of philadelphia pharmacists in 1824. "we are aware" the committeemen reported, "that long custom has so strongly associated the idea of the genuineness of the patent medicines, with particular shapes of the vials that contain them, and with certain printed labels, as to render an alteration in them an affair of difficulty. many who use these preparations would not purchase british oil that was put up in a conical vial, nor turlington's balsam in a cylindrical one. the stamp of the excise, the king's royal patent, the seal and coat of arms which are to prevent counterfeits, the solemn caution against quacks and imposters, and the certified lists of incredible cures, [all these were printed on the bottle wrappers] have not even now lost their influence." nor were they for years to come. thus after 1754 the turlington balsam bottle was pear-shaped, with sloping shoulders, and molded into the glass in crude raised capitals were the proprietor's name and his claim of the kings royal patent.[53] turlington during his life had made one modification. he explained it in a broadside, saying that "to prevent the villainy of some persons who buying up my empty bottles, have basely and wickedly put therein a vile spurious counterfeit-sort," he had changed the bottle shape. the date molded into the glass on his supply of new genuine bottles was january 26, 1754.[54] this was, perhaps, a very fine point of difference from the perspective of the average customer, and in any case the bottle was hidden under its paper wrapper. [53] "from past times an original bottle of turlington's balsam," _chemist and druggist_, september 23, 1905, vol. 67, p. 525; stewart schackne, "bottles," _american druggist_, october 1933, vol. 88, pp. 78-81, 186-188, 190, 194; frederick fairchild sherman, "some early bottles," _antiques_, vol. 3, pp. 122-123; and stephen van rensselaer, _early american bottles and flasks_, peterborough, new hampshire, 1926. [54] waldo r. wedel and george b. griffenhagen, "an english balsam among the dakota aborigines," _american journal of pharmacy_, december 1954, vol. 126, pp. 409-415. the british oil bottle was tall and slender and it rested on a square base. godfrey's cordial came in a conical vial with steep-pitched sides, the cone's point replaced by a narrow mouth.[55] bateman's pectoral drops were packaged in a more common "phial"--a tall and slender cylindrical bottle.[56] dalby's carminative came in a bottle not unlike the godfrey's cordial bottle, except that dalby's was impressed with the inscription dalby's carminativ.[57] steer's opodeldoc bottles were cylindrical in shape, with a wide mouth; some apparently were inscribed opodeldoc while others carried no such inscription. at least one brand of daffy's elixir was packaged in a globular bottle, according to a picture in a 1743 advertisement.[58] speculation regarding the size and shape of the stoughton bottle varies.[59] at least one stoughton bottle was described as "round amber. tapered from domed shoulder to base. long 5 in. bulged neck. square flanged mouth. flat base."[60] [55] sherman, _op. cit._ (footnote 53). [56] schackne, _op. cit._ (footnote 53). [57] george s. and helen mckearin, _american glass_, new york, 1941. [58] _daily advertiser_, london, october 29, 1743. [59] george griffenhagen, "stodgy as a stoughton bottle," _journal of the american pharmaceutical association, practical pharmacy edition_, january 1956, vol. 17, p. 20; mitford b. mathews, ed., _a dictionary of americanisms on historical principles_, chicago, 1951, 2 vols.; bertha kitchell whyte, _wisconsin heritage_, boston, 1954; charles earle funk, _heavens to betsy! and other curious sayings_, new york, 1955. [60] james h. thompson, _bitters bottles_, watkins glen, new york, 1947, p. 60. hooper's and anderson's scots pills were, of course, not packaged in bottles (at least not the earliest), but were instead sold in the typical oval chip-wood pill boxes. on the lid of the box containing hooper's pills was stamped this inscription: dr. john hooper's female pills: by the king's patent 21 july 1743 no. 592. so far no example or illustration of anderson's scots pills has been found. at least one producer, it will be remembered (page 157), sealed the box in black wax bearing a lion rampant, three mallets argent, and the bust of dr. anderson. source of supply severed on september 29, 1774, john boyd's "medicinal store" in baltimore followed the time-honored custom of advertising in the _maryland gazette_ a fresh supply of medicines newly at hand from england. to this intelligence was added a warning. since nonimportation agreements by colonial merchants were imminent, which bade fair to make goods hard to get, customers would be wise to make their purchases before the supply became exhausted. boyd's prediction was sound. the boston tea party of the previous december had evoked from parliament a handful of repressive measures, the intolerable acts, and at the time of boyd's advertisement, the first continental congress in session was soon to declare that all imports from great britain should be halted. [illustration: figure 7.--bottles of british oil, 19th and early 20th century, from the samuel aker, david and george kass collection, albany, new york. (_smithsonian photo 44201-b._)] this baltimore scare advertising may well have been heeded by boyd's customers, for trade with the mother country had been interrupted before; in the wake of the townshend acts in 1767, when parliament had placed import duties on various products, including tea, american merchants in various cities had entered into nonimportation agreements. certainly, there was a decided decrease in the boston advertising of patent medicines received from london. with respect to imports of any kind, it became necessary to explain, and one merchant noted that his goods were "the remains of a consignment receiv'd before the non-importation agreement took place."[61] when parliament yielded to the financial pressure and abolished all the taxes but the one on tea, nonimportation collapsed. this fact is reflected in an advertisement listing nearly a score of patent medicines, including the remedies of turlington, bateman, the bettons, anderson, hooper, godfrey, daffy, and stoughton, as "just come to hand and warranted genuine" on captain dane's ship, "directly from the original warehouse kept by dicey and okell in bow street, london."[62] [61] _massachusetts gazette_, boston, december 21, 1769. [62] _ibid._, april 25, 1771. the days of such ample importations, however, were doomed, as commerce fell prey to the growing revolutionary agitation. the last medical advertisement in the _massachusetts gazette and boston weekly news-letter_, before its demise the following february, appeared five months after the battles of lexington and concord.[63] the apothecary at the sign of the unicorn was frank about the situation. he had imported fresh drugs and medicines every fall and spring up to the preceding june. he still had some on hand. doctors and others should be advised. [63] _ibid._, september 7, 1775. implicit in the advertisement is the suggestion that the securing of new supplies under the circumstances would be highly uncertain. that pre-war stocks did hold out, sometimes well into the war years may be deduced from a williamsburg apothecary's advertisement.[64] w. carter took the occasion of the ending of a partnership with his brother to publish a sort of inventory. along with the "syrup and ointment pots, all neatly painted and lettered," the crabs eyes and claws, the spanish flies, he listed a dozen patent medicines, including the remedies of anderson, bateman, and daffy. [64] _virginia gazette_ (edited by dixon and nicholson), williamsburg, june 12, 1779. even the british blockade failed to prevent patent medicines from being shipped from wholesaler to retailer. in the account book of a salem, massachusetts, apothecary,[65] the following entry appears: 4 cases containing 1 dozn bottles godfreys cordial 4/ 5 dozn do smaller turling bals 18/ 8 dozn bettons british oil 8/ 6-1/2 dozn hoopers female pills 10/ 4 dozn nd 8 boxs and. pills 10/ salem april 8th 1777 the above 13 packages and 4 cases of medicines are ship'd on board the sloop called the two brothers saml west master. on account and [illegible word] of mr. oliver smith of boston apothecary and to him consigned. the cases are unmarked being ship'd at night. error excepted jon. waldo. [65] jonathon waldo, apothecary account book, salem, massachusetts [1770-1790]. manuscript original preserved in the library of the essex institute, salem, mass. [illustration: figure 8.--dalby's carminative, two sides of a bottle from the mckearin collection, hoosick falls, new york. (_smithsonian photo 44287-c._)] the sloop was undoubtedly one of the small coastal type ships employed by the colonists, and the british blockade required such ominous precautions as "unmarked cases" and "ship'd by night." such random assortments of prewar importations could hardly have met the american demand for the old english patent medicines created by a half century of use. doubtless many embattled farmers had to confront their ailments without the accustomed english-made remedies. however, as early as the 1750's, at least two of the english patent medicines, daffy's and stoughton's elixirs, were being compounded in the colonies and packaged in empty bottles shipped from england. apothecary carter of williamsburg ordered sizable quantities of empty "stoughton vials" from 1752 through 1770, and occasionally ordered empty daffy's bottles.[66] in 1774 apothecary waldo of salem noted the receipt from england of "1 groce stoughton phials" and "1 groce daffy's do."[67] joseph stansbury, who sold china and glass in philadelphia, advertised "daffy's elixir bottles" a week after the declaration of independence.[68] stoughton's and daffy's elixirs, therefore, were being compounded by the american apothecaries during the revolutionary war. formulas for both preparations were official in the london and edinburgh pharmacopoeias, as well as in unofficial formularies like quincy's _pharmacopoeias officinalis extemporanea_ of 1765. all these publications were used widely by american physicians and apothecaries. [66] carter, _op. cit._ (footnote 46). [67] waldo, _op. cit._ (footnote 65). [68] _pennsylvania gazette_, philadelphia, july 11, 1776. it is not known how extensively, during the struggle for independence, this custom was adopted for english patent medicines other than daffy's and stoughton's. however, imitation of english patent medicines in america was to increase, and it contributed to the chaos that beset the nostrum field when the war was over and the original articles from england were once more available. and they were bought. an advertisement at a time when the fighting was over and peace negotiations were still under way indicated that the baltimore post office had half a dozen of the familiar english remedies for sale.[69] two years later a new york store turned to tortured rhyme to convey the same message:[70] medicines approv'd by royal charter, james, godfry, anderson, court-plaster, with keyser's, hooper's lockyer's pills, and honey balsam doctor hill's; bateman and daffy, jesuits drops, and all the tinctures of the shops, as stoughton, turlington and grenough, pure british oil and haerlem ditto.... [69] _maryland journal and baltimore gazette_, baltimore, october 29, 1782. [70] _new york packet and the american advertiser_, new york, october 11, 1784. later in the decade, the salem apothecary, jonathon waldo, made a list of "an assortment [of patent medicines] usually called for." the imported brand of turlington's balsam, waldo stated, was "very dear" at 36 shillings a dozen, adding that his "own" was worth but 15 shillings for the same quantity. the english original of another nostrum, essence of peppermint, he listed at 18 shillings a dozen, his own at a mere 10/6.[71] despite the price differential, importations continued. a beverly, massachusetts, druggist, robert rantoul, in 1799 ordered from london filled boxes and bottles of anderson's pills, bateman's drops, steer's opodeldoc, and turlington's balsam, along with the empty vials in which to put british oil and essence of peppermint.[72] for decades thereafter the catalogs of wholesale drug firms continued to specify two grades of various patent medicines for sale, termed "english" and "american," "true" and "common," or "genuine" and "imitation."[73] this had not been the case in patent medicine listings of 18th-century catalogs.[74] [71] waldo, _op. cit._ (footnote 65). [72] robert rantoul, apothecary daybooks, 3 vols., beverly, massachusetts [1796-1812]. manuscript originals preserved in the beverly historical society. also see robert w. lovett, "squire rantoul and his drug store," _bulletin of the business historical society_, june 1951, vol. 25, pp. 99-114. [73] joel and jotham post, _a catalogue of drugs, medicines & chemicals, sold wholesale & retail, by joel and jotham post, druggists, corner of wall and william-streets_, new york, 1804; massachusetts college of pharmacy, _catalogue of the materia medica and of the pharmaceutical preparations, with the uniform prices of the massachusetts college of pharmacy_, boston, 1828; george w. carpenter, _essays on some of the most important articles of the materia medica ... to which is added a catalogue of medicines, surgical instruments, etc._, philadelphia, 1834. [74] john dunlap, _catalogus medicinarum et pharmacorum_, philadelphia, 1771; john day, _catalogue of drugs, chymical and galenical preparations, shop furniture, patent medicines, and surgical instruments sold by john day and company, druggists and chymists in second-street_, philadelphia, 1771; george griffenhagen, "the day-dunlap 1771 pharmaceutical catalog," _american journal of pharmacy_, september 1955, vol. 127, pp. 296-302; also _the new york physician and american medicine_, may 1956, vol. 46, pp. 42-44; smith and bartlett, _catalogue of drugs and medicines, instruments and utensils, dyestuffs, groceries, and painters' colours, imported, prepared, and sold, by smith and bartlett, at their druggists store and apothecaries shop_, boston, 1795. [illustration: figure 9.--godfrey's cordial, 19th-century bottles from the samuel aker, david and george kass collection, albany, new york. (_smithsonian photo 44201-c._)] in buying anderson's and bateman's remedies from london in 1799, robert rantoul of massachusetts specified that they be secured from dicey. it will be remembered that 60 years earlier william dicey, john cluer, and robert raikes were the group of entrepreneurs who had aided benjamin okell in patenting the pectoral drops bearing bateman's name. then and throughout the century, this concern continued to operate a warehouse in the bow churchyard, cheapside, london. in 1721, it was known as the "printing-house and picture warehouse" of john cluer, printer,[75] but by 1790, it was simply the "medicinal warehouse" of bow churchyard, cheapside. this address lay in the center of the london area whence came nearly all of the british goods exported to america.[76] it had been the location of many merchants who had migrated to new england in the 17th century, and these newcomers had done business with their erstwhile associates who did not leave home. thus were started trade channels which continued to run. the bow churchyard warehouse may have been the major exporter of english patent medicines to colonial america, although others of importance were located in the same london region, in particular robert turlington of lombard street and francis newbery of st. paul's churchyard. the significance of the fact that there were key suppliers of patent medicines for the american market lies in the selection process which resulted. out of the several hundred patent medicines which 18th-century britain had available, americans dosed themselves with that score or more which the major exporters shipped to colonial ports. [75] _london mercury_, london, august 19-26, 1721. [76] bernard bailyn, _the new england merchants in the seventeenth century_, cambridge, massachusetts, 1955, pp. 35-36. not only did the bow churchyard warehouse firm have bateman's drops. it will be remembered that in 1721 they advertised that they were preparing daffy's elixir. in 1743, they and newbery were made exclusive vendors of hooper's pills.[77] by 1750, the firm was also marketing british oil, anderson's pills, and stoughton's elixir.[78] turlington in 1755 was selling not only his balsam of life, but was also vending daffy's elixir, godfrey's cordial, and stoughton's elixir.[79] after the tension of the townshend acts, it was the bow churchyard warehouse which supplied a boston apothecary with a large supply of nostrums, including all the eight patent medicines then in existence of the ten with which this discussion is primarily concerned.[80] on november 29, 1770, the _virginia gazette_ (edited by purdie and dixon) reported a shipment, including bateman's, hooper's, betton's, anderson's, and godfrey's remedies, just received "from dr. bateman's original wholesale warehouse in london" (the bow churchyard warehouse). when dalby's carminative and steer's opodeldoc came on the market in the 1780's, it was francis newbery who had them for sale. both the newbery and dicey (bow churchyard warehouse) firms continued to operate in the post-revolutionary years. thus, it was no accident but rather vigorous commercial promotion over the decades, that resulted in the most popular items on the dicey and newbery lists appearing in the philadelphia college of pharmacy pamphlet published in 1824. and although the same old firms continued to export the same old medicines to the new united states, the back of the business was broken. the imitation spurred by wartime necessity became the post-war pattern. [77] _daily advertiser_, london, september 23, 1743. [78] "dr. bateman's drops" (see footnote 7). [79] turlington, _op. cit._ (footnote 15). [80] _massachusetts gazette_, boston, december 21, 1769. the key recipes were to be found in formula books. beginning in the 1790's, even american editions of john wesley's _primitive physic_ included formulas for daffy's, turlington's, and stoughton's remedies which the founder of methodism had introduced into english editions of this guidebook to health shortly before his death.[81] [81] john wesley, _primitive physic_, 21st ed., london, 1785; _ibid._, 22nd ed., london, 1788; _ibid._, 16th amer. ed., trenton, 1788; _ibid._, 22nd amer. ed., philadelphia, 1791; george dock, "the 'primitive physic' of rev. john wesley," _journal of the american medical association_, february 20, 1915, vol. 64, pp. 629-638. the homemade versions, as jonathon waldo had recorded (see p. 171), were about half as costly. the state of affairs at the turn of the new century is illustrated in the surviving business papers of the beverly druggist, robert rantoul. in 1799 he had imported the british oil and essence of peppermint bottles. in 1802 he reordered the latter, specifying that they should not have molded in the glass the words "by the kings patent." rantoul wrote a formula for this nostrum in his formula book, and from it he filled 66 bottles in december 1801 and 202 bottles in june 1803. about the same time he began making and bottling turlington's balsam, ordering bottles of two sizes from london. his formula book contains these entries: "jany 4th, 1804 filled 54 small turlingtons with 37 oz. balsam," and "jany 20th, 1804 filled 144 small turlingtons with 90-1/4 oz. balsam and 9 large bottles with 8-1/4 oz."[82] [82] rantoul, _op. cit._ (footnote 72). two decades later the imitation of the english proprietaries was even bigger business. in 1821 william a. brewer became apprenticed to a druggist in boston. a number of the old english brands, he recalled, were still imported and sold at the time. but his apprenticeship years were heavily encumbered with duties involving the american versions. "many, very many, days were spent," brewer remembered, "in compounding these imitations, cleaning the vials, fitting, corking, labelling, stamping with fac-similes of the english government stamp, and in wrapping them, with ... little regard to the originator's rights, or that of their heirs...." the british nostrums chiefly imitated in this boston shop were steer's, bateman's, godfrey's, dalby's, betton's, and stoughton's. the last was a major seller. the store loft was mostly filled with orange peel and gentian, and the laboratory had "a heavy oaken press, fastened to the wall with iron clamps and bolts, which was used in pressing out 'stoughton's bitters,' of which we usually prepared a hogshead full at one time." a large quantity was needed. in those days, brewer asserted, "almost everybody indulged in stoughton's elixir as morning bitters." [83] [83] william a. brewer, "reminiscences of an old pharmacist." _pharmaceutical record_, august 1, 1884, vol. 4, p. 326. [illustration: figure 10.--godfrey's cordial, early 20th century bottles manufactured in the u.s.a. (_u.s. national museum cat. nos. m-6989, and m-6990; smithsonian photo 44287 b._)] other drugstores certainly followed the practice of brewer's employer, in cleaning up and refilling bottles that had previously been drained of their old english medicines. the chief source of bottles to hold the american imitations, however, was the same as that to which waldo and rantoul had turned, english glass factories. it was not so easy for americans to fabricate the vials as it was for them to compound the mixtures to fill them. in the years before the war of 1812, the british glass industry maintained a virtual monopoly of the specially-shaped bottles for bateman's, turlington's, and the other british remedies. when in the 1820's the first titan of made-in-america nostrums, thomas w. dyott of philadelphia, appeared upon the scene, this venturesome entrepreneur decided to make bottles not only for his own assorted remedies but also for the popular english brands. in time he succeeded in improving the quality of american bottle glass and in drastically reducing prices. the standard cost for most of the old english vials under the british monopoly had been $5.50 a gross. by the early 1830's dyott had cut the price to under two dollars.[84] [84] _democratic press_, philadelphia, july 1 and october 28, 1824; thomas w. dyott, _an exposition of the system of moral and mental abor, established at the glass factory of dyottsville_, philadelphia, 1833; and joseph d. weeks, "reports on the manufacture of glass," _report of the manufactures of the united states at the tenth census_, washington, d. c, 1883. [illustration: figure 11.--an original package of hooper's pills, from the samuel aker, david and george kass collection, albany, new york. (_smithsonian photo_ 44201.)] other american glass manufactories followed suit. for example, in 1835 the free will glass manufactory was making "godfrey's cordial," "turlington's balsam," and "opodeldoc bitters bottles."[85] an 1848 broadside entitled "the glassblowers' list of prices of druggist's ware," a broadside preserved at the smithsonian institution, includes listings for turlington's balsam, godfrey's cordial, dalby's and small and large opodeldoc bottles, among many other american patent medicine bottles. [85] van rensscalar, _op. cit._, (footnote 53), p. 151. in the daybook of the beverly, massachusetts, apothecary,[86] were inscribed for turlington's balsam, three separate formulas, each markedly different from the others. a philadelphia medical journal in 1811 contained a complaint that americans were using calomel in the preparation of anderson's scots pills, and that this practice was a deviation both from the original formula and from the different but still all-vegetable formula by which the pills were being made in england.[87] various books were published revealing the "true" formulas, in conflicting versions.[88] [86] rantoul, _op. cit._ (footnote 72). [87] _philadelphia medical museum_, new ser., vol. 1, p. 130, 1811. [88] _formulae selectae; or a collection of prescriptions of eminent physicians, and the most celebrated patent medicines_, new york, 1818; john ayrton paris, _pharmacologia; or the history of medicinal substances, with a view to establish the art of prescribing and of composing extemporaneous formulae upon fixed and scientific principles_, new york, 1822. philadelphia college of pharmacy formulary as the years went by and therapeutic laissez-faire continued to operate, conditions worsened. by the early 1820's, the old english patent medicines, whether of dwindling british vintage or of burgeoning american manufacture, were as familiar as laudanum or castor oil. with the demand so extensive and the state of production so chaotic, the officials of the new philadelphia college of pharmacy were persuaded that remedial action was mandatory. in may 1822, the board of trustees resolved to appoint a 5-man committee "to select from such prescriptions for the preparation of patent medicines ..., as may be submitted to them by the members of the college, those which in their opinion, may be deemed most appropriate for the different compositions." the committee chose for study "eight of the patent medicines most in use," and sought to ascertain what ingredients these ancient remedies ought by right to contain. turning to the original formulas, where these were given in english patent specifications, the pharmacists soon became convinced that the information provided by the original proprietors served "only to mislead." if the patent specifications were perhaps intentionally confusing, the committee inquired, how could the original formulas really be known? this quest seemed so fruitless that it was not pursued. instead the pharmacists turned to american experience in making the english medicines. from many members of the college, and from other pharmacists as well, recipes were secured. the result was shocking. although almost every one came bolstered with the assertion that it was true and genuine, the formulas differed so markedly one from the other, the committee reported, as to make "the task of reformation a very difficult one." indeed, in some cases, when two recipes bearing the same old english name were compared, they were found to contain not one ingredient in common. in other cases, the proportions of some basic ingredient would vary widely. all the formulas collected for bateman's pectoral drops, for instance, contained opium, but the amount of opium to liquid ingredients in one formula submitted was 1 to 14, while in another it was 1 to 1,000. setting forth boldly to strip these english nostrums of "their extravagant pretensions," the committee sought to devise formulas for their composition as simple and inexpensive as possible while yet retaining the "chief compatible virtues" ascribed to them on the traditional wrappers. hooper's female pills had been from the beginning a cathartic and emmenagogue. however, only aloes was common to all the recipes submitted to the committee. this botanical, which still finds a place in laxative products today, was retained by the committee as the cathartic base, and to it were added "the extract of hellebore, the sulphate of iron and the myrrh as the best emmenagogues." anderson's scots pills had been a "mild" purgative throughout its long career, varying in composition "according to the judgement or fancy of the preparer." paris, an english physician, had earlier reported that these pills consisted of aloes and jalap; the committee decided on aloes, with small amounts of colocynth and gamboge, as the purgatives of choice. of bateman's pectoral drops more divergent versions existed than of any of the others. the committee settled on a formula of opium and camphor, not unlike paragoric in composition, with catachu, anise flavoring, and coloring added. godfrey's cordial also featured opium in widely varying amounts. the committee chose a formula which would provide a grain of opium per ounce, to which was added sassafras "as the carminative which has become one of the chief features of the medicine." english apothecary dalby had introduced his "carminative" for "all those fatal disorders in the bowels of infants." the committee decided that a grain of opium to the ounce, together with magnesia and three volatile oils, were essential "for this mild carminative and laxative ... for children." instead of the complex formula described by robert turlington for his balsam of life, the committee settled on the official formula of compound tincture of benzoin, with balsam of peru, myrrh, and angelica root added, to produce "an elegant and rich balsamic tincture." on the other hand, the committee adopted "with slight variations, the linimentum saponis of the old london dispensatory" to which they, like steers, added only ammonia. the committee found two distinct types of british oil on the market. one employed oil of turpentine as its basic ingredient, while the other utilized flaxseed oil. the committee decided that both oils, along with several others in lesser quantities, were necessary to produce a medicine "as exhibited in the directions" sold with british oil. "oil of bricks" which apparently was the essential ingredient of the betton british oil, was described by the committee as "a nauseous and unskilful preparation, which has long since been banished from the pharmacopoeias." thus the philadelphia pharmacists devised eight new standardized formulas, aimed at retaining the therapeutic goals of the original patent medicines, while brought abreast of current pharmaceutical knowledge. recognizing that the labeling had long contained "extravagant pretensions and false assertions," the committee recommended that the wrappers be modified to present only truthful claims. if the college trustees should adopt the changes suggested, the committee concluded optimistically, then "the reputation of the college preparations would soon become widely spread, and we ... should reap the benefit of the examination which has now been made, in an increased public confidence in the institution and its members; the influence of which would be felt in extending the drug business of our city."[89] [89] philadelphia college of pharmacy, _formulae for the preparation of eight patent medicines, adopted by the philadelphia college of pharmacy_, may 4, 1824; joseph w. england, ed., _the first century of the philadelphia college of pharmacy_, 1821-1921, philadelphia, 1922. the trustees felt this counsel to be wise, and ordered 250 copies of the 12-page pamphlet to be printed. so popular did this first major undertaking of the philadelphia college prove that in 1833 the formulas were reprinted in the pages of the journal published by the college.[90] again the demand was high, few numbers of the publication were "more sought after," and in 1839 the formulas were printed once again, this time with slight revisions.[91] [90] "patent medicines," _journal of the philadelphia college of pharmacy_, april 1833, vol. 5, pp. 20-31. [91] c. ellis, "patent medicines," _american journal of pharmacy_, april 1839, new ser., vol. 5, pp. 67-74. thus had the old english patent medicines reached a new point in their american odyssey. they had first crossed the atlantic to serve the financial interests of the men who promoted them. during the revolution they had lost their british identity while retaining their british names. the philadelphia pharmacists, while adopting them and reforming their character, did not seek to monopolize them, as had the original proprietors. they now could work for every man. english patent medicines go west the double reprinting of the formulas was one token of the continuing role in american therapy of the old english patent medicines. there were others. in 1829 with the establishment of a school of pharmacy in new york city, the philadelphia formulas were accepted as standard. the new labels devised by the philadelphians with their more modest claims of efficacy had a good sale.[92] it was doubtless the philadelphia recipes which went into the bateman and turlington and godfrey vials with which a new druggist should be equipped "at the outset of business," according to a book of practical counsel.[93] to local merchants who lacked the knowledge or time to do it themselves, drummers and peddlers vended the medicines already bottled. "doctor" william euen of philadelphia issued a pamphlet in 1840 to introduce his son to "physicians and country merchants." his primary concern was dispensing nostrums bearing his own label, but his son was also prepared to take orders for the old english patent medicines.[94] manufacturers and wholesalers of much better repute were prepared to sell bottles for the same brands, empty or filled. [92] england, _op. cit._ (footnote 89), pp. 73, 103. [93] carpenter, _op. cit._ (footnote 73). [94] william euen, _a short exposã© on quackery ... or, introduction of his son to physicians and country merchants_, philadelphia, 1840. [illustration: figure 12.--english and american brands of hooper's female pills, an assortment of packages of from the samuel aker, david and george kass collection, albany, new york. (_smithsonian photo 44201-d._)] in the early 1850's a young pharmacist in upstate new york,[95] using "old alcohol barrels for tanks," worked hard at concocting bateman's and godfrey's and steer's remedies. john uri lloyd of cincinnati recalled having compounded godfrey's cordial and bateman's drops, usually making ten gallons in a single batch.[96] out in wisconsin, another druggist was buying godfrey's cordial bottles at a dollar for half a gross, sticking printed directions on them that cost twelve cents for the same quantity, and selling the medicine at four ounces for a quarter.[97] he also sold british oil and opodeldoc, the same old english names dispensed by a druggist in another wisconsin town, who in addition kept bateman's oil in stock at thirteen cents the bottle.[98] godfrey's was listed in the 1860 inventory of an illinois general store at six cents a bottle.[99] [95] james winchell forbes, "the memoirs of an american pharmacist," _midland druggist and pharmaceutical review_, 1911, vol. 45, pp. 388-395. [96] john uri lloyd, "eclectic fads," _eclectic medical journal_, october 1921, vol. 81, p. 2. [97] cody & johnson drug co., apothecary daybooks, watertown, wisconsin [1851-1872]. manuscript originals preserved in the state historical society of wisconsin, cataloged under "cady." [98] swarthout and silsbee, druggists daybook, columbus, wisconsin [1852-1853]. manuscript original preserved in the state historical society of wisconsin. [99] mcclaughry and tyler, invoice book, fountain green, illinois [1860-1877]. manuscript original preserved in the illinois state historical society, springfield. farther west the same familiar names appeared. indeed, the old english patent medicines had long since moved westward with fur trader and settler. as early as 1783, a trader in western canada, shot by a rival, called for turlington's balsam to stop the bleeding. alas, in this case, the remedy failed to work.[100] in 1800 that inveterate methodist traveler, bishop francis asbury, resorted to stoughton's elixir when afflicted with an intestinal complaint.[101] in 1808, some two months after the first newspaper began publishing west of the mississippi river, a local store advised readers in the vicinity of st. louis that "a large supply of patent medicines" had just been received, among them godfrey's cordial, british oil, turlington's balsam, and steer's "ofodeldo [sic]."[102] [100] harold a. innis, _peter pond, fur trader and adventurer_, toronto, 1930. [101] peter oliver, "notes on science, medicine and public health in the united states in the year 1800," _bulletin of the history of medicine_. 1944, vol. 16, p. 129. [102] isaac lionberger, "advertisements in the missouri gazette, 1808-1811," _missouri historical society collections_, 1928-1931, vol. 6, p. 21. turlington's product played a particular role in the indian trade, thus demonstrating that the red man has not been limited in nostrum history to providing medical secrets for the white man to exploit. proof of this has been demonstrated by archaeologists working under the auspices of the smithsonian institution in both north and south dakota. two pear-shaped bottles with turlington's name and patent claims embossed in the glass were excavated by a smithsonian institution river basin surveys expedition in 1952, on the site of an old trading post known as fort atkinson or fort bethold ii, situated some 16 miles southeast of the present elbowoods, north dakota. in 1954 the north dakota historical society found a third bottle nearby. these posts, operated from the mid-1850's to the mid-1880's, served the hidatsa and mandan indians who dwelt in a town named like-a-fishhook village. the medicine bottles were made of cast glass, light green in color, probably of american manufacture. more interesting is the bottle from south dakota. it was excavated in 1923 near mobridge at a site which was the principal village of the arikara indians from about 1800 to 1833, a town visited by lewis and clark as they ascended the missouri river in 1804. this bottle, made of english lead glass and therefore an imported article, was unearthed from a grave in the indian burying ground. throughout history the claims made in behalf of patent medicines have been extreme. this turlington bottle, however, affords one of the few cases on record wherein such a medicine has been felt to possess a postmortem utility.[103] [103] wedel and griffenhagen, _op. cit._ (footnote 54). fur traders were still using old english patent medicines at mid-century. four dozen bottles of turlington's balsam were included in an "inventory of stock the property of pierre chouteau, jr. and co. u[pper], m[issouri]. on hand at fort benton 4th may 1851...."[104] in the very same year, out in the new state of california, one of the early san francisco papers listed stoughton's bitters as among the merchandise for sale at a general store.[105] [104] a. mcdonnell, _contributions to the historical society of montana_, 1941, vol. 10, pp. 202, 217. [105] _california daily courier_, san francisco, april 25, 1851. newspaper advertising of the english proprietaries--even the mere listing so common during the late colonial years--became very rare after the philadelphia college of pharmacy pamphlet was issued. apothecary george j. fischer of frederick, maryland, might mention seven of the old familiar names in 1837,[106] and another druggist in the same city might present a shorter list in 1844,[107] but such advertising was largely gratuitous. since the english patent medicines had become every druggist's property, people who felt the need of such dosage would expect every druggist to have them in stock. there was no more need to advertise them than there was to advertise laudanum or leeches or castor oil. even the supreme court of massachusetts in 1837 took judicial cognizance of the fact that the old english patent medicine names had acquired a generic meaning descriptive of a general class of medicines, names which everyone was free to use and no one could monopolize.[108] [106] _political examiner_, frederick, maryland, april 19, 1837. [107] _frederick examiner_, frederick, maryland, january 31, 1844. [108] _massachusetts supreme court_, thomson vs. winchester, 19 pick (mass.), p. 214, march 1837. as the years went by, and as advertising did not keep the names of the old english medicines before the eyes of customers, it is a safe assumption that their use declined. losing their original proprietary status, they were playing a different role. new american proprietaries had stolen the appeal and usurped the function which bateman's drops and turlington's balsam had possessed in 18th-century london and boston and williamsburg. as part of the cultural nationalism that had accompanied the revolution, american brands of nostrums had come upon the scene, promoted with all the vigor and cleverness once bestowed in english but not in colonial american advertising upon dalby's carminative and others of its kind. while these english names retreated from american advertising during the 19th century, vast blocks of space in the ever-larger newspapers were devoted to extolling the merits of dyott's patent itch ointment, swaim's panacea, and brandreth's pills. more and more americans were learning how to read, as free public education spread. persuaded by the frightening symptoms and the glorious promises, citizens with a bent toward self-dosage flocked to buy the american brands. druggists and general stores stocked them and made fine profits.[109] while bottles of british oil sold two for a quarter in 1885 wisconsin, one bottle of jayne's expectorant retailed for a dollar.[110] it is no wonder that, although the old english names continue to appear in the mid-19th-century and later druggists' catalogs and price currents,[111] they are muscled aside by the multitude of brash american nostrums. many of the late 19th century listings continued to follow the procedure set early in the century of specifying two grades of the various patent medicines, _i.e._, "english" and "american," "genuine" and "imitation," "u.s." and "stamped." american manufactories specializing in pharmaceutical glassware continued to offer the various english patent medicine bottles until the close of the century.[112] [109] james harvey young, "patent medicines: the early post-frontier phase," _journal of the illinois state historical society_, autumn 1953, vol. 46, pp. 254-264. [110] cody and johnson drug co., _op. cit._ (footnote 97). [111] van schaack, stevenson & reid, _annual prices current_, chicago, 1875; morrison, plummer & co., _price current of drugs, chemicals, oils, glassware, patent medicines, druggists sundries ..._, chicago, 1880. [112] hagerty bros. & co., _catalogue of druggists' glassware, sundries, fancy goods, etc._, new york, 1879; whitall, tatum & co., _annual price list_, millville, new jersey, 1898. [illustration: figure 13.--opodeldoc bottle from the collection of mrs. leo f. redden, kenmore, new york. (_smithsonian photo 44201-e._)] in a thesaurus published in 1899, godfrey's, bateman's, turlington's, and other of the old english patent remedies were termed "extinct patents."[113] the adjective referred to the status of the patent, not the condition of the medicines. if less prominent than in the olden days, the medicines were still alive. the first edition of the _national formulary_, published in 1888, had cited the old english names as synonyms for official preparations in four cases, dalby's, bateman's, godfrey's and turlington's. [113] emil hiss, _thesaurus of proprietary preparations and pharmaceutical specialties_, chicago, 1899, p. 12. [illustration: figure 14.--opodeldoc bottle as illustrated in the 1879 catalog of hagerty bros., new york city, new york.] thus as the present century opened, the old english patent medicines were still being sold. city druggists were dispensing them over their counters, and the peddler's wagon carried them to remote rural regions.[114] but the medical scene was changing rapidly. improvements in medical science, stemming in part from the establishment of the germ theory of disease, were providing a better yardstick against which to measure the therapeutic efficiency of proprietary remedies. medical ethics were likewise advancing, and the occasional critic among the ranks of physicians was being joined by scores of his fellow practitioners in lambasting the brazen effrontery of the hundreds of american cure-alls which advertised from newspaper and roadside sign. journalists joined doctors in condemning nostrums. samuel hopkins adams in particular, writing "the great american fraud" series for _collier's weekly_, frightened and aroused the american public with his exposure of cheap whiskey posing as consumption cures and soothing syrups filled with opium. then came a revolution in public policy. after a long and frustrating legislative prelude, congress in june of 1906 passed, and president theodore roosevelt signed, the first pure food and drugs act. the law contained clauses aimed at curtailing the worst features of the patent medicine evil. [114] robert b. nixon, jr., _corner druggist_, new york, 1941, p. 68. the patent medicines in the 20th century although the old english patent medicines had not been the target at which disturbed physicians and "muck-raking" journalists had taken aim, these ancient remedies were governed by provisions of the new law. in november 1906 the bureau of chemistry of the department of agriculture, in charge of administering the new federal statute, received a letter from a wholesale druggist in evansville, indiana. one of his stocks in trade, the druggist wrote, was a remedy called godfrey's cordial. he realized that the pure food and drugs act had something to do with the labeling of medicines containing opium, as godfrey's did, and he wanted to know from the bureau just what was required of him.[115] many manufacturing druggists and producers of medicine were equally anxious to learn how the law would affect them. the editors of a trade paper, the _american druggist and pharmaceutical record_, issued warnings and gave advice. it was still the custom, they noted, to wrap bottles of ancient patent medicines, like godfrey's cordial and turlington's balsam, in facsimiles of the original circulars, on which were printed extravagant claims and fabulous certificates of cures that dated back some two hundred years. the new law was not going to permit the continuation of such 18th-century practices. statements on the label "false or misleading in any particular" were banned.[116] [115] letter from charles leich & co. to harvey washington wiley, bureau of chemistry, department of agriculture, november 2, 1906. manuscript original in record group 97, national archives, washington, d.c. [116] _american druggist and pharmaceutical record_, 1906, vol. 49, pp. 343-344. a few manufacturers, as the years went by, fell afoul of this and other provisions of the law. in 1918 a reading, pennsylvania, firm entered a plea of guilty and received a fifty dollar fine for putting on the market an adulterated and misbranded version of dr. bateman's pectoral drops.[117] the law required that all medicines sold under a name recognized in the _united states pharmacopoeia_ or the _national formulary_, and bateman's was included in the latter, must not differ from the standard of strength, quality, or purity as established by these volumes. yet the bateman drops produced in reading, the government charged, fell short. they contained only 27.8 percent of the alcohol and less than a tenth of the morphine that they should have had. while short on active ingredients, the drops were long on claims. the wrapper boasted that the medicine was "effective as a remedy for all fluxes, spitting of blood, agues, measles, colds, coughs, and to put off the most violent fever; as a treatment, remedy, and cure for stone and gravel in the kidneys, bladder, and urethra, shortness of breath, straightness of the breast; and to rekindle the most natural heat in the bodies by which they restore the languishing to perfect health." okell and dicey had scarcely promised more. by 20th-century standards, the government asserted, these claims were false and fraudulent. [117] department of agriculture, bureau of chemistry, notices of judgment under the food and drugs act, notice of judgment 6222, united states vs. pabst pure extract co., 1919. other manufacturers sold bateman's drops without running afoul of the law. in 1925, ninety-nine years after the philadelphia college of pharmacy pamphlet was printed, one north carolina firm was persuaded that it still was relevant to tell potential customers, in a handbill, that its drops were being made in strict conformity with the college formula.[118] for compound tincture of opium and gambir compound, however, most manufacturers chose to follow the _national formulary_ specifications, which remained official until 1936. [118] original handbill, distributed by standard drug co., elizabeth city, north carolina, 1925, preserved in the files of the bureau of investigation, american medical association, chicago, ill. another old english patent medicine against which the department of agriculture was forced to take action was hooper's female pills. between 1919 and 1923, government agents seized a great many shipments of this ancient remedy in versions put out by three philadelphia concerns.[119] some of the packages bore red seals, others green seals, and still others black, but the labeling of all claimed them to be "a safe and sovereign remedy in female complaints." this theme was expanded in considerable detail and there was an 18th-century ring to the promise that the pills would work a sure cure "in all hypochondriac, hysterick or vapourish disorders." no pill made essentially of aloes and ferrous sulphate, said the government experts, could do these things. nor did the manufacturers, in court, seek to say otherwise. whether the seals were green or red, whether the packages were seized in washington or worcester, the result was the same. no party appeared in court to claim the pills, and they were condemned and destroyed. [119] multiple seizures were made of products shipped by the horace b. taylor co., fore & co., and the american synthetic co. the quotations are from notice of judgment 8868; see also 8881, 8914, 8936, 8956, 8974, 9134, 9147, 9203, 9510, 9586, 9785, 10203, 10204, 10629, 11519, 11669. in one of the last actions under the 1906 law, a case concluded in 1940, after the first federal statute had been superseded by a more rigorous one enacted in 1938, two of the old english patent medicines encountered trouble.[120] they were british oil and dalby's carminative, as prepared by the south carolina branch of a large pharmaceutical manufacturing concern. [120] federal security agency, food and drug administration, notice of judgment 31134, united states vs. mckesson and robbins, inc., murray division, 1942. according to the label, the british oil was made in conformity with the philadelphia college of pharmacy formula given in an outdated edition of the _united states dispensatory_. but instead of containing a proper amount of linseed oil, if indeed it contained any, the medicine was made with cottonseed oil, an ingredient not mentioned in the dispensatory. therefore, the government charged, the oil was adulterated, under that provision of the law requiring a medicine to maintain the strength and purity of any standard it professed to follow. more than that, the labeling contravened the law since it represented the remedy as an effective treatment for various swellings, inflammations, fresh wounds, earaches, shortnesses of breath, and ulcers. dalby's carminative was merely misbranded, but that was bad enough. its label suggested that it be used especially "for infants afflicted with wind, watery gripes, fluxes and other disorders of the stomach and bowels," although it would aid adults as well. the impression that this remedy was capable of curing such afflictions, the government charged, was false and fraudulent. moreover, since the carminative contained opium, it was not a safe medicine when given according to the dosage directions in a circular accompanying the bottle. for these and several other violations of the law, the defending company, which did not contest the case, was fined a hundred dollars. throughout the 19th century, occasional criticism of the old english patent medicines had been made in the lay press. one novel[121] describes a physician who comments on the use of dalby's carminative for babies: "don't, for pity's sake, vitiate and torment your poor little angel's stomach, so new to the atrocities of this world, with drugs. these mixers of baby medicines ought to be fed nothing but their own nostrums. that would put a stop to their inventions of the adversary." [121] john william de forest, _miss ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty_, new york, 1867. opium had been lauded in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the old english proprietaries began, as a superior cordial which could moderate most illnesses and even cure some. "medicine would be a one-armed man if it did not possess this remedy." so had stated the noted english physician, thomas sydenham.[122] but the 20th century had grown to fear this powerful narcotic, especially in remedies for children. this point of view, illustrated in the governmental action concerning dalby's carminative, was also reflected in medical comment about godfrey's cordial. during 1912, a missouri physician described the death of a baby who had been given this medicine for a week.[123] the symptoms were those of opium poisoning. deploring the naming of this "dangerous mixture" a "cordial," since the average person thought of a cordial as beneficial, the doctor hoped that the formula might be omitted from the next edition of the _national formulary_. this did not happen, for the recipe hung on until 1926. the harrison narcotic act, enacted in 1914 as a federal measure to restrict the distribution of narcotics,[124] failed to restrict the sale of many opium-bearing compounds like godfrey's cordial. in 1931, a tennessee resident complained to the medical journal _hygeia_ that this medication was "sold in general stores and drug stores here without prescription and is given to babies." to this, the journal replied that the situation was "little short of criminal."[125] the charge leveled against his competitors by one of the first producers of godfrey's cordial two centuries earlier (see page 158) may well have proved a prophecy broad enough to cover the whole history of this potent nostrum. "... many men, women, and especially infants," he said, "may fall as victims, whose slain may exceed herod's cruelty...." [122] charles h. lawall, _the curious lore of drugs and medicines (four thousand years of pharmacy)_, garden city, new york, 1927, p. 281. [123] w. b. sissons, "poisoning from godfrey's cordial," _journal of the american medical association_, march 2, 1912, vol. 58, p. 650. [124] edward kremers and george urdang, _history of pharmacy_, philadelphia, 1951, pp. 170, 278. [125] "godfrey's cordial," _hygeia_, october 1931, vol. 9, p. 1050. [illustration: figure 15.--turlington's balsam of life bottles as pictured in a brochure dated 1755-1757, preserved in the pennsylvania historical society, philadelphia, pa. according to turlington, the bottle was adopted in 1754 "to prevent the villainy of some persons who, buying up my empty bottles, have basely and wickedly put therein a vile spurious counterfeit sort."] for those who persist in using the formulas of the early english patent medicines, recipes are still available. turlington's balsam remains as an unofficial synonym of u.s.p. compound tincture of benzoin. concerning its efficacy, the _united states dispensatory_[126] states: "the tincture is occasionally employed internally as a stimulating expectorant in chronic bronchitis. more frequently it is used as an inhalent ... it has also been recommended in chronic dysentery ... but is of doubtful utility." [126] _the dispensatory of the united states of america_, 25th ed., philadelphia, 1955, p. 158. a formula for godfrey's cordial, under the title of mixture of opium and sassafras, is still carried in the _pharmaceutical recipe book_.[127] _remington's practice of pharmacy_[128] retains a formula for dalby's carminative under the former _national formulary_ title of carminative mixture. [127] _the pharmaceutical recipe book_, 2nd ed., american pharmaceutical association, 1936, p. 121. [128] eric w. martin and e. fullerton cook, editors, _remington's practice of pharmacy_, 11th ed., easton, pennsylvania, 1956, p. 286. in the nation of their origin, the continuing interest in the ancient proprietaries seems somewhat more lively than in america. the 1953 edition of _pharmaceutical formulas_, published by the london journal _the chemist and druggist_, includes formulas for eight of the ten old patent medicines described in this study. this compendium, indeed, lists not one, but three different recipes for british oil, and the formulas by which dalby's carminative may be compounded run on to a total of eight. two lineal descendents of 18th-century firms which took the lead in exporting to america still manufacture remedies made so long ago by their predecessors. may, roberts & co., ltd., of london, successors to the newbery interests, continues to market hooper's female pills, whereas w. sutton & co. (druggists' sundries), london, ltd., of enfield, in middlesex, successors to dicey & co. at bow churchyard, currently sells bateman's pectoral drops.[129] [129] letter from owen h. waller, editor of _the chemist and druggist_, to george griffenhagen, january 15, 1957. in america, however, the impact of the old english patent medicines has been largely absorbed and forgotten. during the past twenty years a revolution in medical therapy has taken place. most of the drugs in use today were unknown a quarter of a century ago. some of the newer drugs can really perform certain of the healing miracles claimed by their pretentious proprietors for the old english patent medicines. a more recent import from britain, penicillin, may prove to have an even longer life on these shores than did turlington's balsam or bateman's drops. still, two hundred years is a long time. despite the fact that these early english patent medicines are nearly forgotten by the public today, their american career is none the less worth tracing. it reflects aspects not only of medical and pharmaceutical history, but of colonial dependence, cultural nationalism, industrial development, and popular psychology. it reveals how desperate man has been when faced with the terrors of disease, how he has purchased the packaged promises offered by the sincere but deluded as well as by the charlatan. it shows how science and law have combined to offer man some safeguards against deception in his pursuit of health. the time seems ripe to write the epitaph of the old english patent medicines in america. that they are now a chapter of history is a token of medical progress for mankind. [illustration: figure 16.--turlington's balsam of life bottle (all four sides) found in an indian grave at mobridge, south dakota; now preserved in the u.s. national museum. (_cat. no. 32462, archeol.; smithsonian photo 42936-a._)] history of the comstock patent medicine business and dr. morse's indian root pills by robert b. shaw associate professor, accounting and history clarkson college of technology potsdam, n.y. smithsonian studies in history and technology number 22 cover: changing methods of packaging comstock remedies over the years.--lower left: original packaging of the indian root pills in oval veneer boxes. lower center: the glass bottles and cardboard and tin boxes. lower right: the modern packaging during the final years of domestic manufacture. upper left: the indian root pills as they are still being packaged and distributed in australia. upper center: dr. howard's electric blood builder pills. upper right: comstock's dead shot worm pellets. library of congress cataloging in publication data shaw, robert b., 1916-history of the comstock patent medicine business and of dr. morse's indian root pills. (smithsonian studies in history and technology, no. 22) bibliography: p. 1. comstock (w.h.) company. i. title. ii. series: smithsonian institution. smithsonian studies in history and technology, no. 22. hd9666.9.c62s46 338.7'6'615886 76 39864 _official publication date is handstamped in a limited number of initial copies and is recorded in the institution's annual report_, smithsonian year. for sale by the superintendent of documents, u.s. government printing office washington, d.c. 20402--price 65 cents (paper cover) stock number 4700-0204 *history of the comstock patent medicine business and of dr. morse's indian root pills* for nearly a century a conspicuous feature of the small riverside village of morristown, in northern new york state, was the w.h. comstock factory, better known as the home of the celebrated dr. morse's indian root pills. this business never grew to be more than a modest undertaking in modern industrial terms, and amid the congestion of any large city its few buildings straddling a branch railroad and its work force of several dozens at most would have been little noticed, but in its rural setting the enterprise occupied a prominent role in the economic life of the community for over ninety years. aside from the omnipresent forest and dairy industries, it represented the only manufacturing activity for miles around and was easily the largest single employer in its village, as well as the chief recipient and shipper of freight at the adjacent railroad station. for some years, early in the present century, the company supplied a primitive electric service to the community, and the comstock hotel, until it was destroyed by fire, served as the principal village hostelry. but the influence of this business was by no means strictly local. for decades thousands of boxes of pills and bottles of elixir, together with advertising circulars and almanacs in the millions, flowed out of this remote village to druggists in thousands of communities in the united states and canada, in latin america, and in the orient. and dr. morse's indian root pills and the other remedies must have been household names wherever people suffered aches and infirmities. thus morristown, notwithstanding its placid appearance, played an active role in commerce and industry throughout the colorful patent-medicine era. today, the indian root pill factory stands abandoned and forlorn--its decline and demise brought on by an age of more precise medical diagnoses and the more stringent enforcement of various food and drug acts. after abandonment, the factory was ransacked by vandals; and records, documents, wrappers, advertising circulars, pills awaiting packaging, and other effects were thrown down from the shelves and scattered over the floors. this made it impossible to recover and examine the records systematically. the former proprietors of the business, however, had for some reason--perhaps sheer inertia--apparently preserved all of their records for over a century, storing them in the loft-like attic over the packaging building. despite their careless treatment, enough records were recovered to reconstruct most of the history of the comstock enterprise and to cast new light upon the patent-medicine industry of the united states during its heyday. the comstock business, of course, was far from unique. hundreds of manufacturers of proprietary remedies flourished during the 1880s and 1890s the druggists' directory for 1895 lists approximately 1,500. the great majority of these factories were much smaller than comstock; one suspects, in fact, that most of them were no more than backroom enterprises conducted by untrained, but ambitious, druggists who, with parttime help, mixed up some mysterious concoctions and contrived imaginative advertising schemes. a few of these businesses were considerably larger than comstock. however, the comstock company would seem to be typical of the more strongly established patent-medicine manufacturers, and therefore a closer examination of this particular enterprise should also illuminate its entire industry. *the origin of the business* the indian root pill business was carried on during most of its existence by two members of the comstock family--father and son--and because of unusual longevity, this control by two generations extended for over a century. the plant was also located in morristown for approximately ninety years. the indian root pills, however, were not actually originated by the comstock family, nor were they discovered in morristown. rather, the business had its genesis in new york city, at a time when the city still consisted primarily of two-or three-story buildings and did not extend beyond the present 42nd street. according to an affidavit written in 1851--and much of the history of the business is derived from documents prepared in connection with numerous lawsuits--the founder of the comstock drug venture was edwin comstock, sometime in or before 1833. edwin, along with the numerous other brothers who will shortly enter the picture, was a son of samuel comstock, of butternuts, otsego county, new york. samuel, a fifth-generation descendant of william comstock, one of the pioneer settlers of new london, connecticut, and ancestor of most of the comstocks in america, was born in east lyme, connecticut, a few years before the revolution, but sometime after the birth of edwin in 1794 he moved to otsego county, new york. edwin, in 1828, moved to batavia, new york, where his son, william henry comstock, was born on august 1, 1830. within four or five years, however, edwin repaired to new york city, where he established the extensive drug and medicine business that was to be carried on by members of his family for over a century. just why edwin performed this brief sojourn in batavia, or where he made his initial entry into the drug trade, is not clear, although the rapid growth of his firm in new york city suggests that he had had previous experience in that field. it is a plausible surmise that he may have worked in batavia in the drug store of dr. levant b. cotes, which was destroyed in the village-wide fire of april 19, 1833; the termination of edwin's career in batavia might have been associated either with that disaster or with the death of his wife in 1831. the comstocks also obviously had some medical tradition in their family. samuel's younger brother, john lee comstock, was trained as a physician and served in that capacity during the war of 1812--although he was to gain greater prominence as a historian and natural philosopher. all five of samuel's sons participated at least briefly in the drug trade, while two of them also had careers as medical doctors. a cousin of edwin, thomas griswold comstock (born 1829), also became a prominent homeopathic physician and gynecologist in st. louis.[1] it might also be significant that the original home of the comstock family, in connecticut, was within a few miles of the scene of the discovery of the first patent medicine in america--lee's "bilious pills"--by dr. samuel lee (1744-1805), of windham, sometime prior to 1796.[2] this medicine enjoyed such a rapid success that it was soon being widely imitated, and the comstocks could not have been unaware of its popularity. so it seems almost certain that edwin was no longer a novice when he established his own drug business in new york city. between 1833 and 1837 he employed his brother, lucius s. comstock (born in 1806), as a clerk, and for the next fifteen years lucius will figure very conspicuously in this story. he not merely appended the designation "m.d." to his name and claimed membership in the medical society of the city of new york, but also described himself as a counsellor-at-law. edwin, the founder of the business, did not live long to enjoy its prosperity--or perhaps we should say that he was fortunate enough to pass away before it experienced its most severe vicissitudes and trials. after edwin's death in 1837, lucius continued the business in partnership with another brother, albert lee, under the style of comstock & co. two more brothers, john carlton (born 1819) and george wells (born 1820), were employed as clerks. [footnote 1: _national cyclopedia of american biography_, vii: 280.] [footnote 2: the comstock brothers' grandmother, esther lee, was apparently unrelated to dr. samuel lee, the inventor of the bilious pills.] [illustration: figure 1.--original wrapper for carltons liniment, 1851.] the partnership of comstock & co. between lucius and albert was terminated by a dispute between the two brothers in 1841, and albert went his own way, taking up a career as a physician and living until 1876. lucius next went into business with his mother-in-law, anne moore, from 1841 to 1846; after the dissolution of this firm, he formed a new partnership, also under the name of comstock & co., with his brother john (generally known as j. carlton). this firm again employed as clerks george wells comstock and a nephew, william henry, a son of edwin. william henry was to eventually become the founder of the business at morristown. in march of 1849, still a new partnership was formed, comprising lucius, j. carlton, and george wells, under the name of comstock & co. brothers, although the existing partnership of comstock & co. was not formally terminated. assets, inventories, and receivables in the process of collection were assigned by comstock & co. to comstock & co. brothers. but before the end of 1849 the partners quarreled, lucius fell out with his brothers, and after a period of dissension, the firm of comstock & co. brothers was dissolved as of august 1, 1850. on or about the same date j. carlton and george wells formed a new partnership, under the name of comstock & brother, doing business at 9 john street in new york city, also taking their nephew, william henry, as a clerk. lucius continued in business at the old address of 57 john street. as early as june 30, 1851, the new firm of comstock & brother registered the following trade names[3] with the smithsonian institution: carlton's liniment, a certain remedy for the piles; carlton's celebrated nerve and bone liniment for horses; carlton's condition powder for horses and cattle; judson's chemical extract of cherry and lungwort. the repetition of his name suggests that j. carlton was the principal inventor of his firm's remedies. suits and countersuits all of the foregoing changes in name and business organization must have been highly confusing to the wide array of agents and retail druggists over many states and the provinces of canada with whom these several firms had been doing business. and when george wells and j. carlton split off from lucius and established their own office down the street, it was not at all clear who really represented the original comstock business, who had a right to collect the numerous accounts and notes still outstanding, and who owned the existing trade names and formulas. dispute was inevitable under such circumstances, and it was aggravated by lucius' irascible temper. unfortunately for family harmony, these business difficulties also coincided with differences among the brothers over their father's will. samuel had died in 1840, but his will was not probated until 1846; for some reason lucius contested its terms. there had also been litigation over the estate of edwin, the elder brother. with the inability of the two parties to reach friendly agreement, a lawsuit was initiated in june 1850 between lucius on the one hand and j. carlton and george wells on the other for the apportionment of the property of comstock & co. brothers, which was valued at about $25,000 or $30,000. subsequently, while this litigation was dragging on, lucius found a more satisfying opportunity to press his quarrel against his brothers. this arose out of his belief that they were taking his mail out of the post office. on may 26, 1851, one of the new york newspapers, the _day book_, carried the following item: united states marshal's office--complaint was made against j. carlton comstock and geo. wells comstock, of no. 9 john street, and a clerk in their employ, for taking letters from the post office, belonging to dr. l.s. comstock, of 57 in the same street. dr. comstock having missed a large number of letters, on inquiry at the post office it was suspected that they had been taken to no. 9 john street. by an arrangement with the postmaster and his assistants, several letters were then put in the post office, containing orders addressed to dr. comstock, at 57 john street, for goods to be sent to various places in the city to be forwarded to the country. the letters were taken by the accused or their clerk, opened at no. 9, the money taken out and the articles sent as directed, accompanied by bills in the handwriting of geo. wells comstock. warrants were then issued by the u.s. commissioner and recorder talmadge, and two of the accused found at home were arrested and a large number of letters belonging to dr. c. found on the premises. j.c. comstock has not yet been arrested. it is said he is out of the city. these two young men have for some months been trading sometimes under the name of "comstock & brother", and sometimes as "judson & co." at no. 9 john street. the same episode was also mentioned in the _express_, the _commercial advertiser_, and the _tribune_. in fact, a spirited debate in the "affair of the letters" was carried on in the pages of the press for a week. the brothers defended themselves in the following notice printed in the _morning express_ for may 31: obtaining letters painful as it is, we are again compelled to appear before the public in defense of our character as citizens and business men. the two letters referred to by l.s. comstock (one of which contained one dollar only) _were both directed "comstock & co." which letters we claim; and we repeat what we have before said, and what we shall prove that no letter or letters from any source directed to l.s. comstock or lucius s. comstock have been taken or obtained by either of us or any one in our employ_. the public can judge whether a sense of "duty to the post office department and the community", induced our brother to make this charge against us (which if proved would consign us to the penitentiary) and under the pretence of searching for letters, which perhaps never existed; to send police officers to invade not only our store, but our dwelling house, where not even the presence of our aged mother could protect from intrusion. these are the means by which he has put himself [footnote 3: receipts for these registrations were signed by the prominent librarian, charles coffin jewett, later to be superintendent of the boston public library for many years.] [illustration: figure 2.--wrapper for oldridge's balm of columbia, comstock & co., druggists.] in possession of the _names of our customers; of our correspondence_; and our private and business papers. j.c. & geo. wells comstock, firm of comstock & brother, no. 9 john street lucius, for his part, never deigned to recognize his opponents as brothers but merely described them as "two young men who claim relationship to me." it was the position of j. carlton and george that as they, equally with lucius, were heirs of the dissolved firm of comstock & co. brothers, they had as much right as lucius to receive and open letters so addressed. moreover, since the predecessor firm of comstock & co. had never been dissolved, j. carlton also shared in any rights, claims, or property of this firm. in a more personal vein, the brothers also asserted in their brief that lucius "is not on speaking terms with his aged mother nor any one of his brothers or sisters, nephews or nieces, or even of his uncles or aunts, embracing quite a large circle all of whom have been estranged from him, either by personal difficulties with him, or his improper conduct towards his brothers." lucius, in turn, had copies of his charges against his brothers, together with aspersions against their character and their medicines, printed as circulars and widely distributed to all present or former customers in the united states and canada. meanwhile the civil litigation respecting the division of the assets of the old partnership, broken down into a welter of complaints and countercomplaints, dragged on until 1852. no document reporting the precise terms of the final settlement was discovered, although the affair was obviously compromised on some basis, as the surviving records do speak of a division of the stock in new york city and at st. louis. the original premises at 57 john street were left in the possession of lucius. in this extensive litigation, j. carlton and george were represented by the law firm of allen, hudson & campbell, whose bill for $2,132 they refused to pay in full, so that they were, in turn, sued by the allen firm. some of the lengthy evidence presented in this collection suit enlightened further the previous contest with lucius. he was described as an extremely difficult person: "at one time the parties came to blows--and g.w. gave the dr. a black eye." the action by the law firm to recover its fee was finally compromised by the payment of $1,200 in january 1854. the settlement of the affairs of comstock & co. brothers failed to bring peace between lucius and the others. the rival successor firms continued to bicker over sales territory and carried the battle out into the countryside, each contending for the loyalty of former customers. letters and circulars attacking their opponents were widely distributed by both parties. as late as december 1855, more than four years after the event, lucius was still complaining, in a series of printed circulars, about the "robbery" of his mail from the post office, although the case had been dismissed by the court. but somehow the new firm of comstock & brother triumphed over comstock & co., for in the summer of 1853 lucius found it necessary to make an assignment of all of his assets to his creditors. thereafter he removed his business from john street to 45 vesey street, in the rear of st. paul's churchyard, but although he put out impressive new handbills describing his firm as "wholesale chemists, druggists and perfumers," he apparently no longer prospered in the drug trade, for old new york city directories show that he shortly turned his main energies to the practice of law. versatile as he was, lucius entered the union army as a surgeon during the civil war, and upon his return he resumed his legal career, continuing to his death in 1876. aside from his role in the comstock medicine business, lucius also rates a footnote in united states political history as the foreman of the grand jury that indicted boss tweed in 1872. *a new partnership formed* the two proprietors of comstock & brother at 9 john street were the brothers george wells and j. carlton comstock. at the time of the events just related, their nephew, william henry comstock, was an employee, but not a partner, of the firm (he was the "clerk" who had removed the controversial letters from the post office). this partnership was terminated by the death on september 17, 1853, of j. carlton comstock, the inventor of the veterinary medicines. to continue the business, a new partnership, also under the name of comstock & brother, comprising george wells comstock, william henry comstock, and baldwin l. judson, was formed on october 1, 1853. judson was the husband of eliza, a sister of lucius and his brothers. george contributed one half of the capital of the new firm and the other two, one quarter each; however, exclusive possession of all trademarks, recipes, and rights to the medicines was reserved to george. it is not clear precisely when judson entered the drug business or first became associated with the comstocks; there is some evidence that he had previously been in business for himself, as several remedies were registered by him prior to this time. judson's chemical extract was registered with the smithsonian by the comstock firm in 1851, but dr. larzetti's juno cordial or procreative elixir had previously been entered by judson & co. in 1844. a variant of the juno cordial label also mentions levi judson (a father?) as dr. larzetti's only agent in america. besides the "new" remedies, the comstock firm--both comstock firms--was also selling all of the "old" patent medicines, most of them of british origin. these included such items as godfrey's cordial, bateman's pectoral drops, turlington's balsam of life, british oil, and others. the only strictly american product that could claim a venerability somewhat approaching these was samuel lee's bilious pills, patented on april 30, 1796. most of the more recent remedies probably had been originated by local doctors or druggists, either upon experimentation or following old folk remedies, and after enjoying some apparent success were adopted by drug manufacturers. with rare exceptions, however, the names of the discoverers never seem to have made their way into medical history. [illustration: figure 3.--original wrapper for judson's chemical extract of cherry and lungwort, printed about 1855.] *entrance of dr. morse's indian root pills* during the summer of 1855 the comstock firm, now located at 50 leonard street, was approached by one andrew j. white, who represented himself as the sole proprietor of dr. morse's indian root pills and who had previously manufactured them in his own business, conducted under the name of a.b. moore, at 225 main street, in buffalo. actually, white's main connection with this business had been as a clerk, and he had been taken in as a partner only recently. nevertheless, the comstocks accepted his claims--carelessly, one must believe--and on august 10, 1855, signed a contract with white for the manufacture and distribution of these pills. the originator of these pills was andrew b. moore. this is clear from several legal documents, including an injunction proceeding in behalf of white and moore in 1859, which reads in part as follows: the defendant moore always had an equal right with white to manufacture the pills--and by the agreement of 21st june, 1858 moore is (illegible) to his original right and the defendants are manufacturing under moore's original right.... the plaintiffs (the comstocks) by their acts have disenabled moore from using _his own name_.... (emphasis in original). [illustration: figure 4.--label for dr. larzetti's juno cordial, 1844.] [illustration: figure 5.--list of medicines offered by comstock & brother (predecessor of the firm which later moved to morristown) in 1854.] in an undated form of contract, between moore on the one part and george comstock, william h. comstock, judson, and white on the other part, the parties agree, at moore's option, either to sell all rights and interest in dr. morse's indian root pills to him, or to buy them from him, but in the latter event he must covenant that "he will forever refrain from the manufacture or sale of any medicine called dr. morse's root pills, moore's indian root pills, or morse's pills, or moore's pills, or any other name or designation similar to or resembling in any way either thereof...." in brief, there never was a dr. morse--other than andrew b. moore. and the comstocks never claimed any origin of the pills in legal documents, other than their purchase from white. subsequently, the company fabricated a lengthy history of the discovery of the pills and even pictured dr. morse with his "healthy, blooming family." this story was printed in almanacs and in a wrapper accompanying every box of pills. according to this version, "the famous and celebrated dr. morse," after completing his education in medical science, traveled widely in asia, africa, europe, and north america, and spent three years among the indians of our western country, where he discovered the secret of the indian root pills. returning from one of these journeys after a long absence, he found his father apparently on his death bed. but let us quote the story directly: a number of years ago this good man was very sick. he had eight of the most celebrated doctors to attend him both night and day. with all their skill this good and pious gentleman grew worse, and finally they gave him up, saying that it was impossible to cure him and he would soon die ... in the afternoon he was taken with shortness of breath and supposed to be dying. the neighbors were sent for, the room soon filled, and many prayers were offered up from the very hearts of these dear christian people, that some relief might be obtained for this good and pious man. while these prayers were ascending like sweet incense to the throne above, and every eye was bathed in tears, a rumbling noise was heard in the distance, like a mighty chariot winding its way near, when all at once a fine span of horses, before a beautiful coach, stood before the door, out of which alighted a noble and elegant-looking man. in a moment's time he entered the room, and embraced the hand of his dear father and mother. she clasped her arms around his neck and fainted away. the doctor, surprised to see his father so nearly gone, immediately went to his coach, taking therefrom various plants and roots, which he had learned from the red men of the forest as being good for all diseases, and gave them to his father, and in about two hours afterwards he was much relieved.... two days afterwards he was much better, and the third day he could walk about the room ...and now we behold him a strong, active man, and in the bloom of health, and at the age of ninety-five able to ride in one day thirty-five miles, in order to spend his birthday with this celebrated doctor, his son. the foregoing event was supposed to have occurred some years before 1847, as the elder mr. morse's ninety-fifth birthday referred to was celebrated on november 20, 1847, when he was still hale and hearty. the old gentleman was also said to be enormously wealthy, "with an income of about five hundred thousand dollars annually, and the owner of a number of fine, elegant ships, which sailed in different directions to every part of the world." dr. morse, who was the first man to establish that all diseases arise from the impurity of the blood, subsequently discarded his regular practice of medicine and, as a boon to mankind, devoted his entire energy to the manufacture of dr. morse's indian root pills. [illustration: figure 6.-"a short history of dr. morse's father." a copy was inserted in every box of the pills.] this story, which was first disseminated as early as the late 1850s, was an entire fabrication. throughout the patent-medicine era it was the common practice to ascribe an indian, or at least some geographically remote, origin to all of these nostrums and panaceas. in the words of james harvey young, in his book on the social history of patent medicines:[4] from the 1820's onward the indian strode nobly through the american patent-medicine wilderness. hiawatha helped a hair restorative and pocahontas blessed a bitters. dr. fall spent twelve years with the creeks to discover why no indian had ever perished of consumption. edwin eastman found a blood syrup among the comanches. texas charlie discovered a kickapoo cure-all, and frank cushing pried the secret of a stomach renovator from the zuni. (frank, a famous ethnologist, had gone west on a smithsonian expedition.) besides these notable accretions to pharmacy, there were modoc oil, seminole cough balsam, nez perce catarrh snuff, and scores more, all doubtless won for the use of white men by dint of great cunning and valor. [footnote 4: young, james harvey, _the toadstool millionaires, a social history of patent medicines in america before federal regulation_. princeton university press. 1961.] judson's mountain herb pills, a companion product of the indian root pills, had an even more romantic origin--so remarkable, in fact, that the story was embodied in a full-scale paperback novel published by b.l. judson & co. in 1859. according to this book, the remedy was discovered--or at least revealed to the world--by a famous adventurer, dr. cunard. dr. cunard's career somehow bore a remarkable similarity to that of dr. morse. he was also the scion of a wealthy family who spent much time traveling throughout the world, and in this process becoming fluent in no less than thirty languages. eventually he encountered an aztec princess about to be tortured and sacrificed by navajo indians; he interrupted this ceremony only to be captured himself, but by virtue of successfully foretelling an eclipse (happily he had his almanac with him) he won release for himself and the princess. thereafter he led her back to her home, in some remote part of mexico, and lived among her people for a year. as a boon for having saved the princess, he was given possession of the ancient healing formula of the aztecs. upon returning home dr. cunard, in an experience very similar to dr. morse's, found his mother on her death bed, but he effected an instant cure by the use of the miraculous herbs he had brought with him. the news spread, soon a wide circle of neighbors was clamoring for this medicine, and in order that all mankind might share in these benefits, dr. cunard graciously conveyed the secret to b.l. judson & co. these stories were told entirely straightforwardly, with the intention of being believed. how widely they were actually accepted is difficult to say. in retrospect it seems extremely curious that persons as prominent, as successful, as wealthy as dr. morse and dr. cunard were never seen or heard by the public, were never mentioned in the newspapers, never ran for public office, their names never listed in any directories, biographies or encyclopedias, and in fact they were not noticed anywhere--except in the advertising material of comstock & co. and b.l. judson. perhaps such credulity was not unusual in the 1850s, before the advent of widely distributed newspapers and other means of communication, but more than fifty years later, in the early years of the present century, essentially the same version of the history of dr. morse was still being printed in the comstock almanacs. *the struggle for control of the indian root pills* the agreement of august 10, 1855, between andrew j. white and the comstocks established a partnership "for the purpose of manufacturing and selling dr. morse's indian root pills and for no other purpose," the partners thereof being a.j. white as an individual and comstock & brother as a firm. the new partnership was named a.j. white & co., but white contributed no money or property--nothing but the right to dr. morse's indian root pills. the comstock firm supplied all of the tangible assets, together with the use of their existing business premises. in turn, comstock was to receive three fourths and white one fourth of the profits. in brief, the new firm, although bearing white's name, was controlled by the comstocks. it is not clear why moore, the originator of the pills, was not taken into the new business or otherwise recognized in the agreement. as we have seen, white claimed absolute ownership of dr. morse's indian root pills, but moore evidently did not agree, for he continued to manufacture and peddle his own pills, at the same time denouncing those prepared by a.j. white & co. under comstock control as forgeries. moore had previously been in business in buffalo, at 225 main street, under his own name; an announcement in the 1854 buffalo city directory (the _commercial advertiser_) describes his firm as successor both to c.c. bristol and to moore, liebetrut & co. the same directory shows white as merely a clerk at moore's place of business, although he was made a partner sometime during 1854. cyrenius c. bristol, whose business moore took over, had entered the drug trade in 1832, initially in partnership with a dr. g.e. hayes. in the drug field his best known preparation was bristol's renowned sarsaparilla, and he is credited with having originated the patent-medicine almanac, along with other advertising innovations. the patent-medicine business, however, represented merely one of his wide-ranging interests; he was also a co-owner of vessels plying the great lakes, a publisher, and a dabbler in such occult arts as mesmerism, phrenology, and morse's theory of the electric telegraph. in 1855 he appeared as the proprietor of the _daily republic_, and it was perhaps his growing involvement in publishing that led him to turn his drug business over to moore. while we know this much about moore's antecedents, a very considerable mystery remains. if moore was the proprietor of his own apparently prosperous drug and medicine business in buffalo in 1854, with white as one of his clerks, how did it happen that in the following year white represented himself to the comstocks as the sole owner of dr. morse's (moore's) indian root pills? and moore, although he initially disputed this claim, left his own business in buffalo and ultimately joined white and the comstocks, not even in the capacity of a partner, but merely as an employee. these events would seem, however, to date the origin of the indian root pills fairly closely. moore was already manufacturing them in buffalo prior to white's initial agreement with the comstocks, but as he did not mention them by name in his _commercial advertiser_ announcement in 1854, it is a fair presumption that the pills were new at this time. but they must have caught on very rapidly to induce the comstocks to enter a partnership with white, under his name, when he contributed only the indian root pills but no cash or other tangible assets. [illustration: figure 7.--wrapper for dr. morse's indian root pills, a.j. white & co., sole proprietor.] [illustration: figure 8.--indian root pill labels: _a_, original used by moore, the originator of the pills; _b_, initial label used by a.j. white & co. under comstock ownership, 1855-1857; _c_, revised label adopted by comstocks in june 1857 after moore changed the color of his label to blue; _d_, label adopted by moore and white for selling in competition with the comstocks, 1859. obviously printed from the same plate as _c_, but with an additional signature just above the indian on horseback; _e_, new label adopted by the comstocks after the departure of moore and white; _f_, label used in the final years of the business; _g_, label, in spanish, used in final years for export trade to latin america.] while manufacturing the pills in buffalo, moore had been packaging them under a yellow label bearing a pictorial representation of the british coat-of-arms, flanked on one side by an indian and on the other by a figure probably supposed to represent a merchant or a sea captain. the labels also described moore as the proprietor, "without whose signature none can be genuine." and after the formation of a.j. white & co. and the purported transfer of dr. morse's pills to it, moore still continued to sell the same medicine and to denounce the white-comstock product as spurious. the latter was packaged under a white label showing an indian warrior riding horseback and was signed "a.j. white & co." while the color was shortly changed to blue and the name of the proprietor several times amended through the ensuing vicissitudes, the label otherwise remained substantially unchanged for as long as the pills continued to be manufactured, or for over 100 years. the nuisance of moore's independent manufacture of the pills was temporarily eliminated when, on june 21, 1858, moore was hired by a.j. white & co.[5] and abandoned competition with them. the comstocks, in employing him, insisted upon a formal, written agreement whereunder moore agreed to discontinue any manufacture or sale of the pills and to assign all rights and title therein, together with any related engravings, cuts, or designs, to a.j. white & co. as previously stated, the two comstock brothers, judson, and white had offered either to sell the indian root pill business in its entirety to moore, or to buy it from him. moore's employment by a.j. white & co. presumably followed his election not to purchase and operate the business himself. so far so good. the comstocks' claim to the indian root pills through the 75 percent controlled a.j. white & co. now seemed absolutely secure and the disparagement of their products at an end. but new dissension must have occurred, for on new year's day of 1859, without prior notice, moore and white absented themselves from the comstock office, taking with them as many of the books, accounts, records, and other assets of a.j. white & co. as they could carry. forthwith they established a business of their own, also under the name of a.j. white & co., at 10 courtlandt street, where they resumed the manufacture and distribution of dr. morse's indian root pills, under a close facsimile of the label already being used by the a.j. white-comstock firm. these events left the comstocks in an embarrassing position. for over three years they had been promoting the a.j. white trade name, but now they could hardly keep a competitor from operating under his own name. their official attitude was that the old firm of a.j. white & co. was still in existence and controlled by the comstocks. but shortly they conceded this point tacitly when they introduced new labels for the indian root pills, under the name and signature of b. lake judson, and advised that any accounts or correspondence with a.j. white & co. still outstanding should be directed to the new firm of judson. obviously, this state of affairs was extremely confusing to all of the customers. judson traveled widely through the canadian maritime provinces and prevailed upon many merchants to disavow orders previously given to the new a.j. white firm at 10 courtlandt street. on april 28, 1859, white and moore, for their part, appointed one james blakely of napanee, canada west, to represent them in the territory between kingston and hamilton "including all the back settlements," where he should engage in the collection of all notes and receipts for the indian root pills and distribute new supplies to the merchants. on all collections he was to receive 25 percent; new medicines were to be given out without charge except for freight. in his letter accepting the appointment, blakely advised that: i think the pills should be entered here so as to avoid part of the enormous duty. 30% is too much to pay. i think there might be an understanding so that it might be done with safety. goods coming to me should come by oswego and from thence by steamer to millport. by this route they would save the delay they would be subject to coming by kingston and avoid the scrutiny they would give them there at the customhouse. [footnote 5: moore claimed later (his affidavit of november 22, 1859) that he thought he was hired only by white personally, and did not realize that a.j. white & co. was controlled by the comstocks.] [illustration: figure 9.--"to purchasers of dr. morse's indian root pills"--a warning by james blakely, canadian agent for a.j. white, against the "counterfeit" pills manufactured by the comstock firm.] the great bulk of the notes and accounts which were assigned to blakely for collection were undoubtedly accounts originally established with the old a.j. white & co. and therefore in dispute with the comstocks. but in any case, blakely went vigorously up and down his territory, frequently crossing the paths of agents of the comstocks, pushing the pills and attempting to collect outstanding bills owed to a.j. white & co. by persuasion and threats. on july 2, 1860, he wrote that: my sales have been pretty good. comstock pills are put in almost every place, generally on commission at a low figure, but i get them put aside in most cases and make actual sales so they will be likely to get them back. meanwhile, back in new york city, the fight between the erstwhile partners went on, mostly in the legal arena. on april 14, 1859, the sheriff, at the instigation of the comstocks, raided white's premises at 10 courtlandt street and seized the books, accounts, and correspondence carried away by white and moore on january 1. simultaneously, the comstocks succeeded in having white and moore arrested on a charge of larceny "for stealing on last new year's day a large number of notes and receipts," and in september white was arrested on a charge of forgery. since the alleged offense took place in pennsylvania, he was extradited back to that state. neither the circumstances nor the disposition of this case is known, but since white claimed the right to collect notes issued by the old a.j. white & co., it is probable that the charge arose merely out of his endorsement of some disputed note. on this occasion the comstocks printed and distributed circulars which were headed: "andrew j. white, the pill man indicted for forgery," and thereunder they printed the requisition of the governor of new york in response to the request for extradition from pennsylvania, in such a way as to suggest that their side of the dispute had official sanction. the comstocks must also have discovered white's and blakely's arrangement for avoiding "scrutiny" of their goods shipped into canada, for on july 29 there was an acknowledgment by the collector of customs of the port of queenston of certain information supplied by george wells comstock, william henry comstock, and baldwin l. judson on goods being "smuggled into this province." while the principal case between the comstocks and white and moore was scheduled for trial in december 1860, no documents which report its outcome were discovered. however, it is a fair surmise that the rival parties finally realized that they were spending a great deal of energy and money to little avail, injuring each other's business in the process and tarnishing the reputation of the indian root pills regardless of ownership. in any case, a final settlement of this protracted controversy was announced on march 26, 1861, when white and moore relinquished all claims and demands arising out of the sale of dr. morse's indian root pills prior to january 1, 1859. [illustration: figure 10.--as one episode in the contest between the comstocks and white and moore for control of the indian root pills, the comstocks succeeded in having white indicted for forgery and briefly lodged in jail.] since no copy of this agreement was found, we do not know what inducement was offered to moore and white. however, hundreds of announcements of the settlement, directed "to the debtors of the late firm of a.j. white & co." were printed, advising that the controversy and the difficulties between the members of the old firm of a.j. white & co. of no. 50 leonard street, new york, being ended, we hereby notify all parties to whom morse's indian root pills were sent or delivered prior to january 1, 1859, and all parties holding for collection or otherwise, any of said claims or demands for said pills, that we the undersigned have forever relinquished, and have now no claim, right, title or interest in said debts or claims, and authorize the use of the names of said firm whenever necessary in recovering, collecting and settling such debts and claims. the announcement was signed by andrew j. white and andrew b. moore. this should have been the end of this wearisome affair, but it was not. it soon appeared that moore had violated this agreement by concealing a number of accounts, together with a quantity of pills, circulars, labels, and a set of plates, and, in the words of comstock's complaint, transferred them "to james blakely, an irresponsible person in canada west." and blakely evidently continued to collect such accounts for the benefit of himself and moore. however, the comstocks also entered the scene of strife, and sometime during the summer of 1862 william henry comstock, then traveling in ontario, collected a note in the amount of $7.50 in favor of a.j. white & co., as he had every right to do, but endorsed it "james blakely for a.j. white & co." blakely, when he learned of this, charged comstock with forgery; comstock in turn charged blakely with libel. comstock probably defended his somewhat questionable endorsement by the agreement of march 26 of the previous year; in any event the case was dismissed by a justice of the peace in ottawa without comment. in new york city, on november 25, the comstocks had moore arrested again, with white at this time testifying in their support. there was also an attempt to prosecute blakely in canada; his defense was that he had bought the disputed accounts and notes from moore on march 11, 1861--a few days before the agreement with the comstocks--and that his ownership of these notes was thereafter absolute and he was no longer working as an agent for moore. this controversy was still in the courts as late as april of 1864, and its final outcome is not known. but in any case, aside only from moore's and blakely's attempts to collect certain outstanding accounts and to dispose of stock still in their hands, the agreement of march 26, 1861, left the comstocks in full and undisputed possession of dr. morse's indian root pills. white thereafter continued in the patent-medicine business in new york city on his own; his firm was still active as recently as 1914. the subsequent history of moore is unknown. *the brothers part company* one would imagine that the three partners of comstock & brother would have been exhausted by litigation and would be eager to work amicably together for years. but such was not to be the case. the recovered records give notice of a lawsuit (1866) between george comstock on the one hand and william h. comstock and judson on the other. no other documents relating to this case were found, and thus the precise issue is not known, or how it was finally settled. however, it was obviously a prelude to the dissolution of the old firm. letters and documents from the several years preceding this event suggest that judson had become more prominent in the business, and that he and william h. comstock had gradually been drawing closer together, perhaps in opposition to george. judson, although a partner of comstock & brother, also operated under his own name at 50 leonard street and had originated several of the medicines himself. it is not clear whether the old firm of comstock & brother was formally dissolved, but after 1864 insurance policies and other documents referred to the premises as "comstock & judson." in 1863 the federal internal revenue license in connection with the new "temporary" civil war tax on the manufacturing of drugs[6] was issued simply to b.l. judson & co., now located, with the comstocks, at 106 franklin street. [footnote 6: the "temporary" tax placed upon drug manufacture as a revenue measure during the civil war remained in effect until 1883.] [illustration: figure 11.--this announcement, sent to all customers of the indian root pills, marked the final termination of the long dispute between two firms, both named a.j. white & co., and both of whom claimed ownership of the pills.] during this period judson and william henry comstock became interested in a coffee-roasting and spice-grinding business, operated under the name of central mills, and located in the harlem railroad building at the corner of centre and white streets. possibly george objected to his partners spreading their energies over a second business; in any case, dissension must have arisen over some matter. on april 1, 1866, balance sheets were drawn up separately for b.l. judson & co. and comstock & judson; the former showed a net worth of $48,527.56 against only $5,066.70 for the latter. both of these firms had a common bookkeeper, e. kingsland, but the relationship between the firms is not known. on april 25, judson and william h. comstock sold their coffee-roasting business to one alexander chegwidden, taking a mortgage on the specific assets, which included, besides roasters and other machinery, a horse and wagon. but if this had been a factor in the controversy among the partners, the sale failed to end it, for we find that on december 21, 1866, george w. obtained an injunction against william henry and judson restraining them from collecting or receiving any accounts due the partnership of b.l. judson & co., transferring or disposing of any of its assets, and continuing business under that name or using any of its trademarks. unfortunately, we have no information as to the details of this case or the terms of settlement, but we do find that on february 1, 1867, the law firm of townsend, dyett & morrison rendered a bill for $538.85 to b.l. judson and william h. comstock for "supervising and engrossing two copies of agreement with george w. comstock on settlement" and for representing the two parties named in several actions and cross actions with george. this settlement, whatever its precise character may have been, obviously marked the termination of the old partnership--or, more properly, the series of successor partnerships--that had been carried on by various of the comstock brothers for over thirty years. william henry, the former clerk and junior partner--although also the son of the founder--was now going it alone. before this time he had already transferred the main center of his activities to canada, and he must have been contemplating the removal of the business out of new york city. after this parting of the ways, george w. comstock was associated with several machinery businesses in new york city, up until his death in 1889. during the draft riots of 1863 he had played an active role in protecting refugees from the colored orphanage on 43rd street, who sought asylum in his house at 136 west 34th street.[7] *dr. morse's pills move to morristown* in april 1867, the home of dr. morse's indian root pills and of the other proprietary remedies was transferred from new york city to morristown, a village of 300 inhabitants on the bank of the st. lawrence river in northern new york state. this was not, however, the initial move into this area; three or four years earlier william h. comstock had taken over an existing business in brockville, ontario, directly across the river. no specific information as to why the business was established here has been found, but the surrounding circumstances provide some very good presumptions. the bulk of the comstocks' business was always carried on in rural areas--in "the back-woods." specifically, the best sales territory consisted of the middle west--what was then regarded as "the west"--of the united states and of canada west, i.e., the present province of ontario. a surviving ledger of all of the customers of comstock & brother in 1857 supplies a complete geographic distribution. although new jersey and pennsylvania were fairly well represented, accounts in new york state were sparse, and those in new england negligible. and despite considerable travel by the partners or agents in the maritime provinces, no very substantial business was ever developed there. the real lively sales territory consisted of the six states of ohio, indiana, [footnote 7: _national cyclopedia of american biography_, iv:500.] illinois, michigan, wisconsin, and iowa, which accounted for over two thirds of all domestic sales, while canada west contributed over 90 percent of canadian sales. more regular customers were to be found in canada west--a relatively compact territory--than any other single state or province. the number of customers of comstock & brother in 1857 by states and provinces follows: alabama 12 arkansas 1 connecticut 3 delaware 5 d.c. 1 florida 5 georgia 15 illinois 415 indiana 298 iowa 179 kansas ter. 1 kentucky 21 louisiana 7 maine 2 maryland 21 massachusetts 5 minnesota ter. 6 mississippi 8 missouri 32 michigan 194 new york state 88 new york city 3 new jersey 212 new hampshire 1 north carolina 9 ohio 179 pennsylvania 192 rhode island 2 south carolina 5 tennessee 21 texas 1 virginia 30 wisconsin 303 new brunswick 15 nova scotia 19 canada east (quebec) 7 canada west 434 total united states 2,277 total canada 475 the concentration of this market and its considerable distance from new york city at a time when transportation conditions were still relatively primitive must have created many problems in distribution. moreover, the serious threat to the important canadian market imposed by white and moore, although eventually settled by compromise, must have emphasized the vulnerability of this territory to competition. it was also probable that the office in lower manhattan--at 106 franklin street after may 20, 1862--was found to be increasingly congested and inconvenient as a site for mixing pills and tonics, bottling, labeling, packaging and shipping them, and keeping all of the records for a large number of individual small accounts. a removal of the manufacturing part of the business to more commodious quarters, adjacent to transportation routes, must have been urgent. but why move to as remote a place as morristown, new york, beyond the then still wild adirondacks? it is obvious that this location was selected because the company already had an office and some facilities in brockville, canada west. william h. comstock must have first become established at brockville, after extensive peregrinations through canada west, around 1859 or 1860. during the dispute between a.j. white and comstock & judson, blakely, the aggressive canadian agent, had written to white, on september 1, 1859, that he had heard from "mr. allen turner of brockville" that the comstocks were already manufacturing dr. morse's indian root pills at st. catherines. evidently the comstocks thought of several possible locations, for on july 2 of the following year blakely advised his principals that the comstocks were now manufacturing their pills in brockville. two years later, in november 1862, when blakely sued william h. comstock for the forgery of a note, the defendant was then described in the legal papers as "one wm. henry comstock of the town of brockville druggist." and in july 1865, comstock was writing from brockville to e. kingsland, the bookkeeper in new york city, telling him to put brenner--the bearer of the letter--"in the mill." comstock had apparently taken over an existing business in brockville, as receipts for medicines delivered by him describe him as "successor to a.n. m'donald & co." dr. mckenzie's worm tablets also seem to have come into the comstock business with this acquisition. this did not mean a final move to brockville for william h. comstock; for several years he must have gone back and forth and was still active in new york city as a partner of his brother and of judson. we have seen that he subsequently went into partnership with judson in the purchase of the coffee-roasting business. in december 1866, he was a defendant in the lawsuit initiated by his brother george, when he was still apparently active in the new york city business. nevertheless, he apparently shifted the center of his activities to the brockville area about 1860, relinquishing primary responsibility for affairs in new york city to his brother and to judson. [illustration: figure 12.--label for victoria hair gloss, comstock & brother, 1855.] we now find the comstock business established at brockville. exactly why a second plant was built at morristown, right across the river, is again a matter for conjecture. it is a fair assumption, however, that customs duties or other restraints may have interfered with the ability of the canadian plant to supply the united states market. thus, facilities on the other side of the border, but still close enough to be under common management, must have become essential. in an era of water transportation, morristown was a convenient place from which to supply the important middle western territory. ogdensburg was the eastern terminus of lake boats, and several lines provided daily service between that point and buffalo. the railroad had already reached ogdensburg (although not yet morristown) so that rail transportation was also convenient. and the farms of st. lawrence county could certainly be counted upon to supply such labor as was necessary for the rather simple tasks of mixing pills and elixirs and packaging them. finally, the two plants were directly across the river from each other--connection was made by a ferry which on the new york side docked almost on the comstock property--so that both could easily be supervised by a single manager. in fact, if it had not been for the unusual circumstance that they were located in two different countries, they could really have been considered as no more than separate buildings constituting a single plant. surviving receipts for various goods and services show that the move to morristown was carried out in march or april of 1867. although the morristown undertaking was obviously regarded as a continuation of the new york business, it was operated by william henry comstock as the sole proprietor for many years, and the terms of any settlement or subsequent relationship with judson are unknown. a "judson pill co." was subsequently established at morristown, but this was no more than a mailing address for one department of the comstock business. what happened to judson as an individual is a mystery; like moore, he quietly disappears from our story. it is also puzzling that no record of the transfer of land to mr. comstock upon the first establishment of the pill factory in morristown in 1867 can be found. the earliest deed discovered in the st. lawrence county records shows the transfer of waterfront property to william henry comstock "of brockville, ontario," from members of the chapman family, in march 1876. additional adjoining land was also acquired in 1877 and 1882. *the golden era* with the establishment of the comstock patent-medicine business at morristown in 1867, this enterprise may be said to have reached maturity. over thirty years had passed since william henry's father had established its earliest predecessor in lower manhattan. possession of dr. morse's indian root pills was now unchallenged, and this and the other leading brand names were recognized widely in country drug stores and farmhouses over one third of a continent. no longer did the medicines have to be mixed, bottled, and packaged in cramped and dingy quarters above a city shop; spacious buildings in an uncongested country village were now being used. no further relocations would be necessary, as operations exceeded their capacity, or as landlords might elect to raise rents; the pill factory was to remain on the same site for the following ninety years. and the bitter struggles for control, perhaps acerbated because of the family relationship among the partners, were now a thing of the past. william h. comstock was in exclusive control, and he was to retain this position, first as sole proprietor and later as president, for the remainder of his long life. the patent-medicine business as a whole was also entering, just at this time, upon its golden era--the fifty-year span between the civil war and world war i. improved transportation, wider circulation of newspapers and periodicals, and cheaper and better bottles all enabled the manufacturers of the proprietary remedies to expand distribution--the enactment and enforcement of federal drug laws was still more than a generation in the future. so patent medicines flourished; in hundreds of cities and villages over the land enterprising self-proclaimed druggists devised a livelihood for themselves by mixing some powders into pills or bottling some secret elixir--normally containing a high alcoholic content or some other habit-forming element--created some kind of a legend about this concoction, and sold the nostrum as the infallible cure for a wide variety of human (and animal) ailments. and many conservative old ladies, each one of them a pillar of the church and an uncompromising foe of liquor, cherished their favorite remedies to provide comfort during the long winter evenings. but of these myriads of patent-medicine manufacturers, only a scant few achieved the size, the recognition, and wide distribution of dr. morse's indian root pills and the other leading comstock remedies. [illustration: figure 13.--comstock factory buildings, about 1900.] [illustration: figure 14.--wrapper for longley's great western panacea.] of course, the continued growth of the business was a gradual process; it did not come all at once with the move to morristown. even in 1878, after eleven years in this village, the comstock factory was not yet important enough to obtain mention in everts' comprehensive _history of st. lawrence county_.[8] but, as we have seen, additional land was purchased in 1877 and 1882, obviously bespeaking an expansion of the enterprise. in 1885, according to a time book, the pill factory regularly employed about thirty persons, plus a few others on an occasional basis. mr. comstock, from his residence across the river in brockville, was the manager of the business; however, the operations were under the immediate charge of e. kingsland, former chief clerk of the judson and comstock offices in new york city, who was brought up to morristown as superintendent of the factory. e. kingsland was a cousin of edward a. kingsland, one of the leading stationers in new york city, and presumably because of this relationship, kingsland supplied a large part of comstock's stationery requirements for many years. kingsland in morristown retired from the plant in 1885 and was succeeded by robert g. nicolson, who had been a foreman for a number of years. nicolson, a native of glasgow, scotland, was brought to america as a child, first lived at brockville, and then came to morristown as foreman in the pill factory shortly after it was established. he was succeeded as superintendent by his own son, robert jr., early in the present century. the great majority of the employees of the pill factory were women--or, more properly, girls--in an era when it was not yet common-place for members of the fair sex to leave the shelter of their homes for paid employment. the wage rates during the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s were $3 to $5 a week for girls and $7 to $12 a week for men; the last-named amount was an acceptable rate at that time for a permanent and experienced adult man. the factory management of this era was joyously unaware of minimum wages, fair employment laws, social security, antidiscrimination requirements, fair trade, food and drug acts, income taxes, and the remaining panoply of legal restrictions that harass the modern businessman. since only a few scattered payroll records have been recovered, comstock's maximum employment during the morristown period is not known, or just when it was reached. in a brief sketch of the indian root pill business, however, mrs. doris planty, former morristown town historian, mentions a work force of from "40 to 50" around the turn of the century. in 1875, twenty years after its original projection, the utica & black river railroad finally came through the village, bisecting the comstock property with a right-of-way thirty-six feet wide and dividing it thereafter into a "lower shop," where the pills and tonics were made, and the "upper shop," where the medicines were packaged and clerical duties performed. the superintendent and his family lived above the upper shop in an apartment; it was in the spacious attic above this apartment that the records of the business, in a scattered and ransacked condition, were found. inasmuch as the first recorded sale of land to comstock occurred in march 1876, almost simultaneously with the arrival of the railroad, it is a fair surmise that the second building was put up about this time. the coming of the railroad also put a station almost at the doorstep of the factory, and thereafter many shipments came and went by rail. the company's huge volume of mailings, often ten or fifteen bags a day, was also delivered directly to the trains, without going through the local post office. for some years, however, heavy shipments, including coal for the factory's boilers, continued to come by ship. the brockville ferry also operated from a dock immediately adjacent to the railroad station; one end of the station was occupied by the united states customs house. almost from the time of its arrival in morristown, the black river railroad operated a daily through wagner palace sleeping car from new york city via utica and carthage, and service over the same route was continued by the new york central after it took over the north country railroads in 1891. this meant that mr. comstock, when he had business in new york city, could linger in his factory until the evening train paused at the station to load the afternoon's outpouring of pills and almanacs, swing aboard the waiting pullman, and ensconce himself comfortably in his berth, to awaken in the morning within the cavernous precincts of grand central station--an ease and convenience of travel which residents of the north country in the 1970s cannot help but envy. the daily sleeping car through morristown to and from new york city survived as long as the railroad itself, into the early 1960s, thus outlasting both of the comstocks--father and son. [footnotes 8: or perhaps mr. comstock merely failed to pay for an engraved plate and to order a book; these county histories were apparently very largely written and edited with an eye to their subscribers.] the pills were originally mixed by hand. in the summer of 1880 the factory installed a steam engine and belt-driven pill-mixing machinery. at least one rotary pill machine was purchased from england, from j.w. pindar, and delivered to comstock at a total cost (including ocean freight) of â£19-10-9--about $100. one minor unsolved mystery is that a bill for a second, identical machine made out to a.j. white--with whom comstock had not been associated for twenty years--is filed among the comstock records; it can only be surmised that at this time comstock and white were again on good terms, the memories of lawsuits, arrests, and prosecutions long since forgotten, and comstock either ordered a machine in behalf of white or perhaps agreed to take one off his hands. at the time of this expansion, certain outbuildings and a dock for the unloading of coal were erected adjoining the lower building. during 1881 an underwater telegraph cable was laid between morristown and brockville, allowing immediate communication between the two comstock factories. with the advent of the electrical age, around the turn of the century, the comstock factory also installed a generator to supply lighting, the first in the locality to introduce this amenity. the wires were also extended to the four or five company-owned houses in the village, and then to other houses, so that the company functioned as a miniature public utility. its electric lines in the village were eventually sold to the central new york power corporation and incorporated into that system. steam heat was also supplied to the railroad station and the customs house, and the company pumped water out of the river to the water tower on the hill above pine hill cemetery, following the installation of the public water system. in 1908, comstock built a large hotel across the street from the upper factory; sitting part way up the hill and surrounded by a wide veranda, it represented a conspicuous feature in the village and dominated the waterfront scene until its destruction by fire in 1925. the comstock family, in 1910, also built a town hall and social center for the village. adjacent to the lower shop a large boathouse was erected to shelter mr. comstock's yacht, the _maga doma_, a familiar sight on the river for many years. [illustration: figure 15.--the village of morristown from the waterfront. railroad depot, comstock hotel, and pill-factory buildings located left of center.] in any large city, of course, a factory employing, at most, forty or fifty workers would have passed unnoticed, and its owner could hardly expect to wield any great social or political influence. in a remote village like morristown, things are quite different; a regular employer of forty persons creates a considerable economic impact. for two generations the indian root pill factory supplied jobs, in an area where they were always scarce, and at a time when the old forest and dairy industries were already beginning to decline. but the recital of its close associations with the village makes it clear that the pill factory was more than a mere employer; for ninety years it provided a spirit that animated morristown, pioneered in the introduction of utilities and certain social services, linked the village directly with the great outside world of drug stores and hypochondriacs, and distinguished it sharply from other, languishing st. lawrence county villages. one may wonder whether dr. morse's indian root pills really did anyone any good. they certainly did heap many benefits upon all citizens of morristown. [illustration: figure 16.--depot, comstock hotel, and factory buildings (at right), about 1910.] while there was only a single comstock medicine business, operated as a sole proprietorship until 1902, comstock found it convenient to maintain several dummy companies--really no more than mailing addresses--for some years after the move to the north. thus, in morristown was to be found, at least in business and postal directories, besides the comstock company itself, two other proprietary manufacturers: judson pill co. and e. kingsland & co. the judson pill co. preserved the name of comstock's former partner, while use of the name e. kingsland perhaps flattered the vanity of the former chief clerk and later plant superintendent. the major kingsland product was chlorinated tablets, a sure cure for coughs, colds, hoarseness, bronchial irritation, influenza, diphtheria, croup, sore throat and all throat diseases; these were especially recommended by dr. mackenzie, senior physician in the hospital for diseases of the throat (was there any such hospital?) in london, england. the kingsland pills were also popularized under the name of little pink granules. over on the canadian side of the river, where another plant approximately the same size as the morristown facilities was in operation, the comstock company had assimilated the dr. howard medicine co. dr. howard's leading remedies were his seven spices for all digestive disorders and the blood builder for brain and body. the latter, in the form of pills, was prescribed as a positive cure for a wide array of ailments, but like many other patent medicines of the era, it was hinted that it had a particularly beneficial effect upon sexual vitality. they have an especial action (through the blood) upon the sexual organs of both men and women. it is a well recognized fact that upon the healthy activity of the sexual apparatus depend the mental and physical well-being of every person come to adult years. it is that which gives the rosy blush to the cheek, and the soft light to the eye of the maiden. the elastic step, the ringing laugh, and the strong right arm of the youth, own the same mainspring. how soon do irregularities rob the face of color, the eye of brightness! everyone knows this. the blood becomes impoverished, the victim pale. this pallor of the skin is often the outward mark of the trouble within. but to the sufferer there arise a host of symptoms, chiefest among which are loss of physical and nervous energy. then dr. howard's blood builder steps into the breach and holds the fort. the impoverished blood is enriched. the shattered nervous forces are restored. vigor returns. youth is recalled. decay routed. the bloom of health again mantles the faded cheek. improvement follows a few days' use of the pills; while permanent benefit and cure can only reasonably be expected when sufficient have been taken to enrich the blood. before the blood builder pills were taken, all their users were advised to have their bowels thoroughly cleansed by a laxative medicine and, happily, the company also made an excellent preparation for this purpose--dr. howard's golden grains. while the good doctor was modern enough--the circular quoted from was printed in the 1890s--to recognize the importance of the healthy activity of the sexual apparatus, such a suggestion should not be carried too far--so we find that the pills were also unrivaled for building up systems shattered by debauchery, excesses, self-abuse or disease. along with the pills themselves was recommended a somewhat hardy regimen, including fresh air, adequate sleep, avoidance of lascivious thoughts, and bathing the private parts and buttocks twice daily in ice-cold water. [illustration: figure 17.--card used in advertising kingsland's chlorinated tablets.] a few years after their initial introduction, dr. howard's blood builder pills somehow became "electric"--this word surrounded by jagged arrows prominently featured on the outer wrapper--although the character of the improvement which added this new quality was not explained anywhere. the literature accompanying these remedies explained that "in the evening of an active, earnest and successful life, and in order that the public at large might participate in the benefit of his discoveries," dr. howard graciously imparted to the proprietors the composition, methods of preparation, and modes of using these medicines. in other words, he was obviously a public benefactor of the same stamp as dr. morse and dr. cunard--although by the final years of the century, the old story about the long absence from home, the extended travels in remote lands, and the sudden discovery of some remarkable native remedy would probably have sounded a trifle implausible. *putting the pills through* given the characteristics of the patent-medicine business, its most difficult and essential function was selling--or what the comstocks and their representatives frequently described in their letters as "putting the pills through." during the full century within which dr. morse's indian root pills and their companion remedies were distributed widely over north america and, later, over the entire world, almost every form of advertising and publicity was utilized. and it is a strong presumption that the total costs of printing and publicity were much larger than those of manufacture and packaging. initially, the selling was done largely by "travelers" calling directly upon druggists and merchants, especially those in rural communities. all of the comstock brothers, with the exception perhaps of lucius, seem to have traveled a large part of their time, covering the country from the maritime provinces to the mississippi valley, and from ontario--or canada west--to the gulf. their letters to the "home office" show that they were frequently absent for extended periods, visiting points which at the very dawn of the railroad era, in the 1840s and 1850s, must have been remote indeed. in the surviving letters we find occasional references to lame horses and other vicissitudes of travel, and one can also imagine the rigors of primitive trains, lake and river steamers, stagecoaches, and rented carriages, not to mention ill-prepared meals and dingy hotel rooms. judson seems to have handled nova scotia and new brunswick. j. carlton comstock, who died in 1853, covered the south and in fact maintained a residence in new orleans; prior to the opening of the railroads, this city was also a point of entry for much of the west. george wells comstock made several extensive tours of the west, while william henry spent much of his time in canada west and, as we have seen, lived in brockville after 1860. andrew j. white spent most of his time traveling after he joined the firm in 1855; moore also covered canada west intensively, briefly for the comstocks and then in opposition to them. besides the partners themselves, the several successor comstock firms had numerous agents and representatives. as early as 1851, during the dispute between lucius and his brothers, it was stated in a legal brief that the partnership included, besides its manufacturing house in new york city, several hundred agencies and depots throughout every state and county in the union. this assertion may have stretched the truth a bit, as most of the agents must have handled other products as well, but the distribution system for the pills was undoubtedly well organized and widely extended. several full-time agents did work exclusively for the comstocks; these included henry s. grew of st. john's, canada east, who said he had traveled 20,000 miles in three years prior to 1853, and willard p. morse in the middle west, whose signature is still extant on numerous shipping documents. while personal salemanship always must have been most effective in pushing the pills--and also useful in the allied task of collecting delinquent accounts--as the business grew the territory was far too vast to be covered by travelers, and so advertising was also used heavily. hardly any method was neglected, but emphasis was always placed upon two media: almanacs and country newspapers. millions of the almanacs poured out of the small morristown railroad station. in the early years of the present century, for which the record has been found, from july until the following april shipments of almanacs usually ran well in excess of one million per month. at various times they were also printed in spanish and in german; the spanish version was for export, but the german was intended primarily for our own "native" germans in pennsylvania, wisconsin, and elsewhere throughout the middle west. around the turn of the century, the patent-medicine almanac was so common that one could walk into any drug store and pick up three or four of them. credit for the origination of the free patent-medicine almanac has been ascribed to cyrenius c. bristol, founder of the firm which moore later took over and therefore an indirect predecessor of the indian root pills. whether or not this is strictly accurate, it is known that bristol's sarsaparilla almanac was being printed as early as 1843 and by 1848 had expanded into an edition of 64 pages. [illustration: figure 18.--german circular for judson's mountain herb pills.] the comstocks were almost as early. the first date they printed almanacs is not known, but by 1853 it was a regular practice, for the order book of that year shows that large batches of almanacs, frequently 500 copies, were routinely enclosed with every substantial order. over their entire history it is quite reasonable that somewhere in the vicinity of one billion almanacs must have been distributed by the comstock company and its predecessors. as a matter of fact, back in the 1850s there was not merely a comstock but also a judson almanac. one version of the latter was the "rescue of tula," which recounted dr. cunard's rescue of the aztec princess and his reward in the form of the secret of the mountain herb pills. in the 1880s, morse's indian root pill almanac was a 34-page pamphlet, about two thirds filled with advertising and testimonials--including the familiar story of the illness of dr. morse's father and the dramatic return of his son with the life-saving herbs--but also containing calendars, astronomical data, and some homely good advice. odd corners were filled with jokes, of which the following was a typical specimen: "pa," said a lad to his father, "i have often read of people poor but honest; why don't they sometimes say, 'rich but honest'"? "tut, tut, my son, nobody would believe them," answered the father. before 1900 the detailed story of the discovery of dr. morse's pills was abridged to a brief summary, and during the 1920s this tale was abandoned altogether, although until the end the principal ingredients were still identified as natural herbs and roots used as a remedy by the indians. in more recent years the character and purpose of dr. morse's pills also changed substantially. as recently as 1918, years after the passage of the federal food and drug act of 1906, they were still being recommended as a cure for: biliousness dyspepsia constipation sick headache scrofula kidney disease liver complaint jaundice piles dysentery colds boils malarial fever flatulency foul breath eczema gravel worms female complaints rheumatism neuralgia la grippe palpitation nervousness further, two entire pages were taken in the almanac to explain how, on the authority of "the celebrated prof. la roche of paris," appendicitis could be cured by the pills without resort to the surgeon's knife. besides the almanacs, almost every known form of advertising in the preradio era was employed. announcements were inserted in newspapers--apparently mostly rural newspapers--all over the country; the two remedies pushed most intensively were the indian root pills and judson's mountain herb worm tea. the latter always bore a true likeness of tezuco, the aztec chief who had originally conferred the secret of the medicine upon dr. cunard. besides the mountain herb worm tea, there were also mountain herb pills; it is not clear how the pills differed from the tea, but they were recommended primarily as a remedy for diarrhoea dropsy debility fever and ague female complaints headaches indigestion influenza inflammation inward weakness liver complaints lowness of spirits piles stone and gravel secondary symptoms with particular stress upon their value as a "great female medicine." besides the major advertisement of the pills, consisting of an eight-inch column to be printed in each issue of the paper, smaller announcements were provided, to be inserted according to a specified monthly schedule among the editorial matter on the inside pages. sample monthly announcements from the judson mountain herb pills contract used in 1860 were: january the great female medicine the functional irregularities peculiar to the weaker sex, are invariably corrected without pain or inconvenience by the use of judson's mountain herb pills. they are the safest and surest medicine for all the diseases incidental to females of all ages, and more especially so in this climate. ladies who wish to enjoy health should always have these pills. no one who ever uses them once will ever allow herself to be without them. they remove all obstructions, purify the blood and give to the skin that beautiful, clear and healthful look so greatly admired in a beautiful and healthy woman. at certain periods these pills are an indispensable companion. from one to four should be taken each day, until relief is obtained. a few doses occasionally, will keep the system healthy, and the blood so pure, that diseases cannot enter the body. march diseases of the chest and lungs these diseases are too well known to require any description. how many thousands are every year carried to the silent grave by that dread scourge consumption, which always commences with a slight cough. keep the blood pure and healthy by taking a few doses of judson's mountain herb pills each week, and disease of any kind is impossible. consumption and lung difficulties always arise from particles of corrupt matter deposited in the air cells by bad blood. purify that stream of life and it will soon carry off and destroy the poisonous matter; and like a crystal river flowing through a desert, will bring with it and leave throughout the body the elements of health and strength. as the river leaving the elements of fertility in its course, causes the before barren waste to bloom with flowers and fruit, so pure blood causes the frame to rejoice in strength and health, and bloom with unfading beauty. [illustration: figure 19.--card used in advertising judson's mountain herb pills.] any person who read the notices for both medicines carefully might have noticed with some surprise that the mountain herb pills and the indian root pills were somehow often recommended for many of the same diseases. in fact, the mountain herb pills and the indian root pills used identical text in explaining their effect upon several disagreeable conditions. always prominent in this advertising were reminders of our fragile mortality and warnings, if proper medication were neglected, of an untimely consignment to the silent grave. unfortunately, newspapers in the south had been utilized extensively just on the eve of the civil war, and it undoubtedly proved impossible to supply customers in that region during the ensuing conflict. however, other advertising was given a military flavor and tied in with the war, as witness the following (for 1865): general orders--no. 1 _headquarters_ department of this continent and adjacent islands pursuant to division and brigade orders issued by 8,000 field officers, "on the spot", where they are stationed. all skedadlers, deserters, skulkers, and all others--sick, wounded and cripples--who have foresaken the cause of general health, shall immediately report to one of the aforesaid officers nearest the point where the delinquent may be at the time this order is made known to him, and purchase one box of judson's mountain herb pills and pay the regulation price therefor. all who comply with the terms of this order, will receive a free pardon for past offences, and be restored to the grand army of general health. a. good health lieutenant-general by order dr. judson, adjutant-general sold by all dealers. twenty years later, when the civil war had passed out of recent memory and confederate currency was presumably becoming a curiosity, comstock printed facsimiles of $20 confederate bills,[9] with testimonials and advertisements upon the reverse side; it can be assumed that these had enough historical interest to circulate widely and attract attention, although each possessor must have felt a twinge of disappointment upon realizing that his bill was not genuine but merely an advertising gimmick. [footnote 9: these facsimile bills were registered as a trademark at the united states patent office. in his registration application, mr. comstock described himself as a citizen of the united states, residing at morristown, n.y.--although he had served three terms as mayor of brockville, ontario, prior to this time.] back in the 1850s, the comstock company in lower manhattan had an advertising agent, one silas b. force, whose correspondence by some unexplained happenstance was also deposited in the loft of the indian root pill building in morristown, even though he was not an exclusive agent and served other clients besides the comstocks. one of these was dr. uncas brant, for whom force had the following announcement printed in numerous papers: an old indian doctor who had made his fortune and retired from business, will spend the remainder of his days in curing that dreadful disease--consumption--free of charge: his earnest desire being to communicate to the world his remedies that have proved successful in more than 3,000 cases. he requires each applicant to send him a minute description of the symptoms, with two stamps (6 cts) to pay the return letter, in which he will return his _advice prescription_, with directions for preparing the medicines &c. _the old doctor_ hopes that those afflicted will not, on account of delicacy, refrain from consulting him because he makes _no charge_. his sole object in advertising is to do all the good he can, before he dies. he feels that he is justly celebrated for cure of consumption, asthma, bronchitis, nervous affections, coughs, colds, &c. address doct. uncas brant box 3531, p.o., new york this type of an apparently free diagnosis of medical ills, prompted solely by the benevolence of some elderly or retired person, was a familiar petty swindle around the middle of the last century. the newspapers carried many such announcements from retired clergymen, old nurses, or indian doctors, frequently persons who had themselves triumphed over dread diseases and had discovered the best remedies only after years of search and suffering, always offering to communicate the secret of recovery to any fellow sufferer. the victim would receive in reply a recipe for the proper medicine, always with the advice that great care must be taken to prepare it exactly as directed, and with the further advice that if the ingredients should not prove to be conveniently available the benevolent old doctor or retired clergyman could provide them for a trifling sum. invariably, the afflicted patient would discover that the ingredients specified were obscure ones, not kept by one druggist in a hundred and unknown to most of them. thus, he would be obliged, if he persisted in the recommended cure, to send his money to the kindly old benefactor. frequently, he would receive no further reply or, at best, would receive some concoction costing only a few cents to compound. the scheme was all the safer as it was carried on exclusively by mail, and the swindler would usually conclude each undertaking under any given name before investigation could be initiated. besides participating in such schemes, force apparently devoted a large part of his energy in collecting accounts due him or, in turn, in being dunned by and seeking to postpone payment to newspapers with whom he was delinquent in making settlement. other forms of advertising employed over the years included finely engraved labels, circulars and handbills, printed blotters, small billboards, fans, premiums sent in return for labels, a concise--_very_ concise--reference dictionary, and trade cards of various sorts. one trade card closely resembled a railroad pass; this was in the 1880s when railroad passes were highly prized and every substantial citizen aspired to own one. thus, almost everyone would have felt some pride in carrying what might pass, at a glance, as a genuine pass on the k.c.l.r.r.; although it was signed only by "good health" as the general agent, entitled the bearer merely to ride on foot or horseback and was actually an advertisement of kingsland's chlorinated tablets. another card played somewhat delicately but still unmistakably on the indian root pills' capacity to restore male virility. this card pictured a fashionably dressed tomcat, complete with high collar, cane and derby, sitting somewhat disconsolately on a fence as the crescent moon rose behind him, with these reflections: how terribly lonesome i feel! how queer, to be sitting alone, with nobody near, oh, how i wish maria was here, mon dieu! the thought of it fills me with horrible doubt, i should smile, i should blush, i should wail, i should shout, just suppose some fellow has cut me out! me out! and underneath the lesson is given: dr. morse's indian root pills the best family pill in use [illustration: figure 20.--a trade card advertising kingsland's chlorinated tablets, which closely resembled a railroad pass.] testimonials submitted voluntarily by happy users of the pills were always widely featured in the almanacs, newspaper advertisements, and handbills. although the easy concoction of the stories about dr. morse and dr. cunard might suggest that there would have been no hesitation in fabricating these testimonials, it is probable that they were genuine; at least, many have survived in the letters scattered over the floor of the indian root pill factory. in some cases one might feel that the testimonials were lacking in entire good faith, for many of them were submitted by dealers desiring lenient credit or other favors. witness, for example, the following from b. mollohan of mt. pleasant, webster county, west va., on april 16, 1879: pleas find here enclosed two dollars & 50 cts $2 _50_ cts for which pleas place to my credit and return receipt to me for same. i cant praise your dr morse pill two high never before in all my recolection has there bin a meddison here that has given such general satisfaction. i hope the pills will always retain their high standing and never bee counterfeited.... i could sell any amt pills allmost if money was not so scarce. i have to let some out on credit to the sick and poor & wait some time though i am accountable to you for all i recd & will pay you as fast as i sell & collect ... i have about one doz box on hand. mollohan's complaint about the shortage of money and the long delay in collecting many accounts reflected a condition that prevailed throughout the nineteenth century. money was scarce, and the economy of many rural communities was still based largely on the barter system, so that it was very difficult for farmers to generate cash for store goods. consequently, country storekeepers had to be generous in extending credit, and, in turn, manufacturers and jobbers had to be lenient in enforcing collection. not all of the storekeepers could write as neatly and clearly as mollohan. the following letter, quoted in full, from thomas cathey of enfield, illinois, on january 23, 1880, not merely presented a problem relating to the company's policy of awarding exclusive territories but offered considerable difficulty in deciphering: mr cumstock der ser i thaut i wod rite yo u a few lines to inform you that i was the fir st agent for you pills in this setlement but th as is several agent round her and tha ar interfer with mee espesly william a stavson he lives her at enfield he wanted mee to giv him one of you sur klers so he wod be agent but i wodent let hi m hav hit an he rote to you i supose an has got a suplye of pills an ar aruning a gant mee he is sell ing them at 20 cents a box i want you to st op him if you plees mr cumstock i sent you too dollars the 21 p lees credet my a count with hit mr. cumsto ck i want you to send mee sum of you pam plets i want you to send mee right of three tow nships as i am working up a good trad her i wan t indin cree an enfield an carnie tonnships rite son as possible an let me know whether you will let me have those townships or not for my territory i sold a box of pills to melven willson his gir l she has the chils for three yer and he tride eve n thang he cood her wan nothing never dun her eny good one box of you pills brok them on her tha ar the best pills i ever saw in my life tha ar the best medeson for the chills i ever saw an rumites i am giting up a good trad i want you to send me sum of you pamplets i want you to stop these oth er agents that is botheran me an oblige you rite son. enfield white co. ills thomas cathey sadly, we do not know how the company handled mr. cathey's request for sole representation in three illinois townships. after the pills achieved wide recognition and other methods of publicity, chiefly the almanacs, were well established, newspaper advertising was terminated. an invitation to agents (about 1885) declared that for some years past they have not been advertised in newspapers, they being filled with sensational advertisements of quack nostrums got up for no other purpose than catch-penny articles ... the indian root pills obviously claimed a more lofty stature than other, common proprietary remedies. the exclusive representation scheme was also a partial substitution for newspaper advertising; the company was aggressive in soliciting additional agents--aiming at one in every town and village--and then in encouraging them to push the pills by offering prizes such as watches, jewelry, and table utensils.[10] [footnote 10: in connection with this offer the pills were priced to agents at $2 per dozen boxes--$24 per gross--and were to be retailed at $3 per dozen--25â¢ per box. other agreements, however, probably intended for more substantial dealers, specified a price of $16 per gross for the indian root pills.] [illustration: figure 21.--cover for booklet used as a circular describing the indian root pills.] what were the ingredients of the indian root pills and the other comstock preparations? originally, the formulas for the various remedies were regarded as closely held secrets, divulged only to proprietors and partners--and not even to all of them--and certainly never revealed to the purchasers. but despite this secrecy, charges of counterfeiting and imitating popular preparations were widespread. in many cases, the alleged counterfeits were probably genuine--to the extent that either of these terms has meaning--for it was a recurrent practice for junior partners and clerks at one drug house to branch off on their own, taking some of the secrets with them--just as andrew b. white left moore and joined the comstocks, bringing the indian root pills with him. in the latter years, under the rules of the federal food and drug act, the ingredients were required to be listed on the package; thus we know that the indian root pills, in the 1930s and 1940s, contained aloes, mandrake, gamboge, jalap, and cayenne pepper. _aloe_ is a tropical plant of which the best known medicinal varieties come from socotra and zanzibar; those received by the comstock factory were generally described as cape (of good hope) _aloe_. the juice _aloes_ is extracted from the leaves of this plant and since antiquity has been regarded as a valuable drug, particularly for its laxative and vermifuge properties. _mandrake_ has always been reputed to have aphrodisiac qualities. _gamboge_ is a large tree native to ceylon and southeast asia, which produces a resinous gum, more commonly used by painters as a coloring material, but also sometimes employed in medicine as a cathartic. _jalap_ is a flowering plant which grows only at high altitudes in mexico, and its root produces an extract with a powerful purgative effect. all of these ingredients possessed one especial feature highly prized by the patent-medicine manufacturers of the nineteenth century, i.e., they were derived from esoteric plants found only in geographically remote locations. one does find it rather remarkable, however, that the native indian chiefs who confided the secrets of these remedies to dr. morse and dr. cunard were so familiar with drugs originating in asia and africa.[11] the indians may very well have been acquainted with the properties of jalap, native to this continent, but the romantic circumstances of its discovery, early in the last century seem considerably overdrawn, as the medicinal properties of jalap were generally recognized in england as early as 1600. whether the formula for the indian root pills had been constant since their "discovery"--as all advertising of the company implied--we have no way of knowing for sure. however, the company's book of trade receipts for the 1860s shows the recurring purchase of large quantities of these five drugs, which suggests that the ingredients did remain substantially unchanged for over a century. for other remedies manufactured by the company, the ingredients purchased included: anise seed black antimony calomel camphor gum arabic gum asphaltum gum tragacanth hemlock oil horehound laudanum licorice root magnolia water muriatic acid saltpetre sienna oil sulphur wormseed it is not known where the calomel (mercurous chloride) and some of the other harsher ingredients were used--certainly not in the indian root pills or the mountain herb worm tea--for the company frequently incorporated warnings against the use of calomel in its advertising and even promised rewards to persons proving that any of its preparations contained calomel. less active ingredients used to supply bulk and flavor included alcohol, turpentine, sugar, corn starch, linseed meal, rosin, tallow, and white glue. very large quantities of sugar were used, for we find that comstock was buying one 250-pound barrel of sugar from c.b. herriman in ogdensburg approximately once a month. in the patent-medicine business it was necessary, of course, that the pills and tonics must be palatable, neutralizing the unpleasant flavor of some of the active ingredients; therefore large quantities of sugar and of pleasant-tasting herbs were required. it was also desirable, for obvious reasons, to incorporate some stimulant or habit-forming element into the various preparations. [footnote 11: actually, the formula for the indian root pills would seem to have corresponded closely with that for "indian cathartic pills" given in _dr. chase's recipes_, published in 1866. these were described as follows: aloes and gamboge, of each 1 oz.; mandrake and blood-root, with gum myrrh, of each 1/4 oz.; gum camphor and cayenne, of each 1-1/2 drs.; ginger, 4 oz.; all finely pulverized and thoroughly mixed, with thick mucilage (made by putting a little water upon equal quantities of gum arabic and gum tragacanth) into pill mass; then formed into common sized pills. dose: two to four pills, according to the robustness of the patient.] a register of incoming shipments for the year 1905 shows that the factory was still receiving large quantities of aloes, gamboge, mandrake, jalap, and pepper. one new ingredient being used at this time was talc, some of which originated at gouverneur, within a few miles of the pill manufactory, but more of it was described as "german talc." the same register gives the formulas for three of the company's other preparations. one of these, the _nerve & bone liniment_, was simply compounded of four elements: 3 gal. turpentine 2 qts. linseed oil 2 lbs. hemlock 2 lbs. concentrated amonia. the formula for the _condition powders_ (for horses and livestock) was far more complex, consisting of: 4 lbs. sulphur 4 lbs. saltpetre 4 lbs. black antimony 4 lbs. feongreek seed 8 lbs. oil meal 1-1/2 oz. arsenic 2 oz. tart antimony 6 lbs. powdered rosin 2 lbs. salt 2 lbs. ashes 4 lbs. brand (bran-?). the name of the third preparation was not given, but the ingredients were: 1 oz. dry white lead 1 oz. oxide of zinc 1/2 oz. precipitated chalk 3 oz. glycerine add 1 lb. glue. [illustration: figure 22.--a partial list of remedies offered for sale by lucius comstock in 1854, shortly after the separation of the old company into the rival firms of comstock & co. and comstock & brother.] originally, comstock and its predecessor firms marketed a large number of remedies. in 1854, comstock & company--then controlled by lucius comstock--listed nearly forty of its own preparations for sale, namely: oldridge's balm of columbia george's honduras sarsaparilla east india hair dye, colors the hair and not the skin acoustic oil, for deafness vermifuge bartholomew's expectorant syrup carlton's specific cure for ringbone, spavin and wind-galls dr. sphon's head ache remedy dr. connol's gonorrhea mixture mother's relief nipple salve roach and bed bug bane spread plasters judson's cherry and lungwort azor's turkish balm, for the toilet and hair carlton's condition powder, for horses and cattle connel's pain extractor western indian panaceas hunter's pulmonary balsam linn's pills and bitters oil of tannin, for leather nerve & bone liniment (hewe's) nerve & bone liniment (comstock's) indian vegetable elixir hay's liniment for piles tooth ache drops kline tooth drops carlton's nerve and bone liniment, for horses condition powders, for horses pain killer lin's spread plasters carlton's liniment for the piles, warranted to cure dr. mc nair's acoustic oil, for deafness dr. larzetti's acoustic oil, for deafness salt rheum cure azor's turkish wine dr. larzetti's juno cordial, or procreative elixir british heave powders all of the foregoing were medicines for which lucius claimed to be the sole proprietor--although it is improbable that he manufactured all of them: several of them were probably identical preparations under different labels. in addition to these, he offered a larger list of medicines as a dealer. brother j. carlton comstock must have been the main originator of medicines within the firm; he seems to have specialized largely in veterinary remedies, although the liniment for the piles also stood to his credit. despite lucius' claim to sole proprietorship of these remedies, the departing brothers also manufactured and sold most of the identical items, adding two or three additional preparations, such as dr. chilton's fever and ague pills and youatt's gargling oil (for animals). aside from j. carlton comstock and judson, the originators of most of the other preparations are cloaked in mystery; most of them were probably entirely fictitious. admittedly, william youatt (1776-1847), for whom several of the animal remedies were named, was an actual british veterinarian and his prescriptions were probably genuine, but whether he authorized their sale by proprietary manufacturers or was himself rewarded in any way are questions for speculation. the versatile dr. larzetti seems to have experimented both with impotency and deafness, but his ear oil--a number of specimens of which were still on hand in the abandoned factory--was identical in every respect with dr. mcnair's oil, as the labels and directions, aside only from the names of the doctors, were exactly the same for both preparations. in fact, some careless printer had even made up a batch of circulars headed "dr. mc nair's acoustic oil" but concluding with the admonition, "ask for larzetti's acoustic oil and take no other." presumably simple americans who were distrustful of foreigners would take mc nair's oil, but more sophisticated persons, aware of the accomplishments of doctors in rome and vienna, might prefer larzetti's preparation. [illustration: figure 23.--dr. mcnair's and dr. larzetti's acoustic oil apparently were identical in every respect. labels and directions, with the difference only of the doctors' names, were quite obviously printed from the same type.] as the century moved along, the comstock factory at morristown reduced the number of remedies it manufactured, and concentrated on the ones that were most successful, which included, besides the indian root pills, judson's mountain herb pills, judson's worm tea, carlton's condition powders, carlton's nerve & bone liniment, and kingsland's chlorinated tablets. at some undisclosed point, carlton's nerve & bone liniment for horses, originally registered with the smithsonian institution on june 30, 1851, ceased to be a medicine for animals and became one for humans. and sometime around 1920 the judson name disappeared, the worm medicine thereafter was superseded by comstock's worm pellets. long before this, judson had been transposed into somewhat of a mythical character--"old dr. judson"--who had devised the dead shot worm candy on the basis of seventy years' medical experience. during the final years of the comstock business in morristown, in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, only three items were manufactured and sold: the indian root pills, the dead shot worm pellets and comstock's n & b liniment.[12] the worm pellets had been devised by mrs. hill, "an old english nurse of various and extended experience in the foundling hospitals of great britain." besides its chemicals and herbs, the comstock factory was a heavy consumer of pillboxes and bottles. while the company advertised, in its latter years, that "our pills are packaged in metal containers--not in cheap wooden boxes," they were, in fact, packaged for many decades in small oval boxes made of a thin wooden veneer. these were manufactured by ira l. quay of east berne, new york, at a price of 12â¢ per gross. the pill factory often must have been a little slow in paying, for quay was invariably prodding for prompt remittance, as in this letter of december 25, 1868: mr wm h comstock dear sir we have sent you one tierce & 3 cases of pill boxes wich we want you to send us a check for as soon as you git this for we have to pay it the first of next month & must have the money if you want eney moure boxes we will send them & wait for the money till the first of april youres truly quay & champion quay continued to supply the boxes for at least fifteen years, during which his need for prompt payment never diminished. comstock also bought large quantities of bottles, corks, packing boxes, and wrappers. throughout the company's long existence, however, more frequent payments were made to printers and stationers--for the heavy flow of almanacs, handbills, labels, trade cards, direction sheets, and billheads--than for all the drugs and packaging materials. in the success achieved by the indian root pills, the printing press was just as important a contributor as the pill-mixing machine. *the final years* when william henry comstock, sr., moved the indian root pill business to morristown, in 1867, he was--at age 37--at least approaching middle life. yet he was still to remain alive, healthy, and in direct charge of the medicine business for more than half a century longer. and the golden era of the patent-medicine business may be said to have coincided very closely with mr. comstock's active career--from about 1848 to 1919. [footnote 12: however, additional items were manufactured by the dr. howard medicine co., affiliated with the comstock factory in brockville. also, during world war ii the company accepted an army contract for the manufacture and packaging of foot powder.] [illustration: figure 24.--in its final years the comstock factory discontinued most of its old remedies and concentrated upon the three most successful: comstock's dead shot worm pellets, comstock's n. & b. liniment, and dr. morse's indian root pills.] while no schedule of sales, net income, or financial results are available, the fragmentary records make it obvious that the business continued to flourish beyond world war i, and long after the passage of the first food and drug act--in 1906. the almanacs were still printed as recently as 1938; while the labels and other advertising matter abandoned their ornate nineteenth-century style and assumed a distinctly modern aspect--to the extent of introducing comic-style picture stories, featuring the small boy who lacked energy to make the little league baseball team (he had worms), and the girl who lacked male admirers because of pimples on her face (she suffered from irregular elimination). sales volume of the morristown factory, however, apparently did reach a peak early in the present century--perhaps around 1910--and began a more rapid decline during the 1920s. during this same period the geographical character of the market shifted significantly; as domestic orders dropped off, a very substantial foreign business, particularly in latin america, sprang up. while this did not compensate fully for the loss of domestic sales, it did provide a heavy volume that undoubtedly prolonged the life of the indian root pill factory by several decades. william henry comstock, sr., who first came to brockville in 1860, at a time when the struggle with white for the control of the pills was still in progress, married a canadian girl, josephine elliot, in 1864; by this marriage he had one son, edwin, who lived only to the age of 28. in 1893 comstock married, for a second time, miss alice j. gates, and it is a favorable testimony to the efficacy of some of his own virility medicines that at age 67 he sired another son, william henry comstock ii (or "young bill") on july 4, 1897. in the meanwhile, the elder comstock had become one of the most prominent citizens of brockville, which he served three terms as mayor and once represented in the canadian parliament. besides his medicine factories on both sides of the river, he was active in other business and civic organizations, helped to promote the brockville, westport & northwestern railway, and was highly regarded as a philanthropist. although he lived well into the automobile age, he always preferred his carriage, and acquired a reputation as a connoisseur and breeder of horses. as remarked earlier, his steam yacht was also a familiar sight in the upper reaches of the st. lawrence river. the medicine business in morristown was operated as a sole proprietorship by comstock from the establishment here in 1867 up until 1902, when it was succeeded by w.h. comstock co., ltd., a canadian corporation. st. lawrence county deeds record the transfer of the property--still preserving the 36-foot strip for the railroad--from personal to corporate ownership at that time. comstock--the same callow youth who had been charged with rifling lucius' mail in the primitive new york city of 1851--came to the end of his long life in 1919. he was succeeded immediately by his son, william henry ii, who had only recently returned from military service during world war i. according to mrs. planty, former morristown historian, "young bill" had been active in the business before the war and was making an inspection of the company's depots in the orient, in the summer of 1914, when he was stranded in china by the cancellation of transpacific shipping services and was therefore obliged to cross china and russia by the transiberian railway. this story, however, strains credulity a trifle, as the journey would have brought him closer to the scene of conflict at that time, and he was, in any event, only 17 years old when these events are supposed to have occurred. the decline of the patent-medicine business was ascribed by stewart holbrook in his _golden age of quackery_ to three main factors: the pure food and drug acts; the automobile; and higher standards of public education. all of these were, of course, strongly in evidence by the 1920s, when william henry comstock ii was beginning his career as the head of the indian root pill enterprise. nevertheless, the morristown plant was still conducting a very respectable business at this time and was to continue for some four decades longer. the comstock enterprise never seemed to have been much embarrassed by the muckraking attacks that surrounded the passage of the federal food and drug act of 1906. aside from the enforcement of these measures by the energetic harvey wiley, the two most effective private assaults upon the patent-medicine trade probably were the exposures by samuel hopkins adams in a series of articles in _collier's_ magazine in 1905-1906, under the title, "the great american fraud," and the two volumes entitled, _nostrums and quackery_, embodying reprints of numerous articles in the _journal of the american medical association_ over a period of years. both sources named names fearlessly and described consequences bluntly. but the comstock remedies, either because they may have been deemed harmless, or because the company's location in a small village in a remote corner of the country enabled it to escape unfriendly attention, seemed to have enjoyed relative immunity from these attacks. at least, none of the comstock remedies was mentioned by name.[13] to be sure, these preparations--or at least those destined for consumption within the united states--had to comply with the new drug laws, to publish their ingredients, and over a period of time to reduce sharply the extensive list of conditions which they were supposed to cure. nevertheless, it seems probable that the general change in public attitudes rather than any direct consequences of legislative enforcement caused the eventual demise of the dr. morse's indian root pills. [illustration: figure 25.--comstock packaging building (upper floor used as residence for manager--note laundry) at left, hotel at right. ferry slip directly ahead. about 1915.] foreign business began to assume considerable importance after 1900; shipments from morristown to the west indies and latin america were heavy, and the company also listed branches (perhaps no more than warehouses or agencies) in london, hongkong, and sydney, australia. certain of the order books picked up out of the litter on the floor of the abandoned factory give a suggestion of sales volume since 1900: [footnote 13: dr. william's pink pills, also headquartered in brockville, were not so fortunate, as they were mentioned disparagingly in both the _collier's_ and american medical association articles. among numerous proprietary manufacturers who protested, blustered, or threatened legal action against _collier's_, the dr. williams co. was one of only two who actually instituted a libel suit.] sales of dr. morse's indian root pills gross | | estimated | | dollar | domestic foreign total | amount -----+-------------------------------+-----------1900 | -- -- 6,238 | 100,000 1910 | 5,975 -- -- | 96,000 1920 | 3,243 -- -- | 52,000 1930 | -- 1,893 -- | 30,000 1941 | 316 -- -- | 5,000 the foregoing data show sales of the indian root pills only; this was by far the most important product, but the factory was also selling worm pellets, judson's pills (up to 1920), and n & b liniment. also, this tabulation excludes sales in quantities less than one gross, and there were actually many such smaller orders. only physical shipments were shown in the records recovered, and the dollar volume is the author's computation at $16 per gross, the price which prevailed for many years. through 1900 there was only a single order book; beginning prior to 1910, separate domestic and foreign order books were introduced, but most of them have been lost. on the assumption that there was a fair volume of foreign sales in 1910, total sales must have continued to climb through the decade then ending, but by 1920 domestic sales--and probably total sales--had dropped materially. the number of employees, apparently about forty at the peak of the business, had dropped to thirteen according to the 1915 paybook but recovered slightly to sixteen in 1922. these fragmentary data suggest that the morristown branch of the comstock enterprise probably never grossed much over $100,000, but in an era when $12 or $15 represented a good weekly wage and the clutching grasp of the income-tax collector was still unknown, this was more than adequate to support the proprietor in comfort and to number him among the more influential citizens of the district. it is not known how morristown sales compared with those of the brockville factory, but it may be assumed that the company utilized its "dual nationality" to the utmost advantage, to benefit from favorable tariff laws and minimize the restrictions of both countries. the morristown plant supplied the lucrative latin american trade, while during the era of imperial preference, brockville must have handled the english, oriental, and australian business. [illustration: figure 26.--in its final years the comstock advertising assumed a modern guise. depicted here is the n. & b. liniment (originally registered with the smithsonian as carlton's celebrated nerve and bone liniment for horses, in 1851).] for many decades--from 1900 at least up into the 1930s--a number of very large shipments, normally 100 gross or more in single orders, were made to gilpin, langdon & co., baltimore, and to columbia warehouse co. in st. louis, important regional distributors. many substantial orders were also received from legitimate drug houses, such as lehn & fink; schieffelin & co.; smith, kline & french; and mckesson & robbins. curiously, a.j. white & co. of new york city also appears in the order book, around 1900, as an occasional purchaser. among the foreign orders received in 1930 the united fruit company was, by a wide margin, the largest single customer. pills destined for the latin american market were packaged alternatively in "glass" or "tin," and were also labeled "spanish" or "english," as the purchasers might direct. spanish language almanacs and other advertising matter were generally inserted in the foreign parcels, along with many copies of "tapes"--the advertisements of the worm pills conspicuously illustrated with a horrifying picture of an enormous tapeworm. sales volume began to decline more precipitously in the 1930s, and the morristown factory was no longer working even close to capacity. the domestic order book for 1941 shows sales of the indian root pills, in quantities of one gross or more, of only 316 gross. the royal drug co. of chicago gave one single order for 44 gross, and myers bros. drug co. of st. louis bought 25 gross in one shot, but otherwise orders in excess of five gross were rare, and those for one gross alone--or for one half gross, one fourth gross, or one sixth gross--were far more common. the number of orders was still substantial, and the packing and mailing clerks must have been kept fairly busy, but they were working hard for a sharply reduced total volume. some stimulus was provided for the factory during the war years by a military contract for foot powder, but the decline became even more precipitous after the conflict. the comstock hotel was destroyed by fire in 1925, never to be rebuilt. and by the late 1940s the once-busy railroad bisecting the factory property--the old utica & black river--had deteriorated to one lonely train crawling over its track in each direction, on weekdays only, but still carrying a new york city sleeping car. the 1950 order book reveals a business that had withered away to almost nothing. once again, as in 1900, both foreign and domestic sales were recorded in a single book, but now foreign sales greatly outstripped the domestic. in fact, a mere 18 gross of the pills were sold--in quantities of one gross or more--in the domestic market in that year, contrasting sadly with nearly 6,000 gross in 1910. even the henry p. gilpin co. of baltimore, which at one time had been ordering 100 gross or more every month or six weeks, took only a meager four gross during the entire year. there were a large number of very small shipments--such as four boxes of pills here, or a bottle of liniment there--but these did not aggregate very much and gave the appearance of merely accommodating individual customers who could no longer find their favorite remedies in their own local drug stores. the foreign business--chiefly in the west indies, puerto rico, and south america--was still fairly substantial in 1950, amounting to 579 gross of the indian root pills, but this was far from compensating for the virtual disappearance of the domestic market. at the old price of $16 per gross--which may no longer have been correct in 1950--the morristown factory could not have taken in a great deal more than $10,000--hardly enough to justify its continued operation. in any case, it was obviously only the foreign business that kept the plant operating as long as it did; without that it would probably have closed its doors 20 years earlier. a number of customers were, however, faithful to the comstock company for very many years. schieffelin & co. and mckesson & robbins were both important customers way back in the 1840s, and their favor had been an object of dispute in the split between lucius and the other brothers in 1851. schieffelin still appeared frequently in the order books up to the 1920s; during the final years mckesson & robbins was by far the largest single domestic customer. a number of other firms--john l. thompson sons & co. of troy, n.y.; t. sisson & co. of hartford, conn.; and gilman brothers of boston, mass.--appear both in the 1896 and the 1950 order books, although unfortunately the quantities taken had fallen from one or two gross at a shot in the earlier year to a mere quarter gross or a few dozen boxes by 1950. toward the end, in the late 1950s, employment in the factory dropped to only three persons--j.m. barney (foreman), charles pitcher, and florence cree--and they were only doing maintenance work and filling such few orders, mostly in quantities of a few dozen boxes only, that came to the factory unsolicited. gone were the days of travelers scouring the back country, visiting country druggists, and pushing the pills, while simultaneously disparaging rival or "counterfeit" concoctions; gone were the days when the almanacs and other advertising circulars poured out of morristown in the millions of copies; long since vanished were the sweeping claims of marvelous cures for every conceivable ailment. in these final days the indian root pills, now packaged in a flat metal box with a sliding lid, were described modestly as the handy vegetable laxative. and the ingredients were now printed on the box; nothing more was heard of dr. morse's remarkable discovery gleaned during his long sojourn with the indians of the western plains. [illustration: figure 27.--the pill-mixing building, about 1928 (building torn down in 1971).] although the records disclose nothing to this effect, it is a fair premise that the comstock family often must have considered closing the morristown plant after world war ii and, more particularly, in the decade of the 1950s. such inclinations may, however, have been countered by a willingness to let the plant run as long as a trickle of business continued and it did not fall too far short of covering expenses. the last few surviving employees were very elderly, and their jobs may have been regarded as a partial substitute for pensions. this view is evidenced by an injury report for george clute, who suffered a fit of coughing while mixing pills in january 1941; he was then 77 years old and had been working in the factory for 34 years. the final paybooks show deductions for social security and unemployment insurance--specimens of vexatious red tape that the factory had avoided for most of its existence. the decision to close the morristown factory was finally forced upon the family, on may 15, 1959, by the death of william henry comstock ii--"young bill"--who had been president of the company since 1921. like his father, "young bill" comstock had been a prominent citizen of brockville for many years, served a term as mayor--although he was defeated in a contest for a parliamentary seat--was also active in civic and social organizations, and achieved recognition as a sportsman and speedboat operator. [illustration: figure 28.--the packaging and office building at left, depot in center, and comstock hotel at right. canadian shore and city of brockville (location of another comstock factory) in background.] the actual end of the business came in the spring of 1960. the frequency and size of orders had dropped sharply, although the names of many of the old customers still appeared, as well as individuals who would send one dollar for three boxes of the pills. these small shipments were usually mailed, rather than going by express or freight, as formerly. the very last two shipments, appropriately, were to old customers: one package of one-dozen boxes of pills on march 31, 1960, to gilman brothers of boston, and two-dozen boxes to mckesson & robbins at mobile, alabama, on april 11. and with this final consignment the factory closed its doors, concluding ninety-three years of continuous operation in the riverside village of morristown. very little of this story remains to be told. mrs. comstock became president of the company during its liquidation--and thus was a successor to her _father-in-law_, who had first entered the business as a clerk, _119 years earlier_, in 1841. the good will of the company and a few assets were sold to the milburn company of scarborough, ontario, but the comstock business was terminated, and the long career of dr. morse's indian root pills brought to a close. the few superannuated employees were assured of protection against all medical expenses, by the company or by the comstock family, for the rest of their lives. a few years later the associated canadian factory standing in the heart of brockville was torn down; during its lifetime that community had grown up around it, from a village to a flourishing small city. the buildings in morristown were sold to other parties and left to stand untenanted and forlorn for years. the upper (packaging) building, from which the records were recovered, remains in fair condition and may yet be renovated for some further use. the lower (pill-mixing) building, after standing derelict and at the point of collapse for many years, was finally torn down in 1971. the hotel, a large water tank behind the factory, and the combination depot and customs house have all vanished from the scene. the shed where the comstocks kept their yacht has been maintained and still shelters several boats, but the ferry slip just below the factory steps is now abandoned, and no longer do vessels ply back and forth across the river to connect morristown and brockville. the railroad only survived the passing of the factory by a year or two and is now memorialized by no more than a line of decaying ties. the main highway leading westward from ogdensburg toward the thousand islands area has been straightened and rerouted to avoid morristown, so that now only the straying or misguided traveler will enter the village. if he does enter he will find a pleasant community, scenically located on a small bay of the st. lawrence river, commanding an enticing view of the canadian shore, and rising in several stages above the lower level, where the factory once stood; but it is a somnolent village. no longer do river packet steamers call at the sagging pier, no longer do trains thread their way between the factory buildings and chug to a halt at the adjacent station. no longer do hope-giving pills and elixirs, or almanacs and circulars in the millions, pour out of morristown destined for country drugstores and lonely farmhouses over half a continent. only memories persist around the empty ferry slip, the vanished railroad station, and the abandoned factory buildings--for so many years the home of the distinguished dr. morse's indian root pills. *bibliography* the principal source of information for this history of the comstock medicine business comprises the records, letters, documents, and advertising matter found in the abandoned pill-factory building at morristown, new york. supplemental information was obtained from biographies, local and county histories, old city directories, genealogies, back files of newspapers, and materials from the office of the st. lawrence county historian, at the courthouse, canton, new york. two standard histories of the patent-medicine era in america are: holbrook, stewart h. _golden age of quackery._ new york city: macmillan co. 1959. young, j.h. _the toadstool millionaires, a social history of patent medicines in america before federal regulation._ princeton university press. 1961. early in the present century, during the "exposure" of the patent-medicine industry, two principal critical works also were published, each highly specific and naming names fearlessly: adams, samuel hopkins. _the great american fraud._ serially in _collier's_ magazine in 1905-1906. (reprinted in book form, 1906.) american medical association. _nostrums and quackery._ chicago: american medical association press. (reprints from the _journal of the american medical association_: volume i, 1911; volume ii, 1921; volume iii, 1936.) recently two books have appeared, which are largely pictorial, essentially uncritical, and strive mainly to recapture the colorfulness and ingenuity of patent-medicine advertising. carson, gerald. _one for a man, two for a horse._ 128 pages. new york city: doubleday and co. 1961. hechtlinger, adelaide. _the great patent medicine era._ new york city: grosset and dunlap. 1970. a highly recommended source of information on the very early history of patent medicines in america is: griffenhagen, george b., and james harvey young. old english patent medicines in america. _united states national museum bulletin 218, contributions from the museum of history and technology_, paper 10: 155-183 1959. dr. morse's pills live on although the original comstock enterprise has been dissolved and all of its undertakings in north america terminated, as has been related herein, dr. morse's indian root pills and comstock's worm tablets are still being manufactured and sold--by the w.h. comstock company pty. ltd., in australia. this concern, originally a subsidiary of the canadian company, is headed by the former branch manager for the comstocks, who acquired the rights for australia and the orient following the dissolution of the brockville company. distribution is also carried out from this source into new zealand, singapore, and hong kong. packaging and directions are now modern, the pills being described as "the overnight laxative with the tonic action," but a reproduction of the old label and the facsimile signature of william henry comstock, sr., are still being portrayed. thus, the indian root pills have been manufactured continuously for at least 115 years and the comstock business, through the original and successor firms, has survived for nearly 140 years. {transcriber's note: misspellings in the original have been preserved. the text uses a mixture of italics, boldface, enlarged type, and underlining. they are represented here by _lines_ for ordinary emphasis (generally italics), +marks+ for added emphasis (generally bold). material added by the transcriber is in braces { }. all brackets [ ] are in the original text.} * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {illustrated cover: only sent when requested, and then only when sealed. glad tidings of good things. the civialè remedies 174 fulton st., new york } {illustration: chemical laboratory, civiale remedial agency.} manhood perfectly restored. prof. jean civialè's soluble urethral crayons, as a quick, painless and certain cure for _impotence, lost manhood, spermatorrhoea, losses,_ _weakness and nervous debility._ also for prostatitis and varicocele. [the only standard and officially recognized treatment for these diseases of the sexual and urinary organs, endorsed by and adopted in all the hospitals of paris, france.--see _gazette des hopitaux, dec._ 8, 1869; also _dictionnaire des sciences_, vol. xxiv., p. 565.] facts for men of all ages. sixth edition, enlarged, revised and illustrated. issued by the civialè remedial agency, 174 fulton st., new york. [_opposite st. paul's church._] 1885. {transcriber's note: the text pages cycle through a series of eight headers: (1) _all our doctors are regular graduates, and their diplomas are registered in the office of the county clerk, city hall, new york, as required by law._ (2) _our crayons are inserted without pain._ (3) _we cure where a cure is possible._ (4) _we hold out no false hopes._ (5) _our treatment is pleasant, quick and lasting._ (6) _when you are tired of being humbugged or experimented on, send to us._ (7) _we offer special help to impotent men._ (8) _strictest privacy--perfect confidence--certain cure._ the first set of eight pages has the headers in this order: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 3, 7, 8 on one later page, headnote 8 begins _strict privacy_.} to the reader. it is with great pleasure that we send you a copy of this, the sixth edition of our brochure on sexual and urinary diseases. the success of the civialè urethral method, since its first introduction into america, has been almost unparalleled in medical history, and we feel that the time has come for replacing the brief pamphlet containing a mere outline of the method, with a work somewhat more full and exhaustive. aware of the number of worthless and oftentimes actually injurious remedies that are being advertised and recommended for the cure of these affections, and the bogus doctors and worthless firms that infest every large city, we have endeavored to give inquiring patients every proof and assurance of the efficacy of the civialè remedies, every facility for investigating our methods, and proving, to their entire satisfaction, both the medical ability of our consulting staff, and the honor, honesty and fair dealing of the agency. we court the fullest and freest investigation, either by patients themselves or any friends of theirs in this city, either of whom we shall be happy to see and satisfy at any time, at our consulting rooms, business offices or manufactory. repeated trials in some of the most severe cases of spermatorrhoea and impotency, in both france and america, have proven the civialè remedies to be safe, speedy and most satisfactory in all their results, and we feel justly proud of having in our hands so excellent and efficient a means for the radical cure of so obstinate, serious and often dangerous a disease. we take pride in having saved many a young and promising life, in having often stayed the hand bent upon self-destruction, and in having many times cheated the grave or the insane asylum of its expected prey. nor do we feel less proud in having been able, in cases of not so serious, though often of a more embarrassing nature, to restore to full sexual power and vigor _middle-aged and older men whose desire had out-lived their power_, or who, through early abuse, had become so weakened as to be totally impotent, incapable of perpetuating their species--ashamed, discomfited, and disappointed at being somewhat less than a man. as every case cured is the very best advertisement that we can have, it is hardly necessary for us to say that we endeavor to exercise the utmost care, skill and discretion in both diagnosing and treating these cases, and assiduity and scientific accuracy in preparing and compounding those remedies of which we are the fortunate possessors. indeed, we do everything in our power to make success an absolute certainty. a word in closing. our staff of consulting physicians is composed of men selected with great care for their special skill and attainments in this special branch of medical science. these gentlemen are handsomely remunerated for their services, and take a pride and interest in every case they treat. our physicians hold no pecuniary interest in the agency, and hence prescribe for each case solely on its merits, having nothing to gain by selling less or more to any one under their care. they see and treat each case solely and wholly from a medical standpoint, and hence are never influenced by any pecuniary considerations whatsoever. however great the reputation of our physicians may be, we have, from the first organization of this institution, taken and held the ground that the best interest of the patient is best served by resolutely divorcing the medical from the business department. civialè remedial agency. mailing and shipping departments, business offices, consulting rooms, 174 fulton st., new york. _opposite st. paul's church._ office and consulting hours: { 8-12 a.m. { 1-6 p.m. sundays: 9 a.m. to 12 a.m. {illustration: offices, &c., civiale remedial agency.} the civiale urethral treatment _chapter i._ spermatorrhoea--impotency--sterility. the baneful effects and consequences of masturbation, marriage excesses, venereal and urinary diseases on boys and men. could we read the heart of every man and boy we pass upon the street, how few--how very few--there are that would not reveal sickening pictures of lust, disease, melancholy and insanity. charnel-houses of sin and lust--sloughs of despond and regret--excess of passion offset by lack of power--dread, despair, hopelessness, shame and desperation, making a picture of misery scarcely to be conceived by any but those unfortunate beings who in the thoughtless, careless heyday of youth, or the reckless reliance on more mature vigor, have weakened, emasculated and enslaved themselves by indulgences and excesses that have borne fruit of misery, disease and desperation in after years. how little the youth who, in his ignorance of the terrible consequences of his vice, steals away to the secrecy of his chamber or his bed, leaving his happy, healthy and playful companions, in order that he may let the hot waves of lust and passion run riot in his mind, and dry up every spring of healthy thought and action--how little does he think of the after-time of misery and exhaustion that he is bringing upon himself--how little does he think that the vile demon that he is raising up will, like the vampire, suck his very life-blood, steal away his strength and life and vivacity, besmirch and weaken his mind, take the strength from his muscles, the courage from his heart, sap the very foundation of his existence, unsex and unnerve him, render him feeble, wavering and imbecile, dog his footsteps to the very steps of the altar, to curse and blacken and disappoint those joys of parentage and marital right that should be his. the shadow deepens with him as life advances, and follows him, bringing shame and misery and despair at every step, until the poor victim, driven too far, sinks into an early grave by disease or suicide, or is lost to the world and to all joys and friends behind the doors of an insane asylum. he died of no disease known to medical science. he simply faded away--weaker, more nerveless and hopeless day by day; he faded away until, almost before any one knew it, the grave yawned to receive him. poor, miserable, hopeless wreck--poor suicide, for his own sin and crime were the real causes of his death. how many such there are at the present day. we meet them on the street, in business and at church. our insane asylums are full of them. we find their wives unfaithful or unhappy; and their offspring--when they are cursed with any--poor, miserable, weak fledgelings, with aged, wasted faces, water on the brain, with rickets and softening of the bones--idiots or imbeciles--dying early and scarcely regretted even by the parent whose progeny they are, for every wail of the little suffering voice pierced his heart and reminded him of his lustful sin, and passionate, inexcusable indulgence that caused all this misery. "and the sins of the father shall be visited upon the children, even to the third and fourth generations." alas, how true! how indisputable! the imperative laws of nature once broken, the consequences are _inevitable_. of late years it has become the fashion amongst certain men to scoff at this terrible vice of secret indulgence, and to claim that its evil effects are overrated, are portrayed too vividly. ask some poor unfortunate whose confidence you may succeed in gaining, and listen to the pitiful tale of lost health and vitality he will tell you. mark well the wasted hand, the putty-like skin, the black-ringed, lack-lustre eyes, the heavy lip, the labored breath--read the consequences of his sin and crime in his shame-faced way, his shambling gait, his nerveless hands, his fluttering heart, his weakened muscles, and his tottering memory and mind. must he needs lie dead at our feet before these skeptics can be convinced? is not such a state a living death? must these men visit him in the cell of the asylum, watch him as a raving maniac, gaze upon him as a hopeless idiot or a driveling imbecile, before they will be convinced? such proof is at hand. not an asylum in any country but has its score of such; not an asylum record-book but chronicles the sad histories of thousands of these poor, lost creatures--male and female; not an asylum nurse or doctor but will sadly point out these creatures to you, bereft of every trace of reason, all sense of shame, still practicing the horrible vice that has driven every semblance of humanity from their faces and the very light of reason from their eyes. true, every boy or man who practices this vice does not come to this end. but who shall discriminate? there are thousands such, and who shall say which it shall be, or at what moment it shall occur? ah! happy, rosy-cheeked boy, so gay and thoughtless now, so free from misery, disease and care, beware! it may be your turn next. a little thoughtless indulgence, the imitation of friend or companion, though apparently harmless now, may blanch your rosy cheek, destroy your peace and happiness of mind, and make a life-long, hopeless, suffering invalid of you--may shut the door of all earthly enjoyment in your face, blast your hopes, disease or destroy your offspring, alienate you from friends and family, and cut off from all communion with your race, make you an object of shame and disgust to your fellow-men, sink you into an early grave or entomb you for life in the cold stony walls of a lunatic asylum. the day will come, erstwhile, when you will curse the parents who reared you, the friends who surrounded you and the teachers and ministers who taught you, for not warning you of the terrible nature of this indulgence, so secretly common amongst boys and young men. the day will come, when in the midst of your mental, moral and physical agony, with weakened mind and exhausted body, physicians will tell you that masturbation is practically harmless, that its consequences are exaggerated, and that your sufferings are mostly imaginary. then will you pity their ignorance and bemoan the fact that to such men must sufferers in your terrible extremity apply without any feeling of being understood, appreciated or sympathized with, and, far less, relieved or cured. happy will you be then, if you can (with your vice and misery staring you in the face and threatening you with some or all of its dire consequences) direct your steps to those who not only can and will sympathize with you, but who are able to aid you with proper remedies and restoratives and set you safely on the way to health and happiness again. for there _are_ proper aids and remedies; there are hope and happiness to be obtained if the affections growing out of this vice be skillfully taken in hand in time. none but the hopeless sufferers who have been lifted from the misery, shame and weakness of their self-inflicted suffering know how much this world owes to the high medical skill, exhaustive study, and persistent search for truth and proper remedies of those two great frenchmen, +professors claude lallemand+ and +jean civiale+. the medical as well as civil honors conferred upon them by their country and their medical brethren, great as they were, could never half repay them for the good they rendered thoughtless youth and suffering manhood by their special discoveries. there can be no question but that the +civiale urethral crayons+, named thus after this great specialist, and endorsed by the most eminent medical men of france (that country in which lust and passion are peculiarly prevalent), are the most far-reaching and reliable specifics for generative, sexual and nervous diseases known. causes of spermatorrhoea and impotency. self-abuse not the only cause. many years' experience in the treatment of these debilitating diseases has proven very surely that there are many causes besides self-abuse (self-pollution, secret vice or masturbation) for spermatorrhoea, impotency and debility or lost manhood. self-abuse is the most common cause, and we therefore give it the most prominence. the others we will name briefly in about the order of their frequency. 1. marriage excesses.--a very common cause, more often producing impotency (loss of sexual desire or power) and sterility (inability to beget offspring), than spermatorrhoea (loss of vital fluid, daily and nightly losses, losses in the urine, nervous prostration, debility, insanity, paralysis, &c. for full description of symptoms, see pages 12-16). sexual desire was given to mankind, like any other power or appetite--to be enjoyed in reasonable moderation _and for the purpose of insuring a continuance of our species by the birth of offspring_. many men abuse this power--abuse it inordinately, shamefully--and suffer the consequences. this is especially true of the newly married, and men advanced in years, who push their failing powers too far. as a just retribution for the abuse of so important a function, the almighty deprives some of desire, some of power, some of both. 2. onanism.--by many this is confused with masturbation or self-abuse. while like it in some respects and in many of its consequences, it is still different. it is as hurtful to an adult as abuse is to a young person. god punished onan for this sin, hence its name. yet, despite this terrible example so plainly set forth in the old testament, probably one-half of the married men of the present day are pursuing it, and hence so many impotent and powerless persons, seeking vainly amongst the many cheap, quack remedies for something to re-invigorate and re-vitalize them. this is a terrible vice, terrible in its consequences, and however hardy and robust the man, sooner or later his sexual powers must and will succumb to the strain. many men write us, saying that they never masturbated, and yet are totally impotent and cannot understand why it is. and yet they have been thus injuring themselves for years! sexual power and desire were given us for one purpose--the perpetuation of our species, and whoso endeavors to avoid this, must suffer. many married couples do not want more children, from care, poverty or other causes, and hence the extent to which this terrible practice is indulged. it _must_ be from ignorance, for were it commonly known how injurious this practice is, _but few would dare take the terrible risk_. and yet the resulting weakness can be speedily cured if properly treated. in no class of cases have the civiale remedies achieved greater success than in these. 3. anything debilitating--such as overwork, confinement, sedentary occupations, worry, care, excitement, &c., &c.--these are much more common causes of sexual and generative diseases than is generally supposed, and usually very obstinate and difficult to treat, because the system is so run down that there is very little stamina or vitality to rely upon. clerks, business men, lawyers, bankers, ministers and students are very subject to this form of impaired vital and sexual power. theological students are very prone to it. many do not have any idea as to what their real trouble is, and lose much valuable time in doctoring for dyspepsia, consumption, neurasthenia and the like, when really their very life and vitality are oozing away from them in their urine or otherwise. 4. women's (or venereal) diseases.--gonorrhoea (clap), gleet, stricture, injury to the urine canal from the rough use of sounds, bougies, catheters, &c., &c. any one or all of these, by extending the inflammation backward to the seminal ducts and neck of the bladder, may cause either spermatorrhoea or impotency. indeed, stricture (often caused by self-abuse) is one of the most common causes of these complaints. it was here that +lallemand+ and +civiale+ found the key-note of the true treatment of these diseases. 5. varicocele, or a wormy, swollen or twisted state of the veins in the bag, and of those that run down to the testicles, is a very common cause of both spermatorrhoea, impotency and debility. (for full description of this very common and often unexpected disease, send for our illustrated pamphlet on the subject, or see chapter xi, page 44 of this book.) no man or boy with varicocele, no matter how it was produced, can be perfectly sound and strong in his sexual organs. 6. undeveloped, wasted or misshapen parts.--a failure to have perfectly developed organs sometimes dates from birth, but in most cases it is caused by self-abuse at a time when the person is growing. in any case, seminal weakness and wasted or misshapen parts go together as both cause and effect, and the one, when found, will usually very soon lead to the other. _twisting or curving_ is one of the most positive signs of previous inflammation, stricture and twisting or distortion of the seminal ducts, and hence sterility or barrenness. in such especially are the remarkable effects of the +civiale treatment+ the most noticeable. we can say with positiveness, and prove it by case after case, that by no other method can such rapid and perfect restoration of the organs to a natural and healthy state be obtained as by this. some of the very worst and apparently most hopeless cases that we have had--cases that have gone from one physician to another without the slightest improvement--have yielded effectually to the +civiale remedies+. in some of them the persons thus afflicted would have been totally unfitted for marriage had they failed to find relief. their children--healthy, happy and finely developed--speak volumes for what our treatment has done for them. (for treatment refer to page +42+ of this book.) impotent old men- the sexual decay of advancing age. we have thus far given briefly the most common causes of seminal disease. there are a few that we have not mentioned: blows on the head, loins (small of the back), testicles, &c.; weakness caused by prolonged illness, fevers, &c.; malaria, consumption, &c.; the abuse of tobacco, opium, alcohol and chloral, &c., &c.; but these are less common and less important. there is one condition, however, that we have only referred to incidentally, and that is the failure of sexual power in men past middle age. no man (if he is reasonably careful and does not abuse himself) should find his powers decaying before he is seventy or eighty years of age. mind, we do not say "no man does," but no man "_should_," provided he is reasonably careful. but here comes the fact. most men are _not_ careful, and most men _have_ abused themselves at some period. many believe and stoutly maintain that they "never had emissions or seminal disease, and it didn't hurt them." but it did, and it is just now that they begin to feel it. it is true they escaped the more acute and direful effects, but it told on them in after years. there are many thousands to-day who are just now feeling the effects of early vices, now almost forgotten. they can be restored to _natural_ power by proper treatment, but they rarely are, because but few of them believe that early self-abuse or later onanism has anything to do with it. so they spend a fortune almost--and uselessly too--on stimulants, nervines, tonic and the like, but still remain partly or wholly impotent. foolish men! _chapter ii._ the vital fluid what it is, what it does, and how it is allowed to drain away, weakening, emasculating and dementing the vicious and the careless. diurnal (daily) emissions. nocturnal (nightly) emissions. impalpable oozings. losses in the urine. losses while at stool. mistaken gleet. there are thousands of weak, nerveless men, who do not know what ails them; thousands of invalids whose physicians are puzzled and perplexed by their symptoms, and cannot account for the rapid waste of strength, energy and vitality, much less check it; and thousands of others, on the street, in the pulpit, on the bench, in the counting room, whose troubles, illness and misery are due to losses of vital fluid. some know it, many more do not. some are being properly or improperly treated for it; many are being dosed and drugged for malaria, neurasthenia, consumption, overwork, brain troubles, paralysis and many equally as foolish and irrational complaints. they sicken, die, destroy themselves in hopeless despair of ever getting well and strong again, verge into hopeless idiocy or go raving mad, simply because their trouble is not understood; because day by day and hour by hour there is draining from them in their urine, at stool and otherwise, that precious vital fluid that represents life, health and energy to them. {illustration: fig. 1. a human testicle. perfectly healthy. [from gray's anatomy.] each _lobule_ may be seen (carefully guarded from pressure or injury) in its cell, with a strong fibrous partition on each side. all these _lobules_ empty into small ducts which converging form the _globus major_, _epididymis_ and _globus minor_, which finally end in the _vas deferens_, _cord_, _duct_, or _tube_ that conveys the fluid to the seminal vesicles at the back of the bladder. (see _figs._ 5, 6.) as the veins of a _varicocele_ surround these delicate _lobules_ as well as _fine tubing_, it can readily be seen how easily such pressure, weight and crowding may do very serious injury and make the flow of semen irregular, or shut it off altogether.} {illustration: fig. 2. human spermatazoa. [from gray's anatomy.] a. healthy, well developed and active zoa-sperms from the _vital fluid_ of a strong, robust man. b. showing cells and bunches, in which form they are secreted or made by the testicles.} and is it surprising that the continual losses do drain away strength and vitality? this fluid is the only one charged with _life_--actual _life_; capable of producing _life_--of creating offspring--of impregnating and developing into perfect being, with thinking and reasoning brain and mind, pulsating heart, expanding lungs, sentient nerves, motive muscle, and all that beautiful, minute and co-ordinate mechanism that forms a perfect human being--the only secretion in the body capable of propagating species--carrying _life_ within _life_. surely this was not meant for waste. surely the influence of its loss upon the system, especially of a boy or young man (growing and not fully developed), must be great, and it is. many and many a young man thus wastes away before the eyes of his friends from no other cause. many a one loses health and strength from this cause alone, yet does not know it. how much better if all this false modesty, social hypocrisy, and blundering medical dosing and drugging, without thorough examination and full understanding, were wholly done away with, and the young men, and old men too, were brought to understand two cardinal facts: (a) the immense devitalizing effects of even small continued losses of vital fluid, and, (b) the fact that many apparently strong and healthy, as well as weak and nerveless, men who find their sexual powers gradually or suddenly failing them, can, in nine cases out of ten, trace it directly to losses of vital fluid in the urine or otherwise, that have been going on--perhaps wholly unknown to them--for months or years past. (see also chapter on "hidden spermatorrhoea") analysis of urine. at the first symptom of sexual decay or nervous exhaustion, the person thus affected should have his urine carefully and thoroughly analyzed by some competent person. in saying "competent person," we speak advisedly, for but few chemists and fewer physicians are competent to make such an examination and draw correct deductions from what is to be found there. any person can, with the proper reagents, test his urine for the presence or absence of semen, but he cannot make the thorough, scientific, chemical and microscopical analysis that is sometimes needed in order to arrive at a full and perfect diagnosis and successful treatment. {illustration: fig. 3. urine of a young man suffering with spermatorrhoea. 1. epithelial scales from the prostate gland. 2. scales from the kidney tubes. 3, 4. scales from the kidney tubes swollen and degenerated. 5. spermatazoa, wasted, shriveled, imperfect and dead. (in this case the varicocele had extended up the cord.)} if losses of semen are taking place in the urine, it would be well to forward a sample of it at once, for a full and extended analysis, which will be made for the nominal fee of $2, merely to cover the cost of chemicals. our chemical laboratory is under the supervision of mr. g. h. e. du bell, ph.d., a thoroughly competent quantitative and qualitative analytical chemist, a graduate of the french and german universities and also a licentiate in this country, who, with his able corps of assistants, makes all examinations and reports in full upon them to the medical chief of staff, who in turn submits them with the histories of each to the full consulting board or staff. _chapter iii._ the forms, symptoms and consequences of masturbation, spermatorrhoea, nervous exhaustion and spinal irritability. in no disease known to us are the symptoms precisely the same in every case. they vary with the constitutional peculiarities of the individual. yet in nearly every case there are certain prominent or leading symptoms (signs) that are rarely absent at _some_ stage of the disease. we give here the more noticeable ones at first laid down by +lallemand+, the great french physician, who first gave us the name "spermatorrhoea," who first wrote upon this disease, who was the first to discover the connection between the losses of semen and certain symptoms here given, and who, too, was the great originator of that treatment so successfully perfected by his successor, +prof. civiale+, and which is now the _standard_ treatment, recognized and adopted in all the french hospitals. objective symptoms due to masturbation. first, as to the appearance and actions of the +masturbator+--he who is constantly and recklessly drawing drafts of exhaustion and decay on the nervous energy and strength of his coming manhood, and which are sure to bankrupt the most robust health. if there is a man to be pitied on this earth, it is he who is walking about from day to day conscious of being guilty of ever having practiced this vice. mark the man who is addicted to it in no matter how light a form; _his face tells the story of his sin_. see his +haggard looks+, his +deep, sunken eyes+, which he throws only half-way into the countenance of his friend. _note the +blue+ or +black discolorations+ under the +eye+; the +nervousness+ to get away from a crowd, and the extreme +girlishness+ or +backwardness+ when +introduced+ into the +company of ladies+._ the victim of the most dangerous of all vices soon reaches a state which, if not promptly relieved by the proper remedy, will end in life-long misery or an early death. objectively considered, the masturbator is recognized by a marked facial expression, by a characteristic mannerism, and by a peculiar mental state. the face.--_the +facial expression+ consists of a +pale+ and +sallow tint+ of the skin, unusual +development+ of +acne+,--red pimples,-especially on the +forehead+; a +dark circle+ around the +orbits+; +dilated+ and +sluggish pupils+; +lustreless eyes+, and an +oblique line extending+ from the +inner angle+ of the +lids transversely+ across the +cheek+ to the +lower margin+ of the +malar+ (cheek) +bone+. the +face+ has a +haggard, troubled, furtive expression+._ the manner.--_the +manner+ of the +masturbator+ is peculiar. he is +listless, shy, retiring+, and +easily confused+; he +avoids society+, preferring +solitude+; there is a want of +steadiness+ and +decision+ in his +locomotion+; his inferior +extremities+ seem +deficient+ in +power+, and all his movements betray +a mind ill at ease+._ the mind.--_his +mental operations+ are +confused+; his +speech is embarrassed, awkward+, and +without directness+; his +memory+ is +defective+, and he is +absent-minded+ and +given+ to +reverie+. if the habit has long existed, and been excessively frequent in repetition, +epilepsy+ may be produced; or +serious mental disorder+, as +delusional insanity+, +dementia+, etc., may occur._ the sexual organs.--the state of the +genital organs+ varies with the length of time the habit has been indulged. in some young subjects, there will be observed an _+extraordinary development+ of the +organ+_, owing to premature excitement; but the disproportion is not maintained. prof. barthalow says: "with the progress of the habit the organ becomes _+small+ and +relaxed+, the +erections feeble+, the +corpora cavernosa+ either +waste away+ or their +vessels+ lose their +tonicity+, whereby an apparent +shrinkage takes place+; the +corpus spongiosum+ and the +glands+ also +shrink+, so that the +prepuce+ (fore-skin) appears +unnaturally elongated+. the +testes+ may +increase+ in +size+, become +tender+ and +irritable+_, or they may waste away to nothing but little strings; the latter is the more usual result. "_+pains+ in the small of the +back+, a sense of +weight+ and +aching+ in the +loins+, around the +anus+, and in the +testes+_ is experienced. _the +appetite is capricious+, the +digestion feeble, and the bowels+ are +constipated+_, or constipation alternates with diarrhoea. "_the+ mind+ is +deficient+ in +power+ of +attention+, the +imagination is constantly pervaded with vague erotic dreams+, the +moral sense+ is +blunted+, and the +perceptions+ are +dull+ and +confused+. +pains+ in the +head+, in the +occipital+ and +frontal regions+ (front and back of head)_, and a sense of fullness, and in serious cases _alarming +vertigo+ (dizziness and falling); +pains+ in the course of the +principal nerves+, and an extreme +nervous susceptibility+, are experienced. the +organic nervous system+_ manifests a functional disturbance in harmony with the disorder of the nervous system of animal life. _+gastralgia+ and +abdominal pain+ (pain in stomach and bowels)_ and +uneasiness+ are in some cases very distressing symptoms. "the distinctiveness of the foregoing symptoms will be determined by the extent and duration of the habit, and by the constitutional peculiarities of the patient. +the more highly developed the nervous system, and the more it preponderates in activity over the muscular and digestive systems, the more serious the effects.+ effects of masturbation on the mind "the most serious +mental effects+ are produced by +masturbation+. this vice, commenced at or before the period of puberty, interferes seriously with the development of the brain and the evolution of the mental faculties. "that +spermatorrhoea+ will produce in one class of cases +mental disorders+, and not in another, indicates either that some predisposition to these disorders existed, or that the habit of +self-pollution+ was merely an expression of +mental alienation+ (insanity). the +images+ which pervade the minds of boys possessed of the highly-developed nervous organization of masturbators are those of +delusional insanity+. "there is, however, a +cerebral+ (brain) +phase+ of spermatorrhoea which may be separated from the two preceding classes. it is characterized by _+indistinctness of vision+, +dilatation+ of the +pupil+, +amblyopia+ (near-sightedness), +diplopia+ (double sight); +diminution+ in the +sensitiveness+ of the +auditory apparatus+ (deafness); +feebleness+ of +voice+; +mental preoccupation+, +hebetude+ of +mind+, +confusion+ of +ideas+, and a +profound melancholy+._ "the termination of such cases is in _+suicidal monomania+, +delusional insanity+, etc._ in that variety of the cerebral form in which a decided predisposition must be admitted to exist, to disorder of the intellectual faculties, there are found various forms of mental alienation. the +chronic form+ is the most common, which corresponds to the _+melancholia+ of +pinel+, or the +lypemania+ of +esquirol+, terminating in +dementia+._ several of the most characteristic cases which have happened under my observation correspond to the _+delusional insanity+ of +bucknill and tuke+_."--[manual of psychological medicine, phila. ed., p. 103.] insanity from spermatorrhoea. many writers are disposed to underrate the importance of this tendency in spermatorrhoea. the statistics of any of our large insane asylums will illustrate the influence of masturbation in the production of insanity. mr. holmes coote, in a discussion which followed dr. drysdale's paper on the "medical aspects of prostitution," read before the harveian society of london, remarked that "he still entertained the opinion that there were no worse evils appertaining to human weakness than this. he had opportunities of witnessing the fact that among the young there was no cause of insanity more common than indulging in habits which he would not further particularize, but which were known to result in the most complete bodily and mental prostration."--[british medical journal, feb. 17, 1866.] dr. john p. gray, the distinguished superintendent of the state asylum at utica, new york (twenty-fourth annual report, 1867), thus speaks of the +influence of masturbation+ in the production of +insanity+: "the records of this institution show five hundred and twenty-one cases admitted directly attributable to this vice, and i am well convinced that the number is greatly understated." we might add confirmatory testimony from a variety of sources, but the foregoing is sufficient for our purpose. important.--_peculiar, numb, dead, aching, or tingling sensations in the hands, arms, legs or feet, and headache and specks before the eyes on stooping or reading; also sleeplessness, too sound sleep, and apprehensive dreams should be watched for, and the moment they appear danger from paralysis or insanity is to be apprehended and proper treatment at once taken. these symptoms may mean nothing in some cases, but they are terrible harbingers of ill in others._ a case of insanity from self-abuse.--(_fig. 4._) the following case, taken _verbatim_ from the care book of the insane asylum at blackwell's island, will serve as a _type_ of the many to be found in every hospital for the insane in this country. (_and a terrible and noteworthy fact is, that according to the recent annual reports of these institutions, both in this country and europe, insanity, idiocy and dementia from seminal losses and sexual abuses, are increasing from year to year._) {illustration: fig. 4. appearance of james mcc----, a few weeks before he died. (see below.)} "james mcc----, admitted to the asylum ten days ago. single, clerk, born in n.y. state. was found on 6th avenue surrounded by a crowd who were attracted by his violent and frantic efforts to destroy everything within his reach. on being arrested and taken to the 29th precinct station house, he was recognized by the sergeant on duty at the desk as having been arrested twice before within a week--once for violent shouting and disturbance in the street, and once for an attempt at suicide by drowning. as he had attempted his life by hanging the last time he was locked up, and had afterwards seriously injured himself by trying to dash his brains out, he was adjudged insane, and a watch set on him all night. in the morning, when taken before the magistrate, he was violent and abusive, using the most frightfully obscene and profane language. there he was held for examination and sent to bellevue in a "straight-jacket," which was found to be necessary in order to control him. from the padded cell there he was sent here. "upon examination he is found to be suffering from acute mania, alternating with periods of intense melancholia in which he invariably attempts to take his own life. his language when excited exceeds in obscenity anything ever heard. during the intervals of quiet he is constantly practicing the vile habit which has undoubtedly been the cause of his insanity. he has lost all sense of shame and continues to practice before visitors, attendants and physicians. he makes no effort to go to the water-closet, and his clothes and cell are in a filthy and disgusting state. ever since admission he has refused all food, and it has been necessary to feed him with a stomach pump. he is losing flesh and strength every day, and is fast wasting away. "from his relatives who have twice called to see him it was learned that his mental trouble came on very suddenly, although his memory and faculties have been failing for some time past. they say that he complained of sleeplessness, numbness and tingling sensations in the arms and legs, headache, and a peculiar itching of the skin, for months before any distinct symptoms of insanity appeared. they attribute it all to self-abuse, which he has admitted practicing from an early age. "august 28th.--is now paralyzed in both lower limbs. still violent. "sept. 3d.--died this morning about 1 a.m. is so emaciated that he is little more than skin and bones. _rigor mortis_ entirely absent. shortly after death the skin of the whole body changed to a dark chocolate hue." truth is often stranger than fiction. what end more terrible than this! _chapter iv._ spermatorrhoea, or lost manhood. symptoms. spermatorrhoea may be conveniently divided into three stages. first stage--irritation, congestion. in this stage the sexual organs of the brain and nervous system first begin to feel the strain of early abuse, overwork, confinement, sexual excess, or whatever the cause may be in this particular case. the prostate gland (_j_, _b_, _fig. 5_) the seminal vesicles (_l_, _fig. 5_), cowper's duct (_n_, _fig. 5_), the testicles and spermatic cord (_h_, _f_, _k_, _fig. 5_), indeed all the sexual apparatus, including the bulbous sympathetic nerves lying just inside the spine, from the small of the back down to the end of the organ, become filled with dark, thick and stagnated blood. the prostate gland swells and becomes enlarged, the seminal vesicles become weak, baggy and filled with a thin, glairy fluid that oozes out into the urine and urine canal on any little strain, exertion or excitement; especially when, after being in the presence of the opposite sex, weak, feeble erections follow. the testicles become flabby and stringy and no longer make strong, healthy, fecund vital fluid. the constant calls upon them has exhausted them as also the nerves that gave them life, strength and vitality. a heavy dragging +weight+ is often felt in the +groin+, especially after walking or long standing. there is a feeling of +weakness+ and +exhaustion+ in the parts. often +strange sensations+ shoot through the parts, and they are +cold+ and +clammy+ at one time, while +weak+ and +sweating profusely+ at another. {illustration: fig. 5. male organs of generation. [from acton's celebrated work on "the reproductive organs."] _side view of body cut in half lengthways_ showing the course taken by the +vital fluid+ from the +testicle+ (where it is made) to the seminal vesicles (where it is stored). the penis is shown cut off at dotted line _g_. as shown here the +vital fluid+ secreted in the minute tubules of the healthy testicle is gathered into the vas deferens or conveying tube _k_, which passing through the groin dips behind the bladder _a_ and empties into the seminal vesicles or storehouse _b_. from here it is thrown forcibly into the urethra (urine canal) _e_, when needed, and expelled anteriorly by the ejaculatory muscles of the urethra. to reach the urethra the seminal duct _m_ passes directly through the body of the prostate gland _j_-_b_. upon the outside of the testicle, the tube or duct is found twisted and forming a slight bunch, known as the epididymis, _f_, _g_, _h_. it is here that the pressure of a +varicocele+ is first felt--here that it succeeds _in cutting off the free upward flow of vital fluid_ by pressure on these soft branches of the duct, causing +emissions+ by varying and irregular pressure and +impotence+ by constant pressure. when the +varicocele+ becomes very large, it then destroys the delicate tubing or the testicle itself.} the general nervous system also feels the +strain+ and +drain+. +memory and application+, +good judgment+, +decision of character+, and +clear-sightedness+ are not what they were. +headaches+ are not uncommon. +bashfulness and trepidation+, especially in the presence of females, is the rule. the person feels +clumsy+, +embarrassed+ and +ill at ease+. +sleep+ is sometimes poor, there are occasionally +terrible dreams+, sometimes +lascivious ones+ accompanied by +emissions+, +drowsiness+ and a tired, languid feeling in the morning, and a +disinclination to rise+ and go to work are certain signs of +impending+ nervous exhaustion. +the eyes are dull and heavy+, often +black-ringed+ underneath. the pupils of the eyes are unequal--often very large--sometimes one small and one large. the hands tremble and perspire +easily+. the person is +absent-minded, melancholy, prone to brood, and fears the jests+ or ridicule of his companions. the +skin+, especially of the +face+, sometimes becomes +coarse and red, sometimes is pale and pasty+ and covered with +blotches or pimples+. there is sometimes +spasm at the neck of the bladder+, causing +some delay before the urine will flow freely+. often it is passed in a +forked or twisted stream+, plainly showing the presence of either organic or spasmodic stricture. +twitching of the muscles of the eyelid, face and limbs+ is often present, accompanied sometimes by +creeping sensations up the spine+, +flushings of the face+, +chills+ (slight), +dizziness and black spots before the eyes+ on stooping over and occasionally by neuralgic pains in the +head+ and about the heart. if unchecked, or if the baneful habit is still persisted in, the symptoms of the first stage merge rapidly into those of the second stage.--congestion and inflammation. here all the symptoms of the foregoing stage are usually present, only somewhat more intensified. the +congestion+ and +irritation+ are +more decided+, the +weakness+ more marked, the +nervous prostration+ more decided. any, many, or all of the following symptoms may be present, according to the degree of severity or the rapidity of the disease: +emissions+ (day or night), +oozing of a glairy fluid+ under excitement and imaginings, presence of the opposite sex, etc., +partial+ and +imperfect erections, desire to masturbate+, formation of +evil pictures in the mind+, +flushing and chilliness+, +stupidity and tendency to doze or sleep+, +mental hebetude+, +failing memory+, +lack of power of application, energy or concentration+, +restlessness+, +pain and smarting+ in passing urine, +wetting the bed+, +pain in the kidneys+, +headache+, +pimples+ on the face or body, +itching or peculiar sensations+ about the scrotum (bag), thighs, legs, anus, etc., +wasting+ of the +organs+, +stringiness and softening+ of the +testicles+, +dyspepsia+, +sluggish bowels+, +torpid liver+, +failing sight+, +pains in the head+ (front, top and back), chest, limbs, etc., sensation of the +bowels falling out+, +dizziness+ on stooping over or kneeling, +specks+ before the +eyes+, +erotic dreams+, +melancholy+ (developing sometimes into +insanity+), +numbness+ of arms, hands, feet or legs (precursors of +paralysis+), +twitchings+ of the muscles of the eyelids and elsewhere (sometimes ending in +epileptic fits+ or +st. vitus' dance+), +timidity+, +diabetes+ and +deposits+ in the +urine+, +troubled breathing+, +indecision+, +loss of will power+, +bashfulness+, +burning+ of the face, +coldness+ and +clamminess+ of the feet and hands, also of the +scrotum+ (or bag), +palpitation+ of the heart, +early loss of fluid during connection+, +feelings of gloom, despondency, hopelessness+ of a cure, or fear of impending danger or +misfortune+, +tenderness of the scalp+ and +spine+, +dryness+ and +itching of the skin+, +sudden sweating+, +sudden nervous trembling+, +noises+ and +reports+ in the ears and brain, +weight+ on the brain, +weak+ and +flabby muscles+, easily tired after slight exertion, +desire to sleep late+ in the mornings and +failure to be rested+ by sleep, +weakness+ and +torpor+ the day after a nightly emission has occurred, the +oozing of thick white fluid+ from the urethra when +constipated+ or +straining at stool+, +varicocele+, etc., etc. weakness and wasting of the organs. as a rule the +organs waste away+ rapidly or become +curved, twisted, or misshapen+. oftentimes the testicles +dwindle away+ to almost nothing. +settled gloom+ and +melancholy+ pervade the mind, and +hallucinations+, +morbid fear+, +unnatural lust+, +groundless jealousy+ and a +morbid desire for solitude+ show themselves. undoubtedly the list of promotive causes is considerably augmented by maltreatment and the employment of injudicious remedies. we should therefore suggest to all prudent persons the wisdom and importance of consulting _competent authority_ only. self-enervation in the first instance brings about that irritability which evinces itself in +nocturnal discharges+, afterwards in inappreciable but exhaustive +diurnal discharges+, and subsequently in complete debility of the whole generative system. this seminal fluid, such indeed as it is--weak, effete and devoid of all generative power--is undoubtedly the fluid which the organs suffer to escape; and to prevent further its flow, as well as to give a healthy tone to the secretory and retentive vessels ought to form our first care. cough, consumption and general debility and prostration. it is a curious pathological fact, that during the progress of spermatorrhoea, difficulty of breathing, cough, and tightness of the chest, arising in many constitutions from the seminal disorder, have sometimes been actually mistaken for pulmonary consumption. the cough is often distressing, occasionally attended by an expectoration of an offensive kind. there is no doubt that many have been maltreated for consumption when spermatorrhoea was the real malady. that the latter leads to the former is certain enough, but the stages and connections of the respective diseases have been grossly misunderstood by practitioners who have not had sufficient personal acquaintance with the indications of spermatorrhoea. remember that these continued seminal discharges of an involuntary character disorder every function of the animal economy, and it may be added that while spermatorrhoea produces so many ruinous effects peculiar to itself, it aggravates and excites any other disease which may co-exist with it. the +features+ become +pale, emaciated and haggard+. the +eyes are dead, sunken+ and lustreless, and in many cases hold in their depths +a look of wild, unsettled fear that denotes rapidly approaching insanity+. the +bowels+ become +sluggish+, the +appetite capricious+, the +muscles weak+, the +urine pale+ and with +a heavy sediment of semen+ that drains away in it almost constantly. +emissions+ at night becoming more frequent and copious--sometimes bloody--although the fluid secreted by the wasted testicles is +scarcely stronger than water+. +sexual incapacity shows itself.+ +ejaculation+ is either +too quick+ or else very +long delayed+. the +skin+ becomes dry and sallow, the +liver congested and sluggish+. +the heart beats irregularly+, and any sudden sound, movement or fright sets it to beating violently. +shortness of breath+ is complained of. +the brain becomes weaker and more sluggish day by day.+ {illustration: fig. 6. diagrammatic representations of the testicles, ducts, &c. showing where the vital fluid is made and stored and how, and by what means it passes from the +testes+ (where it is made) to the +vesicles+ (where it is stored). the heavy black marks on either side of the urine channel, show the relative position of the ejaculatory muscles.} he generally loses flesh, and feels uneasiness in his stomach which suffers from many of the symptoms accompanying dyspepsia. he is easily startled; the slamming of a door, the firing of a cracker, the falling of a book, a sudden touch, or even speaking to him unexpectedly, will cause him to start. cowardice is a sure consequence of self-abuse and involuntary emissions. the appetite is irregular, often poor, sometimes voracious; the bowels are also variable in their action. the prostatic portion of the urethra is frequently irritable and sometimes is very much +inflamed+; oftentimes there is a +thickening, a sponginess or puffiness+ of the parts immediately involving the ejaculatory ducts. the mucous membrane of the vesiculæ seminales becomes inflamed and thickened. the +testicles+ and the +spermatic cord+ are oftentimes very tender and the seminal fluid is much thinner than natural. such a patient has generally +dark spots under his eyes+, +a sharp nose+, and often +flushes of hectic color+ in his cheeks, particularly when in the presence of company, and there is more or less palpitation of the heart. in the second stage, as in the first, the pollutions are diurnal and nocturnal; the latter are copious and recur frequently. so insensible is the passage of semen that the patient is usually astonished and horrified on waking to find himself and +bedclothes saturated+ with this fluid, which is easily absorbed by the clothes, and rapidly dries up, because it has become thin, watery and effete. in addition to this loss he is subject to one equally great on almost every occasion of +urinating+ and +defecating+. this also takes place without any consciousness on his part, and his only knowledge of the fact is from the alarming weakness he experiences after passing water or going to stool. distraction or absence of mind renders the judgment unfit for any extensive enterprise. the sexual powers are greatly weakened; the overtaxed organs refuse to fulfill their legitimate task; their susceptibility and irritability are so great that the power of retention is lost, and the seminal fluid is discharged prematurely. the generative organs are wasted and inactive, or so weakened as to secrete but a ropy, thin and glairy fluid, having few or none of the characteristics of vital fluid. should the individual suffering this way--and either careless or unfortunate enough to go uncured--have offspring, they will assuredly be puny in body and weakly in mind, and will lead a miserable existence through the neglect and indiscretion of their parent. third stage.--stagnation and wasting. this stage is an aggravation of the two preceding stages combined. the emissions are accompanied and followed by a disagreeable and disgusting sensation of shame and misery. the mind is absorbed as much as can be by the one idea of its wretched situation, and the sufferer is haunted by the thought that his condition and its cause are known to the whole world, and that he is pitied or scorned by every person he meets. he is hypochondriacal, and fearful suggestions of self-destruction ever and anon present themselves. the power of mental concentration is entirely gone and the memory is so feeble that the patient continually forgets what he begins to say. the dimness of vision is continual and so great as to be a material annoyance; the eyes are wandering or fixed upon the ground, seldom venturing to meet the gaze of another. the +ringing in the ears+, +pains in the head and over the eyes+ are almost perpetual and frequently accompanied by partial deafness. +the heart is the seat of pain+, +fluttering+ and +throbbing+ with +violent and long-continued palpitation+, his hands shake, his limbs tremble, his knees are weak, so much so that at times it is almost impossible for him to walk erect. he experiences an insatiable desire for sleep, and yet upon retiring he lies awake for hours, tormented by his troubled reflections, and at last falls into an uneasy slumber, of short duration, disturbed by wretched dreams. +hard, red pimples+ frequently appear on the face, forehead and body, +scaly patches+ round the +ears, eyes, nose and lips+, a +black or bluish semi-circle+ shows itself under the +eyes+, and there is a hollow mark from the corner of the eye in a slanting direction under the cheekbone to the angle of the mouth, which tells its tale. the +skin is livid and clammy+ and the digestion is bad. the patient is tormented with +flatulency+, which he cannot always control and which he justly dreads, as it renders him an object of +disgust+ to all in his presence. the bowels are generally +constipated+, obliging him to strain much at stool, thus aggravating the irritation of the prostate gland vesiculæ seminales and increasing the +seminal losses+. the bladder is irritable and will retain the urine but a short time; the ureters and kidneys are also inflamed and in post-mortem examinations are sometimes found to contain +abscesses+; they are the seat of much pain when pressure is made over the intervertebral spaces of the dorsal and lumbar vertebræ or backbone. the vesiculæ seminales have +been indurated+ and can be felt to be +knotty+ and +hard+. the spinal marrow is very sensitive throughout its whole extent; the cerebellum is the seat of a +dull+ and +heavy pain+, and there is a feeling of pressure upon the brain. cerebral congestion now and then occurs. this stage of the disease is frequently accompanied by +bronchitis+ or a continued +catarrh+, also by disease of the +rectum+ and all the +tissues near the generative organs+. it is hardly necessary to say that the functions of the nervous system are completely deranged, indeed, +nervous twitchings+ of the +eyelids+, +head+ and +limbs+ are the consequences of +spermatorrhoea+. he is finally either hurried to a premature grave by consumption, epilepsy or apoplexy; or insanity, taking the hopeless form of dementia, has removed him from his home to the madhouse. it is safe to say that of all the cases of incurable insanity, a large majority are caused by spermatorrhoea. many, owing to +sheer neglect+ or to +false notions of delicacy+, delay seeking for proper medical relief until they are almost destroyed, and body and mind are nearly in ruins. pitiable the picture of one who has +reached+ this stage of the disease. the organs are still congested but +irritability+ has given away to +torpor+ and +sluggishness+. semen drains away by day and night without provocation, these constant losses dragging the person to the very +brink of the grave+, or +standing him+ within that +melancholy shade+ where +suicide+, +insanity+ or +idiocy+ almost certainly stares him in the face. the organs are wasted almost totally away. all +strength+, +vitality+, +erectile+ and +procreative power+ have left them, and the victim is at last totally +impotent+. of no use to themselves, a curse to their freinds, a disgrace to society, they sink from sight into an early grave or are lost to the world behind asylum doors. it is a sad and terrible picture, but true--too true--to life. the tendency of nature in most disorders is towards cure, but +here it is towards deterioration+. there is no chance here of the evil "wearing itself out" save in madness and death on the one hand, and on the other by the salutary intervention of the most +vigorous+, +cautious+ and +enlightened treatment+, a treatment pursued in the +full light+ of the aids afforded by the great discoveries in physiological science for which the present age is happily distinguished. fortunately for humanity, by the aid of chemistry, as well as medical science, it has been reserved for us to present to the public the +civiale remedies+, which have proved themselves undeniable blessings to thousands, restoring with unerring power those suffering from this hitherto baffling complaint. less severe cases. there are cases where the effects of early abuse are neither so rapid nor so severe. in many instances the persons, to all outward appearances, are strong and robust. they only complain of certain sexual symptoms that trouble them. but let them beware. appearances are very deceitful. let a sudden fit of illness supervene and see how quickly these apparently healthy men succumb and are swept away by it. then, too, in many of these cases, he who to-day may seem strong and healthy, with the exception of his sexual weakness, may suddenly develop most grave nervous symptoms, and in less than a month be beneath the sod or hopelessly insane. such cases have occurred, and one particular instance even as we write presents itself to our mind. poor fellow, he died a raving maniac the very night he was to have been married to one of the most charming young ladies in new haven. and yet he thought he was perfectly healthy. he only learned his true condition too late for human aid. hidden spermatorrhoea. in many cases the seminal ducts have become so weak and relaxed that the fluid passes off involuntarily with the water and is not perceived; also when straining at stool and when you have an erection. to test its escape in the urine, pass off your water in a clear glass pint bottle and let it stand twenty-four hours in a warm place; then hold up the bottle between yourself and the light, and if you discover a sediment of a +white, fleecy+ nature, resembling cotton, in the bottom, you are suffering from +hidden spermatorrhoea+, from which all your present ailments come. where this fluid passes off with the urine, it is just as injurious to the system as full emissions, as it is a continual drain day after day, as well as taking that part of the vitality which goes to supply the brain and nerves. many patients afflicted in this way will notice, shortly after urinating, a +dull pain+ in the forehead, sometimes extending to the +eye-balls+, causing, as well, a feeling of +general debility+, as if they had no strength or will to do anything. if this weakness is allowed to go on unchecked, the mind will become diseased, the eye-sight will be impaired, and the vital forces consumed--thereby causing +partial and complete impotency+. should you desire greater certainty in testing, either send on a sample of your urine, or test it with our powder. the characteristic symptoms of partial impotency are: an imperfect erection, or, if the erection is sufficiently vigorous, it is of too short a duration, and the vital fluid is discharged prematurely. the erector muscles become paralyzed, and the organ remains inactive at the call of the will. the person thus afflicted is greatly embarrassed and mortified at his paralytic condition. that buoyancy of spirit is gone; the snap, vim and vigor that once held sway has departed--and why? because that great motive power (amativeness) that gives the push and go-aheaditiveness is checked, or rather, ceases to act. the curability of spermatorrhoea and impotency. having before us the records of some three thousand cases, grave, simple and severe, that have come under our treatment in this country, as well as the printed copies of the +french hospital reports+, and +civiale's works+, in which he minutely reviews all phases of this complaint, illustrating them with cases from his own practice, we feel justified in assuring our readers that almost any case can be cured, provided +thoroughness+ is the maxim of treatment. the method of profs. +jean civiale+ and +lallemand+, as now perfected and extended by us, and so justly named after +civiale+, stands unrivaled in its +success+ as well as its +simplicity+ and +reasonableness+. to all such as suffer from this harassing complaint we commend, first, a careful reading of the history of this discovery and the eminent medical men and hospitals that endorse it; and, second, a fair trial of these remedies, no matter how +hopeless+, +despondent+ and +despairing+ you may be. (see page 55.) although the advertising and spreading, and the ringing to full perfection of this treatment is really due to us and our physicians, still we feel in duty bound to always keep in view the two great french surgeons who first discovered the method of +intra-urethral medication+. _chapter v._ impotency or lost power. scarcely a day passes that we do not have some patient inquiring +"what is impotence?"+--+"are impotence and spermatorrhoea the same disease?"+ +impotency+ (from the latin words _im_ [not] and _potens_ [to be able] means a condition of the sexual organs in which a man is not able to beget his species. it may be because he has lost his erectile power (and this is how it is most commonly understood), or because he has lost all desire, or lastly, because the +vital fluid+ has become so +weakened+ and +degenerated+ as to have lost its +procreative power+. impotence is most common in men past middle age. it may come on as _the second or third stage of spermatorrhoea_, or it may develop slowly or suddenly _without any symptoms of spermatorrhoea_. it may be accompanied by various +nervous+ and +exhausting+ symptoms, or these may be _wholly absent_. if vital fluid is being lost, and the impotence is due to the weakness thus caused, +nervous exhaustion+ is sure to come sooner or later. impotence and spermatorrhoea may exist together in the same person. many impotent men have no other bad symptoms than simply this failure of the +sexual organs+ to respond when called upon. the trouble in these cases usually lies in the erectile muscles, which are +weakened+ or +paralysed+, and in the +nervous bulbs+ or +ganglia+, that are blunted or exhausted. a perfectly healthy man should be able to beget his species until he is +at least+ 80 years of age. instances of such power at the age of 97 are on record. in these days of +exhaustion+, +early decay+, +excesses+ and +abuse+, most men begin to lose their power at or before 40. this is not right, and can +certainly+ be remedied by proper treatment. impotency, complicated with bladder or prostate disease. in such cases the prostate gland is usually congested, enlarged and irritated, and needs prompt and thorough treatment. (see page 26.) the tone of the nervous system is also lowered, even though it may not be apparent to the individual himself. hence, some good, strong, special, general and sexual tonic, such as +civiale's tonic regulator+ (see page 30) is needed, as is shown by the rapid improvement that follows its use, especially when combined with effective measures for strengthening the +erectile muscles+, invigorating the +sexual nerve ganglia+, and reducing the +prostatic congestion+. some of the most remarkable cases of the thorough cure of impotence and restoration to full sexual vigor that appear in the 53d volume of the french hospital reports, were in men +past 60 years of age+. impotency and wasting of the organs. in many of these cases of impotence (as well as of spermatorrhoea) the organs were either small and puny from birth or had wasted away as the disease progressed--just as a paralyzed arm or leg will waste away from want of use and exercise. such cases, as also those where there is twisting or curving of the organ, need thorough developmental treatment. such organs can be readily developed under proper treatment, just as the breast or a limb may be developed and increased in +size, strength and power+ by the use of the proper treatment. those who have not kept pace with the advances of medical science abroad can scarcely realize how great her strides have been. to-day it is easy (especially in sexual, seminal and urinary diseases) to do what ten years ago the majority of physicians deemed impossible, and to +lallemand+ and +civialè+ belong the highest meed of praise for their unremitting labors in bringing this branch of medical science to its present state of comparative perfection. as an illustration we can cite case after case that has been sent us by physicians in good standing as utterly beyond their skill, and we have returned their patients to them in a few months' time fully and +perfectly restored to sexual strength+ and +vigor+ as they, themselves, were obliged to admit. impotency at any age is curable. do not despair then, reader, if you are thus afflicted and have made several trials and failed to find +health+ and +vigor+. the +civiale remedies+, while not infallible, have certainly done wonders for many so-called "+hopeless cases+," and we doubt not that you, too, can be perfectly restored. submit your conditions and symptoms to our board of consulting physicians, and at least get their opinion upon it. certain it is that these remedies, brought to light by the eminent french savant, professor in the greatest medical college in france, and adopted and endorsed by all the large parisian hospitals and most eminent french physicians, +cannot possibly hurt you+, and +more than likely will cure you+. _chapter vi._ bladder, kidney, prostatic and urinary diseases. congestions, irritation and even inflammation of the urinary organs often occur in men, either alone or as a complication of seminal disease and weakness. the seminal vesicles lie just behind the bladder, while the seminal ducts pass through the body of the +prostate gland+, and open into the urethra (or urine channel) upon its surface (see fig. 5). hence, any inflammation or congestion of this large gland that lies at the root of the organ and neck of the bladder, is almost certain to produce +seminal weakness+, +losses+ and +impotence+. it will be noticed that men past 50 years of age are often forced to rise in the night once or oftener to make water. this, and the delay that sometimes occurs before the stream will start, are usually due to enlarged +prostate gland+--a common condition in men past 50. many and many a man at this age finds his +sexual power declining+ and cannot understand it--+enlarged prostate gland+. as the gland enlarges and becomes stiff and its tissues hardened and brawny, it presses upon and deprives the sexual nerves of power and sometimes paralyzes them, causing total impotency. how useless--worse than useless, even hurtful--are the usual remedies. the prostate gland must be softened, cooled and +robbed+ of its +inflammation+ before anti-impotency remedies can be of the slightest service. and here it is where the great success of the +civiale crayons+ is best shown: +the prostatic crayons melt, run down upon, soothe, quiet and allay the inflammatory and hardened gland+, while the +impotence crayons+ are +re-toning+, +strengthening+ and +re-vitalizing+ the sexual nerves, and strengthening the +erectile+ and +ejaculatory+ muscles. perfect cure and perfect restoration are possible if +proper+ means are +properly+ applied. spermatorrhoea likewise is both caused and complicated by +prostatic+ and +urinary+ inflammation. the sexual nerves are involved and weakened in the same manner as in impotency, while, in addition the hardened substance of the prostate gland keeps the mouths of the seminal ducts open, and the +vital fluid+ runs away into the +urethra+ to be swept out with the urine, without let or hindrance. soon this loss tells, not only upon the brain and nerves and general health, but upon the testicles where this fluid is made. so much is wasted that these two glands, work as they may, cannot supply a sufficiency of good, healthy fluid, and meet the difficulty by making a thin, watery infertile fluid that would flow away even if the mouths of the ducts were healthy. they do this at the cost of a terrible strain upon the whole system--they strain and injure themselves and grow +weak and flabby+ and finally +wasted+--often rupture small vessels in their substance, thus yielding +bloody or black seminal fluid+. the _causes_ of prostatitis or prostatorrhoea are many and diverse. the most prominent are: _gonorrhoea or gleet_, running backward and settling in the gland or neck of the bladder; _stricture_, deep in the canal, causing congestion and inflammation; _masturbation_, by keeping the gland excited, congested and irritated, often causes it; _exposure to cold and wet_, especially sitting on a cold door-step or damp seat; _blows and injuries_ of any kind; _strong injections_, and rough jabbing with steel sounds or rough bougies; _eating hot condiments_, or too free indulgence in alcoholic beverages. various complications. if the inflammation extends to the neck of the +bladder+, he has an attack of +cystitis+. if it goes down along the seminal ducts, it produces +swelled testicle+, +clogged duct+, +chronic enlargement+, +cancer+, +cysts+ and hopeless wasting of the +testicles+. if it extends up the +ureters+, it causes +bright's disease+, +abscess+ of the +kidneys+, or +lumbar fistula+. if it runs forward along the urine canal, it produces so-called +gleet+. if it settles in the +prostate gland+ and becomes chronic, it may cause +abscess of the gland+, +retention of the urine+, and certainly either or both +spermatorrhoea+ or +impotency+. it may thus be seen how exceedingly dangerous a disease this +prostatitis+ is, and how very important it becomes to check it at the earliest possible moment. symptoms.--we have space for but the most prominent and frequent ones: a +dull, aching, dragging+ or +throbbing pain+ between the legs, made worse by +standing, walking, jolting+, &c., and sometimes relieved by hard pressure, or lying down with one's feet higher than their head; pain, burning or smarting on passing urine; +twisting+ of the stream; the oozing of a thin, glairy fluid; +sticking+ together of the lips of the mouth of the urinal canal; +soreness, aching or tenderness+ of one or both +testicles+; dull pain or ache in +the small of the back+ or +buttocks+; +dizziness, sudden fits of exhaustion, convulsions, coma and death+. a +microscopical examination+ of the urine will reveal the nature of the difficulty in a moment. there also will be found evidences of great +nervous wear and tear, and seminal losses+, more or less constant. {illustration: l'ecole de medicine, paris. the most celebrated medical college in france, in which both +civiale+ and +lallemand+ were professors.} gleet and stricture as a cause of spermatorrhoea and impotency. these two diseases are probably less understood than almost any other equally common. it is safe to say that at least one man out of every ten has, has had, or will have one or both. neglected gleet often causes stricture; neglected or improperly treated stricture often causes and keeps up a gleet. another set of statements, equally sweeping and based upon the best of medical evidence, may be made, _i.e._, more cases of gleet and stricture are caused by self-abuse (masturbation, onanism), and sexual excesses than by gonorrhoea--formerly and ignorantly supposed to be about the only cause. furthermore, the main cause of both spermatorrhoea and impotence is stricture (whether caused by self-abuse, gonorrhoea [clap], or any other excess). it was this very important point that +lallemand+ guessed at, and that +civiale+ definitely ascertained to be a fact--proved it by examinations of both living and dead subjects, and demonstrated it before the eyes of every member of the french academy of medicine, the most learned body of medical men in the world. upon this discovery is based the now world-famed +urethral crayon treatment+. it cures--absolutely, thoroughly and +permanently+ cures--because it is based on truth; because the proper remedies are placed upon the very seat and fountain-head of the disease; where quickly and thoroughly it stamps out the fire (inflammation, from the latin _in_, and _flamma_, to burn, to be a-fire) and eradicates the cause, at the same time healing the abrasions, releasing and invigorating the nerves, cleansing and unclogging the ducts, strengthening the erectile muscles--in a word restoring the whole sexual apparatus to its natural tone and strength; not harshly or violently, but gently, kindly, soothingly. indeed it is a heavy debt of gratitude the sufferers from sexual disease and weakness owe to +professor jean civiale+--greatest of all french savants!! were any further proofs necessary, the following facts, the results of recent experimental investigations by such men as acton,{1} black,{2} gross,{3} hammond,{4} bartholow,{5} dupuytren,{6} eckhard,{7} loven,{8} galtz,{9} ollivier,{10} trousseau,{11} erb,{12} otis,{13} wade,{14} sir everard home,{15} liegeois,{16} terrillon,{17} fleischmann,{18} beard,{19} grunfeld,{20} guyon,{21} rosenthal,{22} landon carter gray,{23} and many others, could be cited in its favor. {footnote 1: diseases of the reproductive organs, phila., 1876.} {footnote 2: renal, urinary and reproductive organs, phila., 1872.} {footnote 3: disorders of the male sexual organs, phila., 1883.} {footnote 4: impotence in the male, new york, 1833.} {footnote 5: spermatorrhoea, phila., 1880.} {footnote 6: dictionaire des sciences, tom. viii, paris, 1856.} {footnote 7: beltrage zur anat-uns phys., bd. iv. and bd. vii.} {footnote 8: arbeiten aus der phys. austatt, zu leipsig, 1866.} {footnote 9: pflueger's archlv, bd. viii.} {footnote 10: traite des maladies de la moelle epiniere.} {footnote 11: chu. méd. de l'hotel-dieu de paris.} {footnote 12: ziemssen's cycloped., amer. edit., 1876.} {footnote 13: stricture of the male urethra.} {footnote 14: stricture of the urethra; its complications and effects.} {footnote 15: practical observations, &c., &c.} {footnote 16: medical circular and gazette, 1869, page 381.} {footnote 17: annal. de dermatol, et syphiligraph.} {footnote 18: wiener med. presse, 1878.} {footnote 19: medical record, 1879, page 184.} {footnote 20: endoskopische befunde bei erkrankungen des samenhugels wein, 1880.} {footnote 21: bulletin génerales de thérapie, 1867, page 501.} {footnote 22: wiener klinik, may, 1880.} {footnote 23: archives of medicine, october, 1880, page 191.} stricture the result of masturbation, and the cause of weakness and impotence. in brief it may be stated that +masturbation+ in early life, and sexual excesses at a later period, may, and do produce +congestion+, +inflammation+, +spasm+, +ulceration+, +granulations+, +ulcers+, and both +spasmodic and organic strictures+ of the urethra; that +spermatorrhoea+ and +impotence+ are due to this condition, and that the only really rational treatment is that which directly medicates and heals these parts. this, +civiale's soluble urethral crayons+ do, better and quicker than anything else. prof. gross,{24} for instance, says: "exclusive of these cases, my notes show that 13 out of every 100 cases of stricture are due to onanism;" and otis{25} says: "9 per cent. of all cases are traceable to that practice." reeves, henry smith, goulet, physic and leroy give masturbation as a cause of stricture. black states a like case leading to sexual incapacity, as a result of the stricture. wade says: "in several instances of the kind, +where there had been no sexual intercourse+, the strictures, which were at the bulb, proved more than usually refractory from the extreme morbid sensitiveness of the whole urethral canal." gross goes on to say, that in at least eight out of every ten cases of +spermatorrhoea+ or +impotence+, stricture of the urethra is the cause of the trouble, whether the stricture is due to gonorrhoea, gleet, etc., or to +masturbation or excesses+. {footnote 24 _op cit., page 25._} {footnote 25: _op cit._} the civiale perfected and combined treatment. how senseless, then, to endeavor to cure such conditions with stomach medicines. still, the civiale method does not wholly discard them. they have their place and their purpose, and served it well. it was his practice in many cases to use +nervines+ and +tonics+, as well as +digestives+ and +laxatives+, by the stomach, and with excellent results, for in many of these cases the +digestion was poor+, the +liver torpid+, the +bowels sluggish+ and +constipated+, and +filled with wind+, the +appetite capricious+ and +uneven+. +crayons+ in the urethra could not wholly cure these symptoms, although they stopped the drain that originally caused them. combined with the +tonic-regulator+, the results were prompt and satisfactory. +many patients began to recuperate the moment the inflammation, stricture, ulceration and accompanying losses of vital fluid were stopped, and were soon in robust health again+. in others, however, he found it best, +at the same time that he was healing the diseased+ urethra, to +clear and invigorate the debilitated nerves and weary minds, to tone up the stomach and bowels, set the liver gently working, start the kidneys+ (nearly always congested), +and infuse new life, strength and vigorous impulses into the whole system by means of his tonic-regulator+, which is a pleasant and most efficacious combination of +tonics+, +laxatives+ (not purgatives), and +deobstruents+. +skin, kidneys, lungs, heart, mind, nerves, stomach, liver and bowels, were all set to working right+. and, as a consequence, aided by the urethral remedies, the +losses ceased+, erectile power and +sexual vigor returned, the step became buoyant and elastic, the mind clear, the memory retentive, the eyes clear and bright, the lips and cheeks ruddy with healthful color; the whole system, indeed, renovated, refreshed and re-invigorated.+ _chapter vii._ the duties, responsibilities and failures in and of married life. what more perfect or pleasing picture than that of happy married life. yet how little of it we see! how the newspapers dish up to us in strong words the misery, despair, wretchedness, infidelity and deceit of the divorce court. how it stares at us from the desolate fireside of friend and acquaintance; is hinted at or suppressed by the records of the coroner's office; leers at us from the sumptuous mansion of the affluent; lurks in the humble cottage of the mechanic. how sad the contrast between the home where nestle happiness, love, contentment, offspring; and the abode of suspicion, deceit, infidelity or barrenness. and yet men and women are being married every day, every hour--ay, every minute. men and women incompatible physically, mentally, morally--urged on by lust, cupidity, love; to escape unhappy homes; to hide sad sins--for a thousand reasons, some good, many bad--are constantly marrying. a man selects a wife less carefully than he would a horse; a woman yields herself, her life, her happiness, blindly, unreasoningly, to a man of whom she knows nothing. a man better fitted for the hospital, the infirmary, or the insane asylum, enters the bonds of wedlock with never a thought of the consequences; with never a care as to whether he will wreck his own life and happiness or that of the innocent girl he is deceiving; with never a heed of the ill-starred, diseased, puny or idiotic progeny his act may bring into being, a burden to the community, a curse to himself and a constant reminder of the parent's foolhardiness--ay, even crime! no man who is affected with any form of sexual or venereal disease should for a single instant even think of +marriage+ until every +trace+ of his +weakness+ or +disease+ has disappeared. in these days of medical advance in this special field, there is no excuse for such action. there are few--very few--cases of seminal weakness and impotency that cannot now be cured. of course, here as elsewhere, there are traps and humbugs, quacks and charlatans, false theories and empty moralizing; but there is also truth and knowledge, hope and certainty for such as are sufficiently in earnest to search for them. prof. civiale, by his indomitable perseverance, thorough study and experiment, and final conclusions and discoveries, has placed the means of a perfect restoration to full mental, bodily and sexual vigor within the reach of all, and no man has any right now to enter either blindly or wilfully into so sacred and important a relationship as marriage, and to lower and stultify its ends by blighting the happiness of a fair young wife, exhausting his own vitality in the vain attempt to have offspring, or in having such as shall be a curse to him through life. there are those (let it be hoped they are really honest in their ignorance) who look upon marriage as the only real cure for seminal weaknesses. even if it were a fact that the marital relations did accomplish such a result (and they never do, as bear witness the thousands who are to-day weak, exhausted, ex-sanguinated, unhappy, nerveless, hopeless wrecks, who are cursing the ignorant pretenders who gave this false--this fatal advice); even if such a result was a certainty, what right has any man to besmirch and soil the purity of a happy and innocent maiden for such a purpose? by what law of humanity are woman's hopes and happiness to be hazarded on so fragile a basis, her bark of life to be launched into a pool of such sickening bestiality? such marriages bear and are bearing deadly fruit before our eyes day by day, in infidelity, abandonment, suicide, insanity, crime and prostitution--in disease and misery, even to the third and fourth generation. a special set of pre-marital (before marriage) remedies. no more delicate or wonderful piece of mechanism, no more grandly conceived and wonderfully perfected bit of god's handicraft is to be found than the male and female sexual organs. it is a wonder to those who have made these parts (with their elastic vessels, cavernous sinuses, network of nervous ganglia and fibrillæ, chain of lymphatics, periodical ovulation, timed pubescence, and perfected, co-ordinate functions) a study, that they stand abuse and excess so well; that the fierce blasts of lust and passion that sear and scorch them and well-nigh dry up their fountain springs of vitality and fecundity, do not wholly destroy or hopelessly disarrange their delicate tissues and functions. the first few years of married life, even to a healthy man, are fraught with dangers he knows nothing of. how much more then is the sufferer from a present or even a former seminal weakness in danger. no man, be he ever so healthy, ever so conscious of purity and freedom from abuse, should enter the marital state without preparing for the strain naturally to be expected. as the voice, skin, hair, manner and morals of the youth change at the period of puberty (when the sexual power is first developed--when he first becomes a man), so does the system, mental and moral, change when he enters the bonds of matrimony. if at puberty new diseases are prone to show themselves and old ones to be outgrown, so at marriage a like change must be at least expected, and he who blindly or thoughtlessly hazards a leap in the dark is foolish, or rather foolhardy. a special course of nerve and sexual tonics. especially for the use of young men who have endangered or injured their sexual power by abuse in early years, and for older men who have exhausted themselves by later excesses. +prof. civiale+ was wont (very wisely, we know from actual experience) to prescribe, for a few months before marriage, a +special tonic and strengthening marital course of remedies+, having three distinct ends in view, viz.: (a) the strengthening, toning up and fortifying of the general system, nerves and brain, against the unusual call soon to be made upon them; (b) the strengthening, toning up and fortifying of the sexual nerves, ducts, ganglia, vesicles and testes, against the strain soon to be applied to them, and by this and the preceding means putting the individual in the very best and most favorable condition for the production of strong, healthy, robust and creditable offspring; and (c) the steady and perfect eradication from the system, by every pore and viaduct, of all poisonous, contagious, venereal or other material that might in any way endanger the perfectly normal (healthy and strong) condition of parent or offspring above spoken of. through early abuse, excesses, exposure, neglect, carelessness, imperfect sanitary conditions, wrong methods of living, immoral practices, etc., the blood and liver are liable, even though the skin be clear and the cheeks rosy, to harbor some poisonous humors that might be transmitted to the wife or offspring--poor innocents, too often made to suffer pitiably for the vices or thoughtlessness of the father. every man about to marry owes this cleansing, purification and strengthening of the system general and the system sexual, to his wife, his fellow men and to himself. _chapter viii._ the civiale urethral treatment. for the radical and lasting cure of all diseases of the sexual and urinary organs. its mode of operation, application and advantages. the civialè treatment, by means of quickly melting _medicated_ crayons that are _easily_ and _painlessly_ inserted into the urethra (or urine channel), and thus melt and run down over the irritated, inflamed or strictured parts, the congested prostate gland, and into the orifices of the seminal ducts, is the most successful treatment ever brought forward for these diseases, and it has met with just appreciation, for it has performed radical cures in some of the most serious and distressing cases. some of the advantages may be briefly summed up as follows: 1. it combines local and direct medication of the diseased parts of the urethra, seminal ducts and vesicles, as well as of the generative nerves, by means of urethral crayons, with judicious invigoration of the general digestive, nervous, mental and circulatory systems, by means of stomach remedies, thus attacking the complaint from all sides. 2. the civiale urethral crayons are easily introduced, melt rapidly, medicate the entire canal, never give the slightest pain, never stain the clothing, are rapid, pleasant and cleanly in their action, could be used by a child without danger of injury, are perfectly soft and flexible, and give uniform satisfaction. 3. they need be used but once, or, at the most, twice daily. 4. the good results of the treatment are apparent within the first five or ten days. 5. their price is so reasonable as to place them within the reach of all. 6. they may be used to cure gleet, stricture and prostatitis, when complicating spermatorrhoea or impotence. 7. they never decompose or lose their strength. 8. they are absolutely free from minerals, mercurials, caustics or irritants. 9. they will do precisely what and all that is claimed for them. +civiale's+ knowledge of the anatomy, physiology and pathology of the genito-urinary (sexual and urinary) organs, especially fitted him to study and investigate this subject. it did not take him long to perceive that +lallemand's+ idea that the deep urethra, where the seminal ducts open into it, was the real seat of the disease in both +spermatorrhoea+ and +impotence+, was the true and correct one, and therefore, that any plan of treatment, to be successful, must look to allaying and healing the inflammation, congestion or ulceration of the urethra at the neck of the bladder, and stopping the losses. he reasoned that when the inflammation, irritation and spasm of these parts, and of the seminal ducts, was relieved, the drain of the vital fluid would cease, the dilated mouths of the ducts contract, the vital fluid become thicker and healthier, the organs increase to natural size, and the distressing nervous symptoms, oftentimes dangerous to life or reason, cease to trouble the patient. {illustration: fig. 7. exact size and shape of a +civiale soluble urethral crayon+. (inserted into canal of organ.)} these crayons shown here are small, soft, smooth, perfectly flexible, and dissolve as soon as they are pushed into the urethral canal, thus bringing the remedies directly in contact with the ulcerated and eroded parts, it even running down the ducts into the seminal vesicles themselves. the growth, vigor and future prosperity of every nation depend upon the strength and energy of its young men, and if the places of the robust and healthy are to be filled by effeminate, weakened, nervous and physically drained youths, such as the terrible vice of masturbation is yearly giving us, the results cannot be other than disastrous. the advice, warning and guidance of parents and guardians must be looked to for prevention; the method and remedies of +lallemand+ and +civiale+ for a cure. a guaranteed assurance. there are some persons who, from having used various forms of medicated bougies--having had sounds, catheters and bougies roughly passed upon them by unskillful persons--or merely from an indistinct belief, based upon hearsay or tradition, feel some hesitancy about passing anything into the organ for fear that it may do harm, cause pain, or give rise to stricture. the majority of these timid people have got this idea from hearing it said that stricture and inflammation have often been caused by gonorrhoea (clap) injections, and they therefore have the idea that anything put into the urethra will do harm. there is not the slightest doubt but that strong injections of nitrate of silver, zinc, copper, carbolic acid and the like (of which these injections are usually made) have, in many instances, caused severe inflammation and, eventually, stricture. but that is no reason why proper and absolutely unirritating and bland medicines, such as those in the +civiale crayons+, should do this--and they don't do it. make up a strong injection of zinc, copper, &c., and take a swallow of it. it will burn and pain your mouth and throat, make you hoarse, and for days afterward you will find it painful to swallow. put a troche or lozenge, properly medicated for the purpose, into your mouth, and, instead of causing pain, irritation and difficulty in swallowing, it will relieve these symptoms if they exist, cool and calm the membrane, soothe the irritation, and give tone and strength to the vocal chords. so it is with the civiale soluble crayons. (1.) they are wholly unlike any caustic, metallic or irritating injection. (2.) they do not contain a grain of any mineral, caustic or irritant of any kind. (3.) their ingredients are purely vegetable. (4.) they soothe, calm and allay irritation, and give strength and tone to the mucous membrane, seminal ducts, generative nerves and prostate gland. (5.) they do not cause stricture, but they cure it if it exists. (6.) allow one to dissolve in the mouth, eye, ear, nose, or, in fact anywhere. and they will be found to possess only soothing and healing properties. (7.) they can be inserted into the penis without the slightest trouble, and, melting rapidly and easily, flow down in a bland, soothing, healing and strength and life-giving stream, over the diseased parts. these crayons have been in constant use in paris for the past 25 years, and have never yet, and never will, cause the slightest pain or irritation. patients may rest assured, therefore, that in using these standard french remedies they are absolutely protected, and need not feel the slightest degree of fear. indeed, so well established is this fact that we are willing to pay $1,000 (one thousand dollars) to any person or persons who can cite a single instance when the civiale crayons have ever done the slightest harm. the disease is in the urethra or urine channel, whether it be spermatorrhoe, impotence, prostatitis or gleet, and in order to effect a lasting cure, the remedies must be applied directly to the diseased membrane. in nine cases out of ten, spasmodic stricture already exists and must be cured before the person can get well, and the only way to cure it is to apply the medicines directly to it. it would be as silly for a man with an ulcer on his leg, or a crushed finger, to expect to cure it by taking drugs by the stomach and not applying proper lotions and salves directly to it, as to try to cure seminal disease or weakness without going right to the spot, as can be done by the use of the elegant and harmless crayons of civiale. it was by establishing the fact of local disease and a local remedy clearly and distinctly, upon both physiological and pathological grounds and data, that +lallemand+ and +civiale+ gained such world-wide reputation. and it was the discovery of not only the proper remedies, but an elegant and perfect means of applying them directly to the very seat and root of the disease, that has made the civiale method so justly famous, and has crowned its use with such undoubted success in this country, even in cases where every other plan and agent had failed. a reasonable and honest guarantee. we feel no hesitation whatever in guaranteeing a perfect and permanent cure of spermatorrhoea, impotence, debility, &c., &c., in any case wherein our medical director decides that a cure is possible by any means, if the patient will use reasonable care and diligence in pursuing the treatment, and this is not hard or tiresome; on the contrary, it is easy, simple and direct. we say "in any case wherein our medical director decides that a cure is possible by any means," and we say it with a purpose, for it is our aim and desire, at all times, to be perfectly frank and honest with those who consult us. there are cases that no remedy, be it ever so good, can cure, and when such a one occurs in our practice, we endeavor to show the patient his exact condition, and not (as is so often done) try to persuade him to purchase remedies that we know will do him no good, or, at least, be but an experiment. so, in consulting our physicians, you may be sure of at least an honest opinion, in exact conformity with the facts in your case. _chapter ix._ treatment. the different forms of remedies for different forms of sexual and urinary diseases. these crayons are put up in packages, each of which will last one month. a single package is ordinarily sufficient for mild cases of either spermatorrhoea or impotence. from two to three packages are required for chronic, severe or obstinate cases, or where the person is much debilitated or advanced in years. there are five kinds: no. 1--for spermatorrhoea and chronic debility. no. 2--for impotence or lost power. no. 3--for urinary, kidney, bladder or prostate troubles. no. 4--for gonorrhoea. no. 5--for gleet and stricture (of venereal origin). also: no. 6--a before-marriage tonic course. no. 7--a developing lotion for weak and wasted organs. the following are the main symptoms of each class, with the kind of course they usually call for. if the patient has the symptoms of both classes he is evidently in an advanced stage, and needs both courses. special caution. the reader is warned against confounding the civiale urethral crayons with the american medicated bougies, injections, pastilles, and the like. the disease is really seated in the urethra (urine canal), and can be easily and painlessly medicated, and certainly cured, by means of the civiale crayons. {illustration: fig. 8. exact size and shape of a +civiale soluble urethral crayon+. (inserted into canal of organ).} civiale's urethral crayons. _course no. 1._ _for spermatorrhoea, nervous debility and masturbation._ symptoms: emissions (day or night), oozing of a glairy fluid under excitement and imaginings, presence of the opposite sex, etc., partial and imperfect erections, desire to masturbate, formation of evil pictures in the mind, flushing and chilliness, stupidity and tendency to doze or sleep, mental hebetude, failing memory, lack of power of application, energy or concentration, restlessness, pain and smarting in passing urine, wetting the bed, pain in the kidneys, headache, pimples on the face or body, itching or peculiar sensations about the scrotum (bag), thighs, legs, anus, etc., wasting of the organs, stringiness and softening of the testicles, dyspepsia, sluggish bowels, torpid liver, failing sight, pains in the head (front, top and back), chest, limbs, etc., sensation of the bowels falling out, dizziness on stooping over or kneeling, specks before the eyes, erotic dreams, melancholy (developing sometimes into insanity), numbness of arms, hands, feet or legs (precursors of paralysis), twitchings of the muscles of the eyelids and elsewhere (sometimes ending in epileptic fits or st. vitus' dance), timidity, diabetes and deposits in the urine, troubled breathing, indecision, loss of will power, bashfulness, burning of the face, coldness and clamminess of the feet and hands, also of the scrotum (or bag), palpitation of the heart, early loss of fluid during connection. feelings of gloom, despondency, hopelessness of a cure, or fear of impending danger or misfortune, tenderness of the scalp and spine, dryness and itching of the skin, sudden sweating, sudden nervous trembling, noises and reports in the ears and brain, weight on the brain, weak and flabby muscles, easily tired after slight exertion, desire to sleep late in the mornings, and failure to be rested by sleep, weakness and torpor the day after a nightly emission has occurred, the oozing of a thick white fluid from the urethra when constipated or straining at stool, varicocele, etc., etc. $5 per box. full course of 3 boxes, for obstinate and chronic cases, $12. special note.--it is a rare thing for any one patient to have all these symptoms, and some may have some not here mentioned, but it is important to know just which they do have. persons desiring treatment will, therefore, please tear out the proper page, and having crossed out such symptoms as they do not have, return it to us for the consideration of our physician. to save delay, it is best in ordinarily severe cases to send the price of one course, and leave the selection to our physician's discretion. when less is needed than what is paid for, the balance due the patient will be returned to him with the necessary medicine. civiale's urethral crayons. _course no. 2._ _for impotence, failing or lost strength and vigor of the generative organs, sterility, etc., etc._ symptoms.--(impotence may arise without any previous symptoms of spermatorrhoea, and solely as the result of abuse, overwork, confinement, blows, falls, fever, etc., but it is often the direct result of spermatorrhoea, forming the third stage of that disorder). loss of sexual desire or power, imperfect or rapidly failing erections, too early emissions during connection (denoting irritability), delayed emissions (denoting blunting of sensation), failure to consummate marital duties, oozing of vital fluid, unnatural desire, but not sufficient power, nervous exhaustion, etc., wasting of the organs, etc., etc., etc. 1 box, for simple or recent cases, $6. full course of 3 boxes, for severe or chronic cases, men past middle age, feeble subjects, etc., etc., $15. civiale's urethral crayons. _course no. 3._ _for kidney, bladder, prostatic and other urinary difficulties._ symptoms.--frequent urination, rising at night to urinate, pain or scalding in passing water, dribbling of urine after completing the act, pain and aching in the perineum, mucous oozing from prostatitis, gravel, brick-dust deposit, and other sediments, stone in the bladder, diabetes, irritation and enlargement of the prostate gland, congestion and inflammation of the kidneys, bloody urination, etc., etc. (many cases of seminal disease are due to or made worse by urinary trouble, especially prostatic disease, existing at the same time. hence, when such is the case, it is important to treat the urinary as well as the seminal disease in order to be certain to permanently and thoroughly cure both. the action of the civialè urethral crayons in these cases is prompt and satisfactory. indeed, this is the only known means of reaching and curing prostatic affections. 1 box, $5. 2 boxes, $9. full course, 3 boxes, $12. civiale's urethral crayons. _course no. 4._ _for gonorrhoea._ one box a certain cure. prompt, painless, and leaves no stricture. constantly used in _l'hopital du midi_ and _l'hopital lourcine_, the two great venereal disease hospitals of paris--the one for males, the other for females--as well as in the others. $5 per box. civiale's urethral crayons. _course no. 5._ _for gleet and stricture (when the result of venereal disease)._ the formula used in preparing these urethral crayons is one of the finest the great +civiale+ conceived. repeated trials and modifications finally ended in an almost perfect remedy. gleet or obstinate milky discharge or oozing of from two to twelve years' standing yielded painlessly and permanently to their use. stricture, too, even when organic, if not so far advanced as to interfere seriously with urination, yielded kindly to this treatment, being gradually dissolved and absorbed until, at last, the canal was left free and clear, and all the symptoms of urinary irritation had disappeared. testimony from dr. lorey, interne at the _hopital du midi_, will give some idea of the popularity of this form of treatment in paris. with them he cured eighty consecutive cases of chronic gleet. $5 per box. 2 boxes, $8. 3 boxes, $10. _course no. 6._ _civiale's pre-marital tonic course._ this is the course we have already adverted to under the head of marriage, and we believe that enough was there said to make plain both its object and application. this, unlike the preceding courses, is, so to speak, a mixed one, consisting of a combination of (1) tonics and sexual nervines to be taken by the mouth; (2) a specially prepared course of crayons (tonic, anti-spasmodic and detergent), to be used in the urethra, and (3) a lotion or application which, by being gently applied to the parts once a day with a sponge, soft cloth or the hand, adds greatly to the strength and erectile power, as well as the tone, development and vigor of the testicles. these are put up under the strict personal supervision of our head chemist, mr. du bell, and are exactly in accordance with the formlæ and instructions of the late prof. civiale. price per set, $25. this course may be used alone or in connection with any of the other courses. no man (or woman either) could be injured by it, and many weak and impotent sufferers will find in its use health, strength and bodily and mental vigor. in some instances the tonic regulator and lotion part of this course are advisable without the crayons, and hence we quote their price separately. tonic regulator, $10. lotio fortior, $5. {illustration: dr. lorey, interne at l'hopital du midi, paris.} _civiale's tonic-regulator._ civialé's tonic-regulator is all that its name indicates and much more besides. it is composed of tonics, nervines, bitters, laxatives, nerve foods, cholagogues (acting on the liver), diuretics and diaphoretics (remedies acting on the kidneys and skin and thereby increasing their secretions and cleansing and purifying the blood), digestives, etc., etc., etc. it will thus be seen that a more complete and uniform general tonic-regulator could not be devised, for it acts upon the brain, mind, nervous system, digestive organs, spleen and pancreas, the bowels (keeping them in a healthy and regular manner only--not purging or weakening), upon the heart, lungs, skin, blood and kidneys. so skillfully is the combination made that no one ingredient interferes with the other, but on the contrary each seems to vie with the other in building up and renovating a shattered, weakened and disordered system. bilious, soggy, sleepy men, with aching heads, foul breaths, bad tasting mouths on rising, clogged secretions, sense of inability to exertion, furred or yellow tongues, and the like, absolutely need the tonic-regulator, and not blue mass or anti-bilious pills. weak, nervous, spiritless, exhausted, debilitated, pale, ambitionless, easily tired, prone to become short of breath and have pain in side on running, who find it hard to get sleep, are restless, brood over their troubles, real or imaginary, start at loud noises or sudden jars, perspire too easily, flush too readily, are not rested by sleep, and who are neuralgic, certainly need the tonic-regulator, and will find it rapid in action and very pleasant in its results. health, strength, vigor, rosy cheeks, elastic step, cheery voice, zest and happiness, hope and ambition, hardy flesh and good ruddy blood, made by a perfect digestion of strong foods, will certainly follow, and as they come, all the old myths and phantoms, the melancholy, dread and brooding will disappear like unhealthy nightly vapors before the sun. men, young or old, who have let business cares and worries, mental trouble, family jars, overwork and constant brain wear and tear, confinement, or long hours in unhealthy offices, lack of exercise, too rapid bolting of food, and the like, ruin their previously good constitutions; or those who, through youthful abuses committed in ignorance and repented so bitterly, or later excesses from unbridled passions, have drained their vitality, established a condition of sexual atony (_a_, without; _tonos_, tone or strength or vigor), or done serious harm to their nervous systems, brains or minds, will find the very vital restorative and special generative tonic they need the most in civiale's tonic-regulator. it does not do one thing; it does many. while it throws open one door to let health, strength and vigor enter, it opens others for poisonous secretions, blood impurities and waste products to escape. it not only makes the blood purer and richer, but it strengthens the organ (the heart) that pumps it everywhere throughout the system. it not only builds up and rejuvenates the general system, but it brings vernal strength and power to the weakened and debilitated organs. it was here that civiale made common sense and medical science join hands. (a) with his medicated urethral crayons he healed and strengthened the organs of generation by direct local application. (b) while with the tonic-regulator he sent his powerful yet harmless emissaries (tonics, digestives, cholagogues, nervines and nerve foods, laxatives, diuretics, etc., etc.) into the system, by the stomach, with the food, thus guaranteeing their entrance into the blood which carried them to every nerve fibre and tissue and attacked the disease on every side. this is why this double treatment, intelligently carried out, cannot fail to rebuild the most debilitated and exhausted constitution and check the most serious drains and losses. _course no. 7._ _developmental lotion._ as has already been stated, in some persons seminal disease and losses of vital fluid lead to a wasting away, shrinking or dwindling of the generative organs. it exists in others from birth, and is in no way connected with seminal disease. whichever be the case, it is nevertheless true that a wasted or deformed part of the body, be it arm, leg or what not, cannot in this condition be expected to perform its function in a natural, vigorous and healthy manner. there is a great deal of ignorance upon this subject--ignorance that interferes greatly with the full and proper treatment of cases of seminal weakness. many sufferers from seminal disease and impotence seem to think that just as soon as the losses or emissions are stopped, or erectile power returns, the parts will begin to grow and develop, and soon be restored to natural size and proportions. this is not so. in some few instances it does occur, but in the large majority it does not. it is therefore necessary in these cases to take special measures to fully and perfectly develop the defective parts, and it can only be done by giving a new start to growth and circulation to the nervous and nutritive centres of these parts. a breast, a limb, a hand, indeed any part of the human body, especially in persons not past fifty years of age, can be enlarged and developed, and so, too, can the sexual organs. _the developmental lotion_ that has been in use for many years, is a local application (viz., applied directly to the organs), and acts by stimulating growth, circulation and nutrition. it is cleanly, easily applied, rapid and satisfactory in its results, and we guarantee that it will give uniform satisfaction in all cases where our board of consulting physicians recommend the case as favorable for it. price of the developmental lotion, { strongest, $15. { less strong, 10. it is put up in quantity sufficient to accomplish a full and perfect development. should more than is at first sent be needed to complete the development, we will furnish it at half-price. full instructions accompany it. it should be used in connection with the remedies for impotency or spermatorrhoea in every case where the organs are wasted. its effects in such cases are wonderful and the results very gratifying. civiale remedial agency, 174 fulton street, new york. _chapter x._ reorganized consulting staff. {transcriber's note: the names "g. g. mortimer" and "s. sorensen" are printed above the text in a different typeface. the original names, crossed out by hand, were "millard f. (or e.) flowers" (last four letters unclear) and "george h. du bell" (partially illegible). the _curriculum vitae_ associated with each name is unchanged.} g. g. mortimer, a.m., m.d., ph.d., chief of staff. richard lee, a.m., m.d., of the universities of oxford, london and melbourne, master of arts, member of the royal college of surgeons, of england; late consulting surgeon to the beechworth hospital and professor of botany and chemistry at the tasmanian institute; honorary member of the victoria medical society and fellow of the royal society of tasmania and of the anthropological and physical societies of london; university medalist, etc., etc. chief of personal consultation. henry h. kane, a.m., m.d., late medical superintendent of the de quincey home, interne at the roosevelt, new york, bellevue, charity and lenox hospitals; physician to the north-eastern and good samaritan dispensaries; lecturer at the women's medical college, on urinary and renal diseases, etc., etc., etc. s. sorensen, a.m., ph.d., manufacturing, analytical and experimental chemist, licentiate of the school of pharmacy of heidelberg and berlin, germany. (this accomplished chemist has full charge of all analyses of urine, the preparation of our various formulæ, the purchase and importation of all drugs, etc., etc.) louis b. jones, business and general manager. with such a complete and accomplished staff, it will be seen that the case of every person consulting us will receive the most careful and combined opinion, judgment and decision of all these men. we have the greatest and most generally successful remedies known, and by thoroughly understanding every detail of the cases submitted to us, and carefully applying these remedies, we seldom or never fail to perform a pleasant, absolute and lasting cure. personal consultation. patients desiring a consultation with our chief of staff will find our offices open and physicians in attendance from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., daily, and from 9 to 12 sundays. how to send money. money should be sent by post office order, postal note, check, draft or express order. checks, etc., may be made payable either to the civialè remedial agency, or, if secresy is desired, to our superintendent, mr. l. b. jones. please state in your letter to whom the order (when such is sent) is made payable, in order to avoid confusion in indorsing them for banking. how to send urine. in sending urine, bear in mind the following: never send by mail--always by express--charges prepaid. send morning urine. write your name on a slip of paper and paste it on the bottle. pack the bottle securely in a box filled with sawdust or the like. _chapter xi._ varicocele. varicose testicle, or varicocele. a very common disease amongst men and boys, and one that has a very serious effect in weakening the sexual powers, causing emissions and losses, and preventing a thorough and permanent cure of these complaints. varicocele (from the greek, pronounced var-i-ko-seal, accent on either var or seal) is a condition of bagging, bunching, bulging or twisting of the veins in the scrotum (bag or testicle sac.) it is most commonly found on the left side of the bag, but sometimes is to be seen on both sides. usually the scrotum is bulged out on the side and sometimes hangs very low, so long and twisted are the veins. to the touch the veins feel like a bunch of angle-worms. in some cases they can be seen knotted and swollen through the thin skin of the bag. {illustration: fig. 9. a varicocele. showing how the veins are affected and how they press upon the nerve, duct and artery, and waste the testicle. 1. spermatic artery. 2, 3. spermatic veins. 4. spermatic nerve. 5. vas deferens or seminal duct. 6. testicle. 7. converging tubes. 8. wormy bunch of veins.} {illustration: fig. 10. varicocele, and instrument in place. on the right side, the drawing of the instrument is cut away, also the layers of skin and muscle, showing the dilated and knotty veins in the groin, before they reach the scrotum, also the bell pad in dotted outline, showing how and where the pressure is properly exerted. when the veins in the groin are thus affected, we have what is known as +varicocele of the cord+. on the left side, the cradle and compressor is shown in place.} a hidden danger. in cases of varicocele of the cord (one of the most dangerous of all forms), the veins in the bag are not affected, the trouble being mostly in the groin (in the canal through which the veins run), where the swollen and knotted veins press upon and seriously injure the cord, preventing the free flow of vital fluid, and thereby causing impotence, wasting of the testicles, etc. a dull, heavy, aching or dragging pain in the groin, back or legs, is about the only symptom. the great danger of this form of varicocele lies in the fact that thousands of young men are going about to-day not knowing that they have the disease; not knowing that a persistent evil is nestling in this little canal, gnawing at their vitals, and slowly but surely undermining and destroying their sexual vigor and manhood. we know this to be so because we are daily being consulted by men of different ages, who, until our physician, in the course of the examination, showed it to them, _never suspected its existence_. many of these men had been "doctoring" for years for seminal weakness and the like, with varying success, never being quite cured, or, if cured, soon relapsing--all because a varicocele of the cord existed unsuspected and therefore untreated. {illustration: fig. 11. complete instrument. showing mobility at points so that it will fit any individual.} {illustration: fig. 12. side view. showing bell spring, pad and pubic shield.} causes.--the causes of this condition of the veins of the bag are very numerous. some of the most important are masturbation or excess, causing weakening of all the parts, the veins included; falls, blows, strains, excessive horseback and bicycle riding, running, jumping, mumps going to the testicles, gonorrhoeal inflammation settling there, kick in the groin, wearing of improper trusses, etc., etc. masturbation is one of the most common of all the causes. in many instances, even if it does not _directly_ cause the complaint, it weakens the parts, so that blows, strains, etc., that in others would not produce any particular trouble, readily cause it in these persons. symptoms.--the symptoms are not many unless it has caused seminal weakness and lost vitality, in which case all the symptoms of these complaints may really be attributed to the varicocele. pains in the groin, limbs and back; a sense of weight or dragging; neuralgia of the testicles, fetid perspiration; itching and peculiar sensations in the skin of the bag; chafing in warm weather; easy tiring under rapid walking or running, are not uncommon. in some very bad cases, however, none of these symptoms, or only a few, are present. why, we cannot say. prognosis.--in itself this disease is not dangerous. it is from the fact that the veins may go on bulging until an enormous swelling is produced (we have seen cases where the bag hung as low as the knee and was nearly as large around as a man's arm); that the testicles may be entirely wasted away, and that it may cause spermatorrhoea, lost manhood, total impotence, &c., &c., constitute its greatest gravity. treatment.--cutting and tying operations are exceedingly dangerous, having frequently caused death; and even if successful, the testicles, having their blood supply thus entirely cut off, waste away, and impotence certainly results. prof. chevillot, the great french surgeon, was assassinated by a patient, in whose case he tied the veins on both sides for a double varicocele. becoming totally impotent, on the very eve of his marriage with a beautiful and accomplished young lady, this man became desperate and attempted the surgeon's life. to effect a cure, the following obstacles must be overcome: _weakness and bulging of the walls of the veins._ _weakness and relaxation of the dartos muscle of the scrotum._ _over-clogging and stagnation of blood in the veins._ _healing and strengthening of the ruptured and relaxed valves of the veins._ _relief of the pressure and weight of the column of blood from above._ suspensory bandages are good, because they act as supports. astringent and tonic washes are good, because they strengthen the weakened veins and muscles and heal the relaxed valves. proper trusses are good, because they break the great pressure of the blood from above, and act as do the valves in the veins in the groin in health. also, because they act directly on the disease in cases of varicocele of the cord. but neither one alone will cure a really serious case of varicocele. combine them, however, properly and scientifically, so that you have the practical outcome of these three sound principles of cure in the one appliance, and any case, no matter how severe or how old, can be permanently and painlessly cured. such a perfect and practical combination is to be found in the elastic self-adjusting and adjustable cradle and compressor, which has succeeded in curing many very serious and (apparently) hopeless cases. patented and thoroughly protected from all infringements and imitations (and many would-be ones, seeing our success and recognizing the merits of the cradle-compressor, have lately sprung up), both in this country and europe, there is nothing like it. it combines all the good points of all previous instruments, and being easy to wear, rapid and pleasing in its results, and certain in its effects, is the only rational means for radically curing this disease. briefly: it consists of a very light and elastic triangle of tempered steel bands, that rests on the front of the abdomen, and is held in place by a soft silk-elastic waist-band. in each of the slanting arms of the triangle are small holes that admit the central pivot of a bell-pad, having a central spring, and so adjusted that it adapts itself to every movement of the body without being misplaced. by means of a thumb-screw and the perforations, it (the spring bell-pad) can be set at any point in the groin, and can be changed from day to day and hour to hour. {illustration: fig. 13. instrument on body. _a. a._ transverse steel band; _b. b._ elastic waist belt; _c. d._ metallic arms, perforated to permit change of pad pressure; _e._ pubic shield to which elastic cradle is attached; _f._ bell spring pad.} by means of pivotal joints at the angles, the appliance can be made to fit any one perfectly; moreover, by means of the metallic shoulder below, the arms can be thrown into any lateral variation of the groin line. we thus are able to obtain all the marked benefits of a truss without any of its drawbacks; and that special disadvantage, steady and wearisome pressure at one point, is wholly obviated. the whole appliance is held in place below by means of perineal tubular rubber bands that connect with the waist-belt behind. attached to the metallic shoulder below is the elastic, glove-fitting, self-adjusting testicle-cradle, by means of which not only are the testicles perfectly supported and rested, but by the sheet-rubber lining and the elastic tie bands, a constant, easy and perfectly painless elastic pressure is kept up on the dilated and sagging veins, which are thereby emptied of their unhealthy and stagnated blood and allowed to regain their tone, strength and contractility. by means of the elastic bands it is easy to regulate the amount of pressure, thereby constantly adapting it to the improvement that is steadily taking place. the compression is so uniform, yet so elastic, that it is absolutely painless, and no motion of the body, however violent, can disarrange it. this, and the fact that the blood can enter and leave the testicle with perfect freedom, constitute some of its most marked advantages over the truss. moreover, the wearer always feels a sense of rest and relief while wearing the elastic cradle-compressor, and from the first day the symptoms of weakness and impotence improve. being made in different sizes and shapes, and of the most durable yet softest silk, and powerful yet yielding elastic, they will wear perfectly until long after the varicocele has entirely disappeared. {transcriber's note: the left edge of this page was partially illegible. words and letters in braces { } are conjectural; all came at the beginning of a line.} {illustration: fig. 14. elastic testicle cradle, {deta}ched from compressor, and showing its appearance {when} worn singly. it is lined inside with sheet rubber, and {the t}ie cords are of the very best french elastic. the bag {cover} is of the finest knit silk.} while it compresses the varicocele, forces out the blood, and allows the veins a chance to regain their strength and proper size again, it simply supports and keeps from injury the testicle, which at once begins to grow larger. in addition to their curative value in varicocele, they are now being extensively used by the medical profession for the relief of the pain and subduing of the inflammation of "swelled testicle;" also in hydrocele and hæmatocele. being applied over the whole scrotum, they will cure a double as readily as a single varicocele. in certain recent or simple cases the elastic testicle-cradle alone will effect a perfect cure. if the case is severe or of long standing, if it involves the cord, or if the sexual organs are affected, the complete instrument should be worn. it is beautifully made and finished, and is strong and durable, yet light and easily worn. price. {comp}lete instrument (all attachments) $15.00 {extra} central-spring bell-pad, in case of double varicocele 3.00 {elast}ic glove-fitting testicle-sac and cradle (separate) 6.00 {sold ne}atly boxed, and with full and explicit directions for applying; as also a {____} prescription for a tonic, healing and astringent lotion, to be used {in conju}nction with it. in ordering, please state girth around waist, circumference of scrotum, and length of same from root of penis to about the middle of the bottom of the bag. the reason why varicocele has until within the past ten or fifteen years received so little attention is owing to the fact that up to that time this bagging or bulging of the spermatic veins was looked upon as merely a local affection. no one seemed to be aware of the fact that its effect in nine cases out of ten was to produce seminal weakness and loss of sexual power, etc. to-day no fact is so well recognized in medicine, although probably not so well known outside of the profession. then, too, until very recently, physicians either carelessly dismissed a patient with varicocele with the advice to "get a suspensory bandage and wear it; the thing don't amount to anything;" or else, when the patient became persistent in his demands for a cure, advised him that the dangerous cutting or tying operations were the only means of relief. but this is all changed now. physicians have come to know something about the disease, and means for both relief and cure are now speedy and certain, and in no sense painful or dangerous. it is for the purpose of stating in as plain and concise a manner as possible all the more important facts relating to this disease, and pointing out to such as are troubled with it, or have friends so troubled, not only the proper manner of treatment, but also the danger of delay, that this little treatise has been compiled. many a man well built and apparently healthy, yet totally bereft of manhood--in a word impotent--can trace his deplorable condition to a neglected varicocele. nor are these the only ones who need information upon the subject. thousands of young men are to-day being treated for seminal troubles who will never be cured, because they are entirely ignorant of the existence of a varicocele of the cord, that most insidious and dangerous of all forms of varicocele, or, if aware of it, do not understand the terrible influence it has on their sexual powers, and how great and persistent a stumbling-block it will be in the way of all treatment. it is for the benefit of all such that this little essay is intended. for the sake of clearness we shall consider the subject under the heads of definition, frequency, causes, dangers, influence on sexual diseases, wasting of the organs, symptoms and treatment. consultation with our physicians, by letter or in person, free, references and testimonials promptly and cheerfully furnished. civiale remedial agency, 174 fulton street, new york. _chapter xii._ the reliability of the civiale remedies, and the business standing and probity of our agency. in previous editions of this work, we made no attempt whatever to point out to our readers either our reputation as a medical business firm, or proofs of the efficacy or reliability of the remedies we represent and prescribe, supposing that any person at all familiar with the names and reputation of professors lallemand and civiale, and the honors bestowed upon the latter by the french government, would need no such references, etc. we find, however, that there are but few men in this country who are as familiar as they should be with the nature and extent of lallemand's and civiale's medical labors, or indeed with french medical history at all. we, therefore, for the benefit of such, have here transcribed extracts from that most reliable work, _appleton's cyclopedia_ (copies of which may be found in many families, and every town and city library), from which may be learned the professional standing and reputation of these great men. furthermore: of late years there have sprung up in various parts of the country, physicians and firms who have made it a business to prey upon foolish young men, who took everything that was sent to them for gospel. there are many young men (and old men, too) who do not know us, and for their benefit we have drawn up here and submitted such proofs of our probity, fair dealing and medical capacity, as well as of the reliability of the civiale remedies, as will, we believe, carry conviction of our truthfulness and probity to any honest man's mind. we have always been averse to parading before the eyes of the careless, scoffing world the sufferings of the victims of abuse or excess, even when by doing so we might profit largely by such a course. we have a large number of letters from persons who have been cured by this treatment constantly on file in our office, and any sufferer really in earnest will be gladly given permission to examine them, should he so desire. but we certainly shall not parade such letters, written to us in the strictest confidence and secrecy, to every reader of a treatise of this kind, especially when we give an abundance of equally as good proof of another kind. _if we have always dealt fairly and with professional honor and ability with our corresponding and office patients in the past, we certainly shall continue to do so in the future._ first, let us call your attention to two very recent and very flattering extracts from editorial articles that appeared in newspapers of known standing and reputation in the city of new york, both of which articles were wholly unsolicited by us, being the spontaneous testimony of wholly disinterested journals. testimonials and endorsements from the medical and lay press of this country and france. a notable medical institution. _from the new york tribune and farmer, nov. 22, 1884._ it is a well-recognized fact by writers upon longevity that the men of the present day, both old and young, are less manly and vigorous, less able to resist the attacks of acute disease, and not only less likely to produce healthy and vigorous offspring, but in the majority of instances producing a fewer number as well as a less vigorous and robust progeny. the ratio of births to deaths has fallen off some 12 per cent. in births in the past fifteen years. this fact, coupled with the equally startling consideration that the mortality of infants has increased about 11 per cent. in the past ten years, must needs fill the mind of a lover of his kind with dismay and alarm. although invested and thickly hedged about by ideas of false modesty and pseudo-propriety, in reality the whole fabric of national and individual prosperity, health, vigor and enjoyment, as well as the very important perpetuation of our species, depend upon perfectly strong, healthy and vigorous procreative powers. as an oak cannot grow from a flower seed, neither can weak, puny and debilitated parents give birth to strong, vigorous and mentally sound and active progeny. the subject of procreative pathology deserves more careful and extended study and observation than the majority of our physicians have heretofore been inclined to give it. most of them have let the more numerous and oftentimes the more trivial cases daily coming under their notice crowd this most serious matter from sight, and when applied to for advice or treatment by sufferers from these disorders or debilities, have either pooh-poohed it or have given some simple (or useless) placebo, believing the trouble to be more imaginary than real. is it any wonder, then, that such patients have walked blindfold into the arms of quacks and charlatans who profess the most tender interest in even their minutest symptoms? we have been led to make the foregoing remarks by what we have just finished reading in a very interesting and able work upon this subject recently issued from the press of the civialè remedial agency, of 174 fulton street, this city. the subject matter of this book cannot fail to interest every man, young or old, and must prove of special interest to men just married, and to that large class of middle-aged men who find to their surprise and chagrin that while their bodily health is apparently excellent, their procreative powers have prematurely declined. the fact of the establishment in this city of an original institution under reputable business management, each department of which is presided over by a physician of special skill and qualifications, is something of which every citizen should feel proud. and to judge by the class of patients who may be found in their elegant consulting-rooms, and the very large amount of express and mail matter they are constantly receiving, we believe that they are appreciated. with our magnificent hospitals, second to none in the world, our large medical colleges and dispensaries, and the establishment of so large and excellent an institution as the civialè agency, the main offices being now transferred from paris to this city, new york may justly claim to be the great medical centre of the united states, and sooner or later of the world. we maintain now, as we have always maintained, that the surest and best way to drive quacks and humbugs from any branch of medicine, is to have some of our very ablest and most honorable physicians make such a branch their specialty, and such is the course now being pursued by the civialè agency. the very fact that it takes its name from and is engaged in manufacturing and prescribing the remedies of france's most illustrious specialist, prof. jean civialè, is by itself evidence enough of its medical value and professional integrity. our feelings upon these matters, _i.e._, the great importance of their bearing upon both individual and national vigor and prosperity, the necessity for driving from this field of practice those quacks and humbugs who entrap the foolish and ignorant, those cheap and worthless remedies that flood the drug market--our feelings upon these matters are, we repeat, very strong; and hence, when we find an institution for the treatment of these diseases conducted upon the highest moral, medical and business principles by men of undoubted medical and business standing and integrity, we feel that we cannot endorse them too heartily. the _tribune and farmer_, of new york city, in its current issue of july 26th, 1884, says "an exception to the rule." "the propriety of devoting editorial space to the subject-matter of any medical advertisement that may appear in our columns may be doubted by some, and indeed, were it not for our personal knowledge of the skill and integrity of the medical director of the civialè remedial agency of new york (whose advertisements will be found elsewhere in this issue), we should deem ourselves more than guilty were we to utter a word of endorsement as to the efficacy of their system of treating that serious class of diseases in men which has been generically termed nervous debility, and which for so many years has been, and is at present, made the stalking-horse for impudent swindlers, quacks and impostors to palm off worthless and often injurious compounds on their suffering fellow-men. "let it be understood, then, that we know whereof we speak, and that our object is simply to furnish those who are afflicted with such reliable information as will enable them to determine the true character of their disease, and the best means to be adopted for a cure. "the method of treating diseases of the genito-urinary organs by means of the urethral canal is in the first place no new-fangled experiment, but is identical with the system which has been employed for the past fifteen years in the leading hospitals of france, and more especially in paris, as the standard treatment, and one that gives uniform satisfaction; and in the history of medical science there are perhaps no two physicians who have done more for the alleviation of human suffering and the cure of sexual and seminal diseases than those eminent french surgeons, prof. jean civialè and prof. claude lallemand, to whose joint studies and endeavors this system owes its origin. "we believe, in fact, that this theory and practice of medicine is an advance in the right direction, and we predicted, from its first introduction in the united states some time ago, that the people would readily see its truth and accept the wonderful benefits of its practice. and the result has certainly borne out our prediction, for thousands of sufferers from such ills as impotence, spermatorrhoea, kidney, liver and urinary troubles have been cured by these remedies." {illustration: one view of the hospital of the hotel dieu, paris. this celebrated hospital of paris, the oldest as well as the largest and finest in the city, covers 22,000 square metres of land, has over 1,000 beds, and a corps of over 100 physicians on its medical and surgical staff. it is situated on the _ile de la cité_, near the famous church of notre dame. it was here that both lallemand and civialè studied under the celebrated dupuytren, one of france's greatest surgeons, until, in after years, they themselves became sufficiently great to become its consulting surgeons. in france, honors are gained by ability alone, and not, as here, by political influence and wire-pulling.} the following is a list of the french hospitals with which civiale and lallemand were connected during their lives. hotel dieu. la pitie. la charite. laraboisiere. st. antoine. hopital neckar. hopital cochin. hopital st. louis. hopital du midi. hopital lourcine. la maternite. hospice bicetre. we next give extracts from appleton's cyclopedia, to which reference has already been made. lallemand, claude françois, a french physician, born in metz, jan. 26, 1790, died in marseilles, aug. 25, 1854. after serving as assistant surgeon in the armies of the empire, he studied in paris at the hotel dieu under dupuytren, and, from 1819 to 1845, was professor of clinical surgery at montpelier, with the exception of three years, during which he was suspended for his liberal political expressions. his most important work, _recherches anatomica pathologiques sur l'encephale et ses dependances_ (paris, 1820-1836), established his reputation, and was translated into many languages. in 1845 he was elected to the _academy of sciences_, removed to paris, and was consulted by patients from every part of europe. he bequeathed 50,000 francs to the institute. --[_appleton's cyclopedia, vol. x, p. 144._ {illustration: prof. jean civialè.} {illustration: prof. claude f. lallemand} civialè, jean, a french surgeon, the originator of the operation of lithotrity, born near thiezac, auvergne, 1792, died in paris, june 13, 1867. at a very early age, while a pupil of dupuytren at the _hotel dieu_ hospital in paris, his attention is said to have been attracted to the subject of his future discovery; and, after many years of perseverance, he succeeded in perfecting and introducing to the profession his new operation of lithotrity. before that time the only means was the serious and often dangerous operation of lithotomy (see stone). he was the teacher of several generations of lithotriptists, became a member of the medical academy, and an officer of the legion of honor. his principal publications are: _de la lithotritie, ou brolement de la pierre_, (_paris_), 1827); _lettres sur la lithotritie, &c._ (1827); _traite pratique et historique de la lithotritie_ (1847); _resultats cliniques de la lithotritie pendent les annes_ 1860-64 (1865). --[_appleton's cyclopedia, vol. iv, p. 618._ we also take pleasure in referring--not as patients, but simply as to standing, probity, business capacity and the ability of our consulting staff--to the following firms or gentlemen in this city: west side pharmacy, dealers in drugs, chemicals, &c., corner hudson and charlton streets. coffin & rogers, 85 john street, new york. american drug company, islip, long island. editor of the "new york tribune and farmer." e. duncan sniffen, 3 park row. a characteristic letter. (for once we transgress our rule--never to put a debility patient's letter in print unless the patient urges us to do so--and do it at the request of our medical chief of staff, and with the patient's full consent. the name, however, we omit, simply stating that should any intending patient desire to come and see or send some friend living in the city, to see and verify that letter and many more like it, we shall be most happy to oblige them.) rodney, miss., august 14, 1884. _dear sirs:_--my course of treatment being almost all used, i feel it my duty to state to you my present condition, and i can say without hesitation that i am almost a new man, and i thank god that improvement has been so thorough and rapid, may it be but lasting. sexual desire is now perfect, erections are perfect, emissions come at the right time, oozing of vital fluid at stools and in the urine has stopped, i rest well at night with the exception i shall state further on, appetite is good and digestion almost perfect. i can now approach the presence of the opposite sex with some satisfaction to myself; ambition is returning, and in fact a whole new lease of life seems suddenly to have been allotted to me. the varicocele has almost disappeared. i cannot say enough in praise for this beautiful little appliance, "the cradle compressor." now, if it were not for the urinary disorder which still remains, i should call myself well; that this remains, however, is no fault of the crayons, and could the course no. 3 have reached me undamaged by heat, as did the course no. 2, i have not the least doubt i should now be well. the symptoms of this disorder, still present, are dreams at night, not nervous ones as before, but still unpleasant; mucous oozing after straining, also in the morning on rising i find the lips of organ glued, and on forcing apart a drop of this mucous fluid makes its appearance. i have no doubt whatever that had crayons reached me perfectly, this disorder would have been conquered same as the other. now, in your little circular you guarantee a cure "in all cases wherein your medical examiner decides a cure is possible." now this certainly holds good in my case. please let me know what you are willing to do about the matter, for i certainly need another course of no. 3 crayons, and if you would furnish them in place of the ones destroyed in transit, i should consider your guarantee fulfilled. the course you sent me last could not be used at all; they were ten times worse than the first ones, and i only wasted them in trying to use same. however, do not send any crayons till you hear from me, and i think the weather cool enough, as they would only be wasted again. could you furnish me, and at what price, a suspensory, such as you would recommend, if not, where could i get one? i think it advisable to wear one after laying aside the compressor, as i have to be on my feet all the time. please excuse encroachment on your time and believe me ever, yours very truly, ---singer. double varicocele and spermatorrhoea radically cured. (these letters are published at the patient's own request, and he will be most happy to correspond with any earnest and honest inquirer). "tired of humbugging." "islip, suffolk county, n.y. "_manager of the civiale remedial agency,_ "174 fulton street, new york. "_dear sir:_--my attention has been several times called to your method of curing varicocele of the bag without any cutting or tying, and i am now going to describe my case to you, and get your idea whether you can cure me or not. i would have done this long ago if i hadn't been afraid of being humbugged, as i often have been by doctors and men who said they could cure me right off without any pain or trouble. but they all fooled me out of my money, and that's all. but i'm going to try once more, and please tell me if you think my case is too bad for your compress and cradle. "i'm pretty badly off i know, but it seems to me that this thing ought to be able to be cured by some one. this is how mine was. eight or nine years ago i fell from the rigging of a schooner, and was laid up for nearly sixteen weeks with a broken thigh. i also had both testicles terribly sore and swollen, and it was a long time after my leg got well before i was able to walk, the pain in the groin, testicles and small of my back was so bad. sometimes, even when i was sitting quiet, it would cut me like the stab of a knife. the first i noticed of the varicocele was one day when i was taking a bath i saw there was a sort of bulging there, and come to notice it closer, it felt just like a bunch of angle worms all twisted together. i tried cold water to it and wore a suspension bag for a long time, but it didn't do much good. at first it didn't trouble me much in winter, but was bad in summer. now it's bad all the time, and i don't believe i could walk half a mile without i wore a supporter. "i have tried most everything i ever heard of, but it's no use. some of the things helped me for a while, but they didn't last, and now i'm pretty well discouraged, for i don't dare have it operated on; not so much that i'm afraid of the pain, but because a young man i knew went to a hospital in new york to be operated on, and died, because the veins got inflamed from the cutting and tying. "i am willing to pay any one a fair price for curing me, because as i am now i can't do a fair day's work, and my testes are wasting away very fast. but i don't want any more humbugging, and if you treat me, you have got to give me good proofs that you can do as you say." "truly yours, d. l. b. "i forgot to say that my varicocele is on _both_ sides, but the left side is much the worse. it is twice as bulgy as the other." "just as represented." "islip, n.y. "_dear sir:_--i went to the depot night before last and got the package all right, and when i got up yesterday morning, bathed as the circular said, and put the cradle and compressor on me. i write to tell you how pleased i am. i always felt sure some one would find a cure for this thing, and believe i've got hold of the right thing at last, though i'm not going to crow this time till i'm part way out of the woods at least. "any way, i'm satisfied so far. the appliance is just what it was represented, and i find that it fits me to a t, and is the most easy and comfortable thing i ever wore. i haven't had a bit of pain since i put it on yesterday morning, and i have done some hard work these two days, purposely twisting and wrenching my body about to see if i would get it out of place. "so far it is all right, and i am very thankful to you, for if it never cured me it would be a god-send to wear for relief of that horrid dead ache and dragging pain in my groin and back. i shall want some of your crayons soon, and will write again in a few weeks. please tell me how long the wash ought to stand before it is strained, and whether it would hurt me to use it _twice_ a day instead of once. "very respectfully, d. l. b." "perfectly cured." "islip, suffolk county, n.y., february 13, 1884. "_dear sir:_--it is now over two months since i quit wearing the cradle-compressor, and i seat myself to tell you that the varicocele seems to be entirely well. the left side is a trifle larger than the right, but the veins are not wormy as they used to be, and the blood don't stagnate in them any more. the dragging pain is all gone away, and the small of my back hasn't pained me for a long time. when i came to see you in new york, your doctor told me i musn't feel sure that i was cured until every bit of worminess was gone and the canal was free of swelled veins. you can tell him that this is so now, and that the testicles aren't shrunk and wasted the way they used to be. "our doctor here, who told me i couldn't be cured unless i had it operated on, says it's the most remarkable thing he ever saw. those are his very words. he didn't seem any too chipper to find out he was wrong about having to get cut. "i am a thousand times grateful to you. you have made me a man again, and i shall not forget it. i am ashamed to think how mean a letter i wrote you last summer about humbugging and the like, but i apologize now, and if you find any other people that don't feel sure you can cure them, send them this letter or get them to write to me. "i shall remember all you wrote in your last letter about not 'presuming too much on my improvement,' and to be careful about jumping, straining and lifting hard, and the like. the crayons did their work just as well as the compress instrument, and i never can tell you how grateful i am to you. there's several men i know here that are going to write you about their cases. one of them, -------, is going down on the train to-morrow, and will bring this letter with him, he says, for introduction. good bye. yours respectfully and gratefully, david l. b." remarks. the foregoing three letters tell their story plainly and concisely, and need little or no explanation. we only desire to append the following note from our case book--"d---b----; residence--bay shore, suffolk county, long island, n.y.; age--54; sex--male; civil condition--widower; occupation--track-walker on l.i. railroad (formerly bayman and sailor); disease--double varicocele, most pronounced on the left side; glands much softened and wasted; cord also varicose and very painful. complication--impaired powers, losses and commencing impotence. cause--indirect and contributive abuse in earlier years. direct--fall from rigging of a vessel. treatment--medium cradle and inguinal compressor and one no. 2 course civiale's soluble crayons. result--perfect cure in about 9 months. remarks--as severe and complicated a case as can be found in any records. the symptoms of impotence were undoubtedly due to the pressure of the dilated veins on the testicles in the scrotum and the seminal duct in the inguinal canal. patient promises to report, in person, at the end of six months, to determine whether the cure remains perfect." mr. b---has since moved to islip, long island, where letters of inquiry (containing a stamp for reply) will reach him. consultation. if you should conclude to place your case in our hands, we shall be pleased to hear from you, and promise you the most careful and thorough attention. our consulting staff is large, each physician has his special department to attend to, and each case is afterwards reviewed by the whole board, so as to avoid all possibility of error and give each sufferer the benefit of the highest skill and research. our patients, while numerous, are not such a multitude but that we can and do give each one of them individually the closest attention. should it be convenient for you to visit us in person you will be cordially welcomed. if you hesitate from ordering, from any cause, we shall be pleased to correspond with you. we try to feel as if we have a personal acquaintance with every patient, and treat him as a valued friend; and, whether you ever order or not, we shall be glad to hear from you and know your conclusions on this subject. of course, every letter is sacredly private. no one reads these but the manager, and even our old and trusted medical advisers do not know the names of our patients--only the numbers and descriptions of cases go into their hands. as a further assurance we destroy letters, or return them to the writers, whichever they prefer. we solicit your influence with your friends, and will be ready to reciprocate such favors. you will also be often doing such friends a favor, for which they will always thank you. we shall be particularly pleased to hear from men advanced in years, who feel the necessity of counteracting growing weakness incident to their age, and who know the worse than folly of resorting to pernicious secret preparations, the effect of which is to give unnatural stimulation for a brief time, to be followed by a dangerous, perhaps fatal, reaction. to the medical profession. we make special terms on our instruments and treatment to physicians, and cordially invite them to correspond with us. we will do all in our power to serve the profession to their satisfaction. we have the benefit of the best medical advice and facilities in certain lines not attainable from any other source on the continent. general practitioners and family physicians. we cannot refrain, before closing this chapter, from saying a word or two about the incompetency of the large majority of "general practitioners" and "family physicians," and their evident carelessness, and in some instances, even disgust, in the diagnosis and treatment of this class of cases. the readers of this may be among that class who think the "family physician" the embodiment of medical wisdom, and that if he has failed to cure the case or pooh-poohed it away, there is no hope. but no one m.d., however learned, knows all about the ills of flesh. in this, as in the legal and other learned professions, a man may practice a score of years, and still know little or nothing about various peculiar cases, because they don't come under his notice; he has no opportunity to study them practically, and little inducement to theorize. and the class of cases we are now considering, it may surprise the sufferer to know, are deemed by many "regular" physicians beneath their attention. the physician's calling is a noble one, and he justly takes a high ground regarding his duties. we honor the scruples of our medical friends, but we do not understand nor approve the spirit which leads them to meet these cases with ridicule or evasive answers. that they do thus meet this class of cases, and that their course is censured by the most eminent of the profession, we have abundant evidence. one of the best known medical writers of england, f. b. courtnay, member of the royal college of surgeons, etc., says in one of his works ("true and false spermatorrhoea" pp. 20-21): "again, some medical men * * * * affect to consider these cases 'objectionable,' and on these grounds seek to avoid them. others boldly declare, that as most of such cases are the result of unnatural and immoral habits, the sufferers are justly punished for their conduct, and are unworthy of the attention and sympathy of any one. "now i conceive this to be a monstrous fallacy; for surely it is entirely beyond the scope of any medical man's duty to sit in judgment on the applicants for his professional services. according to my idea of professional duty, every man is bound to do all in his power to afford relief to every sufferer who seeks it at his hands, without question as to the causes and nature of the malady." speaking of one of his patients the same writer says: "he had consulted one of the most eminent members of the medical profession; and this gentleman evidently listened to his narration of his case with great impatience and indifference, and upon the conclusion of his history handed him a prescription, saying: 'there, take that for six weeks, and if it does not do you any good, i don't know what will.' the interpretation the patient put on his conduct and the remarks was, that he need not trouble himself to call again. "now, i have the pleasure of personally knowing the professional gentleman here referred to, and during the last twenty years have been in the constant habit of meeting him in consultation, and i am sure, from my knowledge of him, that his behavior resulted from no intentional unkindness on his part, but solely from the unfortunate feeling of reluctance to attend to such cases, which, both from my own observations and from information obtained from patients, i know to be entertained by too many members of the profession. * * * i am well aware that patients of this class are often most tedious in the narration of their cases; that the details they conceive themselves bound to enter upon are most painful, not to say disgusting, to hear; nevertheless we must, as in many other instances in the discharge of our duties, submit with patience, taking the rough and smooth with the same equanimity, and in the special cases in question, we should endeavor to forget the patient's vices in his woes." another distinguished physician writes: "i cannot disregard the appeals of unhappy and humiliated people. men have come to me who were ashamed to show their organs because of their diminutiveness, and who practiced masturbation and lived in celibacy rather than bear the humiliation of exposure of the parts. nothing can be more pitiable than such a condition." if these very moral and dainty practitioners, who, as dr. courtnay says, affect to consider these cases "objectionable" and the sufferers "unworthy of the attention or sympathy of any one"--if these moralists could sit at our desk, and day after day, week after week, read the affecting stories of enforced celibacy, shattered health, broken family ties, the anguish of jealousy, despair, misanthropy, the consciousness of physical, mental and moral inferiority begotten by this sad condition--we think that then these gentlemen would agree with us that medical science and philanthropy can have no higher object than the saving of these wrecks. our patients' letters and testimonials. our correspondents are candid--they cannot well afford to be otherwise--and it is seldom we read one of their letters without feeling all the interest in the writer that one can for an honest suffering fellow being. we would not feel this interest did they not evince an earnest desire to profit by their misfortunes. our aid is not sought by those wishing a brute's power for excesses, for we hold out no inducements to this class, but plainly tell them that they will inevitably pay the penalty for abuse of nature's laws. nor are our patrons among the vicious and imaginative youth, or the class termed "greenhorns." we confine our advertising almost wholly to the daily press, thus reaching the most intelligent class of citizens only. we regret that, for obvious reasons, we cannot present some of the letters we have received from those who have been treated by our method. we are pledged to secresy with our correspondents, however, and cannot use their names publicly; we cannot publish testimonials, although we have scores of such a nature as to satisfy the most incredulous, yet all must understand that it would be a breach of confidence on our part to make these public, and would ruin our practice besides, as we can only do business of this nature under guarantee of strict privacy. but of the many hundreds we have successfully treated, a number have voluntarily given us permission to refer to them in correspondence with interested parties. we will cheerfully furnish, on conditions named below, a list of some of the persons who have taken this mode of treatment, been thoroughly developed in size and strength of the organs, and relieved of every trace of seminal disease or weakness, and from gratitude and good hearts have volunteered to answer any questions addressed to them by interested persons, who are, of course, expected to hold such correspondence confidential. bear in mind that we use these names only by permission, which was given us unsought by patrons who paid for our services, and now tender this privilege more through kindness to sufferers than a desire to benefit us financially. to save these gentlemen annoyance and useless correspondence, we prefer not to furnish their names except to those who have had previous correspondence with us and who will accompany the request with references. bashfulness and false modesty. we are sorry to note in some of our patrons a feeling of shame in taking this treatment. such feeling we cannot but regard as absurd, and the outgrowth of false ideas. if their present condition has been brought on by evil habits, it is well enough to be ashamed of that fact, but it is certainly altogether creditable to make use of the first opportunity to restore or attain a perfectly natural condition and check such disastrous losses, and in many cases it is absolutely necessary for the welfare and happiness of themselves and others. a well-known medical writer says: "this treatment does not interfere with any regular habits or employment, and may be followed without the knowledge or suspicion of any person whatever. it is beneficial to the general health and quite pleasant in its effects, giving the person a rejuvenated, buoyant feeling, infusing new life and manhood; seemingly dashing young strong blood through all the sluggish veins and arteries of the form." to those who really need this treatment its importance cannot be overestimated. each sufferer can answer to himself how very different life would be if free from his infirmity. would you not be better capacitated for business, labor or pleasure? is not your mind on the rack often--perhaps always? have you not at this time, and in consequence of this deficiency, a tendency to misanthrophy, a bitter feeling that you are the victim of an unkind providence, or else bowed by humiliation due to your own ignorance or vices? does not your very incapacity keep your mind filled with lewd thoughts, which in a state of perfect manhood would not exist? from the confession of hundreds we know how each of you will answer most or all of these questions. is not the means, then, which will raise you above these deplorable conditions, a blessing inestimable? is it not an agent of moral as well as physical regeneration? when this means of deliverance is offered, will you hesitate in availing yourself of its benefits and making it known to others who are sufferers like yourself? let an honest heart and candid judgment answer for you. the fallacy of cheap remedies. there are many men who are affected more or less seriously with diseases of the sexual organs who are constantly on the look-out for so-called cheap remedies, and in the course of a few years manage to spend upon these cheap and trashy medicines and appliances twice or three times as much money as would have been necessary to thoroughly cure them. and what have they got to show for it? nothing--absolutely nothing, aye, even worse than nothing, _i.e._, positive injury to the organs, for, in nine cases out of ten, these cheap, clap-trap potions, by over stimulating, imitating and often inflaming the organs, do them actual harm, hasten and aggravate the disease and leave the patient in a much worse condition than if he had taken no treatment at all. how often have we had cases referred to us for diagnosis and treatment, where irreparable injury had been done by wrong treatment. some were in such a state that no treatment, however excellent, could possibly help them; in others we have had to labor for months to eliminate these poisonous medicines from the system and get the sexual organs into proper condition to admit of a restorative treatment; and in still others the effect of our usually quick and thorough-going remedies were delayed and interfered with by the ignorance or botchwork of some quack or bungler, or the well-meant but stupid doctoring of some "family physician" who thinks himself competent to treat these diseases. no more delicate, complicated or easily injured or disarranged piece of mechanism than the sexual organs exists. in health, they must be treated with care and reason--in disease, with the utmost circumspection. this branch of medicine, least of all, should be the parade ground of ignorance, carelessness or false economy. a man's very health, life, happiness and vigor, his power to procreate his species, to perpetuate his name, his ability to make his wife happy and his children strong and vigorous, all depend upon the treatment he selects. what is worth doing at all is worth doing well, and he who jeopardizes health and happiness, present and future, on the mistaken basis of false economy, is far from wise. everything has a value. if a man offers to sell to another a gold watch worth $150 for $5, you would at once set him down as an impostor, and the watch as injured or worthless or fraudulent. yet there are thousands of men who try to find for a few dollars a remedy for a most serious and complicated disease. in medicine, as elsewhere, common sense plays an important part. such remedies cannot possibly do what is claimed for them. reputable, honest men, educated and skilled physicians who have spent thousands of dollars in obtaining a proper medical education, cannot afford to waste their time for such slight remuneration. hence, unscrupulous scoundrels, who have no reputations either to make or lose, who make most glaring promises in their printed matter, who are willing to guarantee anything to anybody, infest this field. they know how great is man's cupidity, and trade upon it willingly, caring nothing for the consequences. our remedies are reliable and reasonable. we not speak thus disparagingly of cheap remedies because ours are dear, for no patient who has gone the round of cheap remedies, and has at last profited by civiale's method, but will tell you that our treatment is cheap at any price. we charge what we consider a fair and reasonable profit on our remedies. our entire institution is conducted on the very highest and most ethical medical basis. the physicians comprising our consulting staff are men of the best standing, of fine education, and having special experience in this branch of medical science; our remedies are made up under the direct personal supervision of one of the most expert chemists in this country, and precisely after civiale's formulæ; our drugs are purchased from such firms as mckesson & robbins, schieffelin, etc., and are of the purest and best, and our aim at all times is to give the patient consulting us the full value of his money. for such skill and services we charge fairly and reasonably, and we have yet to find a patient who is dissatisfied. our cases get well, provided our advice is followed and a cure is possible. if it is not, we frankly and candidly tell the truth. we cannot afford to make false statements or false promises, to hold out hopes we cannot justify, to ruin our established and well-known reputation for honesty, fair dealing and medical skill in order to make a few dollars. we find that one man cured is the very best advertisement we can have, and that one such case makes us one warm friend and advocate, and brings us many patients, where one man deceived and defrauded would make us one bitter enemy and injure us in the eyes of many. thus, every other consideration of honor and honesty aside, it pays us better to deal fairly with our patrons. this treatment has been thoroughly tried in the most desperate and adverse cases, and has stood the test of time and repeated trials, has stood these tests as no other remedy or remedies ever have or ever will, and in them men of all ages and all conditions may find strength, health and vigor. the civiale remedial agency, main offices and laboratory, 174 fulton street, new york city. --> please address all medical and business letters to offices, 174 fulton street. they may be addressed to civiale agency, or mr. l. b. jones, our business manager. (from the new orleans _weekly picayune_, may 23, 1885.) civiale remedial agency.--every man, whether he be young, middle aged, or old, suffering from weakness, debility, or impotency, will be made healthy and happy by writing to this excellent concern, at 174 fulton street, new york. the advertisement should be read, which will show skeptics that the agency is worthy of confidence. the press and medical profession indorse the gentlemen connected with it in strong terms. a special and important announcement. strict morality vs. false modesty. in preparing both the first and later editions of this little work (that has brought happiness to so many by opening the way to knowledge of a proper means of cure and methods of regaining health and vigor), +the utmost care and circumspection have been exercised in an endeavor to exclude from its pages anything that could be construed by the most fastidious as immodest, obscene, or in any way offensive to decency, morality or good breeding+. indeed, although purely and essentially +a medical work, and intended solely for such persons whose duty it is to be acquainted with the facts given+, in order to understand their complaint, to place themselves under proper treatment, and to avoid the dangers of quackery, we have in many instances wholly excluded or materially modified the wording of passages in order to comply with our original ideas of the strictest purity of thought and speech commensurate with a truthful and honest statement of facts. we wish it distinctly understood that +this treatise is intended solely for persons suffering from genito-urinary diseases+, and that it is +never mailed to any person who has not voluntarily requested us to send it+, and then +not to boys+ or to members of the +opposite sex+. (our application books show a large number of such refusals.) we look upon our special mission in the field of medicine as +distinct+, +laudable+ and +holy+. there are those who look down upon this special branch of medicine, and some ignoramuses who assert that such diseases only exist in the imaginations of such patients as a result of reading the pamphlets of quacks who paint frightful pictures of insanity, idiocy, etc. to such men as these we have only this to say: consult the works of hammond, black, acton, wilson, lallemand, civialè, courtenay, lee etc., etc., the authors of which have world-wide reputations, not only as physicians, but as truthful, honest and moral men. they will then see how really grave are such affections and how needful of aid. god knows that the misery, despondency and actual organic disease, as a result of early vices, are prevalent enough even to-day to make a lover of his fellow men sincerely pity and desire to help them. and we claim (and every honest man cannot but admit) that it is only by the +widespread dissemination of a knowledge of certain facts+ to young and old, especially the former, that such vice and its consequences can be met and overcome. we are daily spreading such knowledge throughout the length and breadth of this land, not only warning and advising the young and cautioning the older, but also pointing out to all such as need it a perfect and easy means of cure and restoration to health and vigor. our mission is as real, noble and important as that of preaching the gospel, and aside from its bearing on the enlightenment of those who would otherwise go astray, and offering the means of relief to those who have already sinned against nature, it is of a broader and even more sweeping importance. as every whole must needs be the sum total of its integrals, so +each nation+ and +people must+--in mental, moral and physical traits--+be that which its individual members make it+. hence, if perfect general health, full procreative ability and healthy offspring mark the majority of the individuals, so naturally must the health, vigor, populousness and power of the nation be accordingly. +as secret vice diminishes, public virtue and morality become greater.+ diseases of the prostate gland, urinary organs and sexual apparatus are as +real, as embarassing+ and +as needful of cure+ as those of the lungs, heart, stomach, or any other organ--indeed, more important, for the latter only affect the life or health of the individual immediately concerned, while the former concern not only the person affected, but his offspring also. there is no reason why false modesty or pseudo-delicacy should reign supreme here. if the almighty had intended these matters to be viewed and treated in the light which some fanatics and extremists seem to desire, we would certainly have been created without the power of procreation entirely. as it is, such organs and such diseases +do exist+, are of the greatest (individual and national) importance, and provided a +full knowledge of the causes and consequences of vice and abuse as related to these parts can be brought vividly and strongly before the mind of every man, young or old, in a chaste, decent and strictly professional manner+, the result can only be a good one, and those who deny it are engaged in moral hair-splitting. we felt that the foregoing remarks were both +apropos+ and necessary with a view to contradicting some statements recently made regarding the uselessness and demoralizing effects of everything concerning this branch of medical practice, and as due ourselves in distinctly recording our belief and practice in the matter; more especially to refute the false accusation that special medical treatises were being scattered broadcast over the land and made to invade the privacy of homes, and coming into the hands of young boys and females. the civialè remedial agency. {illustration (civiale agency)} * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {errors and irregularities noted by transcriber: civiale : civialè _inconsistent spellings in original_ the secrecy of his chamber or his bed or, if secresy is desired the strictest confidence and secrecy we are pledged to secresy _variant spellings in original_ human spermatazoa. ... well developed and active zoa-sperms to their freinds +impotency+ (from the latin words _im_ [not] and _potens_ [to be able] _no closing parenthesis_ {footnote 7: beltrage zur anat-uns phys., bd. iv. and bd. vii.} {footnote 20: endoskopische befunde bei erkrankungen des samenhugels wein, 1880.} _spelling and punctuation of all footnotes as in original._ _footnotes 1-25 were printed in a block, although the text referencing 24 and 25 was on the following page._ bloody urination, etc., etc. (many cases of _no closing parenthesis_ in accordance with the formlæ [_appleton's cyclopedia, vol. x, p. 144._ [_appleton's cyclopedia, vol. iv, p. 618._ _open-ended brackets in original_ _"vol. iv" illegible_ (_paris_), 1827) _extra parenthesis in original_ again, some medical men * * * * affect to consider too many members of the profession. * * * i am well aware _asterisks in original_ your doctor told me i musn't feel sure a tendency to misanthrophy as +real, as embarassing+ and +as needful of cure+ } this treatise on the diseases of women is dedicated to the women of the world. yours for health lydia e. pinkham this entire book copyrighted in 1901 and 1904 by the lydia e. pinkham medicine co., of lynn, mass., u. s. a. all rights reserved and will be protected by law. list of lydia e. pinkham's remedies. +illustration of products+ lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. put up in three forms: liquid, lozenge, and pills price, $1.00 lydia e. pinkham's liver pills, per box " .25 lydia e. pinkham's blood purifier " 1.00 lydia e. pinkham's sanative wash, per packet " .25 all the above, excepting the liquids, can be sent by mail on receipt of price. all druggists sell mrs. pinkham's remedies. chapter i. a woman best understands a woman. =experience a perfect teacher.=--do you know what it is to suffer pain? have you had your body racked and torn with intense suffering? have you ever experienced that indescribable agony which comes from overworked nerves? have you ever felt the sharp, stinging pain, the dull, heavy pain, the throbbing, jumping pain, the cramping, tearing pain, the sickening, nauseating pain? then you know all about them. nobody can tell you anything more. experience is a perfect teacher. =book-learning alone not sufficient.=--suppose you had never experienced pain, but had just read about it in a book, do you think you would have any kind of an idea of what genuine suffering was? most certainly not. book knowledge is valuable. it teaches the location of countries, the use of figures, and the history of nations; but there are some things books cannot do, and the greatest of these is, they cannot describe physical and mental suffering. these are things that must be experienced. =personal experience necessary.=--after you have once suffered, how ready you are to sympathize with those who are going through the same severe trials. if a member of your own home or a friend is passing through the trying ordeal of motherhood, and you have suffered the same, how you can advise, suggest, comfort, guide! if you have had a personal experience of intense agony once every month, do you not think you are in a far better position to talk with one who is suffering in the same way than you would be if you had never gone through all this? =you best understand yourself.=--but let us go a little farther in this study. when you listen to an eminent orator, you have but little idea whether he is nervous or not, but little idea whether he is undergoing a severe strain or not; for you have never been in his place, cannot understand just that condition. men become greatly interested in political matters; perhaps it often seems to you that they become too much disturbed; and yet how can you judge, for you have never been in their place? and so we might go on, giving illustration after illustration as additional proof to this one great fact. it takes a woman to understand a woman. =man cannot know woman's suffering.=--what does a man know about the thousand and one aches and pains peculiar to a woman? he may have seen manifestations of suffering, he may have read something about these things in books, but that is all. even though he might be exceedingly learned in the medical profession, yet what more can he know aside from that which the books teach? did a man ever have a backache like the dragging, pulling, tearing ache of a woman? no. it is impossible. =even medical men cannot understand these things.=--to a man, all pain must be of his kind; it must be a man-pain, not a woman-pain. take, for instance, the long list of diseases and discomforts which come directly from some derangement of the female generative organs; as, for instance, the bearing-down pains, excessive flowing, uterine cramps, and leucorrhoea. do you think it possible for a man to understand these things? granting that he may be the most learned man in the medical profession, how can he know anything about them only in a general way? you know, we know, everybody knows that he cannot. a woman can best prescribe for a woman. =relief first offered in 1873.=--away back in '73 these thoughts came to lydia e. pinkham. she saw the most intense suffering about her on every hand, and yet no one seemed able to give relief. her thorough education enabled her to understand that nearly all the suffering of womankind was due to diseases and affections peculiar to her sex. the whole question resolved itself into just this: if a remedy could be made that would relieve all inflammations and congestions of the ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, and other female organs, the days of suffering for women would be largely over. =first made on a kitchen stove.=--could this be done? mrs. pinkham believed with all her heart that it was possible. so on a kitchen stove she began the great work which has made her name a household word wherever civilization exists. without money, but with a hopeful heart, she made up little batches of this remedy to give to neighbors and friends whom she felt could be relieved by it. the story soon spread from house to house, from village to village, from city to city. now it looked as if a business might be established upon a permanent basis, a basis resting upon the wonderful curative properties of the medicine itself. ="we can trust her."=--by judicious advertising the merits of this remarkable remedy were set forth; and before she was hardly aware of it, she found herself at the head of one of the largest enterprises ever established in this country. that face so full of character and sympathy, soon after it was first published, years ago, began to attract marked attention wherever it was seen. women said, "here is one to whom we can tell our misery, one who will listen to our story of pain, one whom we can fully trust." and so the letters began to arrive from every quarter. now hundreds of these letters are received every day. more than a hundred thousand were written in a single year. everyone is opened by a woman, read by a woman, sacredly regarded as written strictly in confidence by one woman to another. men do not see these letters. =men never see your letters.=--do you want a strange man to hear all about your particular disease? would you feel like sitting down by the side of a stranger and telling him all those sacred things which should be known only by women? it isn't natural for a woman to do this; it isn't like her, isn't in keeping with her finer sense of refinement. =no boys around.=--and then, how would it be when some boy opens the letters, steals time to read a few before they are handed to some other boy clerk to distribute (and probably read) around the office to the various departments? it makes one almost indignant to think how light and trivial these serious matters are so often regarded. =you write to a woman.=--but when you know your letter is going to be seen only by a woman, one who sympathizes with you, feels sorry for you, knows all about you, how different all this seems. =confidence never violated.=--although there are preserved in the secret files of lydia e. pinkham's laboratory many hundreds of thousands of letters from women from all parts of the world, yet in not a single instance has the writer accused mrs. pinkham of violating her confidence. =the largest experience in the world.=--the one thing that qualifies a person to give advice on any subject is experience--experience creates knowledge. no person can speak from a greater experience with female ills nor a greater record of success than mrs. pinkham. thousands of cases come each month, some personally, others by mail; and this has been going on thirty years, day after day, and day after day, thirty years of constant success--think of the knowledge thus gained. surely women are wise in seeking advice from a woman with such an experience--especially when it is free. if you are ill get a bottle of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound at once--then write mrs. pinkham, lynn, mass. what medical man has ever lived who has prescribed for so many women? what whole corps of physicians in any hospital or medical college has answered so many letters, or treated in any way so many patients? =she helps everyone.=--no woman ever writes to her for advice without getting help. no matter how rare you think your case may be, she is almost certain to find letters on file asking advice for other cases of the same kind. by special permission of the writers i print a few of the letters showing what cures have been effected. but if the reader could go through these secret files which are never shown, she might hour after hour, day after day, week after week, spend her whole time reading letters, each one telling some special story of rescue from serious illness, intense suffering, or impending death. =the largest record of cures.=--the writers of these letters are found in every clime and there is hardly a country in the world without its multitude of grateful women cured by lydia e. pinkham's medicines. they have the largest record of absolute cures from female ills known to have been effected by any physician or his medicines. chapter ii. what shall the future generation be? =important to the nation.=--it is impossible to fully comprehend how important to us as a nation is the health of the young women of to-day. we fail to realize that these women are to be the mothers of the next generation, and that in their hands will lie, in large measure, the power to form the characters and direct the destinies of the boys and girls of the future. =woman must be strong.=--we may educate our young men all we wish, yet we cannot have national power through their strength alone. the women of the country must have this physical education if we are to have a people that is strong and hearty. upon the sound health and vigor of the young women of to-day will depend, to a large extent, the health and capacity of the future generations. =what are girls worth?=--it is estimated that there are about twelve million young women in the united states between fourteen and twenty-eight years of age. what are these young women worth to the home, to the state, to the nation, to the human race? this is largely a question of physical health. it is the stern duty of the mother to make this clear to her daughter, and it is the solemn duty of every young woman to thoroughly study the subject herself. =not prepared for motherhood.=--but largely through ignorance, often through indifference, these young girls become mothers when little prepared to do so, and they find not only their own health shattered thereby, but also that they are the mothers of weak, delicate, and perhaps deformed children. =women desire children.=--we read a great deal in the newspapers about how american women are doing everything they possibly can to prevent having children. this is not in accord with our experience. it is a slander on american womanhood,--it is an outrageous falsehood. in not one letter in a thousand which we receive do wives ask how childbearing may be prevented, while every day brings us many, many letters asking if something cannot be done in order that there may be a baby in the house. =a healthy mother and child.=--if you desire a child, you wish a healthy child; and you certainly desire to be a strong mother, one capable of caring for her infant in every way, and able to direct it all through its young life. then let us give you some advice. =why some women do not have children.=--the reason why some wives do not have children may be entirely the fault of the husband; but if this is not the case, then in all probability there is some inflammation of the generative organs. this may be of recent or of old standing. it must be thoroughly removed before the impregnated egg from the ovary can become attached. =the cure for this condition.=--that these changes can be brought about in a vast number of cases i have the most positive testimony. i have advised such wives to continually use lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound; and, with this treatment alone, such a healthy condition of the generative organs has been brought about that pregnancy has very soon followed. this is precisely according to nature's laws, as i have indicated before. therefore, i say to every wife who desires a child, "give lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound a thorough trial. if the fault is yours, the compound will surely remove it, and the longing of your heart will be satisfied." chapter iii. reproduction. =the reproductive instinct strong.=--the reproductive instinct is very strong in the human race, as is indicated by the large amount of energy the woman expends in the bearing of children, and by both sexes in the care and education of their young. as we know, it is only by the production of new individuals that the continuance of the race is assured. =problems of reproduction.=--the problems of reproduction are extremely broad, involving not only the immediate questions of individual reproduction, but also those broader and deeper ones which relate to heredity. =a new life, by chance.=--it is a most astonishing fact that nearly all persons born into the world are given life as the result of chance rather than by careful design. "if my parents had only known!" is the frightful wail of many a wretched life. =to create is divine.=--at no time does man come so near being omnipotent as when, by the tremendous powers given him, a new life is called into existence. and yet, whether strong or weak, refreshed or exhausted, healthy or diseased, sober or intoxicated, sweet or ill-tempered, yielding or resisting, a new life is begun which may be either of two extremes. how great are such questions! the human mind seems appalled when asked to consider them. =education on these subjects necessary.=--it is not the purpose of this book to moralize upon these themes, or to say what should and should not be done; but knowing something of the wretchedness of womankind, and the fearful slavery she often has to endure, i can only hope, with all my heart, that the coming generation may be better educated on these most important topics. it is with a thought or two of this kind in mind that i append the following brief outline of this subject:-=two sexes necessary.=--in the higher animals two sexes are necessary for the reproduction of the race, the male and the female. each contributes some particular element toward the beginning of a new life; this is known as the germ-cell. =the germ-cells.=--the germ-cells of the male are called spermatozoa, and those of the female, ova. the reproductive process is simply a fusion, or union of these male and female germ-cells. =the male elements.=--the spermatozoa are exceedingly delicate and minute; they constitute the greatest part of the semen, or sperm. they are peculiar shaped bodies, having a head, body, and tail, as illustrated in the accompanying figure, and they can only be seen by powerful magnifying glasses. (fig. 1.) ~fig. 1. at the left are six spermatozoa, or male-elements, male germ-cells. at the right is an ovum, egg, female germ-cell. all highly magnified.~ they have the remarkable property of moving about with considerable activity, and their number is almost beyond computation. =only one male element necessary.=--although this number is so vast, yet only a single one is required to endow the female cell, or egg, with life. it is another illustration of how nature does everything possible to increase the chances of perpetuating the race, for without such immense numbers, the chances of the female egg being fertilized would be much less. =may live for days.=--although these male elements can live but a few hours outside of the body, even when especial precautions are taken to make every thing favorable to their existence, yet they have been known to maintain their full life in the vaginal canal for more than eight days after their discharge; another remarkable provision of nature, for the prolonged existence of these cells increases the probability of the fertilization of an egg, and thus increases the chances of producing a new life. =the female element.=--as i have already said, the female germ-cell is also known as the ovum, or egg. a single ovum is shown in fig. 1. if not fertilized by the male elements, the egg passes off into the outside world; if fertilized, it stops in the cavity of the uterus, where it forms an attachment. here it remains until perfectly developed, when, at the end of nine months, it is brought forth to the outside world as a perfect infant. =one female element; many male elements.=--the human ovum is often said to be a miniature of the egg of the common fowl, although there are some quite marked differences between the two. it is a very interesting fact to note that there is only one egg given off at a time; while there are many thousands of the male elements. this is in harmony with the larger size of the egg, and the fact that while this egg awaits fertilization it is most carefully protected within the body of the mother. =where is life first made?=--where the wonderful union of the male and female elements takes place is not definitely known, although it is generally believed that it is upon the surface of the ovary, itself. if this be true, then it is necessary for the male element to traverse the whole length of the uterine cavity, out along the course of the fallopian tube, and there be deposited on the surface of the ovary. =the fertilized egg.=--when a fertilized or impregnated egg is set free from the surface of the ovary, it follows the same course that the unimpregnated egg does until it reaches the uterus. here some most remarkable changes immediately take place whereby the egg is held firmly to the inner wall of the uterine cavity; while the unimpregnated egg, as i have said, passes down the uterine cavity into the vagina, and thus out of the body. in other words, the fertilized egg is retained within the body, while the unfertilized one is cast off. =one egg discharged each month.=--an ovum, or egg, is discharged during each menstrual period. it cannot be seen because of its minute size, a magnifying glass being necessary to detect it, even under favorable conditions. at just what time during this period the ovum is cast from the body is not definitely known, but it is generally thought to be toward the latter part. =time when fertilization is most probable.=--from this it is seen that but one egg fully develops and ripens ready to be fertilized each month. as it is the ripened egg which is thrown off at each menstrual period, therefore it follows that the fertilization of this egg would be most probable at about the time of menstruation. =times when ova do not ripen.=--as a rule, these ova do not ripen, or develop, either during pregnancy, or during the nursing of the child, although there are certain exceptions to this rule; for menstruation occasionally takes place during lactation and pregnancy, and pregnancy itself may occur while the mother is nursing her child. chapter iv. the remedy that cures. =a vegetable compound.=--i hardly think it necessary to mention in detail the separate ingredients of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. we wish to call your attention, however, to that word "vegetable." i do not believe in mercury, arsenic, and the host of mineral poisons which are found in so many remedies. when taken into the system they disturb every function, interfere with the most vital processes, and produce the most disastrous consequences. =the purest and best.=--knowing these things, mrs. pinkham was exceedingly careful to put only the purest and choicest of products of the vegetable kingdom into her compound. each of the roots and herbs is selected with the most extreme care, and all are prepared under the personal supervision of the most thoroughly trained specialists. =one secret.=--one great secret of the success of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound is that each vegetable is so treated that all useful elements are retained, and all useless discarded. =highly concentrated.=--for instance, it is possible for the expert workmen in our laboratory to condense all the medicinal power that exists in a pound of the coarse root into a mass no larger than could be held on the point of a knife. in this way it is possible for a teaspoonful of the vegetable compound to represent all the curative properties usually found in eight or ten times that quantity; in other words, it is highly concentrated. =acts upon female organs.=--mrs. pinkham knew from the very first that she was on the right track. she knew that her vegetable compound contained medicines which act directly and naturally upon the female organs. she knew that one ingredient produced certain effects on the uterus, while other ingredients tended to relieve pain in the ovaries. she knew that one remedy would heal an inflamed uterine cavity, while another ingredient would cause better circulation in the blood-vessels of this part of the body. having the theory all worked out most carefully, she awaited the practical test, feeling confident as to the result. =success was immediate.=--but she did not have to wait long. immediately the cures began, and her neighbors and friends told each other what had been done for them. soon letters came by the hundreds from all parts of the world. thousands upon thousands have written to mrs. pinkham telling her their story, and giving to her, also, full permission to use their testimonials. =it bridges the gulf.=--i am sure you would be delighted, as well as surprised, if you could see the immense difference between the first and last letters received from women. the first is the story of suffering, of extreme agony with prolonged misery and abandoned hope. the last is a song of gratitude, of great love, of joy and peace. the first tells of disease, the last of health. but what an immense gulf between these two!--a gulf, however, i am glad to say, that can be bridged with lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. =you cannot possibly doubt.=--i do not believe you can possibly doubt for one moment the power of this marvelous remedy to cure the diseases of women. how can you doubt it? for a quarter of a century it has gone into every city, village, and hamlet in our land, and into almost every country home. across the water it is finding its way among the rich and the poor. no remedy was ever known that was so generally used. wherever there are women, there are suffering women; and wherever there are suffering women you are sure to find lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. =the testimonials are true.=--do you think there are hundreds of thousands of your own sex who would wilfully falsify? do you think that any could be found who would deliberately do this, and without hope of gain or reward? yet i could point you to hundreds of thousands of letters received from women who write from the fulness of the heart to thank us for what we have done for them. =we speak strongly.=--then am i not justified in speaking strongly to you? don't you think we feel sure of our position? i certainly know what we have done for others, and that makes us feel sure we can do the same for you. =we can cure you.=--i believe our vegetable compound will cure you. i believe it will cure every case where a cure is among the possibilities. you need not be particular whether the soreness in the lower part of your body is in the right side or the left side; whether the pain is sharp, or dull and heavy; whether you suffer terrible agony each month with local pain, or whether it is mental depression; whether the flow is too scant or too profuse. =it corrects the wrong.=--you need not be particular about these things, for they all show that something is wrong, and lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound corrects this wrong. that is what it was made for; that is precisely the work it does. =have faith in us.=--don't purchase a bottle thinking you will "see what it will do," having made up your mind that you will "try the experiment." don't come in this spirit, for there is no need of it. come with the feeling that has inspired so many thousands of your sisters,--come believing that you have at last found a remedy that will relieve you from this terrible slavery to suffering. i am anxious to have you enjoy all the robust health that is your right. i am anxious to make you happy, hopeful, healthy. put your confidence in lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. you will never be disappointed. chapter v. the female pelvis and its contents. =the pelvis.=--the pelvis is the bony framework which forms the lower part of the body. on each side it forms a union with the hip bone to make the hip joint. the female pelvis contains the reproductive organs (uterus, vagina, and ovaries), and also the bladder and lower bowel. fig. 2 gives a very good idea of the shape and general structure of this bony framework; while a careful study of fig. 3 will enable one to form a very correct idea of the relative size and position of the various parts contained in this framework. ~fig. 2. the female pelvis. the flanging sides form the hips. the union of the bones in front forms the pubic arch which is felt at the front of the lower part of the body. the lower end of the spinal column, or backbone, is seen at the back of the figure.~ =the vagina.=--the vagina is a membranous canal extending from the surface of the body to the uterus, or womb. its posterior wall is about 3-1/2 inches long, and its anterior about 3 inches. a careful study should be made of our illustration, in order that the relation of the vagina and uterus to the rectum behind and the bladder in front may be thoroughly understood; also the angle which is formed by the vagina and the uterus. notice should be taken, also, of the opening of the uterus into the upper part of the vagina; as inflammation of the uterus often causes a discharge which passes into the upper part of the vagina and finally out of the body. this gives rise to the belief that the only trouble is in the vagina itself, whereas the real seat of the disease may be high up in the uterus. ~fig. 3. a lateral view of the contents of the female pelvis. 1. the vagina; 2. uterus; 3. bladder; 4. lower bowel; 5. bone forming the pubic arch; 6. the spinal cord, with bone in front and back of it.~ =the uterus.=--the uterus, or womb, is a hollow organ formed of muscular tissue, and lined with a delicate mucous membrane. the bladder is in front, the rectum behind, and the vagina below. =three parts.=--physicians divide this important organ into three parts,--the fundus, body, and neck. the fundus is all the upper rounded portion; the body all that portion between the fundus and the neck; and the neck all the rounded lower part. =the cavity of the uterus.=--this is divided into the cavity of the body and the cavity of the neck. by consulting our illustration it is seen that these cavities differ greatly in shape; that of the body being triangular, while that of the neck is barrel-shaped. by referring again to fig. 4 it will be seen that the cavity of the body has three openings, one on either side at the top going to the fallopian tubes, and an opening at the bottom passing into the cavity of the neck. a constriction exists between these two cavities; but after childbirth this is largely done away with, and there is not that marked difference which existed formerly. =glands in uterus.=--in the mucous membrane lining the uterus are vast numbers of minute glands which secrete mucus. it has been asserted that in the cavity of the neck alone there are from ten to twelve thousand of these glands. it is in this mucous membrane that such remarkable changes occur each month during menstruation, and still more wonderful changes during pregnancy. =the ligaments of the uterus.=--by referring to fig. 5 it will be seen that there are on each side of the uterus flat bands of tissue known as "broad ligaments." these ligaments are attached to the sides of the pelvic cavity, and aid greatly in holding the uterus firmly in place. there are also other ligaments concerned in this same work, although the broad ligaments are most important. the illustration also shows the walls of the vagina cut open, in order that the position of the mouth of the uterus may be easily seen. ~fig. 4. this illustration shows the cavities in a uterus which has been pregnant. 1, the vagina; 2, cavity of the neck of the uterus; 3, cavity of the body, above which is the fundus of the uterus; 4, fallopian tubes, extending to the ovaries.~ ~fig. 5. the female generative organs. 1, the vagina; 2, uterus; 3, broad ligament of left side; 4, a smaller ligament; 5, fallopian tube; 6, ovary; 7, fringed end of fallopian tube.~ =blood-vessels surrounding uterus.=--the uterus is well supplied with blood-vessels, as fig. 6 shows. indeed, there is all over the walls of the uterus and through its tissue a vast network of these vessels. whenever, for any reason, the circulation of the blood through the pelvis is disturbed, these blood-vessels are likely to become engorged, over-filled, producing congestion and inflammation. ~fig. 6. the blood-vessels of the right side of the uterus. 1, blood vessels; 2, end of the fallopian tube; 3, ovary; 4, right edge of uterus.~ =all parts closely related.=--the close relation of these blood-vessels to the blood-supply of the bowels, liver, etc., makes it possible for most serious disturbances to take place even from slight causes. =study the illustrations.=--by studying these illustrations it can be readily seen how an over-distended rectum may produce such an impediment to the circulation that there will be congestion of all the neighboring parts. or, the intestines themselves may become over-distended with fã¦cal matter, or gas, from dyspepsia, and the pressure induced thereby may be sufficient to interfere with the free circulation of these parts, and thus uterine congestion produced. it is also seen how improper dress may compress the organs about these parts, and thus interfere with the circulation. again, it is easily understood, simply from studying the illustrations alone, how any of these causes might produce dislocation of the uterus itself. =object of uterus.=--the uterus is the source of the menstrual discharge, a place for the foetus during its development, and the source of the nutritive supply of this foetus. it is the uterus which contracts at full term and expels the child. =uterus not rigidly fixed.=--in a perfectly normal condition there is considerable mobility to the uterus; in other words, it is not fixed firmly by the ligaments already mentioned. it is rather simply suspended, or hung in the pelvic cavity, by these broad flat bands of tissue. a full bladder will push it backward, while a distended rectum will move it forward; as the body changes its posture, so will the uterus change its position by force of gravity. =cannot be bent upon itself.=--the uterus cannot be bent upon itself without producing injury; neither can it be pushed too far forward or backward, nor crowded down too far without causing great distress and actual disease. =fallopian tube.=--figs. 4 and 5 show that there is given off from each side of the upper part of the uterus a tube. this is called the fallopian tube. each tube is about four inches long. near the uterus its cavity will just admit an ordinary bristle; but near its free end, at the ovary, it is as large as a goose-quill. it is a peculiar tube in that it terminates in a number of fringe-like processes, one of which is always attached to the ovary itself. ~fig. 7. part of an ovary, showing a ripe ovum, or egg, about to be cast off, as occurs at each menstrual period. it is here this egg may be fertilized or impregnated by the male elements.~ =object of this tube.=--the fallopian tube conveys the sperm of the male from the uterus to the ovary, and also takes the germ-cell (or ovule, or egg) from the ovary to the uterus. when a ripe egg is about to be discharged from the ovary, one of these fringe-like processes of the fallopian tube grasps it and receives it into the mouth of the tube, whence it is conveyed directly into the uterine canal. =ovary.=--on each side of the uterus and in each side of the pelvic cavity is an ovary. it is about one and a half inches in length, three-fourths of an inch in width, and one-third of an inch in thickness. it weighs from one to two drachms, and is an elongated, oval-shaped body. ~fig. 8. this figure illustrates the course followed by an ovum. the ripened egg leaves the ovary (1), passes down the fallopian tube (2), and thence into the uterine cavity (3).~ ~fig. 9. an exceedingly minute piece of an ovary, highly magnified. it shows eight ova or eggs.~ =object of ovaries.=--the ovaries are the essential organs of generation in the female. in each ovary are large numbers of cells, ovules, or eggs, one of which, at least, is supposed to pass into the uterine cavity with each menstruation. anatomists tell us that each human ovary contains as many as 30,000 of these ovules, or eggs. local treatment.--fast passing away. =it makes one indignant.=--when i recall the terrible and almost horrible treatment which women have had to undergo in the past, i cannot help but become deeply indignant. it seems as if all medical study had gone for naught, as if the teachings of nature had been forgotten, and most of all, as if no such thing as delicacy and modesty existed. =this makes confirmed invalids.=--it is only necessary for a woman to complain of discomfort in the back, a bearing-down pain, or some unnatural discharge, when some physician says that local treatment, and local treatment only, must be taken. women so thoroughly understand what their physician is going to say that they do not consult him, but go on suffering more and more until they become almost confirmed invalids. others, after they are told what must be done, return home and become gloomy and melancholy over the outlook. =specialists are crazy for work.=--the specialists are so crazy for this kind of work that it seems as though they would gladly scrape and burn the inside of the stomach for dyspepsia, if they could do so! or, they would take a long probe and go down into the interior of the lungs and apply strong caustics, if such a thing were possible! =the patient is deceived.=--if the ache, or the pain, or the discharge was on the back of the hand where it could be seen, and where these "treatments" could be watched, the specialists would have a hard showing indeed, for the patient herself would then see that little good came from these local applications. but being situated within the body, so that only the physician himself can examine the parts, the patient has to rest content, not knowing whether a little pure water is applied (and the fee collected), or whether the strongest acids which burn deep into the tissues are used (and the fee collected). =local treatment unnecessary.=--now all of this is almost invariably unnecessary. it is not showing ordinary common-sense, not in accord with nature, and not in keeping with the best medical science of to-day. yet thousands upon thousands of women are undergoing the worst kind of mental and physical torture in taking these local treatments, while all the savings of the household have to go toward paying the enormous bills of the specialist. =the true doctor not blamed.=--_do not misunderstand me, please. i am not talking against doctors, not against the real, true, genuine, noble physicians and surgeons._ there is no nobler profession than that of the physician, none practiced more faithfully than the good old family physician of this country practice theirs. the best of them are glad to help their patients in any way they can, and in spite of professional prejudice, many have tried lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound upon their patients and have been delighted at the wonderful success of the trial. =nature the best teacher.=--the trouble with so many of these physicians who call themselves "specialists on diseases of women" is that they get it into their head that they know more than nature. they map out a course of their own, and pay no attention whatever to the laws of health. just as if a dog barking at the moon would make it shine less brightly! now any one who has given any thought to the preservation of the health can readily understand how impossible it would be to cure an inflammation of the uterus or ovaries, or check an unnatural discharge from the vagina, by applying strong acids, nitrate of silver, pure carbolic acid, strong tincture of iodine, or other destroying, caustic, irritating, and dangerous drugs. all of these must be injurious, must postpone recovery, and if their use be continued for any great length of time must make a cure quite impossible. =a good medicine needed.=--of course what is needed in these cases is something that will restore the natural circulation of the blood through the tissues of the uterus, something that will relieve congestion and cure inflammation. when the swelling and irritation have subsided, then the nerves are no longer irritated, and all pain disappears. =what this will do.=--then all these parts become better nourished, the weakened and diseased tissues take on new strength, and all unnatural discharges cease. when the relaxed ligaments are properly fed and toned up, then they hold the uterus in its natural position, and all bearing-down pains and other symptoms of displacement quickly disappear. of course this constitutional treatment with lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound is hastened by keeping the parts perfectly clean, which can be easily done with lydia e. pinkham's sanative wash. =a hearty welcome to the perfect cure.=--a hearty welcome to the most scientific treatment; a hearty welcome to the most natural, the most easy, and the most perfect method of cure; a hearty welcome to lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound; a hearty welcome to the remedy that never fails to restore the uterus to perfect health and natural position. chapter vi. menstruation. =occurs monthly.=--once every twenty-eight days very remarkable changes occur in the uterus, giving rise to that peculiar monthly periodicity called menstruation, monthly sickness, monthlies, or being unwell. although this usually occurs once in about four weeks, yet it may be a week less or a week longer; or, indeed, the variation may be even greater than this. =symptoms of its approach.=--as a perfectly natural menstrual period approaches, there is a certain degree of discomfort and lassitude, a sense of weight in the lower part of the body, and more or less disinclination to enter society. these symptoms may be slightly pronounced or very prominent, for it is quite unusual to find a person who does not have at least some general discomfort at this time. =its appearance.=--first there is a slight discharge of mucus which soon becomes of a rusty brown or yellow color from the mixture of a small quantity of blood. by the second or third day the discharge has the appearance of pure blood. the unpleasant sensations which were so marked at first now gradually subside, and the discharge, after continuing for a certain number of days, grows more and more scanty. the color changes from a pure red to a rusty tinge, and finally disappears altogether. then the ordinary duties are resumed. =the age of puberty.=--menstruation begins at about fourteen or fifteen years of age, this period being known as "the age of puberty." it is preceded and attended by peculiar signs. the whole figure becomes more plump and round, the hips increase in breadth, and the breasts rapidly develop. the more striking changes, however, occur in the inclinations and emotional susceptibilities. =age modified.=--a great many circumstances modify the age at which the first menstruation takes place. in hot climates this takes place earlier, the difference between hot and cold countries being as great as three years; yet heredity has more to do with this than anything else. "as was the mother so is the child" is a common saying among women. =continues about thirty years.=--the menstrual function continues active from this age until about the forty-fifth year, although this may be extended even ten years later. during all these years the woman is capable of bearing children, because at each month there has been a fully developed ovum, or egg, ready to be fertilized. =the change of life.=--when the menstrual function ceases, then the period of childbearing is over. the time of its disappearance is known as "the change of life, or menopause." =amount of monthly loss.=--the amount of blood lost during menstruation varies greatly with different individuals, and it would be quite impossible to give anything like an accurate rule. it varies, normally, from one to eight ounces, the average being probably about five ounces. =duration of period.=--the duration of the period is from one to eight days, the average being five days. hence it will be seen that the average loss of fluid per day would be about one ounce. =loss should be small.=--it should be stated here that, as a rule, those enjoy the best health who lose but a small quantity of blood at this time. some persons seem to think that a very free discharge is necessary, and that they feel better at such times; but there is no possible reason why this should be the case. =the first menstruation.=--the appearance of the first menstruation is a most critical time in the life of every young girl, and the mother should be prepared to give her daughter the best of advice. some slight inattention, some undue exposure, some thoughtlessness due entirely to ignorance on these great subjects, may change the whole future from a life of comfort and good health to prolonged days of misery and intense suffering. =menstruation and childbearing.=--it is the belief at the present time, among all who have studied this subject, that menstruation is closely connected with the function of childbearing. the changes which take place each month within the uterine cavity are of precisely the proper character to prepare this tissue for the reception of the fertilized egg. =rules to be observed.=--a few rules should be carefully followed during each menstruation, in order that future trouble may be prevented. first of all, it is necessary to avoid taking cold; yet a person should not stay in the house by the side of a fire, or in a warm room all the time, for this would increase the susceptibility to cold. care should be taken to avoid undue exposure, for nothing will disturb the menstrual process quicker than the sudden chilling of the body, especially when moist with perspiration. intense mental excitement should be avoided, also. if the young girl is at school, she should be told to study more lightly at this time; while any great excitement of any kind, as giving way to anger, or extreme merriment, should be avoided. the feeling of debility and depression which usually accompanies this time is a gentle warning by nature that the body should remain quiet and at rest. it is natural for many persons to be especially depressed at this time; an effort should be made by those who understand the situation to make everything as agreeable and pleasant as possible to the sufferer. =danger to school girls.=--without the slightest doubt, many women are suffering intensely to-day who might be enjoying the best of health had they not been obliged to study so intensely while in school. a moderate amount of study does no harm at this time, but the dread of examinations, with our modern system of cramming at certain times of the school year, has, without doubt, so worked upon the nervous system that many a life has been made miserable as a result. =danger to office girls.=--it is astonishing, when one fully understands the processes of menstruation, how so many girls and young women can remain all day behind the counter in the store, or at the work-table, during these few trying days, and even escape without serious illness. employers never think of the subject, and there is a natural delicacy on the part of those most concerned to mention the subject. there should be in all such establishments some woman to whom these girls could confide their condition. this woman, or overseer, could easily be made responsible for the apparent neglect of duties by these girls at such times. =criminal carelessness.=--how often is it true that young ladies attend balls, skate, and otherwise recklessly expose themselves at this most critical time. one is almost inclined to call such exposures really criminal, because of the terrible consequences so sure to follow. a simple wetting of the feet, or resting quietly in a draught after exercise, during menstruation may impose upon the person a life-long injury. how carefully, then, should mothers watch their daughters at these periods, and how strongly should they impress upon them the necessity of special care. =condition of bowels important.=--the condition of the bowels should also be carefully looked after at these times. indeed, this is so important that it should never be neglected. there should be at least one good movement of the bowels each day. nothing can more certainly derange the menstrual function than persistent constipation. =regularity important.=--every mother should make careful inquiry into the exact frequency of the menstrual period with her young daughter, at least during the first two years of the menstrual function. if there is pain at this time, then something is certainly wrong, and treatment should be taken at once. if there is irregularity, this also requires most prompt attention, as it will surely develop into something serious sooner or later. if the flow is too free, or not free enough, or if there is any deviation from the standard of health, the mother should be acquainted with it, and should proceed at once to correct the difficulty. =first two years very important.=--if a girl can get through the first two years of her menstrual life without serious disease, she stands a very good chance of enjoying good health during the rest of her life; while a slight mistake at this time may produce the most serious disease in later life. if you do not understand your ailments write to mrs. pinkham, lynn, mass. her advice is free and always helpful. chapter vii. disorders of menstruation. =amenorrhoea.=--this is a condition in which the monthly flow is suspended. it can hardly be called a disease, as it is rather a symptom of some disorder of the uterus, or of some constitutional defect. this may occur at the time when menstruation should normally appear, namely, from fourteen to fifteen years of age. =danger of a decline.=--if the young girl does not menstruate at sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, something is certainly wrong, and treatment should be taken at once in order to correct the difficulty before the girl goes into a decline. it is not wise to trust too much to nature in these cases. such girls are generally thin and pale, with a peculiar sallow, or yellowish-green color to the skin which has given rise to the term "green-sickness," or "chlorosis." they fall easy victims to scrofula, consumption, nervous prostration, insomnia, and other diseases. =treatment.=--when the time for menstruation arrives, and the flow does not appear, the mother should give her daughter regular doses of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. this remedy acts strictly according to the laws of nature, and simply brings about natural conditions. for some reason nature may not succeed in beginning this important change in the girl's life, but with the help that comes from the vegetable compound, this is sure to come to pass. =how lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound acts.=--a better circulation is established, the condition of the blood is improved, the nervous system is greatly invigorated, and, as a result, the menstrual flow is established. this should set at rest a great deal of worry on the part of the mother, and it means a great deal to the daughter, as well. now, the mother can be assured that one great danger is passed, and, with proper care and attention, there need be no more trouble. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, however, should be taken for some weeks or months until the habit is well established and menstruation appears regularly every twenty-eight days. =delicate girls.=--if the young girl menstruates, and yet is not in good health, then she should certainly take the vegetable compound for a week before the time when menstruation is expected; the great object being to establish regularity in the menstrual function. =keep the bowels regular.=--in all these cases attention should be given to the condition of the bowels, which are usually constipated. to correct this, the girl should take laxative doses of lydia e. pinkham's liver pills, just enough each night so that there may be one good, natural movement the day following. =look well to the diet.=--a great deal can be done, also, in the way of diet. girls, especially at this time, have a most perverted appetite, preferring pickles, olives, rich pies and cakes, and other indigestible foods. these are all bad, of course, as they disturb the digestion and keep the blood thin. let the diet consist principally of rich milk, eggs, lamb chops, beefsteak, chicken, and good bread and butter. if the milk rests heavy on the stomach, then add a tablespoonful of lime water to each glass of milk. daily exercise in the open air is also of value, and the sleeping-room should be well ventilated, especially at night. =menstruation suspended during pregnancy.=--during pregnancy menstruation is usually suspended, although the regular monthly flow may continue for two or three months. of course, suspension at this time is natural, and nothing should be done to bring on the flow. if menstruation appears when there is a strong probability that pregnancy exists, then the person should remain quietly in bed and eat only light food, and every precaution should be taken lest a miscarriage be brought on. =should a mother nurse her child while menstruating?=--menstruation is also usually suspended during nursing, although not infrequently this function is resumed again three or four months after childbirth. the question here arises whether the mother should continue to nurse her child while menstruating. if the child remains healthy, keeps steadily gaining in weight, and seems to be well nourished, and if the mother is not losing ground in any way, then there is no reason why the mother should not keep on nursing her child. if, however, the mother's health fails, or if there is evidence that the child is not prospering, then weaning should take place. as a rule, a menstruating mother does not have good milk for her child; it is usually thin and watery; although, as i have said, under certain conditions nursing may continue. =sudden suppression.=--sudden suppression of menstruation is most generally due to a cold, mental shock, or undue exposure of some kind. it is always accompanied with pain in the back, headache, more or less fever, and other unpleasant symptoms. it should generally be considered as a dangerous condition, and every effort should be made to restore the menstrual function. sometimes when menstruation is suddenly suppressed in this way, a so-called "vicarious" menstruation occurs, and there is hemorrhage from the lungs, the nose, the gums, the bowels, or from some other source. =treatment of suppression.=--the treatment of sudden suppression consists of a hot foot-bath, or sitting in a tub of hot water. at the same time the person should drink a bowl of hot ginger tea, or hot lemonade, be covered well with blankets, and every effort be made to bring about a profuse sweating. then have the person go to bed, and apply hot cloths across the lower part of the bowels. place at the feet bottles of hot water, or hot bricks, and keep up the perspiration in this way for an hour or two. this is all that need be done in the great majority of cases. =only one medicine to be taken.=--as the shock to the system tends to disturb the menstrual function for some time to come, the person should begin at once with lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, and should continue it through the coming month, in order to insure that the next menstruation may be normal in every way. =scanty menstruation.=--often menstruation appears with perfect regularity and yet is greatly deficient in amount. as we have stated elsewhere, there is no rule about this, and yet when the menstrual function is scanty, it is almost invariably a symptom of anã¦mia, or poverty of the blood. =anã¦mic girls.=--such girls are listless, easily tired, nervous, with little appetite, poor digestion, and with no resistive power. by taking lydia e. pinkham's blood purifier regularly a most remarkable change is brought about; and by the use of an easily digested and very nourishing diet, as just given in this chapter, together with plenty of outdoor exercise, this condition can be corrected before serious trouble ensues. =dysmenorrhoea.=--this is better known as "painful menstruation." it is due to a large number of causes, and yet can almost invariably be relieved by proper treatment. =two great causes.=--in the great majority of cases the cause is two-fold: weakness of the nerves and congestion of the uterus. these are so closely allied that it is often quite impossible to tell which is the ruling factor; indeed, one seems to be largely dependent upon the other. it is certainly true that congestion of the uterus almost invariably produces neuralgia of different parts of the body; while nervous exhaustion, nervous prostration, neuralgia, and general nervousness often show themselves by this increased pain at the menstrual period. =symptoms of dysmenorrhoea.=--usually the most marked pain is before the flow is well established. the person has a heavy pain in the lower part of the bowels, with sharp, darting pains extending down the back of the limbs. then the pain becomes more concentrated in the uterus itself, or sometimes in an ovary at the side. the pain may begin as a dull, heavy ache, which gradually changes into a sharp, darting pain, and which culminates at last in distinct and positive attacks of uterine colic, or cramps. the person suffers such intense pain that a chill may be produced which is followed by a high fever. often the pains are of a bearing-down character, and are not unlike those in the last stages of ordinary labor. =often make a complete wreck.=--these attacks of uterine cramps tell severely on the general health of the person, and if they are allowed to continue without treatment, they almost invariably make a complete wreck of the constitution. =can be cured.=--this most distressing and most agonizing complaint may be quickly and entirely cured by a thorough course of treatment with lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. this remedy should be taken continuously; not a day should pass without the regular dose. =old cases cured.=--if the disease has existed for some time, it must not be expected that it can be cured in a month, but by perseverance the cure will certainly come and will be perfectly satisfactory. =a valuable aid.=--in the meantime, the person who suffers from painful menstruation, a day or two before menstruation is expected, should take lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, being careful to keep the bowels in good condition. =additional treatment.=--if possible, the person had better remain in bed, or recline upon a sofa, for at least a day before the expected menstruation, certainly as soon as the first uncomfortable symptoms appear. then have her take a hot foot-bath, get into bed and cover with warm blankets, with bags or bottles of hot water, or hot bricks at the feet and back, and with warm cloths over the lower part of the abdomen. =temporary relief.=--if the pain is exceedingly severe, and is not relieved by these simple measures, then wring out flannel cloths from as hot water as can be borne and place these over the lower part of the bowels, directly over the uterus, covering them with dry flannels. as soon as these become cool, change for hot cloths again, using care, of course, that the cloths be not hot enough to burn. it is often surprising what instant relief from pain this simple procedure will produce. =do not take opium.=--no one should think for a moment of taking opium in any form at these times, as the opium habit is very easily contracted and is almost impossible to break up. this is also true of other anodyne remedies. by carrying out the suggestions given above, it will be found that their use will not be necessary. =thousands of grateful letters.=--if the readers of this book could only see the thousands of letters from grateful women the world over telling how this vegetable compound relieved them from the fearful torture which they had been enduring for years once a month, they would use every endeavor possible to spread the good news to every suffering friend that at last there is a perfect and absolute cure for this most distressing and most frightful complaint. =reasons for these startling cures.=--the reason why lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound works so admirably in these cases is easily understood when we call to mind the fact that some of its ingredients are the strongest of nerve tonics, building up, strengthening, and giving tone to the whole nervous system; while other ingredients have the remarkable property of relieving congestion of all the female generative organs. =to illustrate "congestion."=--if a string be tied around the base of the finger snugly, but not too tightly, the finger soon becomes darkened from the obstructed circulation. we say the finger is "congested." all that has to be done, in this case, is to cut the string and the congestion is promptly relieved. =cures congestion.=--in cases of congestion of the uterus, lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound removes obstruction to the circulation as effectually as cutting the string relieves the congestion of the finger. when the circulation is perfectly natural through these parts, then the congestion and inflammation must disappear and the uterus itself must again resume its natural position. =menorrhagia.=--this is better known as "profuse menstruation." just what constitutes an unnatural loss of blood cannot be stated, as each woman is a rule to herself. from experience she knows just about what is the normal amount she should lose each month and retain her health and strength. when this amount is more than natural, especially when sufficient to produce weakness and prostration, then it becomes "profuse." =occurs in the full-blooded.=--profuse menstruation may occur in those who are very full-blooded, or in those who are extremely weak and pale. when occurring in the former, the person usually complains of a dull, heavy, throbbing headache, pain in the back, and other symptoms of fever. such persons recover from an excessive flow of blood quite promptly, and do not suffer severely from it. =occurs in the pale.=--on the other hand, when this condition occurs in those who are very weak, pale, and thin, there is usually great prostration, which may even become most alarming. =treatment for the former.=--when profuse menstruation occurs in those who are full-blooded, the diet should be quite simple and plain. indeed, it would be better if the person should take but two meals a day and should eat but little or no meat. immediately upon the appearance of menstruation she should go to bed and remain there as quiet as possible, for in this way the pain and fever will be less and the amount of the flow greatly diminished. =treatment when pale and debilitated.=--it is a much more serious matter when this excessive loss occurs in those who are pale and debilitated. often the most energetic measures are necessary even to preserve life itself. the following rule should be observed when possible:--just as soon as menstruation appears, the person should go to bed and remain there quietly until the flow is nearly over. of course it is an easy matter to give these directions, and exceedingly hard, often quite impossible, for them to be carried out. many women have work that must be done, or children who must be cared for during these days just as well as any other time, and it is almost out of the question for them to remain quiet. yet the question seems to be whether they will remain in bed two or three days at this time, and then have far better health for the rest of the month, or whether they will drag along through all the month. we would certainly urge that this suggestion be carried out as often as possible, and that for one or two days the person keep as quietly in bed as possible. =when very excessive.=--if the flow is very free, then the foot of the bed may be raised three or four inches by placing blocks of wood under each lower corner. this will tend to check the flow. =wonderful cures possible.=--lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has made some most startling and almost miraculous cures in just these conditions. an immense number of letters are on file from women who have despaired of relief, given up all hope, and who were confirmed invalids until after taking this famous remedy. its continued use heals the inflammation in the cavity of the uterus, causes a better circulation through that organ, makes the blood richer, strengthens the digestion, and thus greatly improves the general health. =relief is prompt.=--the very next month after beginning its use the flow is diminished, the next month it is still less, and so on, until soon there is only a regular, natural menstruation. =a happy change.=--and what a change this means to suffering women! it means new life, new hope, new ambition, new courage. it means work better done, children better cared for, and all social and domestic duties better performed. i am indeed most happy in being able to tell suffering women what prompt relief lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound is sure to bring them. in these cases i always recommend the use of the vegetable compound in the form of lozenges, or pills. =metrorrhagia.=--when there is great loss of blood at other times than during the menstrual period, it is given the technical name of metrorrhagia. it means "uterine hemorrhage." keep the person quietly in bed, and have the foot of the bed raised as suggested above. if the hemorrhage is at all severe, a physician should be summoned in order that a careful examination may be made and the cause of this unusual occurrence thoroughly understood. =if you do not understand your ailments write to mrs. pinkham, lynn, mass. her advice is free and always helpful.= all such letters are strictly confidential; only women assist her in answering them. chapter viii. diseases of the uterus and ovaries. =inflammation of the uterus.=--inflammation of the uterus may be either acute or chronic. when acute, as following an abortion, taking cold during menstruation, etc., there is considerable fever, pain in the lower part of the bowels, nausea, and sometimes vomiting, tenderness on pressure over the uterus, pain when passing the urine and general discomfort. =treatment of the acute form.=--the treatment consists in having the person remain quietly in bed, applying bottles of hot water to the feet, if they are cold, and keeping cool cloths over the head if hot from the fever. in this way the circulation may be better balanced, and the tendency to congestion relieved. then take a flannel cloth about six inches square, dip it in hot water, and wring as dry as possible with the hands; now sprinkle ordinary spirits of turpentine freely over one side, and place this side directly over the centre of the lower part of the bowels, that is, just over the uterus. cover this flannel with another warm, dry flannel, and allow it to remain on until the smarting is quite pronounced, or the skin red. then remove this, and apply hot cloths wrung from hot water. use the turpentine cloth again in four or six hours, if the tenderness and pain still persist. =only one medicine needed.=--begin at once with lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, in order that the attack may be cut short. this the compound will certainly do if taken faithfully according to directions. after the acute attack is over, if there is any constipation, this should be relieved by lydia e. pinkham's liver pills; and if there is any discharge from the uterus, lydia e. pinkham's sanative wash should be used once or twice each day, in order to hasten recovery all that is possible. =chronic inflammation.=--it is not exaggerating in the least to say that probably 75 out of every 100 women in the world have more or less chronic inflammation of the uterus. =causes.=--the causes of this are many, as improper dress, which constricts the waist, and presses down upon the delicate organs in the pelvis; improper attention to the health at each menstruation; over-work; anxiety; miscarriages; unskillful treatment at childbirth, etc. =lives of suffering and sorrow.=--what miserable lives women have to endure who go about from day to day with a chronic inflammation of the uterus. each hour there is that dragging, pulling, bearing-down pain; that heavy weight; that terrible depression; and that feeling of abandoned hope. yet hundreds of thousands, i might say millions of women have had all this suffering and sadness turned to joy and comfort, simply by taking lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. =stories almost beyond belief.=--the stories received from our friends seem almost beyond belief. the most striking of them cannot be printed because i fear my readers would think such cures were quite impossible. the letters tell as terrible stories, as frightful conditions as could possibly exist, and yet all this has quickly and promptly changed to robust health by the use of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. so often has this been reported that there is not the least room for doubt. =i speak positively.=--i am not guessing in this matter; it is altogether too serious; there is too much at stake. so i urge upon you to give lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound a thorough trial, feeling positive, without the slightest question of a doubt, that you will be quickly and permanently cured. =leucorrhoea.=--this is also known as "the whites, or the female weakness." it is a symptom of inflammation of the uterus; and that this disease is so prevalent is again proved by this almost universal ailment among women. it is characterized by a white discharge from the vagina which often becomes very irritating, and is especially bad just before or after menstruation. it is a symptom that should not be allowed to go untreated, for it shows that there is serious trouble which may bring about an incurable condition. yet when properly treated, it may be quickly remedied, and all danger removed. =treatment.=--first of all, it is necessary to remove the inflammation that exists in the uterus itself. this is done by the persistent use of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. as i have described elsewhere, this will remove all congestion, heal the inflammation, and bring about a healthy circulation. for this i strongly recommend that lydia e. pinkham's sanative wash be also used with a syringe for local treatment.[1] this should be used each night as a vaginal injection, according to directions, thus thoroughly cleansing the parts, and entirely relieving all irritation which these acrid secretions are sure to set up. if this discharge has been irritating enough to cause any chafing, eruption, itching, or uncomfortable sensation of any kind about the external parts, then the sanative wash should be used for bathing the parts; the relief will be immediate, and the cure very prompt. =may be quickly cured.=--i speak with great positiveness here, because of vast experience and because of the universal success of this treatment. i do not believe there is a case of leucorrhoea which cannot be relieved and soon permanently cured by this treatment. there is no delay; relief comes at once. a great improvement in all the symptoms is very marked, even after the second or third day of treatment. =neglect causes ulceration.=--i would add a word of caution here to women who are afflicted in this way, as the retention of these discharges is likely to produce an irritation about the mouth of the uterus which will result in serious ulceration, and even be the means of producing the most serious and most incurable diseases. =ulcers on the uterus.=--because of the low condition of the system, thin blood, and the local inflammation in the uterus itself, ulcers may form about the mouth of the uterus. these are accompanied by more or less pain, a sense of heaviness and weight in the lower part of the bowels, and a whitish discharge similar to that of leucorrhoea only frequently streaked, or tinted, with blood. the discharge continues about the same all through the month between the days of menstruation. this condition should have the same treatment as that mentioned above for leucorrhoea, and the recovery will be equally prompt. =early treatment necessary.=--if women only understood better how easy a matter it is for these ulcerations to widen and deepen until some incurable and terrible disease results, they would be more prompt in taking treatment, especially when this is sure to be followed by a perfect cure. when the blood is thin and poor, and when the weight is reduced, lydia e. pinkham's blood purifier should be used regularly. the blood purifier, the vegetable compound, and the sanative wash, have done as great work in preventing serious disease as in curing it. =displacement of the uterus forward.=--the uterus may be displaced either forward, backward, or downward. by referring to the illustration in the first part of this book, it will be noticed that the uterus naturally tips slightly forward, so that when it is displaced forward, the condition is simply an exaggeration of its natural state. =causes bladder trouble.=--by referring to this illustration again, it is at once apparent that this tipping forward must bring about some difficulty with the bladder, and such is the case. the most marked symptom is painful and frequent passing of the urine, with a dull and heavy pain across the lower part of the bowels. often this weight is so increased by walking that the person can be upon the feet only a short time without causing discomfort and pain. this condition may be brought about by some unusual effort at lifting, jumping, or straining, or especially by wearing too tight clothing about the waist, tight lacing being probably the most frequent cause of all. =the cure.=--the general treatment here consists in taking a thorough course of treatment with lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, in order to strengthen the ligaments of the uterus which hold this organ in place. when the condition of the system is improved, the nerves strengthened, and the blood made more rich by the use of this compound, then these ligaments partake of this general improvement, and by becoming more tense, bring the uterus back into position. =displacement backwards.=--the uterus may be tipped backward, in which case it will rest against the lower bowel. the principal symptom here is pain in the lower part of the back, as if a movement of the bowels were necessary. there is great discomfort in walking, because of this sense of pressure. the pain is always increased when the bowels move, and is associated with a sense of obstruction, and painful menstruation is very common. =the treatment.=--here the same treatment should be followed as mentioned for the opposite condition above. in the first place, the bowels should be kept in good condition by the use of lydia e. pinkham's liver pills, taking these in just sufficient amount to cause a free movement of the bowels daily. then thorough and prolonged treatment with mrs. pinkham's vegetable compound will give such strength and tone to the ligaments about the uterus that they will again bring back this organ to its proper position. =falling of the womb.=--the most distressing of all these displacements is that known as "prolapsus, or falling of the womb." the most frequent cause of this condition is complete relaxation of the ligaments which naturally support this organ. when the ligaments become weak, they easily stretch, and thus allow the uterus to fall down into the vaginal canal, even nearly to the surface of the body. =symptoms.=--this displacement causes irritation of the bladder and lower bowel, discomfort in walking, painful menstruation, leucorrhoea, a dragging pain in the back, and most marked bearing-down pain in the lower part of the body. =the cure is certain.=--the treatment of this most distressing affection is usually followed by prompt and permanent results. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound should always be taken, because of its great power to relieve all inflammation and give strength and tone to the ligaments which hold up the uterus. lydia e. pinkham's sanative wash should be used, also, for its cleansing and strengthening properties, on the local parts. if a sitz bath-tub is in the house it may be used to great advantage in these cases. a single pail of water will be sufficient, and should be as hot as can be comfortably borne. if a tub of this kind is not at hand, then an ordinary bath-tub may be used, having in it sufficient water to come well over the hips when the person sits in it. =the one permanent cure.=--by taking lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, these relaxed ligaments are given strength and tone so that they assume their former power. as they gain strength they contract, pulling the uterus up into its natural position, and holding it there permanently. i can most positively assure every woman who is suffering from all the discomfort and terrible distress which always accompany falling of the womb, that she may be promptly and most perfectly cured if she will only follow my advice. =an abundance of proof.=--so many letters have come from women who have suffered and have been cured that it is not possible for a reasonable person to doubt what they say. i can only urge all affected with these complaints to give lydia f. pinkham's vegetable compound a good trial, feeling perfectly assured that they will be abundantly satisfied in every way. if you do not understand your ailments write to mrs. pinkham, lynn, mass. her advice is free and always helpful. such letters are strictly confidential communications from one woman to another who will never betray the confidence. footnote: [1] every woman suffering from uterine or vaginal troubles should own and use a syringe. i would recommend the use of ruth paxton's improved fountain syringe. i believe it is the only one that will convey the solution to every part of the vaginal cavity. the ordinary syringe is inadequate. it can be obtained by sending to the r. paxton company, 221 columbus ave., boston, mass. price $1.75, postpaid--registered letter or postal note. it will repay you a thousand times to take the trouble to send for it, as the recoveries from disease are quicker when it is used. anyway, send two-cent stamp for her little book of information. you will see by the letters it contains how the syringe is regarded by those who are using it. chapter ix. diseases of uterus and ovaries (continued). =ovaries, congestion of.=--this disease usually comes from taking cold during menstruation, from some injury, extra strain during lifting, or from some slow inflammatory process. the symptoms are pain and tenderness in one or both sides of the lower part of the body. there is more or less continuous pain, which is always worse in standing or walking. the tenderness in the sides is increased during menstruation, especially if pressure be made over the part. sometimes the pain is quite severe when the bowels move. there is always a feeling of distress, frequently associated with nausea, and often more or less fever. =treatment.=--for treatment the person should have as good surroundings as possible, and should take complete rest during menstruation. in order to relieve the congestion in these parts and thoroughly control the pain, lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound should be taken at once. =removal of ovaries.=--this condition of the ovaries gave rise to the practice of removing these organs. just as soon as a woman consulted a physician and complained of tenderness over the ovaries, he was sure to advise her to have these organs removed. =less operating than formerly.=--but this practice is rapidly passing away, and the very surgeons who were so anxious to operate a few years ago are now found advising against it. this is because of the serious results which follow this operation. while the pain and tenderness in these parts would be relieved, yet the profound and overwhelming impression made upon the nervous system, by producing such a remarkable change in the life of the woman, was even worse than the disease itself. =results of removal of ovaries.=--women who have had their ovaries removed are frequently the victims of hysteria, melancholia, extreme nervous prostration, insomnia, and other distressing and dangerous complaints. =surgical operations unnecessary.=--then, again, it is becoming well known over the whole country that lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound can relieve congestion and pain so thoroughly that the surgeon's knife is unnecessary. i am so confident in this belief that it hardly seems possible that any woman would continue to suffer in this way, when it is so useless. i know we can make every woman perfectly comfortable and at rest, no matter how long she may have suffered, if she will only follow our simple directions. =the one certain cure.=--all she has to do is to keep her bowels in good condition by taking lydia e. pinkham's liver pills, and at the same time take a thorough course of treatment with the vegetable compound. if you have any friends or neighbors who are suffering from this disease, and who fear that it will lead to ovarian tumors, which must ultimately necessitate a dangerous surgical operation, i urge upon you to tell them the story of this vegetable compound. =always brings good cheer.=--it has brought happiness to so many homes, has relieved so much suffering, and has cheered and comforted so many thousands of women, that i am sure you will be doing a great deed of charity if you will only aid in spreading this glad news. =tumors of the uterus.=--the uterus is subject to tumors, or growths, the symptoms of which are much like those of chronic inflammation. as a rule, the person suffering from these tumors knows nothing whatever of their existence until some competent physician has told her such is the case. =fibroid tumors.=--the most common tumors are known as fibroids. they are often small, and yet sometimes attain a considerable size. until within a few years surgeons were always anxious to operate upon these tumors; but this is now largely done away with, for they are not fatal in themselves, and only become serious when they attain an exceedingly large size, or, what is more frequently the case, cause excessive flowing during or between the menstrual periods. =tumors cured without the knife.=--in these cases lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound shows its remarkable power to great advantage. by establishing a better circulation through the uterus, and relieving the congestion in the surrounding parts, and by giving strength and tone to the smaller blood-vessels, the hemorrhage is controlled and the inflammation is reduced. the tumors cease to grow, diminish in size, and disappear altogether under its influence. =vagina, inflammation of.=--occasionally there is an acute and most intense inflammation of the vagina caused by exposure to cold, irritating discharges from the womb, the use of pessaries, supporters, or some contagious disease. many women suffer from this complaint towards the close of menstruation, when the discharges are acrid and most irritating. =promptly cured.=--this inflammation can be promptly cured by the frequent use of lydia e. pinkham's sanative wash. prepare this strictly according to the directions on each package, and use it as a vaginal injection two or three times a day. the cure will be hastened by employing a sitz-bath (sitting in a tub of hot water, or in a bath-tub). =to prevent extension of disease.=--in order to prevent the inflammation from extending into the uterus, it is always wise to take lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound for a few days after an attack of this kind. =pruritus, itching.=--pruritus, or itching of the external parts, is a most annoying affection, which often renders life itself almost unendurable. its most frequent cause is due to irritating discharges from the uterus or vagina. quite a large per cent of the women who are passing through the "change of life" are troubled in this way. it is also a marked symptom of diabetes, or "sugar in the urine;" and if the itching is associated with an unusually large flow of urine, together with dryness of the mouth and extreme thirst, there is a probability that the person is suffering from diabetes. in such a case a specimen of the urine should be taken to a competent physician, and he should be asked to make a thorough examination of it in order to definitely determine this point. =treatment.=--the treatment of pruritus consists in keeping the parts thoroughly cleansed by frequent vaginal injections of lydia e. pinkham's sanative wash, even three or four injections daily; and also bathing the external parts with the same solution. =can be promptly controlled.=--although medical writers so generally claim that this disease is almost impossible to relieve, and although they recommend the application of severe caustics, yet i have never found any difficulty in promptly controlling and curing this affection by the faithful and persistent use of lydia e. pinkham's sanative wash as a local application and the vegetable compound for its constitutional effects. =constitutional treatment necessary.=--although this disease shows itself in only one place, yet the difficulty is in the whole system, and can only be thoroughly removed by the internal use of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. thousands of letters from women tell that their life of agony, distress, and sleeplessness was changed to one of perfect comfort almost immediately upon the use of these remedies. =bladder, inflammation of.=--sometimes the inflammation of the vagina and uterus is so severe that it involves the bladder; or an irritable condition of the bladder may be produced by a pregnant uterus pressing forward against it; or the uterus may be tipped forward a trifle more than natural, and thus press against the bladder sufficient to cause irritation. =symptoms.=--the principal symptom of congestion or inflammation of the bladder is a frequent desire to pass the urine. this act is almost always painful, and is sometimes accompanied with spasmodic contractions of the walls of the bladder, causing severe straining. =may become chronic.=--if treatment be neglected, this condition easily becomes chronic, when it is very difficult to cure. prompt treatment in these cases is strongly urged because it can be cured in every instance, and thus an immense amount of suffering avoided. =treatment.=--if possible, the person should remain in bed or recline on a couch. the diet should consist largely of liquids, nothing being better than good milk. meats, rich soups, and all pastries should be avoided. mrs. pinkham's vegetable compound should be taken at once, because of its most happy effect in relieving congestion and inflammation of all the pelvic organs. indeed, here is one instance where the vegetable compound is alike useful to both sexes. the most flattering testimonials have come from men who have tried this remedy "because it was in the house," and who were most happily surprised to find that the relief was prompt and the cure speedy. for all irritable conditions of the bladder, whether of recent or old standing, i do not believe there is a remedy in the world that holds out such great promises of complete relief equal to lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. =the menopause, or "change of life."=--this is a cessation of menstruation. it usually occurs between the ages of forty and fifty years, although frequently before and even after this time. =symptoms.=--the person first notices that although menstruation had previously been regular, yet now it has become irregular, not appearing more frequently than once every six weeks or two months; or possibly passing over a month, and then appearing regularly again for the following two or three months; or the flow may be less and less month after month, until gradually it disappears altogether; or, not infrequently, menstruation ceases abruptly, without any warning whatever. =a natural condition.=--the change of life should be a perfectly natural condition, not associated with any unpleasant symptom whatever. yet this is rarely the case, while often the suffering at this time is most intense in every way. =affects nervous system.=--the most severe effects are frequently produced on the nervous system. these are known as "heat flashes." it is a marked symptom with a great many women, and is described as a sensation of waves of heat passing over the body. sometimes these are very severe, causing the face to become very red, producing dizziness and intense headache. often there is melancholia, great depression, and not infrequently complete prostration of the nervous system. the digestion may be disturbed, producing constipation, diarrhoea, dyspepsia, loss of appetite, offensive breath, biliousness, etc. most marked changes are certainly taking place in the whole system, and it is but natural that every part of the body should be profoundly impressed. =not expensive treatment.=--i cannot urge too strongly upon my readers the necessity of their taking lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound all through these remarkable changes. it is not a great expense to take this vegetable compound in moderate doses four times a day for weeks, or even months, during these changes. =a critical time.=--if this period of life be passed over in safety, then there may be years and years of robust health remaining; while if it be not attended to properly, the remainder of the life may be one prolonged day of agony. even when persons have suffered during all their menstrual life, they can now have perhaps a score or more of years of complete relief if they properly care for themselves during this change. =keep under its influence.=--lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound is a great tonic in itself, bracing up the whole nervous system, aiding digestion, and causing all the forces of the body to act more in accord with nature. then it has a special influence over the uterus and ovaries; indeed, so marked is its power to correct disease that all the trying days of the "change of life" may be passed over in perfect safety, if only the system be continuously kept under its influence. =may be made easy and natural.=--women who have been dreading this change, and who have been made to look upon it as something horrible to pass through, may now lay all such anxiety aside, for mrs. pinkham long ago solved the problem of making this time of life as healthy and natural as any other. it is not claiming too much to say that if women everywhere will only take lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound through this trying time, they will come out of it feeling better in every way than they have felt for many years. =if you do not understand your ailments, write to mrs. pinkham, lynn, mass. her advice is free and always helpful. such letters are strictly confidential and answered with the help of women only.= chapter x. pregnancy, its symptoms, diseases, etc. =sometimes difficult to tell.=--even the most skilled physicians sometimes make mistakes in stating that pregnancy exists when it does not. =the first sign.=--the most valuable and striking sign of pregnancy is the cessation of the monthly periods; yet even this is not always reliable. sometimes menstruation continues for three or four months, especially during the first pregnancy, although this is exceedingly rare. as a rule, to which there is hardly an exception, if menstruation ceases in a married woman who has previously been regular, she is, in all probability, pregnant. =other signs.=--another important sign is the enlargement of the abdomen, although this cannot be detected much before the fourth month. a valuable sign, also, is the enlargement of the breasts, with a widening and browning of the pink ring around the nipples. enlargement of the breasts often begins as early as the second month, and is quite marked by the fourth or fifth month. =morning sickness.=--morning sickness is a symptom present in the majority of cases. it usually consists of a marked nausea upon rising, and perhaps vomiting. this may last only a few hours in the early morning, or continue through the greater part of the day. it generally appears in the second month and lasts only through the third month, although, in bad cases, it may continue through the whole period, and very seriously affect the health. =treatment.=--there are any number of remedies recommended for the treatment of this morning sickness. what will cure one case seems to be perfectly useless in another. it has been my experience that the best way to manage these cases is as follows: have the person take a slice of toasted bread, or a toasted cracker, with a little coffee if desired, while in bed, remaining there at least half an hour after eating. or, the person may take a glass of milk to which two tablespoonfuls of lime water have been added. then, by rising slowly and moving about carefully, it is often possible to go through the day without any sickness whatever. i have known many cases to be entirely relieved by eating a little ordinary pop-corn. =the morning meal.=--the morning meal may consist of milk to which a little lime water has been added; or a poached or soft-boiled egg. sometimes scarped beef, lean and rare, salted and spread on very thin bread, quiets the stomach at once, while it is highly nourishing. =only one medicine needed.=--it is surprising what happy changes lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound brings about in this condition. the irritability subsides, the digestion is greatly improved, the nervous system is strengthened, and all these uncomfortable and disagreeable symptoms pass away. the compound should be taken in small doses three times a day, after meals. =a bandage may relieve nausea.=--an abdominal bandage will sometimes relieve the morning sickness, if placed snugly, but not too tightly, about the body. it need be worn only a week or two, for a trial, and should always be taken off at night. if the nausea persists during the day, then let the food be light and taken in small amounts, at frequent intervals. ="quickening."=--this is another sign of pregnancy. the word refers to the detection by the mother of the movements of the child. although, without doubt, the child moves within the mother at a much earlier period, yet these movements are too feeble to be noticed until pregnancy has advanced four or four and a half months. =other symptoms of pregnancy.=--other symptoms are morbid longings for unusual articles of food, as sour apples, vinegar, charcoal, clay, slate pencils, etc. these longings, however, should not be satisfied, as they do not represent the demand of nature for these substances. they belong to the same class of changes which are shown by a marked difference in the disposition of a person whereby the lively and cheerful woman becomes melancholy, gloomy, and irritable. =diet during pregnancy.=--the diet during the whole of pregnancy should be generous, yet easily digestible. a great many women do not change their diet at all, and if the person is in good health and does not suffer in any way, there is no reason whatever why the diet should be changed, unless the evening meal be made somewhat lighter. =eat sparingly of meat.=--it is always wise not to eat meat more than once a day. this is because a meat diet throws more work upon the kidneys, and any failure of the kidneys increases the probability of serious trouble at childbirth. so far as is known, there is no foundation for the belief that any special article of diet has any particular effect upon the development of the child. =care of the breasts.=--the care of the breasts during pregnancy must be commenced early. all pressure of the clothing should be removed, in order to give them full opportunity to develop. they should be kept warm, however, and well supported, if the size renders them uncomfortable. =mothers should nurse their children.=--statistics show that the summer diarrhoeas and dysenteries, which carry off such immense numbers of children each year, are almost unknown among babies that nurse. it is the artificially fed child which suffers from wasting diseases and disturbances of the digestion which are so fatal to life. therefore, every prospective mother should do everything in her power to prepare for the proper nursing of her child. =care of the nipples.=--if the nipples are flat, they can be pulled out gently each day with the fingers, and thus the difficulty entirely remedied. at the beginning of the last month of pregnancy, the nipples should be hardened in order that nursing may be painless, and that all fissures, or cracks, may be avoided. every morning and night apply the following solution to the nipples with a piece of absorbent cotton:- glycerite of tannin, 1 fluid ounce. water, 1 fluid ounce. allow this to remain on the nipple. this cannot be used after confinement, for the bitter taste would be objectionable to the child. =can sex be foretold?=--mothers often wish to know if it is possible to determine the sex of the child before it is born. although a great deal has been written on this subject, and a number of so-called rules have been made, yet it is absolutely impossible to tell whether the child will be a boy or a girl; and it is also equally impossible to do anything that could in any way exert an influence in producing a child of the desired sex. =to tell time of confinement.=--for two hundred and eighty days, or forty weeks, the prospective mother has been conducting herself in the best way she thought possible, that all good might be exerted upon the new life. the question now comes, when may the day of confinement be expected? i give here a table for calculating this day, which i am sure will be found very convenient. obstetrical table. --------+--------------------------------------------- january | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 oct'r | 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 --------+--------------------------------------------- feb'y | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 nov'r | 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 --------+--------------------------------------------- march | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 dec'r | 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 --------+--------------------------------------------- april | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 jan'y | 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 --------+--------------------------------------------- may | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 feb'y | 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 --------+--------------------------------------------- june | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 march | 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 --------+--------------------------------------------- july | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 april | 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 --------+--------------------------------------------- august | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 may | 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 --------+--------------------------------------------- sept'r | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 june | 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 --------+--------------------------------------------- october | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 july | 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 --------+--------------------------------------------- nov'r | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 aug | 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 --------+--------------------------------------------- dec'r | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 sept'r | 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 --------+--------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------+----- 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 | 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 |nov. ---------------------------------------------+----- 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 | 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 |dec. ---------------------------------------------+----- 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 | 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 |jan. ---------------------------------------------+----- 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 20 27 28 29 30 | 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 20 30 31 1 2 3 4 |feb. ---------------------------------------------+----- 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 | 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 |mar. ---------------------------------------------+----- 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 | 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 |april. ---------------------------------------------+----- 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 | 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 |may. ---------------------------------------------+----- 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 | 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 |june. ---------------------------------------------+----- 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 | 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 |july. ---------------------------------------------+----- 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 | 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 |aug. ---------------------------------------------+----- 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 | 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 |sept. ---------------------------------------------+----- 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 | 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 |oct. ---------------------------------------------+----- as labor occurs in the larger proportion of cases between 270 and 290 days from the first day of the last menstruation, 280 days is the average. the table presents at a glance the beginning and end of 280 days for every day in the year. find the date of menstruation in the upper line of the horizontal column, and the figure below, with the corresponding month, will indicate 280 days. =to avoid miscarriage.=--the pregnant woman must be very careful as the usual time for menstruation approaches. it is then that any undue effort, unusual lifting, excessive grief, or shock to the system, may bring on a miscarriage. this is especially true if such a misfortune has previously occurred. =a great preventive.=--the most abundant testimony shows that lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound is an almost certain preventive to miscarriage or abortion. it gives strength to the uterine walls, quiets the first approach of pain, controls any spasmodic contractions, and brings about such a healthy condition that all danger is averted. i cannot speak too strongly of this vegetable compound for these cases. so many mothers have written us that they are now happy in the possession of a child, when, for time and time again, they would have a miscarriage at the third or fourth month. =keep it in the house.=--every pregnant woman should always keep in the house a bottle of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. she does not know the day when she will need it, and when that day comes she will require it promptly. at any time when there is soreness, tenderness, unusual pain, any unnatural discharge, or any symptom whatever that shows pregnancy is not pursuing a perfectly natural course, she should begin to use the vegetable compound at once. it should be taken in small doses two or three times a day, just enough to produce its strengthening, quieting, and healing effects. if she finds she has been overdoing, has strained herself in any way, or fears that some unfortunate result will follow an extra hard day's labor, let her take a few doses of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound as a certain preventive to future trouble. =the one universal cure.=--in other words, i repeat what i have already said so many times, that whenever there is trouble of any kind with any part of the female generative organs, whenever these do not act in a perfectly natural manner, then the lydia e. pinkham vegetable compound is indicated; for it is the one great, universal and never-failing cure for all the affections which fall to the lot of womankind. =makes mother and child strong.=--many thousands of wives owe the fact that they are mothers to-day to this grand remedy, and thousands upon thousands of children are happy, strong and robust because their mothers were wise enough to use it. keep it in the house. do not be a day without it. have it where you can reach it at any time. put your confidence in it. 'twill prove a never-failing friend to you in time of need. =mothers' marks.=--there is a wide belief among women that any strong impression made at a certain time during pregnancy will exert a powerful influence in producing some defect or deformity in the child. the opposite is also held, to the effect that beautiful objects, delightful music, and everything elevating and ennobling will have a favorable effect upon the body or mind of the child. an immense amount of testimony can be produced on both sides of this question. the weight of evidence, however, is rather in favor of these so-called "maternal impressions." in other words, it seems possible that under very unusual conditions the mother may affect her unborn child because of some powerful impression made upon the system. yet hundreds of thousands of mothers become frightened and undergo the most terrible experiences without having the slightest unfavorable effect upon the child; while other mothers give birth to deformed children when they have been surrounded with every comfort and have not been disturbed in any way. no one understands this subject, and but little can truly be said about it. =hereditary influences are strong.=--on the other hand, we all know how strong is heredity. therefore it is only acting the part of ordinary wisdom for every pregnant woman to avoid all disagreeable things possible and cultivate everything that is good and true. =early training necessary.=--when we come to study the theory of heredity, we see that it is impossible for any mother to completely change her course of life simply during pregnancy and have a corresponding effect upon her child. to produce the best results on the offspring it is necessary that the mother should have cultivated her own mind and body through many years of training. =were cured early in life.=--lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has done untold good to the present generation. there are hundreds of thousands of children living to-day who are healthy and happy because years before they were born their mothers, when young girls, took this grand household medicine. they were restored to health, a great load was lifted, and things again looked cheerful and bright, and in this condition a happy baby was born into the world. =if you do not understand your ailments write to mrs. pinkham, lynn, mass. her advice is free and always helpful. such letters are strictly confidential and answered with the help of women only.= chapter xi. problems in nursing. =diet during nursing.=--many mothers believe that it is necessary to eat only certain articles of diet while nursing their baby, for fear the child may be given the colic. while this may be true in certain cases, yet it is the exception. as a rule, mothers may eat nearly everything digestible without fear of affecting the baby. =exceptions.=--sometimes raw fruits or acid substances may change the milk in some way so that it will disagree with the baby, but as i have said, this is not the rule. occasionally, however, when such articles of diet as onions, cauliflower, and cabbage have been eaten, these will impart such an odor and taste to the milk that the child will refuse to nurse. =must be guided by experience.=--the only precaution the mother need take is that if she finds some article of diet disagrees with her, or if she knows a certain article always causes pain or discomfort in the child, then these should be avoided. it is true that certain medicines, especially purgatives, may be taken by the mother which will affect the child very quickly. here the same rule should be the guide as should always govern one, namely, no article of diet should be used which is known to disturb the digestion. =insufficient supply of milk.=--when a mother knows that the chances of her child's life are greatly increased if it has its natural food, she will certainly make unusual efforts to supply all the food necessary. mothers are too likely to think that an increase in the quantity of the milk answers every purpose; but this is of no use unless the quality is increased as well. the free use of soups and some malt extracts may increase the quantity, but this does the child no good. it too much resembles the example of the milk-man who uses the well-pump to increase his supply of milk. =how increased.=--however, the supply of milk can easily be increased in quantity and correspondingly improved in quality if the mother will drink freely of cow's milk, and use other substantial foods at the same time. if the milk is constipating, or rests heavy on the stomach, then a little lime water may be added to it in the proportion of one or two tablespoonfuls to a glass of milk. regular exercise in the open air is also necessary in order that the general health may be kept in the best possible condition. =anger may poison milk.=--it is a fact that if the child nurses after the mother has had a severe fright, or has become violently angry, the milk will sometimes act as an intense poison. in such cases the mother had better empty the breasts with a breast-pump, and not nurse the child for ten or twelve hours afterward, substituting some artificially prepared food. =extra supply of milk.=--sometimes the secretion of milk is so great that even a strong child cannot take it all. this produces a distention of the breasts, causing what is known as "caked breasts," or "milk cake." this should be promptly attended to, as there is great danger of an abscess forming. =to prevent caked breasts.=--the way to relieve this condition is to gently but firmly rub the breasts with warm sweet-oil, continuing this for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time. an occasional use of the breast-pump is necessary also. =how to diminish supply.=--when weaning-time comes, the question arises how the secretion of milk may be diminished. this is best done by having the mother take as little liquid as possible, whether of water, tea, milk, soup, or anything of this kind. she should also take a gentle laxative each day, as a little hunyadi water, or laxative mineral water of any kind. then support the breasts by passing a broad band beneath them, and carrying it over the shoulders, compressing the breasts slightly, but not too greatly. the breast-pump should be used as soon as any distention becomes painful, and the breasts should be diligently rubbed with warm sweet-oil. =if you do not understand your ailments write to mrs. pinkham, lynn, mass. her advice is free and always helpful. such letters are strictly confidential and answered with the help of women only.= chapter xii. to prevent convulsions at childbirth. =work of the kidneys most important.=--the kidneys are constantly engaged in removing from the body certain poisonous substances which are held in solution in the urine. if they should fail to do this work, or if no urine should be secreted for even a few hours, most serious consequences would follow. =cause of convulsions.=--when these poisons are retained in the system to a sufficient degree they cause convulsions and unconsciousness, and are frequently fatal. the convulsions which some women have at childbirth are caused by this imperfect action of the kidneys. =to tell if danger is present.=--an examination of the urine at any time will tell whether the kidneys are acting well or not, and thus it is possible to determine whether there is danger of having these convulsions during confinement. therefore i urge upon all pregnant women the necessity of having their urine examined once or twice during the course of pregnancy, and certainly during the eighth or ninth month. =albumen in the urine.=--imperfect action of the kidneys is shown by the appearance of albumen in the urine. any competent physician can easily determine whether this albumen is in the urine or not, and if present he can take such prompt measures as to remedy the evil before any serious danger occurs. of course i know that hundreds of thousands of women pass safely through childbirth and have no unfavorable symptom at all; yet i also know that now and then a most valuable life is lost when it might just as well have been spared as not, if these simple suggestions had been carried out. it is the teaching of all the best medical authorities in the world that this precaution should be taken by every expectant mother. =symptoms of kidney trouble.=--when the kidneys are not performing their work properly, the mother may know it, herself. if she finds her feet and ankles swelling at night, if she has a puffy look under the eyes, and especially if the amount of urine passed in twenty-four hours is not so great as formerly, then there is probably albumen in the urine. in this case she should stop eating meat of all kinds, and live largely upon milk, keeping the bowels in laxative condition by using lydia e. pinkham's liver pills, and bathing the skin well once or twice a day. she should also begin at once the use of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, resting assured that this will remove the congestion in the kidneys, and will cause a more free secretion of the urine. =self-abuse (masturbation).=--this is a cause of many of the diseases of women, also men. small girls learn the practice from larger ones, and through ignorance continue it often to maturity without knowing that it is bringing upon them a physical and moral injury. _if mothers instructed their daughters on this subject there would be fewer broken lives._ symptoms.--the main symptoms are wakefulness, restless nights, headache, indolence, melancholy, indisposition to study, forgetfulness, despondency, weakness in the back and private organs, no confidence in one's own abilities, a desire for seclusion from society; whites, hysterics, and inability to look any one in the face. sometimes the muscles are relaxed, limbs tremble, the skin is sallow and dry, with pain in the womb. =remarks. write to mrs. pinkham in perfect confidence, and she will tell you exactly what to do. delay is dangerous in this matter.= chapter xiii. dyspepsia, constipation, general debility, sleeplessness. =dyspepsia, acute.=--acute dyspepsia is usually caused by some improper diet, as the eating of an unusual article of food or of a larger amount than necessary. such articles of diet as cucumbers, unripe or overripe fruit, an excessive amount of sweets, rich salads, heavy puddings, etc., may so irritate the stomach that an acute attack of dyspepsia follows. =nature often cures.=--nature often makes a prompt cure in these cases by causing a sharp attack of vomiting or diarrhoea. if a cure is not made in this way, then we can imitate nature by giving an emetic, or by taking a laxative, in order to rid the body of the indigestible material as soon as possible. =treatment.=--if there is much pain in the stomach, a mustard plaster should be placed directly over the pit of the stomach, or cloths wrung out in hot water. for the next day following the attack the diet should be restricted to milk, or poached eggs on toast, or something of this kind. =chronic dyspepsia.=--it is chronic dyspepsia, however, which is so annoying because of its persistence. it has been called "the american disease" because so many people are troubled with it. =symptoms.=--persons suffering from chronic dyspepsia complain of a bad taste in the mouth, dry throat, nausea, and a feeling of great weight in the stomach for an hour or two after each meal. frequently there is no appetite whatever, or it may be even more ravenous than natural because of the irritation and inflammation in the stomach. when the latter is the case, food does not satisfy, and it becomes necessary to eat every two or three hours in order to quiet the gnawing and empty feeling in the stomach. the chronic dyspeptic suffers greatly from nervousness and depression of spirits; indeed, it seems almost impossible to maintain the usual cheerfulness. =thought to be the heart.=--many persons go to their family physician thinking they have a serious form of heart disease, when the whole trouble is with the stomach, the violent beating of the heart being simply a nervous manifestation caused by the irritable condition of the stomach. =two diseases closely associated.=--chronic dyspepsia is almost invariably associated with the diseases of women. indeed, the two seem almost inseparable, for whenever you find a woman complaining of soreness across the lower part of the bowels, irregular menstruation, ovarian irritation, inflammation of the bladder, leucorrhoea, etc., you will find a confirmed dyspeptic. the blood is thin and watery, the bowels are constipated, and the whole nervous system seems to be upset. =which disease is the cause?=--the question comes whether the disease in the pelvis causes the difficulty with the stomach, or whether the stomach produces the inflammation in the uterus and surrounding parts. probably one is true at one time and another at another time. the fact is that both conditions need correcting, and there is one remedy which answers perfectly in each case. =both must be cured.=--the digestion certainly cannot be perfect while there is this inflammation in the pelvic organs; while the latter can hardly maintain a healthy condition if the stomach fails to do its work. =both may be cured.=--by paying attention to a few rules of diet, and by taking lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound for a short time, i believe every case will promptly yield to treatment. =cures dyspepsia of men.=--indeed, strange as it may seem, a great many men who have taken lydia e. pinkham's compound because they have seen its good action on the stomach in cases of other members of the family have written reporting good results. it certainly has a most soothing and strengthening power on this organ, while its gently stimulating effect on the whole alimentary canal brings about the most desirable changes. =regular action of the bowels.=--i would recommend that lydia e. pinkham's liver pills be taken each night in just sufficient doses to cause a regular action of the bowels each day. then if lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound be taken, it will not only allay all inflammation in the stomach and impart great strength, but it will at the same time remove the soreness and pain in the pelvic organs. =a simple but valuable aid.=--all such persons will obtain relief by drinking a cupful of hot water at least half an hour before breakfast each morning; and if the case is very bad, then the hot water may be repeated before each meal. the water should be as hot as can be comfortably taken. =useful hints.=--i would strongly urge the necessity of thoroughly chewing the food and eating slowly. if this rule alone were observed there would be far less dyspeptics in the country. drink should be used sparingly at meal-time, also, for while the body requires a great deal of liquid during the day, yet this should be taken between meals rather than during meals. the stomach should certainly have time to rest from its work of digesting the food, hence nothing should be eaten between meals. the habit so many girls have of eating before retiring is very injurious to the health, and should be corrected at once. meals should be taken at regular intervals and not at any time when most convenient. =diet for dyspeptics.=--the chronic dyspeptic should use soups sparingly, for, as a rule, they are quite difficult of digestion, while they do not contain much nourishment. plain mutton and beef soup without much fat are the least harmful. such fish as pickerel, trout, shad, and white fish may be used moderately; while oysters, especially when raw, are easily digested. the best kinds of meat are roasted or broiled beef, lamb chops, and some fowl, as chicken. eggs are easily digested, and are exceedingly valuable as an article of diet for the dyspeptic. they may be cooked in almost any form except hard-boiled. they are highly nourishing, can be prepared in many delicate ways, and are, as i have said, as valuable an article of diet as the dyspeptic can have. persons with chronic dyspepsia do not digest vegetables well, as a rule, although such green vegetables as lettuce, green peas, asparagus, celery, and spinach may be used. potatoes often ferment in the stomach, producing gases, and should be used sparingly. toast is always well borne, but should never be buttered while hot. bread should not be used until it is at least a day old. rolled oats, cracked wheat, etc., may be taken, although with many they cause fermentation. nearly all cooked fruits are well borne by the stomach, and so are nearly all ripe fruits. puddings made from rice and custard are easily digested. milk is valuable at all times, and if the chronic dyspeptic bears it well, this diet alone will frequently make a marked cure. if it rests heavy on the stomach, a little lime water may be added to it in the proportion of a tablespoonful of lime water to a cupful of milk. =forbidden diet.=--there are certain articles of diet which the dyspeptic should not use under any circumstances. among such are fried foods of all kinds, pork, liver, veal, rich soups, turkey, goose, duck, mackerel, lobster, cucumbers, cabbage, turnips, parsnips, string beans, pies and cakes, cheese and nuts. =constipation.=--as we have already stated, constipation is productive of the most serious evils. when the lower bowel is distended, pressure is made upon the surrounding blood-vessels, and thus the circulation seriously interfered with. =causes inflammation of uterus.=--as a result, there is congestion in the blood-vessels of the ovaries and uterus, and inflammation of these organs is likely to follow with its long train of ailments. constipation also seriously interferes with the general health, producing nausea, indigestion, headache, backache, nervousness, general debility, etc. =daily movements necessary.=--nature intended that the alimentary canal should be relieved of its contents at least once every twenty-four hours, and if this is not done, then certain poisons are absorbed into the blood which produce the most undesirable effects. =to cure constipation.=--for constipation i strongly recommend lydia e. pinkham's liver pills. i know they give the most prompt and satisfactory relief. i have received letters from hundreds of women who have been cured of the most distressing ailments of the uterus and bladder simply by using these liver pills, and all because constipation was cured and in this way the cause of the suffering removed. =diarrhoea.=--diarrhoea, as a rule, is an effort of nature to get rid of some offensive material. while this may be the first reason for its existence, yet if it is allowed to go on, it produces such an irritation in the bowels that serious results may easily follow. =treatment.=--if the person is conscious of having eaten something indigestible, as unripe or overripe fruit, then it is best to aid nature by taking some gentle laxative, as a laxative dose of lydia e. pinkham's liver pills, thus hastening the removal of the indigestible substance. if, however, there have been a number of movements of the bowels, until the offending material is probably all removed, then the following plan is all that will be necessary to make a cure: let the person rest at full length upon a couch or bed, remaining as quiet as possible. for the diet nothing should be taken but hot milk. a glass of hot milk can be slowly sipped once every three hours, and nothing else whatever should be taken into the stomach for a day, at least, or until the diarrhoea is checked. if the pain is quite severe in the stomach or bowels, then a mustard plaster may be placed over the most painful part, or cloths wrung from hot water; or a poultice of linseed meal or slippery elm may be applied. i have seen the good results of this treatment of "rest and hot milk" in so many cases, and it is so exceedingly simple, that i earnestly recommend its trial. =general debility, exhaustion, anã¦mia.=--many women go about suffering from great debility, being hardly able to drag themselves through the day. when night comes they are too tired to sleep, and when morning comes it seems they are more tired than they were at night. all parts of the body partake of this general weakness. there are great discomfort and suffering through the lower part of the body, difficulty in passing the urine, constipation of the bowels, leucorrhoea, and all other affections which naturally come from an impoverished condition of the blood. =may be promptly cured.=--to all women who are suffering from this general debility, exhaustion, and nervous prostration i earnestly recommend lydia e. pinkham's blood purifier. if the inflammation in the uterus and surrounding organs is quite marked at the same time, then the blood purifier may be taken before meals and the vegetable compound after. if the female generative organs are not much involved, then the blood purifier may be used alone. =a grand medicine.=--this grand medicine has done great good, and i am confident it will build up the system, purify the blood, and greatly improve the general health. persons suffering from general debility of this kind do not prosper well on a milk diet alone. they need more hearty food, such as rare beefsteak, rare roast beef, lamb chops, and eggs. =sleeplessness.=--sleeplessness is frequently the result of a too liberal use of tea or coffee. many persons cannot take a cup of coffee at any time during the evening without lying awake many hours to pay for it. it is a strong stimulant to those who have a sensitive nervous system, and should be used only sparingly at all times and never after the midday meal. strong tea acts in this way upon a great many, and if any of my readers are troubled with sleeplessness, and yet at the same time use tea and coffee freely, i would suggest that they try, first of all, to do without these drinks and note the effect. =treatment.=--a warm (not hot) foot-bath taken just before retiring will often cause a good night's rest, as it draws the blood from the head, makes the circulation more evenly distributed, and in this way induces sleep. frequently a baby or young child may be made to sleep all through the night if a warm bath be given just before retiring. when the sleeplessness is due to nerve exhaustion, as is frequently the case, the very best results will follow the use of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, because of its great nerve tonic properties. =a hard cold.=--whenever any one has taken a hard cold, it can often be speedily and completely broken up in the following manner: take a hot foot-bath for at least half an hour. while the feet are still in the hot water throw a blanket completely about the limbs and body, in order to retain all the heat possible. at the same time drink one or two cupfuls of hot lemonade, or hot ginger tea. then retire to bed, having the bed previously well warmed, if during the wintertime. put on plenty of covering, keeping a hot flat-iron or a hot water-bottle at the feet, and in every way try to induce free perspiration. after an hour or two, gradually remove the extra clothing. be careful about going out the next morning, for the body will be especially susceptible to the cold. in this way it is possible to break up a hard cold at once. if there is any tendency to cough, or any tightness or soreness in the chest, place a mustard plaster directly over the chest, and allow it to remain on until the skin is quite red. =sore throat.=--an old-fashioned remedy for sore throat, and a very good one, too, is to bind on each side of the throat a piece of salt pork. the surface of the pork may be slightly covered with black pepper, in order to increase its drawing power. this is allowed to remain on all night, but should be taken off in the morning. during the day a flannel is worn about the neck. a gargle for sore throat may be made by dissolving half a teaspoonful of chlorate of potash in a cupful of warm water. gargle the throat with this every hour or two during the day, but do not swallow the mixture. after this has been used for a day or two, then a solution may be made by adding a teaspoonful of pulverized alum to a cupful of warm water; this is applied to the inflamed sides of the throat by means of a swab. gargling the throat with a solution of ordinary extract of witch hazel, one part, and water two parts, also very useful. =croup.=--as a rule, croup may be quickly cured by the use of either hot or cold water. immediately the child begins to breathe hard and cough with a dry, hollow, barking cough, wring out a towel from cold water and apply around the throat, covering this with a dry towel. the wet towel should be changed in a few minutes, just as soon as it becomes a little warm. often before the second cloth is removed the spasm will be broken, and the danger passed. _cool_ water will not answer; it must be _cold_. if the spasm does not break, and the breathing does not become easy within fifteen or twenty minutes, then change to hot water. wring out the cloth from water as hot as can be borne and apply about the neck, changing in a few moments, and so on. =how to lose flesh.=--i have often been asked whether it were possible to have the flesh reduced without in any way affecting the general health. if the person be only slightly heavier than usual, and is in the best of health, it certainly seems wrong to experiment in any way to reduce the weight, especially when this is done only to better follow the dictates of fashion. if, however, the excess of flesh is becoming so great as to be uncomfortable, to interfere with the regular work, or to cause weak action of the heart, etc., then something should be done. there are a few rules which a person may follow to advantage in such cases, although the change should be made gradually. so long as a person continues to gain in flesh, it is positive evidence that more food is being taken than necessary. therefore the first rule is that the quantity of food should be gradually diminished. the second rule is that exercise should be taken regularly. this will keep up the general health, while it will cause the fat to be more evenly distributed over the body. another rule is to keep the bowels well open, so that there may be at least two movements daily. for this special purpose the mineral laxative waters are best. =diet for reducing the flesh.=--fatty foods should be avoided, and so should all drinks in excess. foods containing sugar or starch should be taken sparingly, as oatmeal, potatoes, rice, cakes, sweetened tea and coffee. milk is very fattening to many, hence should not be used. the eminent dr. mitchell, of philadelphia, instituted a course of treatment for reducing the weight, which is quite rigid, but nevertheless effective. the regular diet should be changed gradually until it meets dr. mitchell's demands. he prescribes outdoor exercise, and a diet of one cupful of milk and one egg every three hours when awake. no other food or drink is allowed for twenty days, when the list of foods is gradually extended. there are a number of anti-fat remedies upon the market, but many of them depend for a cure upon their power to disturb digestion, and thus interfere with the general health. =how to gain flesh.=--when it is natural for persons to be thin, it is quite impossible for them to gain in weight under any kind of diet or treatment. many persons, however, are thin simply because some of the digestive organs do not perform their work properly; or because the diet is not the right kind. thin persons need good meats and some vegetables. if the digestion is all right, then such meats as mutton, chicken, broiled bacon, broiled ham, etc., may be used; also rare broiled steak, rare roast beef, etc. eggs may be used in any way except hard-boiled. good bread, oatmeal, cracked wheat, hominy, etc., are good. such indigestible foods as pork and veal, thin soups, cabbage, turnips, pickles, pies, and pastries of all kinds should not be used. often a good preparation of cod-liver oil will increase the weight; and this is also true of many of the extracts of malt. it is useless, however, to try to increase the weight by using a generous diet, unless the digestion is in good order. when the digestion is weak, the person should take lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound because of its power to strengthen the digestion and enable the system to obtain all the good possible from the food. =pimples, rashes, eruptions.=--many persons, especially young girls, are afflicted with pimples on the face, rashes, blackheads, etc. to cure this condition it is necessary that the bowels be made to act regularly each day, which is easily done by the use of lydia e. pinkham's liver pills. then a good course of treatment should be taken with lydia e. pinkham's blood purifier in order to make the blood perfectly pure in every way. attention should also be paid to the diet, and such indigestible articles as pork, pickles, rich pies and cakes, and rich sauces, sweetmeats and nuts should be avoided. for local treatment, the face should be washed each day in warm, soapy water, using the best castile soap. then with a sponge or wash cloth wash off this water with as hot water as can be borne. it is best to keep up this sponging with the hot water for at least five minutes in order that the face may become thoroughly steamed. the face should then be wiped dry and rubbed briskly for a few minutes. =burns.=--burns are likely to occur at any time in the household, and one should always know what to do promptly. the best treatment is to add a teaspoonful of ordinary baking-soda to a cupful of water. saturate some cloths in this solution and lay them over or loosely bind them about the burned part. this will take out the pain and sting at once. as the cloths become dry, more of the solution should be poured over them, and they should not be removed from the burned parts. after a few hours, these wet cloths may be replaced by cloths well covered with vaseline. =if you do not understand your ailments write to mrs pinkham. her advice is free and always helpful. such letters are strictly confidential; they are never shown without the writer's express permission; women only assist in answering them.= free medical advice to women all correspondence strictly confidential +lady with raised hand+ in addressing mrs. pinkham you are confiding your private ills to a woman--a woman who speaks from a greater experience in treating women's diseases than can any living physician--male or female. you can talk freely to a woman when it is revolting to relate your private troubles to a man--besides, a man does not understand--simply because he is a man. many women suffer in silence and drift along from bad to worse, knowing full well that they ought to have immediate assistance, but a natural modesty impels them to shrink from exposing themselves to the questions and probably examinations of even their family physician. it is unnecessary. without money or price you can consult a woman, who can speak from a greater actual experience than can any local physician in the world. every one will agree that there are the strongest of all reasons why, if we are ill, we should appeal to the person who knows the most about the kind of illness with which we are afflicted--one who has had the greatest experience in treating just such cases and meeting just the symptoms that are manifest in our particular case. what confidence does one gain by consulting one who has occasionally met a case just like ours, but has had no great experience? none whatever. all treatment under such a person must of necessity be experimental. but in writing mrs. pinkham you consult one who has, actually filed in her office for ready reference, an immense correspondence with patients suffering from female ills which has been constantly going on for more than twenty-five years; and it is safe to say there is not a case or complication of female derangements with which she is not familiar. it is a positive fact, easily verified, that within the last few months she, with her corps of trained women assistants, has advised in over one hundred thousand cases, and that a vast number of the women of this country owe the restoration of their health to her advice and lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. now, if a woman is ill and miserable, it seems to us only simple justice to herself that she should avail herself of the help of a woman of such enormous experience. mrs. pinkham's standing invitation. women suffering from any form of female weakness are invited to promptly communicate with mrs. pinkham, at lynn, mass. she asks nothing in return, except their good will, and her advice has relieved thousands. surely any woman, rich or poor, is very foolish if she does not take advantage of this generous offer of assistance. =address simply mrs. pinkham, lynn, mass., u. s. a.= el compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham es un remedio seguro para todas las enfermedades de las mujeres, incluyendo la caã­da del ãºtero, leucorrea, menstruaciones irregulares y dolorosas, inflamaciones y ulceraciones de la matriz y del ovario, para toda clase de afecciones de los ã³rganos de la generaciã³n, asã­ como tambiã©n para las enfermedades de los riã±ones de ambos sexos. este remedio estã¡ compuesto de las raã­ces y yerbas mas puras y escogidas, que se encuentran en la naturaleza para las enfermedades de las mujeres. =menstruaciã³n.=--las menstruaciones tempranas no son deseables, aunque muchas menstruaciones aparecen de los trece ã¡ los quince aã±os; sin embargo mucho depende de la constituciã³n de la muchacha. si habiendo llegado ã¡ esta edad no ha menstruado todavã­a, la madre deberã¡ prestar singular cuidado ã¡ la hija; esta probablemente crecerã¡ delgada y pã¡lida con una complexiã³n lã­vida, que harã¡ de ella una vã­ctima fã¡cil y segura de la tisis y de la nevrastenia. nada hay comparable para estos casos al compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham. ayuda y promueve los cambios importantes que han de verificarse en la vida de la muchacha en esa edad previniendo largos aã±os de padecimientos los cuales son resaltados seguros de la negligencia. el compuesto deberã¡ tomarse siguiendo estrictamente las direcciones hasta que la menstruaciã³n ocurra regularmente cada veinte y ocho dã­as. si hay propensiã³n ã¡ estreã±imiento, las pã­ldoras de hã­gado de lydia e. pinkham deberã¡n tomarse juntamente con el compuesto vegetal. estas pã­ldoras han sido hechas especialmente para mujeres y obran in perfecta harmonã­a con el compuesto vegetal. =supresiã³n de las reglas= es la suspensiã³n de la menstruaciã³n. si la supresiã³n de las reglas ocurriese, excepto en los casos de preã±ez ã³ de amamantamiento, el compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham deberã¡ tomarse hasta que la menstruaciã³n vuelva ã¡ producirse regularmente. curarã¡ todas las irregularidades. =menstruaciones dolorosas.=--muchas mujeres sufren dolores terribles durante la menstruaciã³n. el compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham curarã¡ esos martirizantes dolores. nada importa que el caso sea reciente ã³ que haya existido durante muchos meses, si el compuesto vegetal se toma regularmente y siguiendo las instrucciones, la cura serã¡ un hecho cierto. =menstruaciones abundantes= ocurren ã¡ menudo en las personas sanguã­neas y en las pã¡lidas y linfã¡ticas. el compuesto vegetal de lydia pinkham ha hecho algunas de las curas mã¡s asombrosas precisamente en esas condiciones. para las menstruaciones abundantes avisamos que se tome el compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham en forma seca, es decir en pã­ldoras ã³ pastillas. =la inflamaciã³n y la ulceraciã³n del ãºtero= es la causa de casi todas las enfermedades de las mujeres. el compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham ha curado mã¡s de un millã³n de casos de enfermedades uterinas. el nãºmero de relaciones recibidos de mujeres que han estado enfermas ã¡ punto de morir y han sido curadas por este remedio es casi increã­ble. una mujer puede conocer perfectamente si padece de alguna enfermedad del ãºtero, porque estas enfermedades vienen acompaã±adas de terribles dolores en el abdomen, espalda etc., desmayos, pesadez en las extremidades, y de toda clase de otros dolores. una cura segura se encuentra en el compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham. =leucorrea (ã³ flores blancos).=--uno de los primeros sã­ntomas de la inflamacã­on del ãºtero es la leucorrea, familiarmente conocida bajo el nombre de flores blancos, la cual consiste en una secreciã³n blancusca de la vagina la cual debilita muchã­simo el sistema y produce una irritaciã³n de la membrana mucosa que reviste el canal vaginal. el uso regular del compuesto vegetal, por sus efectos en la constituciã³n, y la lociã³n sanativa de lydia e. pinkham usada en inyecciones curarã¡ positivamente los casos mã¡s graves de leucorrea. la negligencia de esta dolorosa enfermedad originarã¡ ãºlceras, flujos excesivos, estableciendo los cimientos para la mã¡s terrible de todas las enfermedades--el cancer. =caã­da del utero.=--existen muchos desplazamientos del ãºtero, pero el mã¡s principal es ã©l conocido generalmente con el nombre de la caã­da del utero. esto es debido muchas veces ã¡ la flojedad de los ligamentos que soportan este ã³rgano. el compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham fortalece lã¡s ligamentos, alivia todas las inflamaciones y gradualmente restaura los ã³rganos ã¡ su propia condiciã³n. el compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham removerã¡ los tumores del ãºtero en su temprano desenvolvimiento tan seguro como el sol brilla. =la inflamaciã³n de los ovarios= es una de las enfermedades mã¡s desesperantes que atacan ã¡ las mujeres de 20 ã¡ 40 aã±os. esta enfermedad va siempre acompaã±ada de algunos dolores de la regiã³n de los ovarios y de una sensaciã³n de pesadez especialmente durante la menstruaciã³n. a menudo el dolor extiã©ndese por el costado y la espalda, especialmente en el lado izquierdo produciendo continuos deseos de orinar. a menos que esta enfermedad se ataque prontamente nada curarã¡ ã¡ la paciente que no sea la cuchilla del cirujano. el compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham a curado miles de mujeres que sufrã­an enfermedades del ovario, salvã¡ndolas de los riesgos de una seria operaciã³n. =la esterilidad= es ã¡ menudo debida ã¡ la extrema debilidad e inflamaciã³n crã³nica del ãºtero; frecuentemente el uso regular del compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham ha restaurado los ã³rganos reproductivos de la mujer ã¡ sus condiciones normales quitã¡ndolas la idea de que su esterilidad era imposible de curarse. =cambio de vida= es el perã­odo peligroso por el cual pasan todas las mujeres que han cumplido 45 aã±os; durante este perã­odo las mujeres sufren toda clase de dolores y enfermedades, pero si el compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham se toma regularmente este cambio importante puede ser pasado sin peligro de enfermedades ã³ muerte. =las enfermedades de los riã±ones y de la vejiga= son comunes en ambos sexos, generalmente de difã­cil curaciã³n, pero pueden curarse si se atienden ã¡ tiempo; nada sin embargo es tan fatal como el no atenderlos debidamente ã¡ su tiempo, siendo la muerte el resultado inevitable. el compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham no reconoce rival entre los remedios que para estas enfermedades han sido descubiertos. es digno de absoluta confianza tanto por hombre como por mujer. =los dolores de la espalda= no son una enfermedad pero son uno de los principales sã­ntomas; cuando existe una enfermedad de los ã³rganos de la generaciã³n, ã©sta es telegrafiada, como si dijeramos, al gran nervio simpã¡tico que tiene uno de sus principales centros en la parte mas baja de la espalda. el compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham curando las enfermedades del ãºtero y de los riã±ones harã¡ desaparecer los dolores de la espalda. =dispepsia ã© indigestiã³n.=--nada en el mundo serã¡ descubierto que pueda compararse al compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham, para las enfermadedes del estã³mago. =preã±ez.=--muchos dolores y sufrimientos que ocurren al dar ã¡ luz ã¡ un niã±o podrã­an evitarse enteramente, si la madre fortificase su sistema durante dos meses antes del nacimiento con el compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham. direcciones generales. una cucharada del compuesto vegetal de lydia e. pinkham deberã¡ tomarse cada 4 horas al dã­a para cualquiera de las enfermedades arriba mencionadas. * * * * * empã¡pese un cuarto del paquete le la lociã³n sanativa de lydia e. pinkham en cantidad suficiente de agua para hacer una pinta despuã©s de haberse filtrado; cuando los flujos son profusos, ãºsese la mitad de esta cantidad, aã±adiendo una pinta de agua caliente. * * * * * para estreã±imiento, dolores de cabeza, biliosidades tã³mense tres pã­ldoras de hã­gado de lydia e. pinkham la primera noche, dos la segunda y una la tercera, y ã¡ menos que se obtenga una saludable flojedad de los intestinos deberã¡ seguirse tomando una cada noche, hasta concluir la caja. * * * * * cuando la sangre es pobre y el paciente se sienta dã©bil y cansado, y desganado, nada en el mundo es tan bueno como el "purificador de la sangre" de lydia e. pinkham. una cucharada tres veces al dã­a curarã¡ el reumatismo, scrã³fula, erupciones de la piel, etc. etc. * * * * * de venta por todos los farmaceãºticos y droguistas. preparado por the lydia e. pinkham medicine company, lynn, mass., e. u. de a. lydia e. pinkham's ã�rt-medicin ar ett sã¤kert botemedel fã¶r alla qvinnosjukdomar, sã¥som lifmoderns nedfallande, hvitsot, oregelbunden och smã¤rtsam rening, inflammation och sã¥rnad pã¥ lifmodern och ã¤ggstockarne, samt alla andra svagheter uti de qvinliga skaporganen, ã¤fvensom njurlidande hos bã¥da kã¶nen. det ã¤r sammansatt af utvalda och renaste slag af rã¶tter och ã¶rter, sã¥som naturen sjelf frã¥mstã¤llt dem fã¶r botandet af qvinnans lidanden. =rening.=--fã¶r tidig rening ã¤r icke ã¶nskvã¤rd, ehuru densamma vanligen bã¶rjar vid omkring tretton intill femton ã¥rs ã¥lder; emellertid beror dervid mycket pã¥ flickans kroppsbyggnad. om hon nã¥tt denna ã¥lder och ã¤nnu icke haft rening, bã¶r modren fã¤sta sã¤rskild uppmã¤rksamhet dervid; hennes dotter blir antagligen mager och blek, med en egendomlig gulblek hy och hon blir ett sã¤kert och lã¤tt offer fã¶r lungsot och nervã¶s nedslagenhet. ingenting i verlden nã¤r upp till lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound i dylika fall. det bidragar att ã¥stadkomma den vigtiga fã¶rã¤ndring uti en flickas lif, som bã¶r ega rum vid omkring denna ã¥lder och fã¶rebygger sã¥lunda ã¥ratal af elã¤nde, som ã¤r en sã¤ker fã¶ljd af uraktlã¥tenhet. medicinen mã¥ste tagas bestã¤mdt enligt fã¶reskrift, intill reningen intrã¤ffar regelbundet hvarje tjuguã¥ttonde dag. om inelfvorna ã¤ro benã¤gna att hoptrã¤nga sig, borde lefver-piller (lydia e. pinkhams liver-pills) begagnas, hvilka blifvit sã¤rskildt sammansatta fã¶r qvinnans bruk och verka i fullkomlig harmoni med vegetable compound. =fã¶rhindrande af flytningen= ã¤r ett uppharonde sedan reningen vederbã¶rligen bã¶rjat. om ett upphã¶rande eger rum, sã¥ framt det icke ã¤r en fã¶ljd af hafvandeskap eller gifvande af di, ã¤r det ett allvarligt fall och lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound bã¶r tagas tills reningen ã¥ter blir regelbunden. den fã¶rbã¤ttrar sã¤kert alla oregelbundenheter. =smã¤rtsam rening.=--mã¥nga qvinnor lida marterande smã¤rta under reningen. lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound botar sã¤kert denna smã¤rtande kã¤nsla. det inverkar ej om detta fã¶rhã¥llande nyligen intrã¤dt eller om det egt rum under mã¥nga mã¥nader; om lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound tages regelbundet och enligt fã¶reskrift ã¤r ett botande sã¤kert. =fã¶r ymnig rening= fã¶rekommer ofta hos dem, som ã¤ro blodfulla, liksom hos dem som ã¤ro bleka och svaga. lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound har ã¥tstadkommit ã¥tskilliga af de mest fã¶rvã¥nansvã¤rda botaden i just dylika fall. fã¶r fã¶r ymnig rening eller flytning rekommendera vi alltid lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound i torr form, antingen som piller eller kakor. =inflammation och sã¥rnad pã¥ lifmodern= ã¤r orsaken till nã¤stan alla qvinnosjukdomar. lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound har botat mera ã¤n en million fall af lifmoderfel. de skildringer, som erhã¥llits frã¥n qvinnor, hvilka varit dã¶dsjuka och som botats genom lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound ã¤ro nã¤stan otroliga. en qvinna vet sã¤kerligen om hon har nã¥got slags lifmoderfel, enã¤r dylikt nã¤stan alltid ã¥tfã¶ljes af en nedtyngande kã¤nsla uti underlifvet, ryggvã¤rk, svimmingsanfall, styfhet i lederna och all annan tã¤nkbar vã¤rk och smã¤rta. ett aldrig svikande botemedel ã¤r lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound. =leucorrhea eller hvitflytning.=--en af de fã¶rsta symptomerna af lifmoderns inflammation ã¤r leucorrhea, vanligen kallad "hvitt," hvilken bestã¥r af en hvit flytning frã¥n moderslidan och som ã¤r mycket kraftnedsã¤ttande fã¶r systemet och retande fã¶r moderslidans kã¤nsliga slemhinna. ett regelbundet begagnande af lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound pã¥ grund af dess inverkanpã¥ kroppsbeskaffenheten och lydia e. pinkhams lã¤kande medel fã¶r insprutning uti moderslidan, botar sã¤kert de allvarligaste fall af hvitflytning. fã¶rsummande af denna ledsamma sjukdom fã¶rorsakar sã¥rnader, ã¶fverdrifven flytning och lã¤gger grunde fã¶r den forskrã¤ckligaste af alla sjukdomar nemligen krã¤fta. =lifmoderns nedfallande.=--det finnes mã¥nga olika rubbningar hos lifmodern, den vanligaste kã¤nd under namn af lifmoderns nedfallande. detta beror hufvudsakligast pã¥ fã¶rslappning af de band som uppbara detta organ eller hã¥lla det pã¥ sin plats. lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound starker dessa band, lindrar inflammation och ã¥terstã¤ller sã¥ smã¥ningen delarne uti deras behã¶riga lã¤ge. lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound borttager svullnad uti lifmodern i dess tidigare stadium lika sã¤kert som solen skiner. =inflammation uti ã�ggstockarne= ã¤r en sã¤rdeles allvarlig sjukdom, som angriper qvinnan mellan 20 och 40 ã¥rs ã¥lder. den ã¥tfã¶ljes alltid af ã¶mhet och hã¥rda smã¤rtor i trakten af ã¤ggstockarne och en kã¤nsla af uppfyllnad isynnerhet under reningen. ofta utstracka sig smartorna till sidan och ryggen, isynnerhet till venstra sidan, med ett stã¤ndigt begã¥r att urinera. sã¤ framt icke denna sjukdom genast hã¤fvas, kan ingenting rã¤dda patienter frã¥n operationsknifven. lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound har emellertid botat tusentals qvinnor fã¶r sjukdomar uti ã¤ggstockarne och rã¤ddat mã¥ngfaldiga frã¥n hospitalet och en allvarlig operation. =ofruktbarhet= har often sin orsak uti ytterlig svaghet och kroniskt inflammeradt tillstã¥nd af lifmodern. regelbundet begagnande af lydia e. pinkhams medicin har ofta ã¥terstã¤llt lifmoderns fruktbara organer till deras normala tillstã¥nd och lindrat frã¥n den bekymrande tanken att ofruktbarheten var obotlig. =fã¶rã¤ndring i lifvet= ar en farlig period fã¶r alla qvinnor, som hunnit till 45 ã¥rs ã¥lder. under denna tid har qvinnan all slags sjukdom och smã¤rta, men om lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound tages regelbundet, kan denna vigtiga fã¶rã¤ndring i en qvinnas lif passeras utan fara fã¶r sjugdom eller dã¶d. =njurlidande och blã¥skatarr= hos bã¥da kã¶nen aro vanliga och svã¥ra sjukdomar, men de kunna botas om de tagas itu med i rã¤tt tid. ingenting ar emellertid sã¥ olycksbringande som symptomerna till dessa sjukdomar om de ej gifvas akt pã¥ i tid och dã¶den ã¤r oundviklig. lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound ã¶fvertrã¤ffas ej af nã¥got annat botemedel, som nã¥gonsin uppstã¥ckts fã¶r botande af alla sjugdomar i njurarne och blã¥san. det ã¤r fullt tillfã¶rlitligt bã¥de fã¶r mã¤n och qvinnor. =ryggvark= ã¤r icke en sjukdom utan en tydlig symptom da sjukdom fã¶refinnes uti skaporganen och ger sig tillkã¤nna som om det vore uti den stora sympatiska nerv, som har ett af sina fã¶rnã¤msta lã¤gen i lã¤gre delen af ryggen. lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound, som hã¤fver lifmoders-, ã¤ggstocks-, och njurlidanden, botar tryckande ryggvã¤rk. =magsyra och dã¥lig matsmã¥ltning.=--ingenting verlden har nã¥gonsin uppstã¤ckts, som uppnã¥r lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound for magsjukdomar. =hafvande tillstand.=--vid barnsbã¶rd intraffer mycken smã¤rta och lidande, som kunde helt och hã¥llet undvikas om den blifvande modern stã¤rkte sitt system genom regelbunden behandling med lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound under en period af tvã¥ mã¥nader fã¶re barnsbã¶rden. allmã�n ordination. en matsked af lydia e. pinkhams vegetable compound hvarje fjerde timma under dagens lopp fã¶r hvilken som helst af fã¶rutnmã¤nde sjukdomar. lã¤gg ett fjerdedels paket af lydia e. pinkhams lã¤kande medel i tillrã¤ckligt med vatten fã¶r att utgã¶ra en pint sedan det silats. dã¥ flytningen ã¤r fã¶r riklig, tag hã¤lften deraf och tillsã¤tt en pint varmt vatten. begagna dagligen fã¶r insprutning i moderslidan. fã¶r fã¶stoppning, hufvudvã¤rk och gallsjukdom tages tre lydia e. pinkhams lefverpiller fã¶rsta natten, tvã¥ den andra och en den tredje och sã¥vida ej en regelbunden och helsosã¥m fã¶rã¤ndring intrã¤dt uti underlifvet, fortsã¤tt att taga ett hvarje afton sã¥ lã¤nge de rã¤cka. nã¤r blodet ã¤r fattigt och patienten ã¤r svag samt alltid kã¤nner sig trã¶tt, ã¤r mager och ej har appetit, sã¥ ã¤r intet i verlden sã¥ vã¤lgã¶rande som lydia e. pinkhams blodrenare. en matsked tre gã¥nger dagligen botar rheumatism, skrofler, hudsjukdomar m. m. sã¤ljes hos apotekare, prepareradt af lydia e. pinkham medicine company, lynn, mass., fã¶renta staterna. le remã�de vã�gã�tal de lydia e. pinkham. =le remã¨de vã©gã©tal de lydia e. pinkham= est un remã¨de absolument sã»r pour toutes les maladies de femme telles que le prolapsus de la matrice, la leucorrhã©e, les menstrues irreguliã¨res et douloureuses, l'inflammation et l'ulcã©ration de la matrice et des ovaires, ainsi que pour toutes les autres affections des organes gã©nitaux de la femme, et les maladies des reins et du foie des deux sexes. il se compose des herbes et racines les plus pures, telles que les pourvoit la nature elle mãªme. =menstrues.=--il n'est pas ã  dã©sirer que les rã¨gles aient lieu a un ã¢ge trop jeune, quoiqu'en gã©nã©ral les menstrues commencent entre la 13e et la 15e annã©e, la constitution de la jeune fille y jouant un certain rã´le. si la fille a atteint cet ã¢ge et qu'elle n'ait pas encore ses rã¨gles, la mã¨re ne saurait ãªtre trop soigneuse; il est probable que la fille est pã¢le et maigre, et que son teint montre cette couleur livide qui nous fait craindre qu'elle ne devienne sous peu la victime de la phthisie et qu'elle ne devienne fortement neurasthã©nique. pour empãªcher un tel malheur rien n'ã©gale "lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound." il produit d'une maniã¨re salutaire et prompte le changement qui devrait alors avoir lieu, en prã©venant ainsi de longues annã©es de souffrances, rã©sultat inã©vitable de tout manque de prã©caution. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound doit ãªtre pris strictement selon les instructions, jusqu'ã  ce que les rã¨gles aient lieu tous les 28 jours. si, de plus, il y a de la constipation, on se servira des pilules de foie de lydia e. pinkham, faites exprã¨s pour l'usage des femmes et opã©rant entiã¨rement d'accord avec le remã¨de. =l'absence des rã¨gles= aprã¨s qu'elles ont commencã© une fois, ã  moins qu'elle ne soit due ã  la grossesse ou ã  l'allaitement, est une affaire de la plus grande importance et personne ne devrait manquer de se servir de lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound jusqu'ã  ce que de nouveau les menstrues se montrent reguliã¨rement. =rã¨gles douloureuses.=--il y a bien des femmes qui, pendant le temps de leurs rã¨gles, souffrent des douleurs tout ã  fait terribles. notre remã¨de guã©rira d'une maniere sã»re cette affection n'importe si c'est un cas rã©cent ou vieux de plusieurs mois. on peut s'attendre ã  une guã©rison sã»re et efficace pourvu que le remã¨de soit pris reguliã¨rement et suivant les instructions. =les rã¨gles excessives= se montrent d'abord chez des personnes sanguines et chez les personnes affaiblies et pales. notre remã¨de, lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, a obtenu des rã©sultats tout ã  fait merveilleux dans ces cas. pour guã©rir l'excã¨s ou l'hã©morrhagie des rã¨gles nous conseillons l'emploi du remã¨de dans sa forme sã¨che, c'est ã  dire en pilules ou en pastilles. =l'inflammation ainsi que l'ulcã©ration de la matrice= peuvent ãªtre regardã©es comme cause de presque toutes les maladies de la femme. cependant lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound a guã©ri plus d'un million de maladies de la matrice. les rapports que nous recevons des femmes qui ont failli en mourir et qui ensuite ont ã©tã© gueries, sont presque incroyables. la femme peut s'assurer assez facilement, si elle est atteinte ou non d'une affection de la matrice, vu le fait qu'ordinairement elle est sujette ã  des tiraillements d'estomac, ã  des peines dans les reins, ã  des ã©vanouissements, ã  l'engourdissement des membres et ã  une foule d'autres douleurs. le seul remã¨de infaillible pour guã©rir toutes ces affections est lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. =la leucorrhã©e= que nous connaissons plus familiã¨rement sous le nom de "fleurs blanches," reprã©sente un des premiers symptã´mes de l'inflammation de la matrice. le mal se montre sous la forme d'une secrã©tion blanchã¢tre du vagin, enfaiblissant le systã¨me et exerã§ant un irritation trã¨s sã©rieuse sur la muqueuse du vagin. l'emploi rã©gulier de lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, grã¢ce ã  son effet sur le systã¨me, ainsi que de la lotion sanitaire de lydia e. pinkham (lydia e. pinkham's sanative wash) appliquã©e sous forme d'injections dans le vagin, ne tardera guã¨re de guã©rir les cas les plus obstinã©s de leucorrhã©e. en nã©gligeant cette maladie dã©sastreuse on est sã»r de donner lieu ã  des secrã©tions excessives, ã  des ulcã¨res ainsi qu'a la plus dangereuse de toutes les maladies--le cancer. =prolapsus de la matrice.=--il y a un grand nombre de dã©placements dont le plus important est appelã© "le prolapsus de la matrice." celui-ci est produit d'abord par une relaxation des ligaments qui, dans leur ã©tat normal, maintiennent cet organe ã  sa place. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound fortifiera ces ligaments, l'inflammation disparaã®tra et peu ã  peu l'organe sera remis dans sa condition normale. notre remã¨de aura de plus un succã¨s indiscutable pour guã©rir toutes les tumeurs de la matrice pourvu qu'on commence ã  s'en servir dã¨s leurs premiã¨re phases. =l'inflammation des ovaires= est une des maladies les plus dã©sastreuses atteignant les femmes entre la vingtiã¨me et la quarantiã¨me annã©e. les personnes qui en souffrent s'aperã§evront vite d'une sensibilitã© extraordinaire dans la rã©gion des ovaires, de plus des sensations d'enflements dã©sagrã©ables, surtout dans la pã©riode des rã¨gles. souvent la douleur s'ã©tend aux flancs et au dos, surtout au flanc gauche, et il se fait sentir un dã©sir incessant d'uriner. a moins que cette affection ne soit arrãªtã©e promptement rien ne pourra sauver la malade d'une opã©ration. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, cependant, a guã©ri les maladies d'ovaires de milliers de femmes et bien de femmes ont ã©tã© assez heureuses, par consã©quent, pour ã©chapper ã  un long traitement ã  l'hã´pital ainsi qu'ã  une opã©ration des plus sã©rieuses. =la stã©rilitã©= est trã¨s souvent une consã©quence directe d'une inflammation chronique de la matrice et d'une faiblesse extrãªme. l'emploi rã©gulier de lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound a souvent rã©tabli les fonctions normales de l'organe gã©nã©rateur, et a ainsi dã©truit cette idã©e fatale que la stã©rilitã© etait incurable. =la pã©riode climatã©rique ou changement de vie= est une pã©riode trã¨s importante et assez dangereuse pour toute femme qui a passã© l'ã¢ge de 45 ans. pendant cette pã©riode les femmes sont atteintes de toute espã¨ce de maladies et de peines; l'emploi rã©gulier de lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound cependant va leur garantir une immunitã© parfaite contre tout accident dangereux qui pourrait leur survenir dans cette pã©riode. =les maladies des reins et de la vessie=, chez les deux sexes, sont trã¨s frequentes et trã¨s obstinã©es. aussi peuvent-elles devenir trã¨s dangereuses et mãªme fatales, si l'on manque de s'en occuper dã¨s l'apparence des premiers symptã´mes. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, que nous conseillons d'employer le plus tã´t possible, est la =mã©dicine par excellence= qui dans tous les cas de maladies du foie et de la vessie produira un rã©sultat simplement merveilleux chez l'homme et chez la femme, et qui ne manquera guã¨re de sauver une vie trop souvent menacã©e fatalement. =le mal de dos=, quelque frã©quent qu'il soit, n'est guã¨re une maladie proprement dite, mais plutã´t un symptã´me de la plus haute importance, comme il indique par le centre dorsal du grand nerf sympathique, qu'il y a une affection des organes gã©nã©rateurs qu'on fera bien de ne point nã©gliger. aussitã´t que ces affections ou utã©rines, ou ovariennes ou rã©nales sont guã©ries par l'emploi de lydia pinkham's vegetable compound, ce mal de dos tourmentant va cesser tout seul. =dyspepsie et indigestion.=--rien au monde n'ã©gale la force guã©rissante de notre remã¨de pour toutes les maladies de l'estomac. =grossesse.=--une grande partie des douleurs et des souffrances qu'en gã©nã©ral les femmes doivent endurer en accouchant pourraient ãªtre evitã©es, si elles se prã©paraient convenablement en fortifiant leur systã¨me par l'emploi de lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, ã  peu prã¨s deux mois avant l'accouchement. mode d'emploi. prenez une cuillerã©e de lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound toutes les 4 heures pendant la journã©e pour guã©rir chacune des maladies dã©crites ci-dessus. trempez le quart d'un paquet de lydia e. pinkham's sanative wash (lotion sanitaire) dans assez d'eau pour obtenir une pinte aprã¨s la filtration; la secrã©tion ã©tant trã¨s forte on doit employer la moitiã© de cette quantitã© ã  laquelle on ajoutera une pinte d'eau chaude. employez la lotion chaque jour en l'injectant dans le vagin. pour guã©rir la constipation, la migraine, les attaques bilieuses, prenez trois pilules la premiã¨re nuit, deux la suivante et une la troisiã¨me et continuez jusqu'ã  ce que la boã®te soit vide, ã  moins qu'il n'y ait pas une ã©vacuation reguliã¨re plus tã´t. quand le sang est appauvri et que le malade est toujours fatiguã©, bien amaigri et sans appã©tit, rien au monde ne lui fera autant de bien que le remã¨de purificateur lydia e. pinkham's blood purifier. une cuillerã©e trois fois par jour guã©rira les rhumatismes, la scrofule et toutes sortes d'ã©ruptions de la peau. vendu chez tous les pharmaciens. prã©parã© par lydia e. pinkham medicine company, lynn, mass., e. u. lydia e. pinkham's krã¤utermittel, unter dem namen "vegetable compound" auf den markt gebracht, ist ein absolut zuverlã¤ssiges heilmittel fã¼r sã¤mmtliche frauenkrankheiten, einschlieã�lich vorfall der gebã¤rmutter, leukorrhoe, unregelmã¤ã�ige und schmerzhafte menstruation, entzã¼ndung und geschwã¼rbildung in der gebã¤rmutter und den eierstã¶cken, ferner fã¼r alle sonstigen schwã¤chezustã¤nde in den weiblichen geschlechtsorganen und fã¼r nierenkrankheiten bei beiden geschlechtern. das mittel ist aus den reinsten und erlesensten wurzeln und krã¤utern, wie sie mutter natur zur heilung aller frauenleiden selbst geschaffen hat, zusammengestellt. =menstruation.= eine ã¼bermã¤ã�ig frã¼he menstruation ist keineswegs wã¼nschenswerth; obwohl die monatsregel oder menstruation im allgemeinen in der zeit vom dreizehnten bis zum fã¼nfzehnten jahre aufzutreten pflegt, wobei jedoch viel von der constitution des betreffenden mã¤dchens abhã¤ngt. hat sie jedoch dieses alter erreicht, und sollte sich die menstruation noch nicht eingestellt haben, so muã� die mutter sich um die sache bekã¼mmern. wahrscheinlich ist das junge mã¤dchen mager und blaã�, wobei der teint ein besonders, gelbliches aussehen hat, so daã� es nur zu leicht ein opfer der auszehrung und allgemeiner nervenschwã¤che wird. fã¼r solche fã¤lle ist lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound geradezu unvergleichlich. es trã¤gt vor allem dazu bei, daã� der wechsel im mã¤dchenleben, der um diese zeit eintreten sollte, auch richtig stattfindet, und es verhindert somit jahrelanges leiden, das in der regel eine sichere folge einer vernachlã¤ssigung in diesem sinne bildet. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound sollte genau nach vorschrift eingenommen werden, bis die regeln regelmã¤ã�ig sich alle 28 tage einstellen. zeigt sich anlage zu verstopfung, so muã� man auch lydia e. pinkham's leberpillen brauchen, die speciell fã¼r den gebrauch von frauen zusammengestellt worden sind und in jeder beziehung harmonisch mit dem "compound" zusammenwirken. =ausbleiben der regeln.= mit diesem ausdruck bezeichnet man das nichterscheinen der menstruation, nachdem dieselbe einmal zu erscheinen angefangen hat. ein derartiges ausbleiben, sofern es nicht der schwangerschaft oder dem stillen zuzuschreiben ist, ist eine ernsthafte angelegenheit, und lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound muã� eingenommen werden, bis die menstruation wieder regelmã¤ã�ig eintritt. durch den gebrauch dieses mittels kann man zuverlã¤ssig alle unregelmã¤ã�igkeiten beseitigen. =schmerzhafter monatsfluã�.= bei vielen frauen verursacht der monatsfluã� ã¼beraus groã�e schmerzen, und alle, die daran leiden, sollten ja nicht verfehlen, sich durch den gebrauch von lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound von dieser wahrhaften geiã�el zu retten. dabei ist es gleichgã¼ltig, ob der fall ein akuter ist oder ob er schon viele monate gedauert hat. vorausgesetzt, daã� das vegetable compound regelmã¤ã�ig und genau nach vorschrift genommen wird, darf man zuverlã¤ssig eine heilung erwarten. =zu starker monatsfluã�.= sowohl vollblã¼tige als auch besonders bleichsã¼chtige und schwã¤chliche personen leiden hã¤ufig unter zu starker menstruation. gerade mit bezug auf derartige zustã¤nde vermag lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound auã�erordentlich gã¼nstige resultate aufzuweisen. doch empfehlen wir bei zu reichlich auftretender blutung lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound in seiner trockenen form, d. h. in der form von pillen oder pastillen einzunehmen. beinahe alle frauenkrankheiten haben ihren ursprung in =entzã¼ndung und geschwã¼rbildung in der gebã¤rmutter=, und es ist daher nicht genug hervorzuheben, daã� lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound schon mehr als eine million fã¤lle von gebã¤rmutteraffektionen glã¼cklich geheilt hat. fast unglaublich klingen die berichte vieler frauen, die todtkrank waren, und die dem vegetable compound ihre rettung verdanken. es ist nicht schwer fã¼r eine frau zu erkennen, ob sie an einer affektion der gebã¤rmutter leidet, da eine derartige erkrankung fast stets von ziehenden, ã¤uã�erst empfindlichen schmerzen im unterleib, rã¼ckenschmerzen, ohnmachtsanfã¤llen, erstarrung â»einschlafenâ« der gliedmaã�en, sowie von einer reihe anderer schmerzen begleitet ist. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound ist ein unfehlbares mittel gegen alle derartigen erkrankungen. =die leukorrhoe oder der weiã�e fluã�.= eines der allerersten symptome, die eine entzã¼ndung der gebã¤rmutter anzeigen, ist die leukorrhoe, oder wie man sich gewã¶hnlich ausdrã¼ckt: der weiã�e fluã�. derselbe zeigt sich als eine weiã�liche absonderung aus der vagina oder mutterscheide, die den kã¶rper auffallend angreift und schwã¤cht und besonders die empfindliche schleimhaut des scheidekanals irritiert. aber selbst die hartnã¤ckigsten fã¤lle von weiã�em fluã� lassen sich positiv kurieren durch den gebrauch von lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound in verbindung mit lydia e. pinkham's "sanative wash" oder â»hygienischem waschwasser.â« das erstere stã¤rkt das system und das zweite heilt die lokalen erscheinungen, da es direct in die scheide eingespritzt wird. man hã¼te sich ja, diese art von krankheit zu vernachlã¤ssigen, da sich sonst leicht geschwã¼re und ã¼bermã¤ã�ige absonderung einstellen kã¶nnen, die oftmals den ersten grund zu der schrecklichsten aller krankheiten -dem krebs legen. =gebã¤rmuttervorfall.= es giebt eine reihe von fã¤llen, wo die gebã¤rmutter eine verã¤nderung ihrer normalen lage erleidet; von diesen ist der wichtigste der sogenannte gebã¤rmuttervorfall. derselbe kommt hauptsã¤chlich von einer erschlaffung der bã¤nder her, die dieses organ stã¼tzen und in seiner richtigen lage erhalten sollen. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound stã¤rkt diese bã¤nder, vermindert die entzã¼ndung und verleiht nach und nach den erkrankten theilen ihren frã¼heren, normalen zustand wieder. die =entzã¼ndung der eierstã¶cke= ist eine ã¤uã�erst schwere erkrankung, die frauen im alter von 20 bis 40 jahren befã¤llt. sie ist stets von groã�er empfindlichkeit und scharfen schmerzen in der gegend der eierstã¶cke begleitet, wozu sich ein gefã¼hl der vã¶lle, besonders zur zeit der menstruation, gesellt. die schmerzen erstrecken sich auch hã¤ufig auf die seite und den rã¼cken, mit vorliebe aber auf die linke seite, in verbindung mit fortwã¤hrendem verlangen das wasser abzuschlagen. wird nicht prompt gegen diese erkrankung eingeschritten, so vermag nichts den kranken vom messer des chirurgen zu retten. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound hat aber tausende von fã¤llen von eierstockerkrankungen geheilt und hat viele frauen der nothwendigkeit enthoben, sich im hospital einer gefã¤hrlichen operation auszusetzen. =unfruchtbarkeit= ist oft weiter nichts als der folgezustand ausnehmender schwã¤che, sowie einer chronischen entzã¼ndung der gebã¤rmutter. der regelmã¤ã�ige gebrauch von lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound hat schon in vielen fã¤llen die weiblichen zeugungsorgane wiederum ihrer normalen thã¤tigkeit zurã¼ckgegeben und eine anscheinend gã¤nzliche unfruchtbarkeit glã¼cklich gehoben. die sogenannten =wechseljahre= oder die =menopause= sind eine zeit wirklicher gefahr fã¼r alle diejenigen frauen, die das 45. jahr ã¼berschritten haben. wã¤hrend dieser zeit sind die frauen allen mã¶glichen beschwerden und erkrankungen ausgesetzt, die sich aber alle vermeiden lassen, ohne ernstliche krankheit oder sogar den tod fã¼rchten zu mã¼ssen, wenn man wã¤hrend dieser sehr wichtigen periode des frauenlebens regelmã¤ã�ig lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound einnimmt. =nierenund blasenbeschwerden= sind hã¤ufige und hartnã¤ckige leiden beider geschlechter. sie sind alle heilbar, vorausgesetzt, daã� man sich bei zeiten um sie kã¼mmert; werden sie aber vernachlã¤ssigt, so kã¶nnen sie leicht verhã¤ngnisvoll werden und sogar den tod nach sich ziehen. sicher ist aber, daã� lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound als ausgezeichnetes mittel zur heilung aller nierenund blasenkrankheiten von keinem anderen bisher erfundenen mittel ã¼bertroffen wird. mã¤nner und frauen kã¶nnen volles vertrauen in dasselbe setzen. =rã¼ckenschmerzen= sind nicht eine krankheit, sondern sind vielmehr nur ein, gewisse krankheiten anzeigendes, symptom. bei krankheiten der geschlechtsorgane wird der groã�e sympathische nerv, dessen hauptcentrum im unteren theil des rã¼ckens liegt, in mitleidenschaft gezogen und verkã¼ndet sozusagen das vorhandensein einer derartigen krankheit. dadurch, daã� lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound alle affektionen der gebã¤rmutter, der eierstã¶cke und der nieren heilt, heilt es auch das so sehr peinigende rã¼ckenweh. =verdauungsbeschwerden.= es giebt in der ganzen welt kein besseres mittel gegen alle stã¶rungen der magenthã¤tigkeit als gerade lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. =schwangerschaft.= oftmals ist die geburt eines kindes mit vielen schmerzen und beschwerden fã¼r die mutter verbunden, und doch kã¶nnten alle diese zum groã�en theil vermieden werden, wollte nur die mutter ungefã¤hr zwei monate vor der entbindung anfangen, ihren kã¶rper durch den regelmã¤ã�igen gebrauch von lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound zu krã¤ftigen. gebrauchsanweisung. fã¼r sã¤mmtliche oben erwã¤hnte beschwerden nehme man alle vier stunden wã¤hrend des tages je einen eã�lã¶ffel voll von lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound ein. * * * * * man weiche ein viertel packet von lydia e. pinkham's sanative wash in genã¼gend wasser, um nach dem durchseihen ein pint zu haben. ist die absonderung sehr bedeutend, so brauche man die hã¤lfte der so erhaltenen flã¼ssigkeit, fã¼ge noch ein pint warmen wassers dazu und benã¼tze diese flã¼ssigkeit, um tã¤glich einspritzungen in die scheide zu machen. * * * * * gegen verstopfung, migrã¤ne, sowie gallendrang nehme man drei von lydia e. pinkham's leberpillen die erste nacht, zwei die zweite nacht und eine die dritte nacht; tritt auch dann noch kein regelmã¤ã�iger stuhlgang ein, so nehme man eine pille jede nacht soweit der vorrath reicht. * * * * * befindet sich das blut in schlechtem zustande und ist der patient immer mã¼de, abgemagert und angegriffen, und leidet er dazu noch an appetitmangel, so benã¼tze er lydia e. pinkham's blood purifier (blut-reiniger), das beste mittel auf der welt fã¼r diesen zweck. dreimal im tage ein eã�lã¶ffel voll heilt zuverlã¤ssig alle fã¤lle von rheumatismus, skropheln, hautausschlã¤ge, &c. &c. in allen apotheken zu haben. hergestellt von der lydia e. pinkham medicine company, =lynn, mass., v. s. von a.= read the following testimonials. dear mrs. pinkham: i wish all women suffering from female troubles might know what you have done for me. a year ago last june i was very sick, and on examination my physician said i had polypus of the womb and that i would not stop flowing until i had an operation. i always had a horror of operations and could not bear the thoughts of having one, as i am a nervous person. i wrote to you and followed all your directions faithfully, and all the while i prayed that i might not have to have one. at that time i could hardly walk across the floor and i was pale and thin. now i weigh one hundred and thirty-five pounds, do all my work, and my husband and children say that i am growing young. i am still taking your medicine and will do so until after the turn of life. mrs. nelson bavier, west hartford, conn. dear mrs. pinkham: i suffered for over three years with female weakness brought on by falling on an icy pavement. i had frequent backache and fearful headaches, blinding me with pain. i also had intense pains at the menstrual period. my family physician prescribed several remedies, but although he was considered an excellent physician, he was unable to relieve me. a cousin who visited me had a bottle of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound with her and spoke so highly of its efficacy that i took a few doses of it. i was pleased and surprised to find that it seemed to relieve my pains in twenty-four hours. i took it regularly, and within twenty-four hours more i felt like a different woman, and two weeks continued use of it restored me to health and strength such as i had not known in years. i consider lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound the only medicine on the market which is reliable for the ills of the sex. miss maud bell, 408 lanwee west, lansing, mich. grand recorder, daughters of american independence. september 22, 1902. i would like to have your advice as i am a married woman and would be pleased to have children. i cannot tell what is the trouble, but i lose them and i am as careful as i can be. it happens just when i am on the fourth month. i have just had my third miscarriage and been flowing over two weeks and have much pain in back and womb. my menstruation is very painful and some months i have it twice. my stomach bothers me. i suffer with indigestion and dyspepsia. mrs. frank wilcox. august 25, 1903. i will let you know that i have a son, and if it had not been for lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound i would not have my baby. your medicine kept me well until the last minute. i did not know what an ache was. i used fourteen bottles of the compound and three boxes of your liver pills. i cannot thank your medicine too much as it has done me more good than the doctors. mrs. frank wilcox. 43 orange st., bloomfield, n. j. june 26, 1903. i have been a sufferer for seven years with womb trouble, ever since my child was born. my doctor says my ovaries are affected also and will have to be taken out. i suffer with pains in my back and left side and at times cannot rest day or night. i have leucorrhoea and menstruation is very irregular and very free with a good deal of pain. i was told to write you for advice. mrs. j. d. curtis. september 25, 1903. i am still taking lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound and have improved wonderfully, have gained ten pounds and feel like a new woman. i will recommend your medicine to all women suffering from female trouble for it has done me more good than the doctors have for three years. you are perfectly welcome to use my name and statement for the good of others for everyone ought to know of your wonderful medicine. mrs. j. d. curtis, box 262, monaca, pa. january 15, 1901. i was reading to-day in a paper of the recovery of a lady after writing to you and as her case seemed to be very much the same as mine, i was impressed with the desire to write to you to see if i could not get relief. i am the mother of two children and have never had any weakness of any kind until the past year. i am pregnant at present, my back pains me nearly all the time and left side of abdomen. my back pains so sometimes i cannot stand on my feet or straighten up. my appetite is poor and my friends tell me i look badly. i hope that you will be able to give me some advice. mrs. d. d. eddy. june 27, 1903. about one year and a half ago, i wrote you in regard to my taking your medicine. i was pregnant at the time and in perfect misery. i suffered everything. you very kindly wrote to me advising your lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound which i began to take at once and when my baby was born, i was sick only half an hour and the sixth day i was upon my feet and felt as well and strong as i ever felt in my life. my baby is a strong healthy boy. i wish to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your kind letter to me. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound is the grandest medicine in the world for women. i shall recommend it as long as i live. mrs. d. d. eddy, 243 east ave., saratoga springs, n.y. dear mrs. pinkham: i am very grateful for the good lydia pinkham's vegetable compound did for me. i began using it when i thought there was no help for me and that i would be an invalid for life. the doctor said that i would not get well unless i underwent an operation for ovarian and female difficulties. i was afraid that my health would not stand the strain and so when a friend who was similarly afflicted told me of the good lydia pinkham's vegetable compound did her, i immediately began to use it and i am glad that i did so, for in less than four months i could report as she did a perfect cure. words fail to express my thankfulness. very truly yours, margrite ryan, hotel english, indianapolis, ind. treasurer st. andrews society. dear mrs. pinkham: last spring my health seemed gradually to decline, until i finally felt so weak i thought i would have to give up entirely. i lost my appetite, had headaches, and bearing down pains with cramps so that i was in perfect misery. i became wakeful and extremely nervous. reading of the value of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound in our paper here, i decided to try it, and am pleased to state that i derived immediate benefit, and soon enjoyed permanent relief. within eight weeks i was restored to normal health, and felt refreshed and strengthened as though i had enjoyed a lengthy vacation. since that time i have recommended your compound to a number of my lady friends suffering with female irregularities, and those who have used it report great benefit from its use. mrs. e. e. van dinter, 965 college ave., appleton, wis. vice-president social economic club. +lady on sofa with head obscured by pillows; child sitting on floor crying+ ~don't~ don't wait until your suffering have driven you to despair, with your nerves all shattered and your courage gone. help and happiness surely await you if you accept mrs. pinkham's advice. disease makes women nervous, irritable, and easily annoyed by children and household duties; such women need the counsel and help of a woman who understands the peculiar troubles of her sex; that woman is mrs. pinkham, who with that famous medicine, =lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound=, has restored thousands upon thousands of sick and discouraged women to health and happiness. her address is lynn, mass., and her advice is free. write to-day, do not wait. =will not the volumes of letters from women who have been made strong by lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound convince others of the virtues of this great medicine?= =when a medicine has been successful in more than a million cases, is it justice to yourself to say, without trying it, "i do not believe it would help me?"= =surely you cannot wish to remain weak and sick and discouraged, exhausted with each day's work. if you have some derangement of the feminine organism try lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. it will surely help you.= i am firmly persuaded after eight years experience with lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound that it is the safest and best medicine for any suffering woman to use. immediately after my marriage i found that my health began to fail me. i became weak and pale with severe bearing down pains, fearful headaches and frequent dizzy spells. the doctors prescribed for me and yet i did not improve. i would at times bloat after eating and have frequent vomiting. i had acrid discharge and pains down through my limbs so i could hardly walk. it was as bad a case of female trouble as i have ever known. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound cured me within four months and since that time i have had occasion to recommend it to a number of patients suffering with all forms of female difficulties and i found that while it is considered unprofessional to recommend patent medicines, i could honestly recommend your vegetable compound for i have found it cures where other medicines fail. my mother and two sisters have used it also and their health has been restored and their strength renewed. it is a grand medicine for sick women. mrs. martha pohlman, 55 chester ave., newark, n. j. graduate nurse from blockley training school at philadelphia and for 6-1/2 years the chief clinic nurse at the philadelphia hospital. march 31, 1902. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has done me a great deal of good. when i first had my monthly period i suffered very much. i would have such headaches, also pain in abdomen and side. was not able to go to school. after taking several bottles of your medicine i was relieved of my trouble and i am now well and enjoying good health. miss mary e. rogers, kipton, ohio. october 8, 1901. it gives me great pleasure to tell what your vegetable compound has done for me for the benefit of other suffering women. i would have been a total wreck and probably not living to-day had i not taken your medicine. my legs were so stiff and my back so sore that i could not be on my feet and at times i would have the sick headache so bad that i did not know what i was doing. i also had leucorrhoea all the time which caused me to feel very weak. i lost in flesh until i weighed only ninety-eight pounds. i was unable to carry babe to maturity. my first child being born in seven months. since taking your medicine i have had two little girls which are pictures of health and which i owe to lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. i have taken twelve bottles of the vegetable compound, used one box of liver pills which i found excellent to regulate the bowels. i am now in good health and weigh one hundred and twenty-five pounds. i cannot praise your medicine enough for the benefit i have derived from its use. what a blessing it is that women can consult with a lady and if every woman feels as i do, they would all consult you far and near. mrs. nelson f. spangler, center oak, pa. april 18, 1901 i will now write you a letter of gratitude for what your medicine has done for me. i suffered with very painful menstruation and could not become pregnant which was my great desire. i began the use of your medicine and after taking sixteen bottles i found myself pregnant. i continued the use of your vegetable compound and felt well all the time. last october my baby was born, it was a girl and weighed eleven and one-half pounds. it is my belief that i would never have had my baby if i had not used your medicine. i recommend lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound to all, believing there is no better medicine for women. mrs. chas. rohde, 621 vine street, peoria, ill. i have intended for some time to write to you and tell you what lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has done for me. i had been feeling weak and nervous, very easily tired and had much backache. i took two bottles of your compound and felt so much better that i enjoyed, instead of dreading my household duties. i can and do gladly recommend your medicines to anyone suffering from female troubles. mrs. m. e. shepler, 17 amesbury place, cleveland, ohio. household cares +top right: lady sitting in chair with large broom in the backgroud; bottom left: lady standing with forefinger on cheek+ a sick woman's devotion to duty is a heroism which a well person cannot understand. how distressing to see a woman struggling with her daily round of household duties, when her back and head are aching, and every movement brings out a new pain. one day the poor woman is wretched and utterly miserable; in a day or two she is better, and laughs at her fears, thinking there is nothing much the matter after all; but before night the deadly backache reappears, the limbs tremble, the lips twitch--it seems as though all the imps of satan were clutching her vitals; she "goes to pieces" and is flat on her back. no woman ought to arrive at this terrible state of misery, because these symptoms are a sure forerunner of womb troubles. she must remember that =lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound= is almost an infallible cure for all female ills, such as irregularity of periods, which cause weak stomach, sick headache, etc., displacements and inflammation of the womb, or any of the multitude of illnesses which beset the female organism. read how mrs. frake wrote to mrs. pinkham when she was in great trouble. her letter tells the result, and how a cure was effected by the use of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. _read these letters from mrs. frake._ "dear mrs. pinkham:--i have read of your medicine making so many cures, and have been advised to write to you, but i feel that it is of no use. the doctor says that i have womb trouble, but he does not seem to help me a great deal. i have such a weakness across me most of the time--have backache, am very nervous, and am troubled with leucorrhoea. i am very weak, cannot walk any distance or stand long unless i ache all over. i would like to know it you think your medicine would do me any good."--mrs. samuel frake, prospect plains, n.j. "dear mrs. pinkham:--i cannot thank you enough for what =lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound= has done for me. when i first wrote to you i had suffered for years. the doctor said i had congestion of the womb, was troubled with my kidneys and bladder, my back ached dreadfully all the time, and i suffered with bearing-down feeling, could scarcely walk about to do my own housework. i stopped doctoring with the physician and took your medicine, and am now able to do my own work, have no more backache or weakness across me, and can do all my own work. i cannot praise your medicine enough, and would advise all suffering women to try it."--mrs. samuel frake, prospect plains, n.j. the medicine that has restored a million women to health is lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. june 10, 1901. my daughter sixteen years old, has been in very poor health ever since the change to womanhood a year ago. she had the best of doctors but they did her little good. she complained of feeling tired all the time, did not care for anything, pain in her back, very nervous, poor in flesh and so pale. it made her tired to ride or walk any distance, could not go to school. some thought she could not live long. through the use of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound she is now in the best of health. i feel that your medicine saved her life. mrs. anna hughes, altmar, n. y. december 12, 1902. about a month ago i took a very bad cold and it was at time of menstruation and it stopped my menses. i began to have pains in my ovaries and at last i had inflammation of the ovaries and pain in my kidneys and bladder. i got over that but did not flow hardly any. the last time i came around i began to have that pain in my right ovary and it lasted a week and i have been flowing for a week. i would like some advice as i do not know what to think of my case. miss ruby mushrush. july 22, 1903. about three months ago the doctor turned the x-ray on me to see what was the matter and found that i had an abscess near my ovary and in a place that if it had broken would have killed me right away. the doctor's medicine did me no good, so mama went to the store and got me a bottle of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. i am now so well that i can work, thanks to your medicine. it has saved me from an operation. miss ruby mushrush, east chicago, ind. february 10, 1902. as i have heard and read so much about your medicine, i have decided to write you and tell you my trouble and ask your advice. i am completely run down, am a widow, twenty-five years old, and have one boy five years old. i have never been strong since the birth of my child. menstruation is irregular and scanty and am always in such distress, pain in lower abdomen and limbs, pain and dizziness in head, cold hands and feet, poor appetite, sick headache, nervous, have leucorrhoea badly, bearing down pains in small of back, pain in both sides, also have catarrh of head and throat. i have had different doctors but they do not help me and i am discouraged. i will be glad to hear from you. would like to feel well once more. mrs. annie m. wahl. june 1, 1902. i think it is my duty to let everyone know what lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has done for me. it has made me well and happy. five months ago i could hardly walk across the room, i was so full of pain. i could scarcely step. i now feel like a new woman. i sleep well and have a good appetite. i used to get such awful sick headache spells, but now i have them no more. also would be troubled with awful bearing down pain at time of menstruation but have also been relieved of this. i cannot praise your medicine enough. i think it is the best thing made for women. i advise, everyone who suffers with female trouble to try lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. mrs. annie m. wahl, bellwood, blair co., pa. october 10, 1901. i think it is my duty to let you know the good that lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has done for me. i think it is the best medicine in the world. i was well until i weaned my baby and then i began to bloat and had bearing down pains. i took to filling up with water in my abdomen. i had the doctor and he said it was abdominal dropsy and that not having menstruation was the cause of it. he said i would have to be tapped. he tapped me once and took eleven quarts of water from me and in a week i began to fill up again and he was waiting to tap me again. i wrote to mrs. pinkham and began to take the vegetable compound and the water began to leave me. when i had taken two bottles it had all left me and menses appeared. i now feel as well as i ever did and am able to do all my work. i feel very thankful to you. mrs. hattie riley, waterford, ohio. backache ~miss pearl ackers.~ the ordinary every-day life of most of our women is a ceaseless treadmill of work. how much harder the daily tasks become when some derangement of the female organs makes every movement painful and keeps the nervous system all unstrung. one day she is wretched and utterly miserable; in a day or two she is better and laughs at her fears, thinking there is nothing much the matter after all; but before night the deadly backache reappears, the limbs tremble, the lips twitch--it seems as though all the imps of satan were clutching her vitals, she "goes to pieces" and is flat on her back. no woman ought to arrive at this terrible state of misery, because these symptoms are a sure indication of womb diseases, and backache is merely a symptom of more serious trouble. women should remember that an almost infallible cure for all female ills, such as irregularity of periods, which cause weak stomach, sick headache, etc., displacements and inflammation of the womb, or any of the multitudes of illnesses which beset the female organism may be found in lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound =when a medicine has been successful in more than a million cases, why should you say, "i do not believe it will help me?" if you have some derangement of the feminine organism try lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. it will surely help you. if there is anything in your case about which you would like special advice, write freely to mrs. pinkham, lynn, mass.; her advice is given free and will greatly help you.= "dear mrs. pinkham:--about two years ago i consulted a physician about my health, which had become so wretched that i was no longer able to be about. i had severe backache, bearing-down pains, pains across the abdomen, was very nervous and irritable, and this trouble grew worse each month. "the physician prescribed for me, but i soon discovered he was unable to help me, and i then decided to try =lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound=, and soon found that it was doing me good. my appetite was returning, the pains disappearing, and the general benefits were well marked. "you cannot realize how pleased i was, and after taking the medicine for only three months, i found i was completely cured of my trouble, and have been well and hearty ever since and no more fear of the monthly period, as it now passes without pain to me. yours very truly, miss pearl ackers, 327 north summer st., nashville, tenn." march 10, 1902. i now write to tell you what your medicine has done for me. after my first child was born, my womb came down so far that the doctor had to replace it and it was always weak and would never stay in place. a friend told me about lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. i got one bottle of it without any faith at all for i was so bad, i did not think it would do as much good as she said. well, i took seven bottles and now i am entirely well. i have used the vegetable compound right along when pregnant and found it a great help, child-birth being almost painless. i have had four children and have always been able to do my work even the washing until the child was born. it certainly is a wonderful medicine for pregnant women and i would not be without it at that time. mrs. george goodchild, port kennedy, pa. june 9, 1901. i had falling of the womb and such an aching across my pelvis bone could hardly walk as the least jar hurt so. i was better before i had finished the second bottle and after taking six bottles was entirely cured. i can recommend lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound to any one. mrs. rosa g. burton, 1006 brandywine st., phila., pa. august 19, 1902. i take great pleasure in writing to thank you for what lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has done for me. i suffered for years with painful menstruation, pains in the back, leucorrhoea, dizziness and nervous prostration. since taking your medicine, i feel like a new woman. i never will be without your vegetable compound and will recommend it as long as i live. hoping my testimonial may be of benefit to others, i remain, yours truly, mrs. mary brady, 1929 dumaine st., nr. prieur, new orleans, la. july 16, 1901 i have been taking lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound for the past eight months and it has done me a great deal of good. before taking it, i suffered with my head and pains in my back and when i had my changes i suffered agony, could hardly stand on my feet. i have taken twelve bottles of the compound and to-day i am a well woman. i weighed one hundred and twenty pounds before taking it and now i weigh one hundred and forty-five. i keep a laundry and recommend your medicine to my customers. augusta bliss, 530 e. 84th st., new york, n. y. april 29, 1902. i write this letter so that all suffering women may know what your wonderful medicine has done for me. before i began taking your medicine i was very weak and not able to do anything. i had had a miscarriage and a bad flooding spell and my husband had given up all hopes of my ever getting strong again. some of my friends told me to try lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. i was in bed at the time. after taking a few doses i began to feel better. i have taken now three bottles and am telling my friends what it has done for me. my husband would not have me do without the medicine. mrs. george perry, box 52, fort gibson, ind. ter. june 14, 1901. when i wrote to you for advice a year and a half ago, i was confined to my bed and had just about given up hopes of ever being well again. i had heard so much about lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound i told my husband i would like to try it. he got me a bottle and after taking two bottles i was able to get up and walk a little. my trouble was enlargement of the womb, also had ovarian trouble. i had spells of flooding nearly losing my life at monthly periods. altogether i was sick and discouraged. the pains and aches i suffered i cannot explain. i took seventeen bottles of your vegetable compound and was cured. in due time i gave birth to a nice baby girl. my baby is now six months old and so fat and healthy and i am so well, no more female trouble or pain in back. mrs. may m. morgareidge, mayoworth, wyo. fibroid tumors cured. a distressing case of fibroid tumor, which baffled the skill of boston doctors. mrs. hayes, of boston, mass., in the following letter tells how she was cured, after everything else failed, by =lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound=. =mrs. hayes' first letter appealing to mrs. pinkham for help:= "dear mrs. pinkham--i have been under boston doctors' treatment for a long time without any relief. they tell me i have a fibroid tumor. i cannot sit down without great pain, and the soreness extends up my spine. i have bearing-down pains both back and front. my abdomen is swollen, and i have had flowing spells for three years. my appetite is not good. i cannot walk or be on my feet for any length of time. "the symptoms of fibroid tumor given in your little book accurately describe my case, so i write to you for advice."--(signed) mrs. e. f. hayes, 22 ruggles st., (roxbury) boston, mass. =note the result of mrs. pinkham's advice--although she advised mrs. hayes, of boston, to take her medicine--which she knew would help her--her letter contained a mass of additional instructions as to treatment, all of which helped to bring about the happy result.= "dear mrs. pinkham--sometime ago i wrote to you describing my symptoms and asked your advice. you replied, and i followed all your directions carefully, and to-day i am a well woman. "the use of =lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound= entirely expelled the tumor and strengthened my whole system. i can walk miles now. "=lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound= is worth five dollars a drop. i advise all women who are afflicted with tumors or female trouble of any kind to give it a faithful trial."--(signed) mrs. e. f. hayes, 99 ziegler st., (roxbury) boston, mass. =mountains of gold could not purchase such testimony--or take the place of the health and happiness which lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound brought to mrs. hayes.= woman's kidney troubles. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound is especially successful in curing this fatal woman's disease. of all the diseases known with which the female organism is afflicted, kidney disease is the most fatal. in fact, unless early and correct treatment is applied, the weary patient seldom survives. being fully aware of this, mrs. pinkham, early in her career, gave exhaustive study to the subject, and in producing her great remedy for woman's ills--lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound--was careful to see that it contained the correct combination of herbs which was sure to control that fatal disease, woman's kidney troubles. the vegetable compound acts in harmony with the laws that govern the entire female system, and while there are many so-called remedies for kidney troubles, lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound is the only one especially prepared for women. the following letters will show how marvellously successful it is. oct. 17, 1901. i have noticed your advertisement in the papers of your wonderful medicine, and i wish to consult you in regard to my sickness. i have been a sufferer of female weakness for the past six months; have doctored a great deal, but it has done me no good. i have _kidney_ and _bladder_ trouble, backache, constipation, headache, terrible pains in my left side, have leucorrhoea, painful menstruation, which compels me to take my bed for two and three days; also have falling of the womb. blood is very thin. i hope to hear from you soon. mrs. w. n. matthews, 548 w. jefferson st., springfield, ill. april 15, 1902. i am almost ashamed to acknowledge the receipt of your letter received last fall. after i had doctored for a year without receiving any relief, i then wrote you for advice in regard to my sickness and began the use of your medicine. i am happy to say that i never felt better in my life than i do now. i can eat hearty, sleep well, and feel like a new woman. many thanks for your kind and highly appreciated letter. i wish every suffering woman would try lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. mrs. w. n. matthews, 548 w. jefferson st., springfield, ill. june 15, 1901. it affords me great pleasure to give you my testimony in regard to the value of lydia e. pinkham's valuable remedies. i suffered for some time with internal trouble, being at times unable to walk across the floor. i had weakness of the bladder and was very nervous. after taking one bottle vegetable compound i felt better. i continued its use, and after taking five bottles could walk two miles without difficulty. my health is now good and i am sixty years old. i think your vegetable compound the best medicine i have ever taken. mrs. henry gittelman, 1004 n. 6th st., reading, pa. june 26, 1901. i will write and let you know how much good lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has done me. i cannot express the terrible suffering i have had to endure. i was taken last may with nervous prostration; also had female trouble, liver, stomach, _kidney_ and _bladder_ trouble. i was in a terrible condition. the doctor attended me for a year, but i kept getting worse. i got so i was not able to do any work. was confined to my bed most of the time, and thought i would never be able to do anything. people thought i would not live. i decided to try your medicine. i have taken twelve bottles vegetable compound and cannot praise it too highly, for i know it will do all and even more than it is recommended to do. i tell every suffering woman about your medicine and urge them to try it. mrs. emma sawyer, conyers, ga. ~change of life~ a danger period through which every woman must pass. owing to modern methods of living, not one woman in a thousand approaches this perfectly natural change without experiencing a train of very annoying and sometimes painful symptoms. at this period a woman indicates a tendency towards obesity or tumorous growths. those dreadful hot flashes, sending the blood surging to the heart until it seems ready to burst, and the faint feeling that follows, sometimes with chills, as if the heart were going to stop forever, are only a few of the symptoms of a dangerous nervous trouble. the nerves are crying out for assistance. the cry should be heeded in time. =lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound= was prepared to meet the needs of woman's system at this trying period of her life, and all women who use it pass through this trying period with comfort and safety. august 6, 1902. my trouble was change of life and cramping. no human tongue can describe what i suffered with the cramp. i dreaded from one time to another so much that i almost wanted to die. our family physician did everything he could for me, but i got no relief. he said if i lived to get through with the other trouble it would wear away after a time, but i had it six years, and could not walk or exercise in any way without bringing on an attack of the cramp, and i would suffer untold misery until i would be perfectly exhausted and helpless. i read in one of your little books about lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound being good for female trouble and change of life, and thought there was no harm in trying it. so i did, and it helped me, and i was able to take walks and work some. i am very thankful for the relief your medicine has been to me. mrs. v. m. blake, deep water, w. va. dear mrs. pinkham: i began to dread the approach of change of life some years ago, as so many of my friends had been miserable for five or six years during that period and as i was not very strong and being subject to headaches and weakness, i felt that i did not have the strength to carry me through this dangerous period and had it not been for lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, i feel that i would not have been alive to-day. i began to take it about three years ago when i felt the change coming on and continued taking it for three months, then i did not take any for a couple of months, and began to feel so badly that i started to use it again, and then continued to take it for about six months out of every year for three years and am pleased to state that it has kept me free from sickness. very truly yours, mrs. george shepherd, berlin, wis. vice-president mothers' club. june 28, 1902. i thought i would write and state my condition to you and ask if you think you can do me any good. i am fifty-five years old, never had any children. i came here from brooklyn for my husband's health, he having consumption. i have always had good health, never any trouble with my menses, always regular until two or three months before my husband died, which was march 25, 1901. as soon as he died, i commenced and flowed constantly ever since. i know it must be the change of life. i did not worry about it for four or five months, then i had a doctor but he did me no good. i had another with the same result. last may i had to go to new york and traveling i think was too much for me as i have been worse. i saw a doctor there and he wanted me to go to the hospital and have my womb curetted, but i did not feel like having that done. i never have any pain only once in a while a little backache. please let me know if you think you can do me any good. mrs. j. j. reardon. january 18, 1903. i feel that i must write and thank you for the good you have done me. i wrote to you my case last summer. i flowed constantly for sixteen months so badly that i dared not go any where and the doctors all said an operation. nothing did me any good. as a last resort i appealed to you. i had no faith in your medicine, but thought i would try it and if it did me no good i would go to the hospital. i took two boxes of the lydia e. pinkham's compound pills and started on the third and now i am all right. i was run down, nervous, could not sleep, no appetite, but lydia e. pinkham's compound has cured me entirely. i am very grateful to you and wish that everyone afflicted as i was would try it. mrs. j. j. reardon, milford, pa. november 20, 1901. lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound did wonders for me during the _change of life_. i was troubled with backache and headache, hot flashes and cold chills, pains in my hips, and at times would have such pains under my shoulder blades that i could hardly move for a while. i hope that other suffering women will take your medicine. many thanks for what you have done for me. mrs. sarah derfer, dundee, ohio. +ladies in profile+ tired mothers =a nervous, irritable mother, often on the verge of hysterics, is unfit to care for children; it ruins a child's disposition and reacts upon herself. the trouble between children and= their mothers too often is due to the fact that the mother has some female weakness, and she is entirely unfit to bear the strain upon her nerves that governing a child involves; it is impossible for her to do anything calmly. she cannot help it, as her condition is due to suffering and shattered nerves caused by some derangement of the uterine system with backache, headache, and all kinds of pain, and she is on the verge of nervous prostration. when a mother finds that she cannot be calm and quiet with her children, she may be sure that her condition needs attention, and she cannot do better than to take lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound it builds up her system, strengthens her nerves, and enables her to calmly handle a disobedient child without a scene. the children will soon realize the difference, and seeing their mother quiet, will themselves become quiet. _=read what the vice-pres. of the mothers' club, at hot springs, ark., says:=_ "dear mrs. pinkham--=lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound= will make every mother well, strong, healthy and happy. i dragged through nine years of miserable existence, worn out with pain and weariness. i then noticed a statement of a woman troubled as i was, and the wonderful results she had obtained from your compound, and decided to try what it would do for me, and used it for three months. at the end of that time i was a different woman, and the neighbors remarked it, and my husband fell in love with me all over again. it seemed like a new existence. i had been suffering with inflammation and falling of the womb, but your medicine cured that, and built up my entire system, till i was indeed like a new woman."--sincerely yours, mrs. chas. f. brown, vice-pres. mothers' club, hot springs, ark. free medical advice to women. =from a vast experience in treating female ills, extending over 20 years, mrs. pinkham has gained a knowledge which is of untold value.= =if there is anything in your case about which you would like special advice, write freely to mrs. pinkham. address is lynn, mass. her advice is free, always confidential and helpful.= lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound +lady gazing upwards+ =has cured more women than any other medicine in the world.= its annual sales are greater than those of any other medicine exclusively for women. it holds the record for the greatest number of actual cures of woman's ills. this fact is attested by hundreds of thousands of letters from grateful women which are on file in the pinkham laboratory, and which are constantly being published. merit alone can produce such results. good advertising serves to call attention for a time, but merit alone can stand the test of time. the ablest specialists now agree that lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound is the most universally successful remedy for woman's ills known to medicine. all sick women should note these facts, and placing all possible prejudices aside, should realize the truthfulness of these statements, and that a cure for their troubles actually exists. wise is the woman who has faith in lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, for health and happiness is sure to follow its use. =you can get helpful advice free.--if there is anything about your illness you do not understand, mrs. pinkham, at lynn, mass., will be glad to receive a letter from you telling her all the details. she will send you promptly a reply which may save you years of suffering and pain. she has helped thousands of women. for all this she will not charge you a cent; besides, she will keep your letter strictly confidential. write her to-day.= october 14, 1902. i suffer something terrible with flooding every month and pass large clots of blood. the pains are excruciating. i can hardly stand them. the doctor says my ovaries are decayed and my womb needs to be scraped. i do not wish to go under the operation if i can possibly avoid it. i hope you can relieve me. mrs. mary dimmick. september 16, 1903. after giving lydia e. pinkham's wonderful remedies a thorough trial, i am very anxious to send in my testimonial that others may learn of their great value. i have been a great sufferer for the last eight years, the trouble first originating from painful menstruation, and i also had inflammation and ulceration of the womb. the doctor told me i must have an operation or i could not live. i then wrote you telling all my ailments. i followed your advice very carefully and am now entirely well. i can walk miles without an ache or pain and can safely say i owe my life and health to lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. i cannot speak too highly of its merits. my friends all look at me in astonishment, for my case was very serious and it seems almost a miracle that i am cured. i wish suffering women could read this testimonial and realize the value of your remedy. i shall take much pleasure in recommending it to all. mrs. mary dimmick, 59th and e. capitol st., benning p. o., washington, d. c. july 14, 1901. words cannot express the gratitude i feel towards you for what lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound has done for me. my trouble was misplacement of the womb, also womb was lacerated, and had inflammation of the ovaries. i went away for treatment to a specialist on female diseases and passed through twelve operations. was gone from home eight weeks and gradually grew worse and returned home to die, having given up all hope of ever getting well. my heart would stop beating at times and i became very weak, could not sit up in bed. a friend of mine brought me a bottle of the vegetable compound and i began its use and by the time i had taken half a bottle i could see that i had improved. i used in all twelve bottles of the compound and am now able to do all my house work and enjoy better health than i have in six years. i owe my life to you, for i believe i would have been in my grave to-day had it not been for the vegetable compound. your medicine is a god-send to suffering women. mrs. j. a. jordan, canoe station, ga. march 3, 1901. dear mrs. pinkham: i would like some advice from you as i have such very bad pains in ovaries, falling of the womb, and every time i have my monthlys i have the cramps very bad, and seem to be getting worse. i always have it a week and i am so very nervous. i don't want an operation. every time i become pregnant i carry the child only seven months, and then it is born and lives only a week or two. i have lost four children this way and hope you will tell me what to take as i know you have helped others. mrs. fred seydel. august 26, 1902. dear mrs. pinkham: over a year ago i wrote you a letter asking for advice how to carry my babes to full time as i had lost four children between five and seven months. i took lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound and did as you instructed me, and now i have a beautiful baby girl about six months old and we are both healthy. i advise all suffering women to call on you for help and i tell every one of the good you have done me. mrs. fred seydel, 412 n. 54th st., west phila., pa. june 13, 1901. last summer i had terrible pains in my back and head. i went to the doctor and he told me i had a touch of bright's disease and gave me some medicine but it did me no good. my mother advised me to take some of your medicine, and after taking eight bottles of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound i can say that i am feeling well. mrs. annie damback. 263 grand street, rahway, n. j. +ladies with children+ dyspepsia of women =requires treatment which acts in harmony with the female system.= a great many women suffer with a form of indigestion or dyspepsia which does not seem to yield to ordinary medical treatment. while the symptoms seem to be similar to those of ordinary indigestion, yet the medicines universally prescribed do not seem to restore the patient's normal condition. =mrs. pinkham= claims that there is a kind of dyspepsia that is caused by derangement of the female organism, and which while it causes disturbance similar to ordinary indigestion cannot be relieved without a medicine which not only acts as a stomach tonic, but has peculiar utero-tonic effects as well; in other words, a derangement of the female organs may have such a disturbing effect upon a woman's whole system as to cause serious indigestion and dyspepsia, and it cannot be relieved without curing the original cause of the trouble, which seems to find its source in the pelvic organs. as proof of this theory, we call attention to the letter from mrs. maggie wright, who was completely cured by the use of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. "my dear mrs. pinkham--for two years i suffered more or less with dyspepsia, which so degenerated my entire system that i was unfit to properly attend to my daily duties. i felt weak and nervous, and nothing i ate tasted good or felt comfortable in my stomach. i tried several dyspeptic cures, but nothing seemed to help me permanently. i decided to give =lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound= a trial, and was happily surprised to find that it acted like a fine tonic, and in a few days i began to enjoy and properly digest my food. my recovery was rapid, and in five weeks i was a different woman. seven bottles completely cured me, and a dozen or more of my friends have used it since."--mrs. maggie wright, 12 van voorhis st., brooklyn, new york. =many women were utterly discouraged, and life lacked all joy to them when they wrote mrs. pinkham, lynn, mass. they received advice which made them strong women again.= +lady sitting in chair with elbow on table and hand propped on chin+ the blues =don't wait until your sufferings have driven you to despair, with your nerves all shattered and your courage gone.= when a cheerful, brave, light-hearted woman is suddenly plunged into that perfection of misery, the blues, it is a sad picture. it is usually this way: she has been feeling "out of sorts" for some time; head has ached, and back also; has slept poorly, been quite nervous, and nearly fainted once or twice; head dizzy, and heart beats very fast; then that bearing-down feeling. her doctor says: "cheer up; you have dyspepsia; you will be all right soon." but she does not get "all right." she grows worse day by day, till all at once she realizes that a distressing female complaint is established. her doctor has made a mistake. she has lost faith in him; hope vanishes; then comes the brooding, morbid, melancholy, everlasting blues. =lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound= instantly asserts its curative powers in all those peculiar ailments of women, and the story recited above is the true experience of hundreds of american women, whose letters of gratitude we constantly publish. =surely you cannot wish to remain weak, and sick and discouraged, exhausted with each day's work. if you have some derangement of the female organism try the remedy that has restored a million women to health=, lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. "dear mrs. pinkham--i cheerfully recommended =lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound= to my suffering sisters as a perfect medicine for all female derangements. i was troubled with displacement of the womb and other female weakness. had headache, backache, and such bearing-down pains i could hardly walk across the floor, and was very nervous. a friend advised me to try your medicine, which i did, and after using the first bottle i began to improve. i took in all twelve bottles of vegetable compound, one box of liver pills, also used the sanative wash and was cured, and have no return of my troubles. i am as well now as i ever was. i am more thankful every day for my cure. i know that your medicine will do everything that it is recommended to do for suffering women."--mrs. dora anderson, north muskegon, mich. "dear mrs. pinkham--i want to tell you what your remedies have done for me. before taking them i used to have a continuous headache, would be very dizzy, would have spells when everything seemed strange, and i would not know where i was. i went to our local doctor. he gave me some medicine, but it did not seem to do me any good, but after taking =lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound=, i began to improve at once. i can honestly recommend your remedies to all suffering women and advise all to give it a trial."--mrs. henry sell, van wyck, wash. free medical advice to women. =if there is anything in your case about which you would like special advice, write freely to mrs pinkham. she will hold your letter in strict confidence.= in the treatment of female troubles such as leucorrhoea, and all inflammation of the vaginal passage by local application, experience has proven that nothing excels lydia e. pinkham's sanative wash for vaginal injections. every woman will find this a most valuable assistant whenever a =vaginal injection= is desirable. it is soothing, cleansing and healing. in connection with the vegetable compound it hastens the cure. we are permitted to publish on this page several testimonials which demonstrate the virtue of the sanative wash, and should convince every woman that she should place complete reliance on any statement made by mrs. pinkham in regard to the virtue and reliability of any of these medicines. directions for using the sanative wash. steep one-fourth of the package in sufficent water to make one pint after it is strained. when the discharge is very profuse, use one-half of this, adding to it one pint of warm water, daily, as a vaginal injection. =25 cents per package. sold by druggists everywhere.= sanative wash. i feel that i neglect a duty in not writing you that others may know what your vegetable compound has done for me. before taking it i was almost an invalid, could not walk any distance and suffered pain all the time. after taking nine bottles i was very much better, and can now do my house work and ride a wheel. it would take too much space to tell you all of its merits but i must not forget to speak of the sanative wash for it simply acts like magic. trusting that this may help some other sufferer, i remain. yours truly, mrs. a. c. saxton, port jefferson, n. y. sanative wash. it affords me great pleasure to tell you of the benefit i have derived from taking your vegetable compound and sanative wash. i can hardly find words to express my gratitude to you for the boon which you have offered suffering women in your excellent remedies. before taking your compound i was thin, sallow and nervous. i was troubled with leucorrhoea, and my menstrual periods were very irregular. i tried three physicians and gradually grew worse. about a year ago i was advised by a friend to try your sanative wash and vegetable compound, which i did. after using your vegetable compound and sanative wash i am now enjoying better health than i ever did, and attribute the same to your wonderful remedies. i cannot find words to express what a godsend your remedies have been to me. whenever i begin to feel nervous and ill, i know i have a never failing physician at hand. it would afford me pleasure to know that my words have directed my suffering sisters to the road to health and strength through your most excellent remedies. i thank you again for what your remedies have done for me. miss mary sachner, 205 e. town st., columbus, ohio. sanative wash. i am glad to state that through the use of your vegetable compound and sanative wash, etc., i am cured from the worst form of female weakness. i was troubled very much with leucorrhoea, bearingdown pains and backache. it seemed that i had no strength at all. i was in pain all over. i began to feel better after taking the first dose of vegetable compound, and am now like a new woman. i know if other suffering women would only try it, it would help them. mrs. george. w. shepard, box 127, boonville, n. y. lydia e. pinkham's blood purifier is far superior to any other known remedy for the cure of all diseases arising from impurities of the blood, such as scrofula, cancerous humor, erysipelas, rheumatism, canker, salt rheum and skin diseases. impure blood can be made rich and pure. there is no condition of the human system so uncertain or so deceptive as the condition of the blood. other disease makes itself known by aches or appearance, but the blood courses on with no sign of vitiation, carrying its poison to every nerve and fibre of the body. suddenly comes the awakening; pains that were never thought of before, ulcers or eruptions where never a pimple existed, make you ask in wonder, if not in agony, the cause. this effect may come in various ways, but the cause is always impure blood. this impurity or blood poisoning produces _rheumatism_, _debility_, _neuralgia_, _scrofula_, _mercurial or syphilitic ulcers_, _fistula_, _eruptions_, _consumption_, _scurvy_, _&c._ indigestion and biliousness. these two complaints are closely akin and generally exist together. _dyspepsia, or chronic indigestion_, is more prevalent in this country than anywhere else on the face of the earth, the chief reason being that we eat with intemperate haste, and consequently do not, as a rule, properly masticate our food. the work that should be done by the dental mill we remit to the stomach; and, as it cannot accomplish the task, the _food-grist_ is not properly ground up and applied, and the whole body--aye, every fibre and tissue of it--suffers. we need not here describe the pains and penalties of _dyspepsia_. they are within the personal experience of two-thirds of the adult population of the united states. _biliousness_ is a somewhat indefinite term, but it means, in its common acceptation, an _unnatural determination of bile to the channels of circulation_. the yellow tinge of the skin and of the white of the eyes in bilious cases is caused by the undue presence of bile in the superficial blood-vessels. a proper course of lydia e. pinkham's blood purifier, together with her celebrated liver pills, will purify the blood and drive off the bile, making you happy and pleasant, instead of grouty and disagreeable. lydia e. pinkham's blood purifier is as great a success as her celebrated vegetable compound, and may be used with great benefit in all diseases caused by impurities of the blood. do not class it with bitters of any kind. it is not a drink or an appetizer, but a _strictly medicinal preparation_. it is a powerful alterative, but a purely vegetable preparation, and may be taken without fear by any invalid. the dose is small and with good nutritious diet of any kind, avoiding highly seasoned or greasy food, you will be free from the tortures of rheumatism, clear of scrofulous sores or ulcers, and eradicate every taint, whether inherited or contracted. you will have a beautiful complexion and a soft, smooth skin, and rejoice in a healthy body and pure blood. =for sale by your druggist, $1.00 per bottle.= sept. 15, 1902. i feel it my duty to send you a testimonial and tell you how much good lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound and blood purifier has done my daughter. she feels like a different person. her menstruation was irregular; did not come around for two months. she took some medicine from the doctor which did not help her, and he thought she would have to take treatments. she took some of your vegetable compound and now her menses are regular again and she rests well nights, which she had not been able to do for about a year. her friends all wonder at her improved looks as well as health. i never fail to recommend your medicine when i know of any woman who has female troubles. mrs. magdalena schick, washington, ill. jan. 21, 1902. i will tell you what your remedy has done for me. i was in a very bad condition with scrofula swellings around my neck. it started with a bunch on the side of my neck, and it kept growing until the whole side of my face was swollen. i had tried everything in the shape of patent medicines for five years. i had gone under an operation in one of the hospitals in boston and had them cut out. i had thirty little tubular glands taken from back of my ear down my shoulder. they looked like a bunch of grapes, and about the same size. after the cuts healed over they started to come again worse than before. after suffering so much i thought i would try lydia e. pinkham's blood purifier, and before i had taken two bottles there was a great change in the swellings. i continued its use and to-day i am a well woman. every word of this is true. i cannot speak too highly in praise of your blood purifier. mrs. w. h. haynes, 38 adams ave., everett, mass. lydia e. pinkham's liver pills are especially adapted to the needs of the stomach and liver, the derangement of which they prevent and cure. they are purely vegetable and perfectly harmless. they do not purge, gripe or weaken, but are a gentle effective laxative which stimulates the natural action of the bowels. they are excellent in conjunction with the vegetable compound; especially in those cases when the complaints that are peculiar to women are attended with constipation and sluggishness of the liver. in such cases these pills enable the vegetable compound to do its work more speedily and effectively. the enormous sale of lydia e. pinkham's liver pills has been attained purely on their merit. during the last 25 years, we have found nothing to excel them. one box contains more than three times the number of pills ordinarily sold for 25 cents and we therefor justly claim superiority both in quantity and quality. january 12, 1901. i write you these few lines to see if you can suggest some means to cure me. a little more than a year ago, i was sick with menstruation for the first time and since then i am sick all the time in some way or other. i have painful and irregular menstruation. i went to summer resorts for my health and was doctored all summer, but to no effect. i have not flowed for two months and thought i would see if you could do me any good. marion barber. may 25, 1903. about two years ago i wrote to you for advice, being troubled with irregular menstruation and womb disease. i began taking lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound and liver pills and using the sanative wash and i am glad to say i am completely cured and have not had any sickness since. i wish to thank you for your kind advice and shall recommend your medicine to my lady friends. marion barber, 101 bracewell ave., north adams, mass. i am passing through the change of life, am suffering from extreme nervousness and depression of spirits, am very constipated and blood impoverished. i have heard so much about lydia e. pinkham's medicine i wish to give it a trial. please advise me. mrs. alice pickering, 14 george street, providence, r. i. june 29, 1900. six months ago i wrote to you stating my case. you advised me to take lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, blood purifier and liver pills. i followed your instructions. i never used anything in my life that benefited me so much. they are wonderful medicines. i cannot say enough in their praise. i know i should have been insane if i had not taken them. mrs. alice pickering, 14 george street, providence, r. i. important when writing to mrs. pinkham for advice and counsel, it is highly important that you should answer the following questions: =is your menstruation regular?= =is your menstruation profuse?= =is your menstruation scanty?= =is your menstruation painful?= =are you married or single?= =if married, have you borne children?= =have you any discharge from the vagina other than the courses?= =have you a free movement of the bowels daily?= =are you constipated?= =is your blood in good condition?= write out plainly all symptoms you do not understand. be sure of the strictest confidence. mrs. pinkham never betrays a trust. you can rely on her help implicitly. address your letters to "mrs. pinkham, lynn, mass." a word of warning. no other medicine in the world has received such widespread and unqualified endorsement as has lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound. no other medicine has such a record of cures of female troubles or such hosts of grateful friends. do not be persuaded that any other medicine is just as good. any dealer who asks you to buy something else when you go into his store purposely to buy lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, has no interest in your case. he is merely trying to sell you something on which he can make a larger profit. he does not care whether you get well or not, so long as he can make a little more money out of your sickness. if he wished you well he would, without hesitation, hand you the medicine you ask for, and which he knows is the best woman's medicine in the world. follow the record of this medicine, and remember that these thousands of cures of women whose letters are constantly printed in this paper were not brought about by "something else," but by =lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound, the great woman's remedy for woman's ills=. those women who refuse to accept anything else are rewarded a hundred thousand times, for they get what they want--a cure. moral--stick to the medicine that you =know= is best. =when a medicine has been successful in restoring to health more than a million women, you cannot well say without trying it, "i do not believe it will help me." if you are ill, do not hesitate to get a bottle of lydia e. pinkham's vegetable compound at once, and write mrs. pinkham, lynn, mass, u. s. a., for special advice. it is free and helpful, and will cost you nothing.= this entire book copyrighted in 1901 and 1904 by the lydia e. pinkham medicine co., of lynn, mass., u. s. a. all rights reserved and will be protected by law. ~the home of lydia e. pinkham's remedies lynn, mass., u. s. a.~ transcriber's notes: passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. passages in bold are indicated by =bold=. illustration captions are indicated by ~caption~. illustration descriptions added by the transcriber are indicated by +description+. the obstetrical table on page 26 was split in half for this text file. misprints corrected: "grea" corrected to "great" (page 16) "ryggvã¤kr" corrected to "ryggvã¤rk" (page 38) missing "to" added (page 60) the great american fraud by samuel hopkins adams a series of articles on the patent medicine evil, reprinted from collier's weekly i-----the great american fraud 3 ii----peruna and the bracers 12 iii---liquozone 23 iv----the subtle poisons 32 v-----preying on the incurables 45 vi----the fundamental fakes 57 also the patent medicine conspiracy against the freedom of the press i. the great american fraud. reprinted from collier's weekly, oct. 7, 1905. {003} this is the introductory article to a series which will contain a full explanation and exposure of patent-medicine methods, and the harm done to the public by this industry, founded mainly on fraud and poison. results of the publicity given to these methods can already be seen in the steps recently taken by the national government, some state governments and a few of the more reputable newspapers. the object of the series is to make the situation so familiar and thoroughly understood that there will be a speedy end to the worst aspects of the evil. [image ==>] {003} gullible america will spend this year some seventy-five millions of dollars in the purchase of patent medicines. in consideration of this sum it will swallow huge quantities of alcohol, an appalling amount of opiates and narcotics, a wide assortment of varied drugs ranging from powerful and dangerous heart depressants to insidious liver stimulants; and, far in excess of all other ingredients, undiluted fraud. for fraud, exploited by the skillfulest of advertising bunco men, is the basis of the trade. should the newspapers, the magazines and the medical journals refuse their pages to this class of advertisements, the patent-medicine business in five years would be as scandalously historic as the south sea bubble, and the nation would be the richer not only in lives and money, but in drunkards and drug-fiends saved. "don't make the mistake of lumping all proprietary medicines in one indiscriminate denunciation," came warning from all sides when this series was announced. but the honest attempt to separate the sheep from the goats develops a lamentable lack of qualified candidates for the sheepfold. external remedies there may be which are at once honest in their claims and effective for their purposes; they are not to be found among the much-advertised ointments or applications which fill the public prints. cuticura may be a useful preparation, but in extravagance of advertising it rivals the most clamorous cure-all. pond's extract, one would naturally suppose, could afford to restrict itself to decent methods, but in the recent {004}epidemic scare in new york it traded on the public alarm by putting forth "display" advertisements headed, in heavy black type, "meningitis," a disease in which witch-hazel is about as effective as molasses. this is fairly comparable to peruna's ghoulish exploitation, for profit, of the yellow-fever scourge in new orleans, aided by various southern newspapers of standing, which published as _news_ an "interview" with dr. hartman, president of the peruna company. drugs that make victims. when one comes to the internal remedies, the proprietary medicines proper, they all belong to the tribe of capricorn, under one of two heads, harmless frauds or deleterious drugs. for instance, the laxatives perform what they promise; if taken regularly, as thousands of people take them (and, indeed, as the advertisements urge), they become an increasingly baneful necessity. acetanilid will undoubtedly relieve headache of certain kinds; but acetanilid, as the basis of headache powders, is prone to remove the cause of the symptoms permanently by putting a complete stop to the heart action. invariably, when taken steadily, it produces constitutional disturbances of insidious development which result fatally if the drug be not discontinued, and often it enslaves the devotee to its use. cocain and opium stop pain; but the narcotics are not the safest drugs to put into the hands of the ignorant, particularly when their presence is concealed in the "cough remedies," "soothing syrups," and "catarrhal powders" of which they are the basis. few outside of the rabid temperance advocates will deny a place in medical practice to alcohol. but alcohol, fed daily and in increasing doses to women and children, makes not for health, but for drunkenness. far better whiskey or gin unequivocally labeled than the alcohol-laden "bitters," "sarsaparillas" and "tonics" which exhilerate fatuous temperance advocates to the point of enthusiastic testimonials. none of these "cures" really does cure any serious affection, although a majority of their users recover. but a majority, and a very large majority, of the sick recover, anyway. were it not so--were one illness out of fifty fatal--this earth would soon be depopulated. as to testimonials. the ignorant drug-taker, returning to health from some disease which he has overcome by the natural resistant powers of his body, dips his pen in gratitude and writes his testimonial. the man who dies in spite of the patent medicine--or perhaps because of it--doesn't bear witness to what it did for him. we see recorded only the favorable results: the unfavorable lie silent. how could it be otherwise when the only avenues of publicity are controlled by the advertisers? so, while many of the printed testimonials are genuine enough, they represent not the average evidence, but the most glowing opinions which the nostrum vender can obtain, and generally they are the expression of a low order of intelligence. read in this light, they are unconvincing enough. but the innocent public regards them as the type, not the exception. "if that cured mrs. smith of oshgosh it may cure me," says the woman whose symptoms, real or imaginary, are so feelingly described under the picture. lend ear to expert testimony from a certain prominent cure-all: "they see my advertising. they read the testimonials. they are convinced. they have faith in peruna. it gives them a gentle stimulant and so they get well." there it is in a nutshell; the faith cure. not the stimulant, but the faith inspired by the advertisement and encouraged by the stimulant does the work--or seems to do it. if the public drugger can convince his patron {005}that she is well, she _is_ well--for his purposes. in the case of such diseases as naturally tend to cure themselves, no greater harm is done than the parting of a fool and his money. with rheumatism, sciatica and that ilk, it means added pangs; with consumption, bright's disease and other serious disorders, perhaps needless death. no onus of homicide is borne by the nostrum seller; probably the patient would have died anyway; there is no proof that the patent bottle was in any way responsible. even if there were--and rare cases do occur where the responsibility can be brought home--there is no warning to others, because the newspapers are too considerate of their advertisers to publish such injurious items. the magic "red clause." with a few honorable exceptions the press of the united states is at the beck and call of the patent medicines. not only do the newspapers modify news possibly affecting these interests, but they sometimes become their active agents. f. j. cheney, proprietor of hall's catarrh cure, devised some years ago a method of making the press do his fighting against legislation compelling makers of remedies to publish their formulæ, or to print on the labels the dangerous drugs contained in the medicine--a constantly recurring bugaboo of the nostrum-dealer. this scheme he unfolded at a meeting of the proprietary association of america, of which he is now president. he explained that he printed in red letters on every advertising contract a clause providing that the contract should become void in the event of hostile legislation, and he boasted how he had used this as a club in a case where an illinois legislator had, as he put it, attempted to hold him for three hundred dollars on a strike bill. "i thought i had a better plan than this," said mr. cheney to his associates, "so i wrote to about forty papers and merely said: 'please look at your contract with me and take note that if this law passes you and i must stop doing business,' the next week every one of them had an article and mr. man had to go." so emphatically did this device recommend itself to the assemblage that many of the large firms took up the plan, and now the "red clause" is a familiar device in the trade. the reproduction printed on page 6 {p006} is a fac-simile of a contract between mr. cheney's firm and the emporia _gazette_, william allen white's paper, which has since become one of the newspapers to abjure the patent-medicine man and all his ways. emboldened by this easy coercion of the press, certain firms have since used the newspapers as a weapon against "price-cutting," by forcing them to refuse advertising of the stores which reduce rates on patent medicines. tyrannical masters, these heavy purchasers of advertising space. to what length daily journalism will go at the instance of the business office was shown in the great advertising campaign of paine's celery compound, some years ago. the nostrum's agent called at the office of a prominent chicago newspaper and spread before its advertising manager a full-page advertisement, with blank spaces in the center. "we want some good, strong testimonials to fill out with," he said. "you can get all of those you want, can't you?" asked the newspaper manager. "can _you?_" returned the other. "show me four or five strong ones from local politicians and you get the ad." fake testimonials. that day reporters were assigned to secure testimonials with photographs which subsequently appeared in the full-page advertisement as promised. as for the men who permitted the use of their names for this {006}purpose, several of them afterward admitted that they had never tasted the "compound," but that they were willing to sign the testimonials for the joy of appearing in print as "prominent citizens." another chicago newspaper compelled its political editor to tout for fake indorsements of a nostrum. a man with an inside knowledge of the patent-medicine business made some investigations into this phase of the matter, and he declares that such procurement of testimonials became so established as to have the force of a system, only two chicago papers being free from it. [image ==>] {006} to-day, he adds, a similar "deal" could be made with half a dozen of that city's dailies. it is disheartening to note that in the case of one important and high-class daily, the pittsburg _gazette_, a trial rejection of all patent-medicine advertising received absolutely no support or encouragement from the public; so the paper reverted to its old policy. [image ==>] {007} a window exhibit in a chicago drug store. {008} the control is as complete, though exercised by a class of nostrums somewhat differently exploited, but essentially the same. only "ethical" preparations are permitted in the representative medical press, that is, articles not advertised in the lay press. yet this distinction is not strictly adhered to. "syrup of figs," for instance, which makes widespread pretense in the dailies to be an extract of the fig, advertises in the medical journals for what it is, a preparation of senna. antikamnia, an "ethical" proprietary compound, for a long time exploited itself to the profession by a campaign of ridiculous extravagance, and is to-day by the extent of its reckless _use_ on the part of ignorant laymen a public menace. recently an article announcing a startling new drug discovery and signed by a physician was offered to a standard medical journal, which declined it on learning that the drug was a proprietary preparation. the contribution was returned to the editor with an offer of payment at advertising rates if it were printed as editorial reading matter, only to be rejected on the new basis. subsequently it appeared simultaneously in more than twenty medical publications as reading matter. there are to-day very few medical publications which do not carry advertisements conceived in the same spirit and making much tin same exhaustive claims as the ordinary quack "ads" of the daily press, and still fewer that are free from promises to "cure" diseases which are incurable by any medicine. thus the medical press is as strongly enmeshed by the "ethical" druggers as the lay press is by paine, "dr." kilmer, lydia pinkham, dr. hartman, "hall" of the "red clause" and the rest of the edifying band of life-savers, leaving no agency to refute the megaphone exploitation of the fraud. what opposition there is would naturally arise in the medical profession, but this is discounted by the proprietary interests. the doctors are investigating. "you attack us because we cure your patients," is their charge. they assume always that the public has no grievance against them, or, rather, they calmly ignore the public in the matter. in his address at the last convention of the proprietary association, the retiring president, w. a. talbot of piso's consumption cure, turning his guns on the medical profession, delivered this astonishing sentiment: "no argument favoring the publication of our formulas was ever uttered which does not apply with equal force to your prescriptions. it is pardonable in you to want to know these formulas, for they are good. but you must not ask us to reveal these valuable secrets, to do what you would not do yourselves. the public and our law-makers do not want your secrets nor ours, _and it would be a damage to them to have them_." the physicians seem to have awakened, somewhat tardily, indeed, to counter-attack. the american medical association has organized a council on pharmacy and chemistry to investigate and pass on the "ethical" preparations advertised to physicians, with a view to listing those which are found to be reputable and useful. that this is regarded as a direct assault on the proprietary interests is suggested by the protests, eloquent to the verge of frenzy in some cases, emanating from those organs which the manufacturers control. already the council has issued some painfully frank reports on products of imposingly scientific nomenclature; and more are to follow. what one druggist is doing. largely for trade reasons a few druggists have been fighting the nostrums, but without any considerable effect. indeed, it is surprising to see that people are so deeply impressed with the advertising claims put forth daily as to be impervious to warnings even from experts. {009} a cut-rate store, the economical drug company of chicago, started on a campaign and displayed a sign in the window reading: [image ==>] {009} please do not ask us what is any old patent medicine worth? for you embarrass us, as our honest answer must be that it is worthless if you mean to ask at what price we sell it, that is an entirely different proposition. when sick, consult a good physician. it is the only proper course. and you will find it cheaper in the end than self-medication with worthless "patent" nostrums. this was followed up by the salesmen informing all applicants for the prominent nostrums that they were wasting money. yet with all this that store was unable to get rid of its patent-medicine trade, and to-day nostrums comprise one-third of its entire business. they comprise about two-thirds of that of the average small store. legislation is the most obvious remedy, pending the enlightenment of the general public or the awakening of the journalistic conscience. but legislation proceeds slowly and always against opposition, which may be measured in practical terms as $250,000,000 at stake on the other side. i note in the last report of the proprietary association's annual meeting the significant statement that "the heaviest expenses were incurred in legislative work." most of the legislation must be done by states, and we have seen in the case of the hall catarrh cure contract how readily this may be controlled. two government agencies, at least, lend themselves to the purposes of the patent-medicine makers. the patent office issues to them trade-mark registration (generally speaking, the convenient term "patent medicine" is a misnomer, as very few are patented) without inquiry into the nature of the article thus safeguarded against imitation. the post office department permits them the use of the mails. except one particular line, the disgraceful "weak manhood" remedies, where excellent work has been done in throwing them out of the mails for fraud, the department has done nothing in the matter of patent remedies, and has no present intention of doing anything; yet i believe that such action, powerful as would be {010}the opposition developed, would be upheld by the courts on the same grounds that sustained the post office's position in the recent case of "robusto." a post-office report. that the advertising and circular statements circulated through the mails were materially and substantially false, with the result of cheating and defrauding those into whose hands the statements came; that, while the remedies did possess medicinal properties, these were not such as to carry out the cures promised; that the advertiser knew he was deceiving; that in the sale and distribution of his medicines the complainant made no inquiry into the specific character of the disease in any individual case, but supplied the same remedies and prescribed the same mode of treatment to all alike. should the department apply these principles to the patent-medicine field generally, a number of conspicuous nostrums would cease to be pat-, rons of uncle sam's mail service. some states have made a good start in the matter of legislation, among them michigan, which does not, however, enforce its recent strong law. massachusetts, which has done more, through the admirable work of its state board of health, than any other agency to educate the public on the patent-medicine question, is unable to get a law restricting this trade. in new hampshire, too, the proprietary interests have proven too strong, and the mallonee bill was destroyed by the almost united opposition of a "red-clause" press. north dakota proved more independent. after jan. 1, 1906, all medicines sold in that state, except on physicians' prescriptions, which contain chloral, ergot, morphin, opium, cocain, bromin, iodin or any of their compounds or derivatives, or more than 5 per cent, of alcohol, must so state on the label. when this bill became a law, the proprietary association of america proceeded to blight the state by resolving that its members should offer no goods for sale there. boards of health in various parts of the country are doing valuable educational work, the north dakota board having led in the legislation. the massachusetts, connecticut and north carolina boards have been active. the new york state board has kept its hands off patent medicines, but the board of pharmacy has made a cautious but promising beginning by compelling all makers of powders containing cocain to put a poison label on their goods; and it proposes to extend this ruling gradually to other dangerous compositions. health boards and analyses. it is somewhat surprising to find the health department of new york city, in many respects the foremost in the country, making no use of carefully and rather expensively acquired knowledge which would serve to protect the public. more than two years ago analyses were made by the chemists of the department which showed dangerous quantities of cocain in a number of catarrh powders. these analyses have never been printed. even the general nature of the information has been withheld. should any citizen of new york, going to the health department, have asked: "my wife is taking birney's catarrh powder; is it true that it's a bad thing?" the officials, with the knowledge at hand that the drug in question is a mater of cocain fiends, would have blandly emulated the sphinx. outside criticism of an overworked, undermanned and generally efficient department is liable to error through ignorance of the problems involved in its administration; yet one can not but believe that some form of warning against what is wisely admittedly a public menace would have been a wiser form {011}of procedure than that which has heretofore been discovered by the formula, "policy of the department." policies change and broaden under pressure of conditions. the health commissioner is now formulating a plan which, with the work of the chemists as a basis, shall check the trade in public poisons more or less concealed behind proprietary names. it is impossible, even in a series of articles, to attempt more than an exemplary treatment of the patent-medicine frauds. the most degraded and degrading, the "lost vitality" and "blood disease" cures, reeking of terrorization and blackmail, can not from their very nature be treated of in a lay journal. many dangerous and health-destroying compounds will escape through sheer inconspicuousness. i can touch on only a few of those which may be regarded as typical: the alcohol stimulators, as represented by peruna, paine's celery compound and duffy's pure malt whiskey (advertised as an exclusively medical preparation); the catarrh powders, which breed cocain slaves, and the opium-containing soothing syrups, which stunt or kill helpless infants; the consumption cures, perhaps the most devilish of all, in that they destroy hope where hope is struggling against bitter odds for existence; the headache powders, which enslave so insidiously that the victim is ignorant of his own fate; the comparatively harmless fake as typified by that marvelous product of advertising and effrontery, liquozone; and, finally, the system of exploitation and testimonials on which the whole vast system of bunco rests, as on a flimsy but cunningly constructed foundation. ii. peruna and the bracers. reprinted from collier's weekly, oct. 28, 1905. {012} a distinguished public health official and medical writer once made this jocular suggestion to me: "let us buy in large quantities the cheapest italian vermouth, poor gin and bitters. we will mix them in the proportion of three of vermouth to two of gin, with a dash of bitters, dilute and bottle them by the short quart, label them '_smith's reviver ana blood purifier; dose, one wineglassful before each meal_'; advertise them to cure erysipelas, bunions, dyspepsia, heat rash, fever and ague, and consumption; and to prevent loss of hair, smallpox, old age, sunstroke and near-sightedness, and make our everlasting fortunes selling them to the temperance trade." "that sounds to me very much like a cocktail," said i. "so it is," he replied. "but it's just as much a medicine as peruna and not as bad a drink." peruna, or, as its owner, dr. s. b. hartman, of columbus, ohio (once a physician in good standing), prefers to write it, pe-ru-na, is at present the most prominent proprietary nostrum in the country. it has taken the place once held by greene's nervura and by paine's celery compound, and for the same reason which made them popular. the name of that reason is alcohol.* peruna is a stimulant pure and simple, and it is the more dangerous in that it sails under the false colors of a benign purpose. * dr. ashbel p. grinnell of new york city, who has made a statistical study of patent medicines, asserts as a provable fact that more alcohol is consumed in this country in patent medicines than is dispensed in a legal way by licensed liquor venders, barring the sale of ales and beer. according to an authoritative statement given out in private circulation a few years ago by its proprietors, peruna is a compound of seven drugs with cologne spirits. this formula, they assure me, has not been materially changed. none of the seven drugs is of any great potency. their total is less than one-half of 1 per cent, of the product. medicinally they are too inconsiderable, in this proportion, to produce any effect. there remains to peruna only water and cologne spirits, roughly in the proportion of three to one. cologne spirits is the commercial term for alcohol. what peruna is made of. any one wishing to make peruna for home consumption may do so by mixing half a pint of cologne spirits, 190 proof, with a pint and a half of water, adding thereto a little cubebs for flavor and a little burned sugar for color. manufactured in bulk, so a former peruna agent estimates, its cost, including bottle and wrapper, is between fifteen and eighteen cents a bottle. its price is $1.00. because of this handsome margin of profit, and by way of making hay in the stolen sunshine of peruna advertising, many imitations have sprung up to harass the proprietors of the alcohol-and-water product. pe-ru-vi-na, p-ru-na, purina, anurep (an obvious inversion); these, bottled and labeled to resemble peruna, are self-confessed imitations. from what the peruna people tell me, i gather that they are dangerous and damnable frauds, and that they cure nothing. what does peruna cure? catarrh. that is the modest claim for it; nothing but catarrh. to be sure, a careful study of its literature will suggest its value as a tonic and a preventive of lassitude. but its reputation {013}rests on catarrh. what is catarrh? whatever ails you. no matter what you've got, you will be not only enabled, but compelled, after reading dr. hartman's peruna book, "the ills of life," to diagnose your illness as catarrh and to realize that peruna alone will save you. pneumonia is catarrh of the lungs; so is consumption. dyspepsia is catarrh of the stomach. enteritis is catarrh of the intestines. appendicitis--surgeons, please note before operating--is catarrh of the appendix. bright's disease is catarrh of the kidneys. heart disease is catarrh of the heart. canker sores are catarrh of the mouth. measles is, perhaps, catarrh of the skin, since "a teaspoonful of peruna thrice daily or oftener is an effectual cure" ("the ills of life"). similarly, malaria, one may guess, is catarrh of the mosquito that bit you. other diseases not specifically placed in the catarrhal class, but yielding to peruna (in the book), are colic, mumps, convulsions, neuralgia, women's complaints and rheumatism. yet "peruna is not a cure-all," virtuously disclaims dr. hartman, and grasps at a golden opportunity by advertising his nostrum as a preventive against yellow fever! that alcohol and water, with a little coloring matter and one-half of 1 per cent, of mild drugs, will cure all or any of the ills listed above is too ridiculous to need refutation. nor does dr. hartman himself personally make that claim for his product. he stated to me specifically and repeatedly that no drug or combination of drugs, with the possible exception of quinin for malaria, will cure disease. his claim is that the belief of the patient in peruna, fostered as it is by the printed testimony, and aided by the "gentle stimulation," produces good results. it is well established that in certain classes of disease the opposite is true. a considerable proportion of tuberculosis cases show a history of the peruna type of medicines taken in the early stages, with the result of diminishing the patient's resistant power, and much of the typhoid in the middle west is complicated by the victim's "keeping up" on this stimulus long after he should have been under a doctor's care. but it is not as a fraud on the sick alone that peruna is baneful, but as the maker of drunkards also. "it can be used any length of time without acquiring a drug habit," declares the peruna book, and therein, i regret to say, lies specifically and directly. the lie is ingeniously backed up by dr. hartman's argument that "nobody could get drunk on the prescribed doses of peruna." perhaps this is true, though i note three wineglassfuls in forty-five minutes as a prescription which might temporarily alter a prohibitionist's outlook on life. but what makes peruna profitable to the maker and a curse to the community at large is the fact that the minimum dose first ceases to satisfy, then the moderate dose, and finally the maximum dose; and the unsuspecting patron, who began with it as a medicine, goes on to use it as a beverage and finally to be enslaved by it as a habit. a well-known authority on drug addictions writes me: "a number of physicians have called my attention to the use of peruna, both preceding and following alcohol and drug addictions. lydia pinkham's compound is another dangerous drug used largely by drinkers; paine's celery compound also. i have in the last two years met four cases of persons who drank peruna in large quantities to intoxication. this was given to them originally as a tonic. they were treated under my care as simple alcoholics." the government forbids the sale of peruna to indians. expert opinion on the non-medical side is represented in the government order to the indian department, reproduced on the following page, the kernel of which is this: {014} department of the interior, office of indian affairs, washington, d. c., _august 10, 1905._ _to indian agents and school superintendents in charge of agencies:_ the attention of the office has been called to the fact that many licensed traders are very negligent as to the way in which their stores are kept. some lack of order might he condoned, but it is reported that many stores are dirty even to filthiness. such a condition of affairs need not be tolerated, and improvement in that respect must be insisted on. the office is not so inexperienced as to suppose that traders open stores among indians from philanthropic motive's. nevertheless a trader has a great influence among the indians with whom he has constant dealings and who are often dependent upon him, and there are not a few instances in which the trader has exerted this influence for the welfare of his customers as well as for his own profit. a well-kept store, tidy in appearance, where the goods, especially eatables, are handled in a cleanly way, with due regard to ordinary hygiene, and where exact business methods prevail is a civilizing influence among indians, while disorder, slovenliness, slipshod ways, and dirt are demoralizing. you will please examine into the way in which the traders under your supervision conduct their stores, how their goods, particularly edible goods, are handled, stored, and given out, and see to it that in these respects, as well in respect of weights, prices, and account-keep-ing, the business is properly conducted. if any trader, after due notice, fails to come up to these requirements you will report him to this office. in connection with this investigation, please give particular attention {016}to the proprietary medicines and other compounds which the traders keep in stock, with special reference to the liability of their misuse by indians on account of the alcohol which they contain. the sale of peruna, which is on the lists of several traders, is hereby absolutely prohibited. as a medicine, something else can be substituted; as an intoxicant, it has been found too tempting and effective. anything of the sort under another name which is found to lead to intoxication you will please report to this office. when a compound of that sort gets a bad name it is liable to be put on the market with some slight change of form and a new name. jamaica ginger and flavoring extracts of vanilla, lemon, and so forth, should be kept in only small quantities and in small bottles and should not be sold to indians, or at least only sparingly to those who it is known will use them only for legitimate purposes. of course, you will continue to give attention to the labeling of poisonous drugs with skull and cross-bones as per office circular of january 12, 1905. copies of this circular letter are herewith to be furnished the traders. yours, respectfully, c. f. larrabee, _acting commissioner._ note, in the fifth paragraph, these sentences: "the sale of peruna which is on the list of several traders, _is hereby absolutely prohibited._ as a medicine something else can be substituted; as an intoxicant it has been found too tempting." alcohol in "medicines" and in liquors. [image ==>] {015} these diagrams show what would be left in a bottle of patent medicine if everything was poured out except the alcohol; they also show the quantity of alcohol that would be present if the same bottle had contained whisky, champagne, claret or beer. it is apparent that a bottle of peruna contains as much alcohol as five bottles of beer, or three bottles of claret or champagne--that is, bottles of the same size. it would take nearly nine bottles of beer to put as much alcohol into a thirsty man's system as a temperance advocate can get by drinking one bottle of hostetter's stomach bitters. while the "doses" prescribed by the patent medicine manufacturers are only one to two teaspoonfuls several times a day, the opportunity to take more exists, and even small doses of alcohol, taken regularly, cause that craving which is the first step in the making of a drunkard or drag fiend. specific evidence of what peruna can do will be found in the following report, verified by special investigation: pinedale, wyo., oct. 4.-(special.)--"two men suffering from delirium tremens and one dead is the result of a peruna intoxication which took place here a few days ago. c. e. armstrong, of this place, and a party of three others started out on a camping trip to the yellowstone country, taking with them several bottles of whisky and ten bottles of peruna, which one of the members of the party was taking as a tonic. the trip lasted over a week. the whisky was exhausted and for two days the party was without liquor. at last some one suggested that they use peruna, of which nine bottles remained. before they stopped the whole remaining supply had been consumed and the four men were in a state of intoxication, the like of which they had never known before. finally, one awoke with terrible cramps in his stomach and found his companions seemingly in an almost lifeless condition. suffering terrible agony, he crawled on his hands and knees to a ranch over a mile distant, the process taking him half a day. aid was sent to his three companions. armstrong was dead when the rescue party arrived. the other two men, still unconscious, were brought to town in a wagon and are still in a weak and emaciated condition. armstrong's body was almost tied in a knot and could not be straightened for burial." here is testimony from a druggist in a southern "no license" town: "peruna is bought by all the druggists in this section by the gross. i have seen persons thoroughly intoxicated from taking peruna. the common remark in this place when a drunken party is particularly obstreperous is that he is on a 'peruna drunk,' it is a notorious fact that a great many do use peruna to get the alcoholic effect, and they certainly do get it good and strong. now, there are other so-called remedies used for the same purpose, namely, gensenica, kidney specific, jamaica ginger, hostetter's bitters, etc." so well recognized is this use of the nostrum that a number of the southern newspapers advertise a cure for the "teruna habit." which is probably worse than the habit, as is usually the case with these "cures." in southern ohio and in the mountain districts of west virginia the "peruna jag" is a standard form of intoxication. two testimonials. a testimonial-hunter in the employ of the peruna company was referred by a minnesota druggist to a prosperous farmer in the neighborhood. the farmer gave peruna a most enthusiastic "send-off"; he had been using it for several months and could say, etc. then he took the agent to his barn and showed him a heap of empty peruna bottles. the agent counted them. there were seventy-four. the druggist added his testimonial. "that old boy has a 'still' on all the time since he discovered peruna," said he. "he's my star customer." the druggist's testimonial was not printed. at the time when certain chicago drug stores were fighting some of the leading patent medicines, and carrying only a small stock of them, a boy {017}called one evening at one of the downtown shops for thirty-nine bottles of peruna. "there's the money," he said. "the old man wants to get his before it's all gone." investigation showed that the purchaser was the night engineer of a big downtown building and that the entire working staff had "chipped in" to get a supply of their favorite stimulant. "but why should any one who wants to get drunk drink peruna when he can get whisky?" argues the nostrum-maker. there are two reasons, one of which is that in many places the "medicine" can be obtained and the liquor can not. maine, for instance, being a prohibition state, does a big business in patent medicines. so does kansas. so do most of the no-license counties in the south, though a few have recently thrown out the disguised "boozes." indiana territory and oklahoma, as we have seen, have done so because of poor lo's predilection toward curing himself of depression with these remedies, and for a time, at least, peruna was shipped in in unlabeled boxes. united states district attorney mellette, of the western district of indian territory, writes: "vast quantities of peruna are shipped into this country, and i have caused a number of persons to be indicted for selling the same, and a few of them have been convicted or have entered pleas of guilty. i could give you hundreds of specific cases of 'peruna drunk' among the indians. it is a common beverage among them, used for the purposes of intoxication." the other reason why peruna or some other of its class is often the agency of drunkenness instead of whisky is that the drinker of peruna doesn't want to get drunk, at least she doesn't know that she wants to get drunk. i use the feminine pronoun advisedly, because the remedies of this class are largely supported by women. lydia pinkham's variety of drink depends for its popularity chiefly on its alcohol. paine's celery compound relieves depression and lack of vitality on the same principle that a cocktail does, and with the same necessity for repetition. i know an estimable lady from the middle west who visited her dissipated brother in new york--dissipated from her point of view, because she was a pillar of the w. c. t. u., and he frequently took a cocktail before dinner and came back with it on his breath, whereon she would weep over him as one lost to hope. one day, in a mood of brutal exasperation, when he hadn't had his drink and was able to discern the flavor of her grief, he turned on her: "i'll tell you what's the matter with you," he said. "you're drunk--maudlin drunk!" she promptly and properly went into hysterics. the physician who attended diagnosed the case more politely, but to the same effect, and ascertained that she had consumed something like half a bottle of kilmer's swamp-root that afternoon. now, swamp-root is a very creditable "booze," but much weaker in alcohol than most of its class. the brother was greatly amused until he discovered, to his alarm, that his drink-abhorring sister couldn't get along without her patent medicine bottle! she was in a fair way, quite innocently, of becoming a drunkard. another example of this "unconscious drunkenness" is recorded by the _journal of the american medical association_: "a respected clergyman fell ill and the family physician was called. after examining the patient carefully the doctor asked for a private interview with the patient's adult son. "'i am sorry to tell you that your father undoubtedly is suffering from chronic alcoholism,' said the physician. "'chronic alcoholism! why, that's ridiculous! father never drank a drop of liquor in his life, and we know all there is to know about his habits.' "'well, my boy, its chronic alcoholism, nevertheless, and at this present {018}moment your father is drunk. how has his health been recently? has he been taking any medicine?' "'why, for some time, six months, i should say, father has often complained of feeling unusually tired. a few months ago a friend of his recommended peruna to him, assuring him that it would build him up. since then he has taken many bottles of it, and i am quite sure that he has taken nothing else.'" from its very name one would naturally absolve duffy's malt whiskey from fraudulent pretence. but duffy's malt whiskey is a fraud, for it pretends to be a medicine and to cure all kinds of lung and throat diseases. it is especially favored by temperance folk. "a dessertspoonful four to six times a day in water and a tablespoonful on going to bed" (personal prescription for consumptive), makes a fair grog allowance for an abstainer. [image ==>] {018} a saloon window display at auburn. n. y. this bar-room advertises duffy's malt whiskey, the beverage "indorsed" by the "distinguished divines and temperance workers" pictured below, and displays it with other well-known brands of bourbon and rye--not as a medicine, but purely as a liquor, to be served, like others, in 15-cent drinks across the bar. medicine or liquor? [image ==>] {019} three "distinguished temperance workers" who advocate the use of whiskey. of these three "distinguished divines and temperance workers," the rev. dunham runs a get-married-quick matrimonial bureau, while the "rev." houghton derives his income from his salary as deputy internal revenue collector, his business being to collect uncle sam's liquor tax. the printed portrait of houghton is entirely imaginary; a genuine photograph of the "temperance worker" and whiskey indorser is shown above. the rev. mcleod lives in greenleaf, mich.--a township of 893 inhabitants, in salina county, north of port huron, and off the railway line. mr. mcleod was called to trial by his presbytery for indorsing duffy's whiskey and was allowed to "resign" from the fellowship. {020}it has testimonials ranging from consumption to malaria, and indorsements of the clergy. on the opposite page we reproduce a duffy advertisement showing the "portraits" of three "clergymen" who consider duffy's pure malt whiskey a gift of god, and on page 18 [image ==>] {018}a saloon-window display of this product. for the whisky has its recognized place behind the bar, being sold by the manufacturers to the wholesale liquor trade and by them to the saloons, where it may be purchased over the counter for 85 cents a quart. this is cheap, but duffy's pure malt whiskey, is not regarded as a high-class article. [image ==>] {020} rev. w. n. dunham. born in vermont eighty-two years ago, mr. dunham was graduated from the boston medical college and practiced medicine until about thirty years ago, when he moved west. there he became a preacher. he occupied the pulpit of the south cheyenne, wyoming, congregational church for ten years. two years ago he retired from the pulpit and established a marriage bureau for the accommodation of couples who come over from colorado to be married. no money was paid by the duffy's malt whiskey people for dunham's testimonial; but he received about $10 "to have his picture taken." "rev." m. n. houghton. this is the actual likeness of the "distinguished divine" with the side whiskers in the duffy whiskey advertisement. mr. houghton was for a number of years pastor of the church of eternal hope, of bradford, pa. he retired six years ago to enter politics, and is now a deputy internal revenue collector. although a member of the universalist church, mr. houghton is a spiritualist and delivered orations last summer at the lily dale assembly, the spiritualistic "city of light" located near dunkirk, n. y. mr. houghton owned racehorses and was a patron of the turf. its status has been definitely settled in new york state, where excise commissioner cullinane recently obtained a decision in the supreme court declaring it a liquor. the trial was in rochester, where the nostrum is made. eleven supposedly reputable physicians, four of them members of the health department, swore to their belief that the whisky contained drugs which constituted it a genuine medicine. the state was able to show conclusively that if remedial drugs were present they were in such small {021}quantities as to be indistinguishable, and, of course, utterly without value; in short, that the product was nothing more or less than sweetened whisky. yet the united states government has long lent its sanction to the "medicine" status by exempting duffy's pure malt whiskey from the federal liquor tax. in fact, the government is primarily responsible for the formal establishment of the product as a medicine, having forced it into the patent medicine ranks at the time when the spanish war expenses were partly raised by a special tax on nostrums. up to that time the duffy product, while asserting its virtues in various ills, made no direct pretence to be anything but a whisky. transfer to the patent medicine list cost it, in war taxes, more than $40,000. by way of setting a _quid pro quo_, the company began ingeniously and with some justification to exploit its liquor as "the only whisky recognised by the government as medicine," and continues so to advertise, although the recent decision of the internal revenue department, providing that all patent medicines which have no medicinal properties other than the alcohol in them must pay a rectifier's tax, relegates it to its proper place. while this decision is not a severe financial blow to the duffys and their congeners (it means only a few hundred dollars apiece), it is important as officially establishing the "bracer" class on the same footing with whisky and gin, where they belong. other "drugs" there are which sell largely, perhaps chiefly, over the oar, hostetter's bitters and damiana bitters being prominent in this class. when this series of articles was first projected, _collier's_ received a warning from "warner's safe cure," advising that a thorough investigation would be wise before "making any attack" on that preparation. i have no intention of "attacking" this company or any one else, and they would have escaped notice altogether, because of their present unimportance, but for their letter. the suggested investigation was not so thorough as to go deeply into the nature of the remedy, which is an alcoholic liquid, but it developed this interesting fact; warner's safe cure, together with all the warner remedies, is leased, managed and controlled by the new york and kentucky distilling company, manufacturers of standard whiskies which do not pretend to remedy anything but thirst. duffy's malt whiskey is an another subsidiary company of the new york and kentucky concern. this statement is respectfully submitted to temperance users of the malt whiskey and the warner remedies. some alcohol percentages. hostetter's bitters contain, according to an official state analysis, 44 per cent, of alcohol; lydia pinkham appeals to suffering womanhood with 20 per cent, of alcohol; hood's sarsaparilla cures "that tired feeling" with 18 per cent.; burdock's blood bitters, with 25 per cent.; ayer's sarsaparilla, with 26 per cent., and paine's celery compound, with 21 per cent. the fact is that any of these remedies could be interchanged with peruna or with each other, so far as general effect goes, though the iodid of potassium in the sarsaparilla class might have some effect (as likely to be harmful as helpful ) which would be lacking in the simpler mixtures. if this class of nostrum is so harmful, asks the attentive reader of newspaper advertising columns, how explain the indorsements of so many people of prominence and reputation? "men of prominence and reputation" in this connection means peruna, for peruna has made a specialty of high government officials and people in the public eye. in a self-gratulatory dissertation the peruna company observes in substance that, while the leading minds of the nation have hitherto shrunk from the publicity attendant on commending any patent medicine, the transcendent virtues of peruna have overcome this amiable modesty, and, one and all, they stand forth its avowed champions. this is followed by an ingenious document headed {022}"fifty members of congress send letters of indorsement to the inventor of the great catarrh remedy, pe-ru-na," and quoting thirty-six of the letters. analysis of these letters brings out the singular circumstance that in twenty-one of the thirty-six there is no indication that the writer has ever tasted the remedy which he so warmly praises. as a sample, and for the benefit of lovers of ingenious literature, i reprint the following from a humorous member of congress: "my secretary has as bad a case of catarrh as i ever saw, and since he has taken one bottle of peruna he seems like a different man. "taylorsville, n. c. romulus z. linney." the famous letter of admiral schley is a case in point. he wrote to the peruna company: "i can cheerfully say that mrs. schley has used peruna, and, i believe, with good effect. [signed] w. s. schley." this indorsement went the rounds of the country in half-page blazonry, to the consternation of the family's friends. admiral schley seems to have appreciated that this use of his name was detrimental to his standing. he wrote to a columbus religious journal the following letter: "1820 i street, washington, d. c., nov. 10,1904. "_editor catholic columbian_:--the advertisement of the peruna company, inclosed, is made without any authority or approval from me. when it was brought to my attention first i wrote the company a letter, stating that the advertisement was offensive and must be discontinued. their representative here called on me and stated he had been directed to assure me no further publication would be allowed, as it was without my sanction. "i would say that the advertisement has been made without my knowledge or consent and is an infringement of my rights as a citizen. "if you will kindly inform me what the name and date of the paper was in which the inclosed advertisement appeared i shall feel obliged. "very truly yours, w. s. schley." careful study of this document will show that this is no explicit denial of the testimonial. but who gives careful study to such a letter? on the face of it, it puts the peruna people in the position of having forged their advertisement. ninety-nine people out of a hundred would get that impression. yet i have seen the testimonial, signed with admiral schley's name and interlined in the same handwriting as the signature, and i have seen another letter, similarly signed, stating that admiral schley had not understood that the letter was to be used for such advertising as the recipient based on it. if these letters are forgeries the victim has his recourse in the law. they are on file at columbus, ohio, and the peruna company would doubtless produce them in defense of a suit. what the government can do. one thing that the public has a right to demand in its attitude toward the proprietary medicines containing alcohol: that the government carry out rigidly its promised policy no longer to permit liquors to disguise themselves as patent medicines, and thereby escape the tax which is put on other (and probably better) brands of intoxicants. one other demand it should make on the purveyors of the concoctions: that they label every bottle with the percentage of alcohol it contains; that they label every man who writes testimonials to duffy, and the w. c. t. u. member who indorses peruna, lydia pinkham, warner and their compeers, will know when they imbibe their "tonics," "invigorators," "swamp roots," "bitters," "nerve-builders" or "spring medicines" that they are sipping by the tablespoon or wineglassful what the town tippler takes across the license-paying bar. iii.--liquozone. reprinted from collier's weekly, nov. 18, 1905. {023} twenty years ago the microbe was making a great stir in the land. the public mind, ever prone to exaggerate the importance and extent of any new scientific discovery, ascribed all known diseases to microbes. the infinitesimal creature with the mysterious and unpleasant attributes became the leading topic of the time. shrewdly appreciating this golden opportunity, a quack genius named radam invented a drug to slay the new enemy of mankind and gave it his name. radam's microbe killer filled the public prints with blazonry of its lethal virtues. as it consisted of a mixture of muriatic and sulphuric acids with red wine, any microbe which took it was like to fare hard; but the ingenious mr. radam's method of administering it to its intended prey via the human stomach failed to commend itself to science, though enormously successful in a financial sense through flamboyant advertising. liquozone "cures" thirty-seven varieties. in time some predaceous bacillus, having eluded the "killer," carried off its inventor. his nostrum soon languished. to-day it is little heard of, but from the ashes of its glories has risen a mightier successor, liquozone. where twenty years ago the microbe reveled in publicity, to-day we talk of germs and bacteria; consequently liquozone exploits itself as a germicide and bactericide. it dispenses with the red wine of the radam concoction and relies on a weak solution of sulphuric and sulphurous acids, with an occasional trace of hydrochloric or hydrobromic acid. mostly it is water, and this is what it "cures": "asthma, gallstones, abscess--anemia, goiter--gout; bronchitis, hay fever--influenza, blood poison, la grippe, bowel troubles, leucorrhea, coughs--colds, malaria--neuralgia, consumption, piles--quinsy, contagious diseases, rheumatism, cancer--catarrh, scrofula, dysentery--diarrhea, skin diseases, dyspepsia--dandruff, tuberculosis, eczema--erysipelas, tumors--ulcers, fevers, throat troubles --all diseases that begin with fever--all inflammations--all catarrh--all contagious diseases--all the results of impure or poisoned blood. in nervous diseases liquozone acts as a vitalizer, accomplishing what no drugs can do." these diseases it conquers by destroying, in the human body, the germs which cause (or are alleged to cause) them. such is liquozone's claim. yet the liquozone company is not a patent medicine concern. we have their own word for it: "we wish to state at the start that we are not patent medicine men, and their methods will not be employed by us.... liquozone is too important a product for quackery." the head and center of this non-patent medicine cure-all is douglas smith. {024}mr. smith is by profession a promoter. he is credited with a keen vision for profits. several years ago he ran on a worthy ex-piano dealer, a canadian by the name of powley (we shall meet him again, trailing clouds of glory in a splendid metamorphosis), who was selling with some success a mixture known as powley's liquefied ozone. this was guaranteed to kill any disease germ known to science. mr. smith examined into the possibilities of the product, bought out powley, moved the business to chicago and organized it as the liquid ozone company. liquid air was then much in the public prints. mr. smith, with the intuition of genius, and something more than genius' contempt for limitations, proceeded to catch the public eye with this frank assertion: "liquozone is liquid oxygen--that is all." it is enough. that is, it would be enough if it were but true. liquid oxygen doesn't exist above a temperature of 229 degrees below zero. one spoonful would freeze a man's tongue, teeth and throat to equal solidity before he ever had time to swallow. if he could, by any miracle, manage to get it down, the undertaker would have to put him on the stove to thaw him out sufficiently for a respectable burial. unquestionably liquozone, if it were liquid oxygen, would kill germs, but that wouldn't do the owner of the germs much good because he'd be dead before they had time to realize that the temperature was falling. that it would cost a good many dollars an ounce to make is, perhaps, beside the question. the object of the company was not to make money, but to succor the sick and suffering. they say so themselves in their advertising. for some reason, however, the business did not prosper as its new owner had expected. a wider appeal to the sick and suffering was needed. claude c. hopkins, formerly advertising manager for dr. shoop's restorative (also a cure-all) and perhaps the ablest exponent of his specialty in the country, was brought into the concern and a record-breaking campaign was planned. this cost no little money, but the event proved it a good investment. president smith's next move showed him to be the master of a silver tongue, for he persuaded the members of a very prominent law firm who were acting as the company's attorneys to take stock in the concern, and two of them to become directors. these gentlemen represent, in chicago, something more than the high professional standing of their firm; they are prominent socially and forward in civic activities; in short, just the sort of people needed by president smith to bulwark his dubious enterprise with assured respectability. the men who back the fake. in the equitable scandal there has been plenty of evidence to show that directors often lend their names to enterprises of which they know practically nothing. this seems to have been the case with the lawyers. one point they brought up: was liquozone harmful? positively not, douglas smith assured them. on the contrary, it was the greatest boon to the sick in the world's history, and he produced an impressive bulk of testimonials. this apparently satisfied them; they did not investigate the testimonials, but accepted them at their face value. they did not look into the advertising methods of the company; as nearly as i can find out, they never saw an advertisement of liquozone in the papers until long afterward. they just became stockholders and directors, that is all. they did as hundreds of other upright and well-meaning men had done in lending themselves to a business of which they knew practically nothing. while the lawyers continued to practice law, messrs. smith and hopkins were running the liquozone company. an enormous advertising campaign was begun. pamphlets were issued containing testimonials and claiming {025}the soundest of professional backing. indeed, this matter of expert testimony, chemical, medical and bacteriologic, is a specialty of liquozone. today, despite its reforms, it is supported by an ingenious system of pseudoscientific charlatanry. in justice to mr. hopkins it is but fair to say that he is not responsible for the basic fraud; that the general scheme was devised, and most of the bogus or distorted medical letters arranged, before his advent. but when i came to investigate the product a few months ago i found that the principal defense against attacks consisted of scientific statements which would not bear analysis and medical letters not worth the paper they were written on. in the first place, the liquozone people have letters from chemists asseverating that the compound is chemically scientific. faked and garbled indorsements. [image ==>] {025} analysis of liquozone. sulphuric acid -about nine-tenths of one per cent. sulphurous acid -about three-tenths of one per cent water....... -nearly ninety-nine per cent. sulphuric acid is oil of vitriol. sulphurous acid is also a corrosive poison. liquozone is the combination of these two heavily diluted. messrs. dickman, mackenzie & potter, of chicago, furnish a statement to the effect that the product is "made up on scientific principles, contains no substance deleterious to health and is an antiseptic and germicide of the highest order." as chemists the dickman firm stands high, but if sulphuric and sulphurous acids are not deleterious to their health there must be something peculiar about them as human beings. mr. deavitt of chicago makes affidavit that the preparation is not made by compounding drugs. a st. louis bacteriologist testifies that it will kill germs (in culture tubes), and that it has apparently brought favorable results in diarrhea, rheumatism and a finger which a guinea-pig had gnawed. these and other technical indorsements are set forth with great pomp and circumstance, but when analyzed they fail to bear out the claims of liquozone as a medicine. any past investigation into the nature of liquozone has brought a flood of "indorsements" down on the investigator, many of them medical. my inquiries have been largely along medical lines, because the makers of the drug claim the private support of many physicians and medical institutions, and such testimony is the most convincing. "liquozone has the indorsement of an overwhelming number of medical authorities," says one of the pamphlets. one of the inclosures sent to me was a letter from a young physician on the staff of the michael reese hospital, chicago, who was paid $25 to make bacteriologic tests in pure cultures. he reported: "this is to certify that the fluid liquozone handed to me for bacteriologic examination has shown bacteriologic and germicidal properties." at the same time he {026}informed the liquozone agent that the mixture would be worthless medicinally. he writes me as follows: "i have never used or indorsed liquozone; furthermore, its action would be harmful when taken internally. can report a case of gastric ulcer due probably to its use." later in my investigations i came on this certificate again. it was quoted, in a report on liquozone, made by the head of a prominent chicago laboratory for a medical journal, and it was designated "report made by the michael reese hospital," without comment or investigation. this surprising garbling of the facts may have been due to carelessness, or it may have some connection with the fact that the laboratory investigation was about that time employed to do work for mr. douglas smith, liquozone's president. another document is an enthusiastic "puff" of liquozone, quoted as being contributed by dr. w. h. myers in _the new york journal of health_. there is not nor ever has been any such magazine as _the new york journal of health_. dr. w. h. myers, or some person masquerading under that name, got out a bogus "dummy" (for publication only, and not as guarantee of good faith) at a small charge to the liquozone people. for convenience i list several letters quoted or sent to me, with the result of investigations. the suffolk hospital and dispensary of boston, through its president, albert c. smith, writes: "our test shows it (liquozone) to possess great remedial value." the letter i have found to be genuine. but the hospital _medical_ authorities say that they know nothing of liquozone and never prescribe it. if president smith is prescribing it he is liable to arrest, as he is not an m.d. a favoring letter from "dr." fred w. porter of tampa, fla., is quoted. the liquozone recipients of the letter forgot to mention that "dr." porter is not an m.d., but a veterinary surgeon, as is shown by his letter head. dr. george e. bliss of maple rapids, mich., has used liquozone for cancer patients. dr. bliss writes me, under the flaming headline of his "cancer cure," that his letter is genuine and "not solicitated." dr. a. a. bell of madison, ga., is quoted as saying: "i found liquozone to invigorate digestion." he is _not_ quoted (although he wrote it) as saying that his own personal experience with it had shown it to be ineffective. i have seen the original letter, and the unfavorable part of it was blue-penciled. for a local indorsement of any medicine perhaps as strong a name as could be secured in chicago is that of dr. frank billings. in the offices of _collier's_ and elsewhere dr. billings has been cited by the liquozone people as one of those medical men who were prevented only by ethical considerations from publicly indorsing their nostrum, but who, nevertheless, privately avowed confidence in it. here is what dr. billings has to say of this: chicago, ill., july 31, 1905. _to the editor of collier's weekly._ _dear sir_:--i have never recommended liquozone in any way to any one, nor have i expressed to any representative of the liquozone company, or to any other person, an opinion favorable to liquozone. (signed) frank billings, m.d. under the heading, "some chicago institutions which constantly employ liquozone," are cited hull house, the chicago orphan asylum, the home for incurables, the evanston hospital and the old people's home. letters to the institutions elicited the information that hull house {027}had never used the nostrum, and had protested against the statement; that the orphan asylum had experimented with it only for external applications, and with such dubious results that it was soon dropped; that it had been shut out of the home for incurables; that a few private patients in the old people's home had purchased it, but on no recommendation from the physicians; and that the evanston hospital knew nothing of liquozone and had never used it. having a professional interest in the "overwhelming number of medical indorsements" claimed by liquozone, a chicago physician, dr. w. h. felton, went to the company's offices and asked to see the medical evidence. none was forthcoming; the lists, he was informed, were in the press and could not be shown. he then asked for the official book for physicians advertised by the firm, containing "a great deal of evidence from authorities whom all physicians respect." this also, they said, was "in the press." as a matter of fact, it has never come out of the press and never will; the special book project has been dropped. one more claim and i am done with the "scientific evidence." in a pamphlet issued by the company and since withdrawn occurs this sprightly sketch: "liquozone is the discovery of professor pauli, the great german chemist, who worked for twenty years to learn how to liquefy oxygen. when pauli first mentioned his purpose men laughed at him. the idea of liquefying gas--of circulating a liquid oxygen in the blood--seemed impossible. but pauli was one of those men who set their whole hearts on a problem and follow it out either to success or to the grave. so pauli followed out this problem though it took twenty years. he clung to it through discouragements which would have led any lesser man to abandon it. he worked on it despite poverty and ridicule," etc. liquozone kills a great german scientist. alas for romance! the scathing blight of the legal mind descended on this touching story. the lawyer-directors would have none of "professor pauli, the great german chemist," and liquozone destroyed him, as it had created him. not totally destroyed, however, for from those rainbow wrappings, now dissipated, emerges the humble but genuine figure of our old acquaintance, mr. powley, the ex-piano man of toronto. he is the prototype of the teutonic savant. so much the liquozone people now admit, with the defence that the change of powley to pauli was, at most, a harmless flight of fancy, "so long as we were not attempting to use a name famous in medicine or bacteriology in order to add prestige to the product." a plea which commends itself by its ingeniousness at least. gone is "professor pauli," and with him much of his kingdom lies. in fact, i believe there is no single definite intentional misstatement in the new liquozone propaganda. for some months there has been a cessation of all advertising, and an overhauling of materials under the censorship of the lawyer-directors, who were suddenly aroused to the real situation by a storm of protest and criticism, and, rather late in the day, began to "sit up and take notice." the company has recently sent me a copy of the new booklet on which all their future advertising is to be based. the most important of their fundamental misstatements to go by the board is "liquozone is liquid oxygen." "liquozone contains no free oxygen," declares the revision frankly. no testimonials are to be printed. the faked and garbled letters are to be dropped from the files. there is no claim of "overwhelming medical indorsement." nor is the statement {028}anywhere made that liquozone will cure any of the diseases in which it is recommended. yet such is the ingenuity with which the advertising manager has presented his case that the new newspaper exploitation appeals to the same hopes and fears, with the same implied promises, as the old. "i'm well because of liquozone," in huge type, is followed by the list of diseases "where it applies." and the new list is more comprehensive than the old. all ills look alike to liquozone. [image ==>] {028} just as to peruna all ills are catarrh, so to liquozone every disease is a germ disease. every statement in the new prospectus of cure "has been submitted to competent authorities, and is exactly true and correct.," declares the recently issued pamphlet, "liquozone, and tonic germicide"; and the pamphlet goes on to ascribe, among other ills, asthma, gout, neuralgia, dyspepsia, goiter and "most forms of kidney, liver and heart troubles" to germs. i don't know just which of the eminent authorities who have been working for the liquozone company fathers this remarkable and epoch-making discovery. {029} unfortunately, the writer of the liquozone pamphlet, and the experts who edited it, got a little mixed on their germs in the matter of malaria. "liquozone is deadly to vegetable natter, but helpful to animals," declares the pamphlet.... "germs are vegetables"--and that is the reason that liquozone kills them. but malaria, which liquozone is supposed to cure, is positively known to be due to animal organisms in the blood, not vegetable. therefore, if the claims are genuine, liquozone, being "helpful to animals," will aid and abet the malaria organism in his nefarious work, and the liquozone company, as well-intentioned men, working in the interests of health, ought to warn all sufferers of this class from use of their animal-stimulator. the old claim is repeated that nothing enters into the production of liquozone but gases, water and a little harmless coloring matter, and that the process requires large apparatus and from eight to fourteen days' time. i have seen the apparatus, consisting of huge wooden vats, and can testify to their impressive size. and i have the assurance of several gentlemen whose word (except in print) i am willing to take, that fourteen days' time is employed in impregnating every output of liquid with gas. the result, so far as can be determined chemically or medicinally, is precisely the same as could be achieved in fourteen seconds by mixing the acids with the water. the product is still sulphurous and sulphuric acid heavily diluted, that is all. will the compound destroy germs in the human body? this is, after all, the one overwhelmingly important point for determination; for if it will, all the petty fakers and forgery, the liquid oxygen and professor pauli and the mythical medical journalism may be forgiven. for more than four months now _collier's_ has been patiently awaiting some proof of the internal germicidal qualities of liquozone none has been forthcoming except specious generalities from scientific employés of the company--and testimonials. the value of testimonials as evidence is considered in a later article. liquozone's are not more convincing than others. of the chemists and bacteriologists employed by the liquozone company there is not one who will risk his professional reputation on the simple and essential statement that liquozone taken internally kills germs in the human system. one experiment has been made by mr. schoen of chicago, which i am asked to regard as indicating in some degree a deterrent action of liquozone on the disease of anthrax. of two guinea-pigs inoculated with anthrax, one which was dosed with liquozone survived the other, not thus treated, by several hours. bacteriologists employed by us to make a similar test failed, because of the surprising fact that the dose as prescribed by mr. schoen promptly killed the first guinea-pig to which it was administered. a series of guinea-pig tests was then arranged (the guinea-pig is the animal which responds to germ infection most nearly as the human organism responds), at which dr. gradwohl, representing the liquozone company, was present, and in which he took part. the report follows: {030} lederle laboratories. sanitary, chemical and bacteriologic investigations. 518 fifth avenue, new york city. october 21, 1905, anthrax test. twenty-four guinea-pigs were inoculated with anthrax bacilli, under the same conditions, the same amount being given to each. the representative of the liquozone people selected the twelve pigs for treatment. these animals were given liquozone is 5 c.c. doses for three hours. in twenty-four hours all pigs were dead--the treated and the untreated ones. second anthrax test. eight guinea-pigs were inoculated under the same conditions with a culture of anthrax sent by the liquozone people. four of these animals were treated for three hours with liquozone as in the last experiment. these died also in from thirty-six to forty-eight hours, as did the remaining four. diphtheria test. six guinea-pigs were inoculated with diphtheria bacilli and treated with liquozone. they all died in from forty-eight to seventy-two hours. two out of three controls (i. e., untreated guinea-pigs) remained alive after receiving the same amount of culture. tuberculosis test. eight guinea-pigs were inoculated with tubercle bacilli. four of these animals were treated for eight hours with 5 c.c. of a 20 per cent, solution of liquozole. four received no liquozone. at the end of twenty-four days all the animals were killed. fairly developed tuberculosis was present in all. to summarize, we would say that the liquozone had absolutely no curative effect, but did, when given in pure form, lower the resistance of the animals, so that they died a little earlier than those not treated. lederle laboratories. by ernst j. lederle. dr. gradwohl, representing the liquozone company, stated that he was satisfied of the fairness of the tests. he further declared that in his opinion the tests had proved satisfactorily the total ineffectiveness of liquozone as an internal germicide. but these experiments show more than that. they show that in so far as liquozone has any effect, it tends to lower the resistance of the body to an invading disease. that is, in the very germ diseases for which it is advocated, _liquozone may decrease the chances of the patient's recovery with every dose that is swallowed, but certainly would not increase them_. in its own field liquozone is _sui generis_. on the ethical side, however, there are a few "internal germicides," and one of these comes in for mention here, not that it is in the least like liquozone in its composition, but because by its monstrous claims it challenges comparison. since the announcement of this article, and before, _collier's_ has been in receipt of much virtuous indignation from a manufacturer of remedies which, he claims, liquozone copies. charles marchand has been the most active enemy of the douglas smith product. he has attacked the makers in print, organized a society, and established a publication mainly devoted to their destruction, and circulated far and wide injurious literature (most of it true) about their product. of the relative merits of hydrozone, glycozone (marchand's products); and liquozone, i know nothing; but i know that the liquozone company has never in its history put forth so shameful an advertisement as the one reproduced on page 28, [image ==>] {028} signed by marchand, and printed in the new orleans _states_ when the yellow-fever scare was at its height. {031} and hydrozone is an "ethical" remedy; its advertisements are to be found in reputable medical journals. the same old fake. partly by reason of marchand's energy, no nostrum in the country has been so widely attacked as the chicago product. occasional deaths, attributed (in some cases unjustly) to its use, have been made the most of, and scores of analyses have been printed, so that in all parts of the country the true nature of the nostrum is beginning to be understood. the prominence of its advertising and the reckless breadth of its claims have made it a shining mark. north dakota has forbidden its sale. san francisco has decreed against it; so has lexington, ky., and there are signs that it will have a fight tor its life soon in other cities. it is this looming danger that impelled liquozone to an attempted reform last summer. yet, in spite of the censorship of its legal lights, in spite of the revision of its literature by its scientific experts, in spite of its ingenious avoidance of specifically false claims in the advertising which is being scattered broadcast to-day, liquozone is now what it was before its rehabilitation, a fraud which owes its continued existence to the laxity of our public health methods and the cynical tolerance of the national conscience. iv--the subtle poisons. reprinted from collier's weekly, dec. 2, 1006. {032} ignorance and credulous hope make the market for most proprietary remedies. intelligent people are not given largely to the use of the glaringly advertised cure-alls, such as liquozone or peruna. nostrums there are, however, which reach the thinking classes as well as the readily gulled. depending, as they do, for their success on the lure of some subtle drug concealed under a trademark name, or some opiate not readily obtainable under its own label, these are the most dangerous of all quack medicines, not only in their immediate effect, but because they create enslaving appetites, sometimes obscure and difficult of treatment, most often tragically obvious. of these concealed drugs the headache powders are the most widely used, and of the headache powders orangeine is the most conspicuous. orangeine prints its formula. it is, therefore, its proprietors claim, not a secret remedy. but to all intents and purposes it is secret, because to the uninformed public the vitally important word "acetanilid" in the formula means little or nothing. worse than its secrecy is its policy of careful and dangerous deception. orangeine, like practically all the headache powders, is simply a mixture of acetanilid with less potent drugs. of course, there is no orange in it, except the orange hue of the boxes and wrappers which is its advertising symbol. but this is an unimportant deception. the wickedness of the fraud lies in this: that whereas the nostrum, by virtue of its acetanilid content, thins the blood, depresses the heart and finally undermines the whole system, it claims _to strengthen the heart and to produce better blood_. thus far in the patent medicine field i have not encountered so direct and specific an inversion of the true facts. recent years have added to the mortality records of our cities a surprising and alarming number of sudden deaths from heart failure. in the year 1902 new york city alone reported a death rate from this cause of 1.34 per thousand of population; that is about six times as great as the typhoid fever death record. it was about that time that the headache powders were being widely advertised, and there is every reason to believe that the increased mortality, which is still in evidence, is due largely to the secret weakening of the heart by acetanilid. occasionally a death occurs so definitely traceable to this poison that there is no room for doubt, as in the following report by dr. j. l. miller, of chicago, in the _journal of the american medical association_, on the death of mrs. frances robson: "i was first called to see the patient, a young lady, physically sound, who had been taking orangeine powders for a number of weeks for insomnia. the rest of the family noticed that she was very blue, and for this reason i was called. when i saw the patient she complained of a sense of faintness and inability to keep warm. at this time she had taken a box of six orangeine powders within about eight hours. she was warned of the danger of continuing the indiscriminate use of the remedy, but insisted that many of her friends had used it and claimed that it was harmless. the family promised to see that she did not obtain any more of the remedy. three days later, however, i was called to the house and found the patient dead. the family said that she had gone to her room the evening before in her usual health. the next morning, the patient not appearing, they investigated and found her dead. the case was reported to the coroner, and the coroner's verdict was: 'death was from the effect of an overdose of orangeine {033}powders administered by her own hand, whether accidentally or otherwise, unknown to the jury.'" last july an 18-year-old philadelphia girl got a box of orangeine powders at a drug store, having been told that they would cure headache. there was nothing on the label or in the printed matter inclosed with the preparation warning her of the dangerous character of the nostrum. following the printed advice, she took two powders. in three hours she was dead. coroner dugan's verdict follows: "mary a. bispels came to her death from kidney and heart disease, aggravated by poisoning by acetanilid taken in orangeine headache powders." prescribing without authority. yet this poison is being recommended every day by people who know nothing of it and nothing of the susceptibility of the friends to whom they advocate it. for example, here is a testimonial from the orangeine booklet: "miss a. a. phillips, 60 powers street, brooklyn, writes: 'i always keep orangeine in my desk at school, and through its frequent applications to the sick i am called both "doctor and magician."'" if the school herein referred to is a public school, the matter is one for the board of education; if a private school, for the health department or the county medical society. that a school teacher should be allowed to continue giving, however well meaning her foolhardiness may be, a harmful and possibly fatal dose to the children intrusted to her care seems rather a significant commentary on the quality of watchfulness in certain institutions. obscurity as to the real nature of the drug, fostered by careful deception, is the safeguard of the acetanilid vender. were its perilous quality known, the headache powder would hardly be so widely used. and were the even more important fact that the use of these powders becomes a habit, akin to the opium or cocain habits, understood by the public, the repeated sales which are the basis of orangeine's prosperity would undoubtedly be greatly cut down. orangeine fulfills the prime requisite of a patent medicine in being a good "repeater." did it not foster its own demand in the form of a persistent craving, it would hardly be profitable. its advertising invites to the formation of an addiction to the drug. "get the habit," it might logically advertise, in imitation of a certain prominent exploitation along legitimate lines. not only is its value as a cure for nervousness and headaches insisted on, but its prospective dupes are advised to take this powerful drug as a _bracer_. "when, as often, you reach home tired in body and mind... take an orangeine powder, lie down for thirty minutes' nap--if possible--anyway, relax, then take another." "to induce sleep, take an orangeine powder immediately before retiring. when wakeful, an orangeine powder will have a normalizing, quieting effect." it is also recommended as a good thing to begin the day's work on in the morning--that is, take orangeine night, morning and between meals! these powders pretend to cure asthma, biliousness, headaches, colds, catarrh and grip (dose: powder every four hours during the day for a week!--a pretty fair start on the orangeine habit), diarrhea, hay fever, insomnia, influenza, neuralgia, seasickness and sciatica. of course, they do not cure any of these; they do practically nothing but give temporary relief by depressing the heart. with the return to normal conditions of blood circulation comes a recurrence of the nervousness, {034}headache, or what not, and the incentive to more of the drug, until it becomes a necessity. in my own acquaintance i know half a dozen persons who have come to depend on one or another of these headache preparations to keep them going. one young woman whom i have in mind told me quite innocently that she had been taking five or six orangeine powders a day for several months, having changed from koehler's powders when some one told her that the latter were dangerous! because of her growing paleness her husband had called in their physician, but neither of them had mentioned the little matter of the nostrum, having accepted with a childlike faith the asseverations of its beneficent qualities. yet they were of an order of intelligence that would scoff at the idea of drinking swamp-root. [image ==>] {034} an acetanilid death record. this list of fatalities is made up from statements published in the newspapers. in every case the person who died had taken to relieve a headache or as a bracer a patent medicine containing acetanilid, without a doctor's prescription. this list does not include the case of a dog in altoona, pa., which died immediately on eating some sample headache powders. the dog did not know any better. mrs. minnie bishop, louisville, ky.; oct. 16, 1903. mrs. mary cusick and mrs. julia ward, of 172 perry street, new york city; nov. 27, 1903. fred. p. stock, scranton, pa.; dec. 7, 1903. c. frank henderson, toledo, 0.; dec. 13, 1903. jacob e. staley, st. paul, mich.; feb. 18, 1904. charles m. scott, new albany, ind.; march 15, 1904. oscar mckinley, pittsburg, pa.; april 13, 1904. otis staines, student at wabash college; april 13, 1904. mrs. florence rumsey, clinton, la.; april 23, 1904. jenny mcgee, philadelphia, pa.; may 26, 1904. mrs. william mabee, leoni, midi.; sept. 9, 1904. mrs. jacob friedman, of south bend, ind.; oct. 19, 1904. miss libbie north, rockdale, n. y.; oct. 26, 1904. margaret hanahan, dayton, o.; oct. 29, 1904. samuel williamson, new york city; nov. 21, 1904. george kublisch, st. louis, mo.; nov. 24, 1904. robert breck, st. louis, mo.;'nov. 27, 1904. mrs. harry haven, oriskany falls, n. y.; jan. 17, 1905. mrs. jennie whyler, akron, 0.; april 3, 1905. mrs. augusta strothmann, st. louis, mo.; june 20, 1905. mrs. mary a. bispels, philadelphia, pa.; july 2, 1905. mrs. thos. patterson, huntington, w. va.; aug. 15, 1905. some of these victims died from an alleged overdose; others from the prescribed dose. in almost every instance the local papers suppressed the name of the fatal remedy, {035}peruna. that particular victim had the beginning of the typical blue skin pictured in the street-car advertisements of orangeine (the advertisements are a little mixed, as they put the blue hue on the "before taking," whereas it should go on the "after taking"). and, by the way, i can conscientiously recommend orangeine, koehler's powders, royal pain powders and others of that class to women who wish for a complexion of a dead, pasty white, verging to a puffy blueness under the eyes and about the lips. patient use of these drugs will even produce an interesting and picturesque, if not intrinsically beautiful, purplish-gray hue of the face and neck. [image ==>] {035} drugs that deprave. another acquaintance writes me that he is unable to dissuade his wife from the constant use of both orangeine and bromo-seltzer, although her {036}health is breaking down. often it is difficult for a physician to diagnose these cases because the symptoms are those of certain diseases in which the blood deteriorates, and, moreover, the victim, as in opium and cocain slavery, will positively deny having used the drug. a case of acetanilid addiction (in "cephalgin," an ethical proprietary) is thus reported: "when the drug was withheld the patient soon began to exhibit all the traits peculiar to the confirmed morphine-maniac--moral depravity and the like. she employed every possible means to obtain the drug, attempting even to bribe the nurse, and, this failing, even members of the family." another report of a similar case (and there are plenty of them to select from) reads: "stomach increasingly irritable; skin a grayish or light purplish hue; palpitation and slight enlargement of the heart; great prostration, with pains in the region of the heart; blood discolored to a chocolate hue. the patient denied that she had been using acetanilid, but it was discovered that for a year she had been obtaining it in the form of a proprietary remedy and had contracted a regular 'habit.' on the discontinuance of the drug the symptoms disappeared. she was discharged from the hospital as cured, but soon returned to the use of the drug and applied for readmission, displaying the former symptoms." [image ==>] {036} new york state's new poison label. on a cocain-laden medicine. where i have found a renegade physician making his millions out of peruna, or a professional promoter trading on the charlatanry of liquozone, it has seemed superfluous to comment on the personality of the men. they are what their business connotes. with orangeine the case is somewhat different. its proprietors are men of standing in other and reputable spheres of activity. charles l. bartlett, its president, is a graduate of yale university and a man of some prominence in its alumni affairs. orangeine is a side issue with him. professionally he is the western representative of ivory soap, one of the heaviest of legitimate advertisers, and he doubtless learned from this the value of skillful exploitation. next to mr. bartlett, the largest owner of stock (unless he has recently sold out) is william gillette, the actor, whose enthusiastic indorsement of the powders is known in a personal sense to the profession which he follows, and in print to hundreds of thousands of theater-goers who have read it in their programs. whatever these gentlemen may think of their product (and i understand that, incredible as it may seem, both of them are constant users of it and genuine believers in it), the methods by which it is sold and the essential and mendacious concealment of its real nature illustrate the {037}level to which otherwise upright and decent men are brought by a business which can not profitably include either uprightness or decency in its methods. orangeine is less dangerous, except in extent of use, than many other acetanilid mixtures which are much the same thing under a different name. a friend of mine with a weak heart took the printed dose of laxative bromo quinin and lay at the point of death for a week. there is no word of warning on the label. in many places samples of headache powders are distributed on the doorsteps. the st. louis chronicle records a result: "huntington, w. va., aug. 15, 1905.--while mrs. thomas patterson was preparing supper last evening she was stricken with a violent headache and took a headache powder that had been thrown in at her door the day before. immediately she was seized with spasms and in an hour she was dead." that even the lower order of animals is not safe is shown by a canine tragedy in altoona, pa., where a prize collie dog incautiously devoured three sample tablets and died in an hour. yet the distributing agents of these mixtures do not hesitate to lie about them. rochester, n. y., has an excellent ordinance forbidding the distribution of sample medicines, except by permission of the health officer. an agent for miniature headache powders called on dr. goler with a request for leave to distribute 25,000 samples. "what's your formula?" asked the official. "salicylate of soda and sugar of milk," replied the traveling man. "and you pretend to cure headaches with that?" said the doctor. "i'll look into it." analysis showed that the powders were an acetanilid mixture. the sample man didn't wait for the result. he hasn't been back to rochester since, although dr. goler is hopefully awaiting him. bromo-seltzer is commonly sold in drug stores, both by the bottle and at soda fountains. the full dose is "a heaping teaspoonful." a heaping teaspoonful of bromo-seltzer means about ten grains of acetanilid. the united states pharmacopeia dose is four grains; five grains have been known to produce fatal results. the prescribed dose of bromo-seltzer is dangerous and has been known to produce sudden collapse. megrimine is a warranted headache cure that is advertised in several of the magazines. a newly arrived guest at a long island house party brought along several lots and distributed them as a remedy for headache and that tired feeling. it was perfectly harmless, she declared; didn't the advertisement say "leaves no unpleasant effects"? as a late dance the night before had left its impress on the feminine members of the house party, there was a general acceptance of the "bracer." that night the local physician visited the house party (on special "rush" invitation), and was well satisfied to pull all his patients through. he had never before seen acetanilid poisoning by wholesale. a chicago druggist writes me that the wife of a prominent physician buys megrimine of him by the half-dozen lots secretly. she has the habit. on october 9, w. h. hawkins, superintendent of the american detective association, a mar of powerful physique and apparently in good health, went to a drug store in anderson, ind., and took a dose of dr. davis' headache powders. he then boarded a car for marion and shortly after fell to the floor, dead. the coroner's verdict is reproduced on page 35. {035} whether these powders are made by a dr. w. c. davis, of indianapolis, who makes anti-headache, i am unable to state. anti-headache describes itself as "a compound of mild ingredients and positively contains no dangerous drugs." it is almost pure acetanilid. in the "ethical" field the harm done by this class of proprietaries is perhaps {038}as great as in the open field, for many of those which are supposed to be sold only in prescriptions are as freely distributed to the laity as peruna. and their advertising is hardly different. antikamnia, claiming to be an "ethical" remedy, and advertising through the medical press by methods that would, with little alteration, fit any patent painkiller on the market, is no less dangerous or fraudulent than the orangeine class which it almost exactly parallels in composition. it was at first exploited as a "new synthetical coal-tar derivative," which it isn't and never was. it is simply half or more acetanilid (some analyses show as high as 68 per cent.) with other unimportant ingredients in varying proportions. in a booklet entitled "light on pain," and distributed on doorsteps, i find under an alphabetical list of diseases this invitation to form the antikamnia habit: [image ==>] {038} "nervousness (overwork and excesses)--dose: one antikamnia tablet every two or three hours. "shoppers' or sightseers' headache--dose: two antikamnia tablets every three hours. "worry (nervousness, 'the blues')--dose: one or two antikamnia and codein tablets every three hours." codein is obtained from opium. the codein habit is well known to all institutions which treat drug addictions, and is recognized as being no less difficult to cure than the morphin habit. the following well-known "remedies" both "ethical" and "patent," depend for their results upon the heart-depressing action of acetanilid: orangeine bromo-seltzer megrimine anti-headache ammonol salacetin royal pain powders dr. davis's headache phenalgin cephalgin miniature headache powders powders a typical instance of what antikamnia will do for its users is that of a pennsylvania merchant, 50 years old, who had declined, without apparent antikamnia {039}cause, from 140 to 116 pounds, and was finally brought to philadelphia in a state of stupor. his pulse was barely perceptible, his skin dusky and his blood of a deep chocolate color. on reviving he was questioned as to whether he had been taking headache powders. he had, for several years. what kind? antikamnia; sometimes in the plain tablets, at other times antikamnia with codein. how many? about twelve a day. he was greatly surprised to learn that this habit was responsible for his condition. "my doctor gave it to me for insomnia," he said, and it appeared that the patient had never even been warned of the dangerous character of the drug. were it obtainable, i would print here the full name and address of that attending physician, as one unfit, either through ignorance or carelessness, to practice his profession. and there would be other physicians all over the country who would, under that description, suffer the same indictment within their own minds for starting innocent patients on a destructive and sometimes fatal course. for it is the careless or conscienceless physician who gets the customer for the "ethical" headache remedies, and the customer, once secured, pays a profit, very literally, with his own blood. once having taken antikamnia, the layman, unless informed as to its true nature, will often return to the drug store and purchase it with the impression that it is a specific drug, like quinin or potassium chlorate, instead of a disguised poison, exploited and sold under patent rights by a private concern. the united states postoffice, in its broad tolerance, permits the antikamnia company to send through the mails little sample boxes containing tablets enough to kill an ordinary man, and these samples are sent not only to physicians, as is the rule with ethical remedies, but to lawyers, business men, "brain workers" and other prospective purchasing classes. the box bears the lying statement: "no drug habit--no heart effect." just as this is going to press the following significant case comes in from iowa: "farmington, iowa, oct. 6.-(special to the constitution-democrat.)--mrs. hattie kick, one of the best and most prominent ladies of farmington, died rather suddenly wednesday morning at 10 o'clock from an overdose of antikamnia, which she took for a severe headache from which she was suffering. mrs. kick was subject to severe headaches and was a frequent user of antikamnia, her favorite remedy for this ailment." there is but one safeguard in the use of these remedies: to regard them as one would regard opium and to employ them only with the consent of a physician who understands their true nature. acetanilid has its uses, but not as a generic painkiller. pain is a symptom; you can drug it away temporarily, but it will return clamoring for more payment until the final price is hopeless enslavement. were the skull and bones on every box of this class of poison the danger would be greatly minimized. with opium and cocain the case is different. the very words are danger signals. legal restrictions safeguard the public, to a greater or less degree, from their indiscriminate use. normal people do not knowingly take opium or its derivatives except with the sanction of a physician, and there is even spreading abroad a belief (surely an expression of the primal law of self-preservation) that the licensed practitioner leans too readily toward the convenient narcotics. but this perilous stuff is the ideal basis for a patent medicine because its results are immediate (though never permanent), and it is its own best advertisement in that one dose imperatively calls for another. therefore it behooves the manufacturer of opiates to disguise the use of the drug. this he does in varying forms, and he has found his greatest success in the "cough and consumption cures" and the soothing syrup class. the former of these will be considered in another article. as to the "soothing syrups," {040}designed for the drugging of helpless infants, even the trade does not know how many have risen, made their base profit and subsided. a few survive, probably less harmful than the abandoned ones, on the average, so that by taking the conspicuous survivors as a type i am at least doing no injustice to the class. some years ago i heard a prominent new york lawyer, asked by his office scrub woman to buy a ticket for some "association" ball, say to her: "how can you go to these affairs, nora, when you have two young children at home?" "sure, they're all right," she returned, blithely; "just wan teaspoonful of winslow's an' they lay like the dead till mornin'." what eventually became of the scrub woman's children i don't know. the typical result of this practice is described by a detroit physician who has been making a special study of michigan's high mortality rate: "mrs. winslow's soothing syrup is extensively used among the poorer classes as a means of pacifying their babies. these children eventually come into the hands of physicians with a greater or less addiction to the opium habit. the sight of a parent drugging a helpless infant into a semi-comatose condition is not an elevating one for this civilized age, and it is a very common practice. [image ==>] {040}i can give you one illustration from my own hospital experience, which was told me by the father of the girl. a middle-aged railroad man of kansas city had a small daughter with summer diarrhea. for this she was given a patent diarrhea medicine. it controlled the trouble, but as soon as the remedy was withdrawn the diarrhea returned. at every withdrawal the trouble began anew, and the final result was that they never succeeded in curing this daughter of the opium habit which had taken its hold on her. it was some years afterward that the parents became aware that she had contracted the habit, when the physician took away the patent medicine and gave the girl morphin, with exactly the same result which she had experienced with the patent remedy. at the time the father told me this story his daughter was 19 years of age, an only child of wealthy parents, and one who could have had every advantage in life, but who was a complete wreck in every way as a result of the opium habit. the father told me, with tears in his eyes, that he would rather she had died with the original illness than to have lived to become the creature which she then was." the proprietor of a drug store in san josé, cal., writes to _collier's_ as follows: [image ==>] {041} "i have a good customer, a married woman with five children, all under 10 years of age. when her last baby was born, about a year ago, the first thing she did was to order a bottle of winslow's soothing syrup, and every {042}week another bottle was bought at first, until now a bottle is bought every third day. why? because the baby has become habituated to the drug. i am not well enough acquainted with the family to be able to say that the weaned children show any present abnormality of health due to the opium contained in the drug, but the after-effects of opium have been thus described.... another instance, quite as startling, was that of a mother who gave large quantities of soothing syrup to two of her children in infancy; then, becoming convinced of its danger, abandoned its use. these children in middle life became neurotics, spirit and drug-takers. three children born later and not given any drugs in early life grew up strong and healthy. "i fear the children of the woman in question will all suffer for their mother's ignorance, or worse, in later life, and have tried to do my duty by sending word to the mother of the harmful nature of the stuff, but without effect. "p. s.--how many neurotics, fiends and criminals may not 'mrs. winslow' be sponsor for?" this query is respectfully referred to the anglo-american drug company, of new york,' which makes its handsome profit from this slave trade. recent legislation on the part of the new york state board of pharmacy will tend to decrease the profit, as it requires that a poison label be put on each bottle of the product, as has long been the law in england. an omaha physician reports a case of poisoning from a compound bearing the touching name of "kopp's baby friend," which has a considerable sale in the middle west and in central new york. it is made of sweetened water and morphin, about one-third grain of morphin to the ounce. "the child (after taking four drops) went into a stupor at once, the pupils were pin-pointed, skin cool and clammy, heart and respiration slow. i treated the case as one of opium poisoning, but it took twelve hours before my little patient was out of danger." as if to put a point of satirical grimness on the matter, the responsible proprietor of this particular business of drugging helpless babies is a woman, mrs. j. a. kopp, of york, pa. making cocain fiends is another profitable enterprise. catarrh powders are the medium. a decent druggist will not sell cocain as such, steadily, to any customer, except on prescription, but most druggists find salve for their consciences in the fact that the subtle and terrible drug is in the form of somebody's sure cure. there is need to say nothing of the effects of cocain other than that it is destructive to mind and body alike, and appalling in its breaking down of all moral restraint. yet in new york city it is distributed in "samples" at ferries and railway stations. you may see the empty boxes and the instructive labels littering the gutters of broadway any saturday night, when the drug-store trade is briskest. simey's catarrhal powder, dr. cole's catarrh cure, dr. gray's catarrh powder and crown catarrh powder are the ones most in demand. all of them are cocain; the other ingredients are unimportant--perhaps even superfluous. whether or not the bottles are labeled with the amount of cocain makes little difference. the habitués know. in one respect, however, the labels help them by giving information as to which nostrum is the most heavily drugged. "people come in here," a new york city druggist tells me, "ask what catarrh powders we've got, read the labels and pick out the one that's got the most cocain. when i see a customer comparing labels i know she's a fiend." {043} naturally these owners and exploiters of these mixtures claim that the small amount of cocain contained is harmless. for instance, the "crown cure," admitting 2% per cent., says: "of course, this is a very small and harmless amount. cocain is now considered to be the most valuable addition to modern medicine... it is the most perfect relief known." birney's catarrh cure runs as high as 4 per cent, and can produce testimonials vouching for its harmlessness. here is a birney "testimonial" to the opposite effect, obtained "without solicitation or payment" (i have ventured to put it in the approved form), which no sufferer from catarrh can afford to miss. [image ==>] {043} read what william thompson, of chicago, says of birney's catarrh cure. "three years ago thompson was a strong man. now he is without money, health, home or friends." (chicago tribune.) "i began taking birney's catarrh cure (says thompson) three years ago, and the longing for the drug has grown so potent that i suffer without it. "i followed the directions at first, then i increased the quantity until i bought the stuff by the dozen bottles." a famous drink and drug cure in illinois had, as a patient, not long ago, a 14-year-old boy, who was a slave to the birney brand of cocain. he had run his father $300 in debt, so heavy were his purchases of the poison. chicago long ago settled this cocain matter in the only logical way. the proprietor of a large downtown drug store noticed several years ago that at noon numbers of the shop girls from a great department store purchased certain catarrh powders over his counter. he had his clerk warn them that the powders contained deleterious drugs. the girls continued to purchase in increasing numbers and quantity. he sent word to the superintendent of the store. "that accounts for the number of our girls that have gone wrong of late," was the superintendent's comment. the druggist, mr. mcconnell, had an analysis made by the board of health, which showed that the powder most called for was nearly 4 per cent, cocain, whereon he threw it and similar powders out of stock. the girls went elsewhere. mr. mcconnell traced them and started a general movement against this class of remedies, which resulted in an ordinance forbidding their sale. birney's catarrhal powders, as i am informed, to meet the new conditions brought-out a powder without cocain, which had the briefest kind of a sale. for weeks thereafter the downtown stores were haunted by haggard young men and women, who begged for "the old powders; these new ones don't do any good." as high as $1.00 premium was paid for the 4 per cent, cocain species. to-day the illinois druggist who sells cocain in this form is liable to arrest. yet in new york, at the corner of forty-second street and broadway, i saw recently a show-window display of the birney cure, and similar displays are not uncommon in other cities. regarding other forms of drugs there may be honest differences of opinion as to the limits of legitimacy in the trade. if mendacious advertising were stopped, and the actual ingredients of every nostrum plainly published {044}and frankly explained, the patent medicine trade might reasonably claim to be a legitimate enterprise in many of its phases. but no label of opium or cocain, though the warning skull and cross-bones cover the bottle, will excuse the sale of products that are never safely used except by expert advice. i believe that the chicago method of dealing with the catarrh powders is the right method in cocainand opium-bearing nostrums. restrict the drug by the same safeguards when sold under a lying pretence as when it flies its true colors. then, and then only, will our laws prevent the shameful trade that stupefies helpless babies and makes criminals of our young men and harlots of our young women. v.--preying on the incurables. reprinted from collier's weekly, jan. 13, 1906. {045} incurable disease is one of the strongholds of the patent medicine business. the ideal patron, viewed in the light of profitable business, is the victim of some slow and wasting ailment in which recurrent hope inspires to repeated experiments with any "cure" that offers. in the columns of almost every newspaper you may find promises to cure consumption. consumption is a disease absolutely incurable by any medicine, although an increasing percentage of consumptives are saved by open air, diet and methodical living. this is thoroughly and definitely understood by all medical and scientific men. nevertheless there are in the patent medicine world a set of harpies who, for their own business interests, deliberately foster in the mind of the unfortunate sufferer from tuberculosis the belief that he can be saved by the use of some absolutely fraudulent nostrum. many of these consumption cures contain drugs which hasten the progress of the disease, such as chloroform, opium, alcohol and hasheesh. others are comparatively harmless in themselves, but for their fervent promises of rescue they delude the sufferer into misplacing his reliance, and forfeiting his only chance by neglecting those rigidly careful habits of life which alone can conquer the "white plague." one and all, the men who advertise medicines to cure consumption deliberately traffic in human life. [image ==>] {045} certain members of the proprietary association of america (the patent medicine "combine") with whom i have talked have urged on me the claim that there are firms in the nostrum business that are above criticism, and have mentioned h. e. bucklen & co., of chicago, who manufacture a certain salve. the bucklen salve did not particularly interest me. but when i came to take up the subject of consumption cures i ran unexpectedly on an interesting trail. in the country and small city newspapers there is now being advertised lavishly "dr. king's new discovery for consumption." it is proclaimed to be the "only sure cure for consumption." further announcement is made that "it strikes terror to the doctors." as it is a morphin and chloroform mixture, "dr. king's new discovery for consumption" is well calculated to strike terror to the doctors or to any other class or profession, except, perhaps, the undertakers. it is a pretty diabolical concoction to give to any one, and particularly to a consumptive. the chloroform temporarily allays the cough, thereby checking nature's effort to throw off the dead matter from the lungs. the opium drugs the patient into a deceived cheerfulness. the combination is admirably designed to shorten the life of any consumptive who takes it steadily. of course, there is nothing on the label of the bottle to warn the purchaser. that would be an example of legitimate advertising in the consumption field. [image ==>] {046} a typical fraud. chloroform and prussic acid. {047} another "cure" which, for excellent reasons of its own, does not print its formula, is "shiloh's consumption cure," made at leroy, n. y., by s. c. wells & co. were it to publish abroad the fact that it contains, among other ingredients, chloroform and prussic acid. under our present lax system there is no warning on the bottle that the liquid contains one of the most deadly of poisons. the makers write me: "after you have taken the medicine for awhile, if you are not firmly convinced that you are very much better we want you to go to your druggist and get back all the money that you have paid for shiloh." [image ==>] {047} [image ==>] {048} [image ==>] {049} but if i were a consumptive, after i had taken "shiloh" for awhile i should be less interested in recovering my money than in getting back my wasted chance of life. would s. c. wells & co. guarantee that? {050} morphin is the important ingredient of dr. bull's cough syrup. nevertheless, the united states postoffice department obligingly transmits me a dose of this poison through the mails from a. c. meyer & co., of baltimore, the makers. the firm writes me, in response to my letter of inquiry: "we do not claim that dr. bull's cough syrup will cure an established case of consumption. if you have gotten this impression you most likely have misunderstood what we claim.... we can, however, say that dr. bull's cough syrup has cured cases said to have been consumption in its earliest stages." quite conservative, this. but a. c. meyer & co. evidently don't follow their own advertising very closely, for around my sample bottle (by courtesy of the postoffice department) is a booklet, and from that booklet i quote: "_there is no case of hoarseness, cough, asthma, bronchitis... or consumption that can not be cured speedily by the proper use of dr. bull's cough syrup_." if this is not a claim that dr. bull's cough syrup "will cure an established case of consumption," what is it? the inference from meyer & co.'s cautious letter is that they realize their responsibility for a cruel and dangerous fraud and are beginning to feel an uneasiness about it, which may be shame or may be only fear. one logical effect of permitting medicines containing a dangerous quantity of poison to be sold without the poison label is shown in the coroner's verdict reproduced on page 47. [image ==>] {047} in the account of the keck baby's death from the dr. bull opium mixture, which the cincinnati papers published, there was no mention of the name of the cough syrup. asked about this, the newspapers gave various explanations. two of them disclosed that they had no information on the point. this is contrary to the statement of the physician in the case, and implies a reportorial, laxity which is difficult to credit. one ascribed the omission to a settled policy and one to the fear of libel. when the coroner's verdict was given out, however, the name of the nostrum got into plain print. on the whole, the cincinnati papers showed themselves gratifyingly independent. another case of poisoning from this same remedy occurred in morocco, ind., the victim being a 2-year-old child. the doctor reports: "in an hour, when first seen, symptoms of opium poisoning were present. in about twelve hours the child had several convulsions, and spasms followed for another twelve hours at intervals. it then sank into a coma and died in the seventy-two hours with cardiac failure. the case was clearly one of death from overdose of the remedy." the baby had swallowed a large amount of the "medicine" from a bottle left within its reach. had the bottle been properly labeled with skull and cross-bones the mother would probably not have let it lie about. caution seems to have become a suddenly acquired policy of this class of medicines, in so far as their correspondence goes. unfortunately, it does not extend to their advertising. the result is a rather painful discrepancy. g. g. green runs hotels in california and manufactures quack medicines in woodbury, n. j., one of these being "boschee's german syrup," a "consumption cure." mr. green writes me (per rubber stamp): "consumption can sometimes be cured, but not always. some cases are beyond cure. however, we suggest that you secure a trial bottle of german syrup for 25 cents," etc. on the bottle i read: "certain cure for all diseases of the throat and lungs." consumption is a disease of the lungs; sometimes of the throat. {051} if it "can sometimes be cured, but not always," then the german syrup is not a "certain cure for all diseases of the throat and lungs," and somebody, as the ill-fated reingelder put it, "haf lied in brint" on mr. green's bottle, which must be very painful to mr. green. mr. green's remedy contains morphin and some hydrocyanic acid. therefore consumption will be much less often curable where boschee's german syrup is used than where it is not. absolutely false claims. a curious mixture of the cautious, semi-ethical method and the blatant claim-all patent medicine is offered in the ozomulsion company. ozomulsion does not, like the "cures" mentioned above, contain active poisons. it is one of the numerous cod-liver oil preparations, and its advertising, in tne medical journals at first and now in the lay press, is that of a cure for consumption. i visited the offices of the ozomulsion company recently and found them duly furnished with a regular physician, who was employed, so he informed me, in a purely ethical capacity. there was also present during the interview the president of the ozomulsion company, mr. a. frank richardson, former advertising agent, former deviser of the advertising of swamp-root, former proprietor of kranitonic and present proprietor of slocum's consumption cure, which is the "wicked partner" of ozomulsion. for convenience i will put the conversation in court report form, and, indeed, it partook somewhat of the nature of a cross-examination: q.--dr. smith, will ozomulsion cure consumption? a.--ozomulsion builds up the tissues, imparts vigor, aids the natural resistance of the body, etc. (goes into a long exploitation in the manner and style made familiar by patent medicine pamphlets. ) q.--but will it cure consumption? a.--well, without saying that it is a specific, etc. (passes to an instructive, entertaining and valuable disquisition on the symptoms and nature of tuberculosis. ) q.--yes, but will ozomulsion cure consumption? a.--we don't claim that it will cure consumption. q.--does not this advertisement state that ozomulsion will cure consumption? (showing advertisement.) a.--it seems to. q.--will ozomulsion cure consumption? a.--in the early stages of the disease-q. (interrupting)--does the advertisement make any qualifications as to the stage of tne disease? a.--not that i find. q.--have you ever seen that advertisement before? a.--not to my knowledge. q.--who wrote it? a. (by president richardson)--i done that ad. myself. q.--mr. richardson, will ozomulsion cure consumption? a.--sure; we got testimonials to prove it. q.--have you ever investigated any of these testimonials? q. (to dr. smith)--dr. smith, in view of the direct statement of your advertising, do you believe that ozomulsion will cure consumption? a.--well, i believe in a great many cases it will. health for five dollars. that is as far as dr. smith would go. i wonder what he would have said as to the dr. t. a. slocum side of the business. dr. slocum puts out a "special cure offer" that will snatch you from the jaws of death, on the {052}blanket plan, for $6, and guarantees the cure (or more medicine) for $10. his scheme is so noble and broad-minded that i can not refrain from detailing it. for $5 you get, 1 large bottle of psychine, 1 large bottle of ozomulsion, 1 large bottle of coltsfoote expectorant, 1 large tube of ozojell, 3 boxes of lazy liver pills 3 hot x-ray porous plaster, "which," says the certificate, "will in a majority of cases effect a permanent care of the malady from which the invalid is now suffering." whatever ails you--that's what dr. t. a. sloram cures. for $10 you get almost twice the amount, plus the guarantee. surely there is little left on earth, unless dr. slocum should issue a $15 offer, to include funeral expenses and a tombstone. the slocum consumption cure proper consists of a gay-hued substance known as "psychine." psychine is about 16 per cent, alcohol, and has a dash of strychnin to give the patient his money's worth. its alluring color is derived from cochineal. it is "an infallible and unfailing remedy for consumption." ozomulsion is also a sure cure, if the literature is to be believed. to cure one's self twice of the same disease savors of reckless extravagance, but as "a perfect and permanent cure will be the inevitable consequence," perhaps it's worth the money. it would not do to charge dr. t. a. slocum with fraud, because he is, i suppose, as dead as lydia e. pinkham; but mr. a. frank richardson is very much alive, and i trust it will be no surprise to him to see here stated that his ozomulsion makes claims that it can not support, that his psychine is considerably worse, that his special cure offer is a bit of shameful quackery, and that his whole slocum consumption cure is a fake and a fraud so ludicrous that its continued insistence is a brilliant commentary on human credulousness. since the early '60s, and perhaps before, there has constantly been in the public prints one or another benefactor of the human race who wishes to bestow on suffering mankind, free of charge, a remedy which has snatched him from the brink of the grave. such a one is mr. w. a. noyes, of rochester, n. y. to any one who writes him he sends gratis a prescription which will surely cure consumption. but take this prescription to your druggist and you will fail to get it filled, for the simple reason that the ingenious mr. noyes has employed a pharmaceutical nomenclature peculiarly his own if you wish to try the "cannabis sativa remedy" (which is a mixture of hasheesh and other drugs) you must purchase it direct from the advertiser at a price which assures him an abnormal profit. as mr. noyes writes me proposing to give special treatment for my (supposed) case, depending on a diagnosis of sixty-seven questions, i fail to see why he is not liable for practicing medicine without a license. piso grows cautious. piso's consumption cure, extensively advertised a year or two ago, is apparently withdrawing from the field, so far as consumption goes, and the pino people are now more modestly promising to cure coughs and colds. old analyses give as the contents of piso's cure for consumption alcohol, chloroform, opium and cannabis indica (hasheesh). in reply to an inquiry as to whether their remedy contains morphin and cannabis indica, the piso company replies: "since the year 1872 piso's cure has contained no morphin or anything derived from opium." the question as to cannabis indica is not answered. analysis shows that the "cure" contains chloroform, alcohol and apparently cannabis indica. it is, therefore, another of the {053}remedies which can not possibly cure consumption, but, on the contrary, tend by their poisonous and debilitating drugs to undermine the victim's stamina. peruna, liquozone, duffy's malt whiskey, pierce's golden medical discovery and the other "blanket" cures include tuberculosis in their lists, claiming great numbers of well-authenticated cures. from the imposing book published by the r. v. pierce company, of buffalo, i took a number of testimonials for investigation; not a large number, for i found the consumption testimonial rather scarce. from fifteen letters i got results in nine cases. seven of the letters were returned to me marked "unclaimed," of which one was marked "name not in the dictory," another "no such postoffice in the state" and a third "deceased." the eighth man wrote that the golden medical discovery had cured his cough and blood-spitting, adding: "it is the best lung medisan i ever used for lung trubble." the last man said he took twenty-five bottles and was cured! two out of nine seems to me a suspiciously small percentage of traceable recoveries. much stress has been laid by the proprietary association of america through its press committee on the suit brought by r. v. pierce against the ladies' home journal, the implication being (although the suit has not yet been tried) that a reckless libeler of a noble and worthy business has been suitably punished. in the full appreciation of dr. pierce's attitude in the matter of libel, i wish to state that in so far as its claim of curing consumption is concerned his golden medical discovery is an unqualified fraud. [image ==>] {053} one might suppose that the quacks would stop short of trying to deceive the medical profession in this matter, yet the "consumption cure" may be found disporting itself in the pages of the medical journals. for instance, i find this advertisement in several professional magazines: "mcarthur's syrup of hypophosphites has proved itself, time and time again, to be positively beneficial in this condition [tuberculosis] in the hands of prominent observers, clinicians and, what is more, practicing physicians, hundreds of whom have written their admiring encomiums in {054}its behalf, and it is the enthusiastic conviction of many that _its effect is truly specific_" which, translated into lay terms, means that the syrup will cure consumption. i find also in the medical press "a sure cure for dropsy," fortified with a picture worthy of swamp-root or lydia pinkham. both of these are frauds in attempting to foster the idea that they will _cure_ the diseases, and they are none the less fraudulent for being advertised to the medical profession instead of to the laity. is there, then, no legitimate advertising of preparations useful in diseases such as tuberculosis? very little, and that little mostly in the medical journals, exploiting products which tend to build up and strengthen the patient. there has recently appeared, however, one advertisement in the lay press which seems to me a legitimate attempt to push a nostrum. it is reproduced at the beginning of this article. notice, first, the frank statement that there is no specific for consumption; second, that there is no attempt to deceive the public into the belief that the emulsion will be helpful in all cases. whether or not scott's emulsion is superior to other cod-liver oils is beside the present question. if all patent medicine "copy" were written in the same spirit of honesty as this, i should have been able to omit from this series all consideration of fraud, and devote my entire attention to the far less involved and difficult matter of poison. unhappily, all of the scott's emulsion advertising is not up to this standard. in another newspaper i have seen an excerpt in which the scott & bowne company come perilously near making, if they do not actually make, the claim that their emulsion is a cure, and furthermore make themselves ridiculous by challenging comparison with another emulsion, suggesting a chemical test and offering, if their nostrum comes out second best, _to give to the institution making the experiment a supply of their oil free for a year_. this is like the german druggist who invented a heart-cure and offered two cases to any one who could prove that it was injurious! consumption is not the only incurable disease in which there are good pickings for the birds of prey. in a recent issue of the new york sunday _american-journal_ i find three cancer cures, one dropsy cure, one "heart-disease soon cured," three epilepsy cures and a "case of paralysis cured." cancer yields to but one agency--the knife. epilepsy is either the result of pressure on the brain or some obscure cerebral disease; medicine can never cure it. heart disease is of many kinds, and a drug that may be helpful in relieving symptoms in one case might be fatal in another. the same is true of dropsy. medical science knows no "cure" for paralysis. as space lacks to consider individually the nature of each nostrum separately, i list briefly, for the protection of those who read, a number of the more conspicuous swindles of this kind now being foisted on the public: rupert wells' radiatized fluid, for cancer. miles' heart disease cure. miles' grand dropsy cure. dr. tucker's epilepsy cure. dr. grant's epilepsy cure. w. h. may's epilepsy cure. dr. kline's epilepsy cure. dr. w. 0. bye's cancer cure. mason's cancer cure. dr. williams' pink pills for pale people, which are advertised to cure paralysis and are a compound of green vitriol, starch and sugar. purchasers of these nostrums not only waste their money, but in many cases they throw away their only chance by delaying proper treatment until it is too late. {055} properly, a "cure" known as bioplasm belongs in this list, but so ingenious are its methods that it deserves some special attention. in some of the new york papers a brief advertisement, reading as follows, occupies a conspicuous position. "after suffering for ten years the torture that only an ataxic can know, mr. e. p. burnham, of delmar, n. y., has been relieved of all pain and restored to health and strength, and the ability to resume his usual pursuits, by an easily obtained and inexpensive treatment which any druggist can furnish. to any fellow-sufferer who mails him a self-addressed envelope mr. burnham sends free this prescription which cured him."--adv. now, people who give away something for nothing, and spend money advertising for a chance to do it, are as rare in the patent medicine business as out of it, and delmar, n. y., is not included in any map of altruria that i have learned of e. p. burnham, therefore, seemed worth writing to. the answer came back promptly, inclosing the prescription and explaining the advertiser's purpose: "my only motive in the notice which caught your attention is to help other sufferers. _you owe me nothing. i have nothing to sell_. when you are benefited, however, if you feel disposed and able to send me a contribution to assist me in making this great boon to our felow-sufferers better known it will be thankfully received and used for that purpose." i fear that mr. burnham doesn't make much money out of grateful correspondents who were cured of locomotor ataxia by his prescription, because locomotor ataxia is absolutely and hopelessly incurable. where mr. burnham gets his reward, i fancy, is from the bioplasm company, of 100 william street, new york, whose patent medicine is prescribed for me. i should like to believe that his "only motive is to help other sufferers," but as i find, on investigation, that the advertising agents who handle the "burnham" account are the bioplasm company's agents, i am regretfully compelled to believe that mr. burnham, instead of being of the tribe of the good samaritan, is probably an immediate relative of ananias. the bioplasm company also proposes to cure consumption, and is worthy of a conspicuous place in the fraud's gallery of nostrums. even the skin of the ethiop is not exempt from the attention of the quacks. a colored correspondent writes, asking that i "give a paragraph to these frauds who cater to the vanity of those of my race who insult their creator in attempting to change their color and hair," and inclose a typical advertisement of "lustorene," which "straightens kinky, nappy, curly hair," and of "lustorone face bleach," which "whitens the darkest skin" and will "bring the skin to any desired shade or color." nothing could better illustrate to what ridiculous lengths the nostrum fraud will go. of course, the lustorone business is fraudulent. some time since a virginia concern, which advertised to turn negroes white, was suppressed by the postoffice department, which might well turn its attention to lustorone face bleach. there are being exploited in this country to-day more than 100 cures, for diseases that are absolutely beyond the reach of drugs. they are owned by men who know them to be swindles, and who in private conversation will almost always evade the direct statement that their nostrums will "cure" consumption, epilepsy, heart disease and ailments of that nature. many of them "guarantee" their remedies. they will return your money if you aren't satisfied. and they can afford to. they take the lightest of risks. the real risk is all on the other side. it is their few pennies per bottle against your life. were the facile patter by which they lure to the bargain a menace to the pocketbook alone, one might regard them only as ordinary {056}followers of light finance, might imagine them filching their gain with the confidential, half-brazen, half-ashamed leer of the thimblerigger. but the matter goes further and deeper. every man who trades in this market, whether he pockets the profits of the maker, the purveyor or the advertiser, takes toll of blood. he may not deceive himself here, for here the patent medicine is nakedest, most cold-hearted. relentless greed sets the trap and death is partner in the enterprise. vi--the fundamental fakes. reprinted from collier's weekly, feb. 17, 1906. {057} advertising and testimonials are respectively the aggressive and defensive forces of the great american fraud. without the columns of the newspapers and magazines wherein to exploit themselves, a great majority of the patent medicines would peacefully and blessedly fade out of existence. nearly all the world of publications is open to the swindler, the exceptions being the high-class magazines and a very few independent spirited newspapers. the strongholds of the fraud are dailies, great and small, the cheap weeklies and the religious press. according to the estimate of a prominent advertising firm, above 90 per cent, of the earning capacity of the prominent nostrums is represented by their advertising. and all this advertising is based on the well-proven theory of the public's pitiable ignorance and gullibility in the vitally important matter of health. study the medicine advertising in your morning paper, and you will find yourself in a veritable goblin-realm of fakery, peopled with monstrous myths. here is an amulet in the form of an electric belt, warranted to restore youth and vigor to the senile; yonder a magic ring or a mysterious inhaler, or a bewitched foot-plaster which will draw the pangs of rheumatism from the tortured body "or your money back"; and again some beneficent wizard in st. louis promises with a secret philtre to charm away deadly cancer, while in the next column a firm of magi in denver proposes confidently to exorcise the demon of incurable consumption without ever seeing the patient. is it credible that a supposedly civilized nation should accept such stuff as gospel? yet these exploitations cited above, while they are extreme, differ only in degree from nearly all patent-medicine advertising. ponce de leon, groping toward that dim fountain whence youth springs eternal, might believe that he had found his goal in the peruna factory, the liquozone "laboratory" or the vitæ-ore plant; his thousands of descendants in this century of enlightenment painfully drag themselves along poisoned trails, following a will-o'-the-wisp that dances above the open graves. newspaper accomplices. if there is no limit to the gullibility of the public on the one hand, there is apparently none to the cupidity of the newspapers on the other. as the proprietary association of america is constantly setting forth in veiled warnings, the press takes an enormous profit from patent-medicine advertising. mr. hearst's papers alone reap a harvest of more than half a million dollars per annum from this source. the chicago _tribune_, which treats nostrum advertising in a spirit of independence, and sometimes with scant courtesy, still receives more than $80,000 a year in medical patronage. many of the lesser journals actually live on patent medicines. what wonder that they are considerate of these profitable customers! pin a newspaper owner down to the issue of fraud in the matter, and he will take refuge in the plea that his advertisers and not himself are responsible for what appears in the advertising columns. _caveat emptor_ is the implied superscription above this department. the more shame to those publications {058}which prostitute their news and editorial departments to their greed. here are two samples, one from the cleveland _plain-dealer_, the other from a temperance weekly, green goods "cable news." the "ascatco" advertisement, which the plain-dealer prints as a cablegram, without any distinguishing mark to designate it as an advertisement, of course, emanates from the office of the nostrum, and is a fraud, as the _plain-dealer_ well knew when it accepted payment, and became partner to the swindle by deceiving its readers. tne vitæ-ore "editorial" appears by virtue of a full-page advertisement of this extraordinary fake in the same issue. whether, because church-going people are more trusting, and therefore more easily befooled than others, or from some more obscure reason, many of the religious papers fairly reek with patent-medicine fakes. take, for instance, the _christian endeavor world_, which is the undenominational organ of a large, powerful and useful organization, unselfishly working toward the betterment of society. a subscriber who recently complained of certain advertisements received the following reply from the business manager of the publication: "dear sir:--your letter of the 4th comes to me for reply. appreciating the good spirit in which you write, let me assure you that, to the best of our knowledge and belief, we are not publishing any fraudulent or unworthy medicine advertising. we decline every year thousands of dollars' worth of patent-medicine advertising that we think is either fraudulent or misleading. you would be surprised, very likely, if you could know of the people of high intelligence and good character who are benefited by these {059}medicines. we have taken a great deal of pains to make particular inquiries of our subscribers with respect to this question, and a very large percentage of them are devoted to one or more well-known patent medicines, and regard them as household remedies. trusting that you will be able to understand that we are acting according to our best and sincerest judgment, i remain, yours very truly, "the golden rule company, "george w. coleman, business manager" running through half a dozen recent issues of the _christian endeavor world_, i find nineteen medical advertisements of, at best, dubious nature. assuming that the business management of the _christian endeavor world_ represents normal intelligence, i would like to ask whether it accepts the statement that a pair of "magic foot drafts" applied to the bottom of the feet will cure any and every kind of rheumatism in any part of the body? further, if the advertising department is genuinely interested in declining "fraudulent or misleading" copy, i would call their attention to the ridiculous claims of dr. shoop's medicines, which "cure" almost every disease; to two hair removers, one an "indian secret," the other an "accidental discovery," both either fakes or dangerous; to the lying claims of hall's catarrh cure, that it is "a positive cure for catarrh" in all its stages to "syrup of figs," which is not a fig syrup, but a preparation of senna; to dr. kilmer's swamp root, of which the principal medicinal constituent is alcohol; and, finally, to dr. bye's oil cure for cancer, a particularly cruel swindle on unfortunates suffering from an incurable malady. all of these, with other matter, which for the sake of decency i do not care to detail in these columns, appear in recent issues of the _christian endeavor world_, and are respectfully submitted to its management and its readers. quackery and religion. the baptist watchman of oct. 12, 1905, prints an editorial defending the principle of patent medicines. it would be interesting to know whether the back page of the number has any connection with the editorial. this page is given up to an illustrated advertisement of vito-ore, one of the boldest fakes in the whole frauds' gallery. vitæ-ore claims to be a mineral mined from "an extinct mineral spring," and to contain free iron, free sulphur and free magnesium. it contains no free iron, no free sulphur, and no free magnesium. it announces itself as "a certain and never-failing cure" for rheumatism and bright's disease, dropsy, blood poisoning, nervous prostration and general debility, among other maladies. whether it is, as asserted, mined from an extinct spring or bucketed from a sewer has no bearing on its utterly fraudulent character. there is no "certain and never-failing cure" for the diseases in its list, and when the _baptist watchman_ sells itself to such an exploitation it becomes partner to a swindle not only on the pockets of its readers, but on their health as well. in the same issue i find "piso's cure for consumption," "bye's cancer cure," "mrs. m. summer's female remedy," "winslow's soothing syrup," and "juven pills," somewhat disguised here, but in other mediums openly a sexual weakness "remedy." a correspondent sends me clippings from _the christian century_, leading off with an interesting editorial entitled "our advertisers," from which i quote in part: "we take pleasure in calling the attention of our readers to the high grade of advertising which _the christian century_ commands. we shall continue to advertise only such companies as we know to be thoroughly reliable. during the past year we have refused thousands of dollars' {060}worth of advertising which other religious journals are running, but which is rated 'objectionable' by the better class of periodicals. compare our advertising columns with the columns of any other purely religious journal, and let us know what you think of the character of our advertising patrons." whether the opinion of a non-subscriber will interest _the christian century_ i have no means of knowing, but i will venture it. my opinion is that a considerable proportion of its advertisements are such as any right-minded and intelligent publisher should be ashamed to print, and that if its readers accept its endorsement of the advertising columns they will have a very heavy indictment to bring against it. three "cancer cures," a dangerous "heart cure," a charlatan eye doctor, piso's consumption cure, dr. shoop's rheumatism cure and liquozone make up a pretty fair "frauds' gallery" for the delectation of _the christian century's_ readers. [image ==>] {060} as a convincing argument, many nostrums guarantee, not a cure, as they would have the public believe, but a reimbursement if the medicine is unsatisfactory. liquozone does this, and faithfully carries out its agreement. electro-gen, a new "germicide," which has stolen liquozone's advertising scheme almost word for word, also promises this. dr. shoop's agreement {061}is so worded that the unsatisfied customer is likely to have considerable trouble in getting his money back. other concerns send their "remedies" free on trial, among these being the ludicrous "magic foot drafts" referred to above. at first thought it would seem that only a cure would bring profit to the makers. but the fact is that most diseases tend to cure themselves by natural means, and the delighted and deluded patient, ascribing the relief to the "remedy," which really has nothing to do with it, sends on his grateful dollar. where the money is already paid, most people are too inert to undertake the effort of getting it back. it is the easy american way of accepting a swindle as a sort of joke, which makes for the nostrum readers ready profits. safe rewards. then there is the "reward for proof" that the proprietary will not perform the wonders advertised. the liquozone company offer $1,000, i believe, for any germ that liquozone will not kill. this is a pretty safe offer, because there are no restrictions as to the manner in which the unfortunate germ might be maltreated. if the matter came to an issue, the defendants might put their bacillus in the liquozone bottle and freeze him solid. if that didn't end him, they could boil the ice and save their money, as thus far no germ has been discovered which can survive the process of being made into soup. nearly all of the hall catarrh cure advertisements offer a reward of $100 for any case of catarrh which the nostrum fails to cure. it isn't enough, though one hundred times that amount might be worth while; for who doubts that mr. f. j. cheney, inventor of the "red clause," would fight for his cure through every court, exhausting the prospective $100 reward of his opponent in the first round? how hollow the "guarantee" pretence is, is shown by a clever scheme devised by radam, the quack, years ago, when shreveport was stricken with yellow fever. knowing that his offer could not be accepted, he proposed to the united states government that he should eradicate the epidemic by destroying all the germs with radam's microbe killer, offering to deposit $10,000 as a guarantee. of course, the government declined on the ground that it had no power to accept such an offer. meantime, radam got a lot of free advertising, and his fortune was made. no little stress is laid on "personal advice" by the patent-medicine companies. this may be, according to the statements of the firm, from their physician or from some special expert. as a matter of fact, it is almost invariably furnished by a $10-a-week typewriter, following out one of a number of "form" letters prepared in bulk for the "personal-inquiry" dupes. such is the lydia e. pinkham method. the pinkham company writes me that it is entirely innocent of any intent to deceive people into believing that lydia e. pinkham is still alive, and that it has published in several cases statements regarding her demise. it is true that a number of years ago a newspaper forced the pinkham concern into a defensive admission of lydia e. pinkham's death, but since then the main purpose of the pinkham advertising has been to befool the feminine public into believing that their letters go to a woman--who died nearly twenty years ago of one of the diseases, it is said, which her remedy claims to cure. the immortal mrs. pinkham. true, the newspaper appeal is always "write to mrs. pinkham," and this is technically a saving clause, as there is a mrs. pinkham, widow of the son of lydia e. pinkham. what sense of shame she might be supposed to suffer in the perpetration of an obvious and public fraud is presumably {062}salved by the large profits of the business. the great majority of the gulls who "write to mrs. pinkham" suppose themselves to be addressing lydia e. pinkham, and their letters are not even answered by the present proprietor of the name, but by a corps of hurried clerks and typewriters. you get the same result when you write to dr. hartman, of peruna, for personal guidance. dr. hartman himself told me that he took no active part now in the conduct of the peruna company. if he sees the letters addressed to him at all, it is by chance. "dr. kilmer," of swamp-root fame, wants you to write to him about your kidneys. there is no dr. kilmer in the swamp-root concern, and has not been for many years. dr. t. a. slocum, who writes you so earnestly and piously about taking care of your consumption in time, is a myth. the whole "personal medical advice" business is managed by rote, and the letter that you get "special to your case" has been printed and signed before your inquiry ever reached the shark who gets your money. an increasingly common pitfall is the letter in the newspapers from some sufferer who has been saved from disease and wants you to write and get the prescription free. a conspicuous instance of this is "a notre dame lady's appeal" to sufferers from rheumatism and also from female trouble. "mrs. summers," of notre dame, ill., whose picture in the papers represents a fat sister of charity, with the wan, uneasy expression of one who feels that her dinner isn't digesting properly, may be a real lady, but i suspect she wears a full beard and talks in a bass voice, because my letter of inquiry to her was answered by the patent medicine firm of vanderhoof & co., who inclosed some sample tablets and wanted to sell me more. there are many others of this class. it is safe to assume that every advertising altruist who pretends to give out free prescriptions is really a quack medicine firm in disguise. one more instance of bad faith to which the nostrum patron renders himself liable: it is asserted that these letters of inquiry in the patent medicine field are regarded as private. "all correspondence held strictly private and sacredly confidential," advertises dr. r. v. pierce, of the golden medical discovery, etc. a chicago firm of letter brokers offers to send me 50,000 dr. pierce order blanks at $2 a thousand for thirty days; or i can get terms on ozomulsion, theodore noel (vitæ-ore), dr. stevens' nervous debility cure, cactus cure, women's regulators, etc. with advertisements in the medical journals the public is concerned only indirectly, it is true, but none the less vitally. only doctors read these exploitations, but if they accept certain of them and treat their patients on the strength of the mendacious statements it is at the peril of the patients. take, for instance, the antikamnia advertising which appears in most of the high-class medical journals, and which includes the following statements: "do not depress the heart. do not produce habit. are accurate--safe--sure." these three lines, reproduced as they occur in the medical journals, contain five distinct and separate lies--a triumph of condensed mendacity unequaled, so far as i know, in the "cure all" class. for an instructive parallel here are two claims made by duffy's malt whiskey, one taken from a medical journal, and hence "ethical," the other transcribed from a daily paper and therefore to be condemned by all medical men. puzzle: which is the ethical and which the unethical advertisement? [image ==>] {063} "it is the only cure and preventative [sic] of consumption, pneumonia, grip, bronchitis, coughs, colds, malaria, low fevers and all wasting, weakening, diseased conditions." {064} "cures general debility, overwork, la grippe, colds, bronchitis, consumption, malaria, dyspepsia, depression, exhaustion and weakness from whatever cause." all the high-class medical publications accept the advertising of "mcarthur's syrup of hypophosphites," which uses the following statement: "it is the enthusiastic conviction of many (physicians) that its effect is truly specific." that looks to me suspiciously like a "consumption cure" shrewdly expressed in pseudo-ethical terms. the germicide family. zymoticine, if one may believe various medical publications, "will prevent microbe proliferation in the blood streams, and acts as an efficient eliminator of those germs and their toxins which are already present." translating this from its technical language, i am forced to the conviction that zymoticine is half-brother to liquozone, and if the latter is illegitimate at least both are children of beelzebub, father of all frauds. of the same family are the "ethicals" acetozone and keimol, as shown by their germicidal claims. again, i find exploited to the medical profession, through its own organa, a "sure cure for dropsy." "hygeia presents her latest discovery," declares the advertisement, and fortifies the statement with a picture worthy of swamp-root or lydia pinkham. every intelligent physician knows that there is no sure cure for dropsy. the alternative implication is that the advertiser hopes to get his profit by deluding the unintelligent of the profession, and that the publications which print his advertisement are willing to hire themselves out to the swindle. in one respect some of the medical journals are far below the average of the newspapers, and on a par with the worst of the "religious" journals. they offer their reading space for sale. here is an extract from a letter from the _medical mirror_ to a well-known "ethical firm": "should you place a contract for this issue we shall publish a 300-word report in your interest in our reading columns." many other magazines of this class print advertisements as original reading matter calculated to deceive their subscribers. back of all patent medicine advertising stands the testimonial. produce proofs that any nostrum can not in its nature perform the wonders that it boasts, and its retort is to wave aloft its careful horde or letters and cry: "we rest on the evidence of those we have cured." the crux of the matter lies in the last word. are the writers of those, letters really cured? what is the value of these testimonials? are they genuine? are they honest? are they, in their nature and from their source, entitled to such weight as would convince a reasonable mind? three distinct types suggest themselves: the word of grateful acknowledgement from a private citizen, couched in such terms as to be readily available for advertising purposes; the encomium from some person in public life, and the misspelled, illiterate epistle which is from its nature so unconvincing that it never gets into print, and which outnumbers the other two classes a hundred to one. first of all, most nostrums make a point of the mass of evidence. thousands of testimonials, they declare, {065}just as valuable for their purposes as those they print, are in their files. this is not true. i have taken for analysis, as a fair sample, the "world's dispensary medical book," published by the proprietors of pierce's favorite prescription, the golden medical discovery, pleasant pellets, the pierce hospital, etc. as the dispensers of several nostrums, and because of their long career in the business, this firm should be able to show as large a collection of favorable letters as any proprietary concern. overworked testimonials. in their book, judiciously scattered, i find twenty-six letters twice printed, four letters thrice printed and two letters produced four times. yet the compilers of the book "have to regret" (editorially) that they can "find room only for this comparatively small number in this volume." why repeat those they have if this is true? if enthusiastic indorsements poured in on the patent medicine people, the duffy's malt whiskey advertising management would hardly be driven to purchasing its letters from the very aged and from disreputable ministers of the gospel. if all the communications were as convincing as those published, the peruna company would not have to employ an agent to secure publishable letters, nor the liquozone company indorse across the face of a letter from a mrs. benjamin charters: "can change as we see fit." many, in fact i believe i may say almost all, of the newspaper-exploited testimonials are obtained at an expense to the firm. agents are employed to secure them. this costs money. druggists get a discount for forwarding letters from their customers. this costs money. persons willing to have their picture printed get a dozen photographs for themselves. this costs money. letters of inquiry answered by givers of testimonials bring a price--25 cents per letter, usually. here is a document sent out periodically by the peruna company to keep in line its "unsolicited" beneficiaries: "as you are aware, we have your testimonial to our remedy. it has been some time since we have heard from you, and so we thought best to make inquiry as to your present state of health and whether you still occasionally make use of peruna. we also want to make sure that we have your present street address correctly, and that you are making favorable answers to such letters of inquiry which your testimonial may occasion. remember that we allow 25 cents for each letter of inquiry. you have only to send the letter you receive, together with a copy of your reply to the same, and we will forward you 25 cents for each pair of letters. "we hope you are still a friend of peruna and that our continued use of your testimonial will be agreeable to you. we are inclosing stamped envelope for reply. very sincerely yours, "the peruna drug manufacturing company, "per carr." and here is an account of another typical method of collecting this sort of material, the writer being a young new orleans man, who answered an advertisement in a local paper, offering profitable special work to a news paper man with spare time: "i found the advertiser to be a woman, the coarseness of whose features was only equaled by the vulgarity of her manners and speech, and whose self-assertiveness was in proportion to her bulk. she proposed that i set about securing testimonials to the excellent qualities of peruna, which she pronounced 'pay-runa,' for which i was to receive a fee of $5 to $10, according to the prominence of 'the guy' from whom i obtained it. this i declined {066}flatly. she then inquired whether or not i was a member of any social organizations or clubs in the city, and receiving a positive answer she offered me $3 for a testimonial, including the statement that pay-runa had been used by the members of the southern athletic club with good effects, and raised it to $5 before i left. "upon my asking her what her business was before she undertook the pay-runa work, she became very angry. now, when a female is both very large and very angry, the best thing for a small, thin young man to do is to leave her to her thoughts and the expression thereof. i did it." [image: ==>] {066} no questions desired. {067} testimonials obtained in this way are, in a sense, genuine; that is, the nostrum firm has documentary evidence that they were given; but it is hardly necessary to state that they are not honest. often the handling of the material is very careless, as in the case of doan's kidney pills, which ran an advertisement in a southern city embodying a letter from a resident of that city who had been dead nearly a year. cause of death, kidney disease. in a former article i have touched on the matter of testimonials from public men. these are obtained through special agents, through hangers-on of the newspaper business who wheedle them out of congressmen or senators, and sometimes through agencies which make a specialty of that business. a certain washington firm made a "blanket offer" to a nostrum company of a $100 joblot of testimonials, consisting of one de wolf hopper, one sarah bernhardt and six "statesmen," one of them a united states senator. whether they had mr. hopper and mme. bernhardt under agreement or were simply dealing in futures i am unable to say, but the offer was made in business-like fashion. and the "divine sarah" at least seems to be an easy subject for patent medicines, as her letters to them are by no means rare. congressmen are notoriously easy to get, and senators are by no means beyond range. there are several men now in the united states senate who have, at one time or another, prostituted their names to the uses of fraud medicines, which they do not use and of which they know nothing. naval officers seem to be easy marks. within a few weeks a retired admiral of our navy has besmirched himself and his service by acting as pictorial sales agent for peruna. if one carefully considers the "testimonials" of this class it will appear that few of the writers state that they have ever tried the nostrum. we may put down the "public man's" indorsement, then, as genuine (documentarily), but not honest. certainly it can bear no weight with an intelligent reader. almost as eagerly sought for as this class of letter is the medical indorsement. medical testimony exploiting any medicine advertised in the lay press withers under investigation. in the liquozone article of this series i showed how medical evidence is itself "doctored." this was an extreme instance, for liquozone, under its original administration, exhibited less conscience in its methods than any of its competitors that i have encountered. where the testimony itself is not distorted, it is obtained under false pretences or it comes from men of no standing in the profession. some time ago duffy's malt whiskey sent out an agent to get testimonials from hospitals. he got them. how he got them is told in a letter from the physician in charge of a prominent pennsylvania institution: "a very nice appearing man called here one day and sent in his card, bearing the name of dr. blank (i can't recall the name, but wish i could), a graduate of vermont university. he was as smooth an article as i have ever been up against, and i have met a good many. he at once got down to business and began to talk of the hospitals he had visited, mentioning physicians whom i knew either personally or by reputation. he then brought out a lot of documents for me to peruse, all of which were bona fide affairs, from the various institutions, signed by the various physicians or resident physicians, setting forth the merits or use of 'duffy's malt whiskey.' he asked if i had ever used it. i said yes, but very little, and was at the time using some, a fact, as i was sampling what he handed me. he then placed about a dozen small bottles, holding possibly two ounces, on the table, and said i should keep it, and he would send me two quarts free for use here as soon as he got back." getting a testimonial from a physician. {068} "he next asked me if i would give him a testimonial regarding duffy's whiskey. i said i did not do such things, as it was against my principles to do so. 'but this is not for publication,' he said. i replied that i had used but little of it, and found it only the same as any other whisky. he then asked if i was satisfied with the results as far as i had used it. i replied that i was. he then asked me to state that much, and i very foolishly said i would, on condition that it was not to be used as an advertisement, and he assured me it would not be used. i then, in a few words, said that 'i (or we) have used and are using duffy's malt whiskey, and are satisfied with the results,' signing my name to the same. he left here, and what was my surprise to receive later on a booklet in which was my testimonial and many others, with cuts of hospitals ranging along with people who had reached 100 years by use of the whisky, while seemingly all ailments save ringbone and spavin were being cured by this wonderful beverage. i was provoked, but was paid as i deserved, for allowing a smooth tongue to deceive me. duffy's malt whiskey has never been inside this place since that day and never will be while i have any voice to prevent it. the total amount used at the time and before was less than half a gallon." this hospital is still used as a reference by the duffy people. many of the ordinary testimonials which come unsolicited to the extensively advertised nostrums in great numbers are both genuine and honest. what of their value as evidence? some years ago, so goes a story familiar in the drug trade, the general agent for a large jobbing house declared that he could put out an article possessing not the slightest remedial or stimulant properties, and by advertising it skillfully so persuade people of its virtues that it would receive unlimited testimonials to the cure of any disease for which he might choose to exploit it. challenged to a bet, he became a proprietary owner. within a year he had won his wager with a collection of certified "cures" ranging from anemia to pneumonia. moreover, he found his venture so profitable that he pushed it to the extent of thousands of dollars of profits. his "remedy" was nothing but sugar. i have heard "kaskine" mentioned as the "cure" in the case. it answers the requirements, or did answer them at that time, according to an analysis by the massachusetts state board of health, which shows that its purchasers had been paying $1 an ounce for pure granulated sugar. whether "kaskine" was indeed the subject of this picturesque bet, or whether it was some other harmless fraud, is immaterial to the point, which is that where the disease cures itself, as nearly all diseases do, the medicine gets the benefit of this _viæ medicatriæ naturæ_--the natural corrective force which makes for normal health in every human organism. obviously, the sugar testimonials can not be regarded as very weighty evidence. testimonials for a magic ring. there is being advertised now a finger ring which by the mere wearing cures any form of rheumatism. the maker of that ring has genuine letters from people who believe that they have been cured by it. would any one other than a believer in witchcraft accept those statements? yet they are just as "genuine" as the bulk of patent medicine letters and written in as good faith. a very small proportion of the gratuitous indorsements get into the newspapers, because, as i have said, they do not lend themselves {069}well to advertising purposes. i have looked over the originals of hundreds of such letters, and more than 90 per cent, of them--that is a very conservative estimate--are from illiterate and obviously ignorant people. even those few that can be used are rendered suitable for publication only by careful editing. the geographical distribution is suggestive. out of 100 specimens selected at random from the pierce testimonial book, eighty-seven are from small, remote hamlets, whose very names are unfamiliar to the average man of intelligence. only five are from cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants. now, garden city, kas.; north yamhill, ore.; theresa, jefferson county, n. y.; parkland, ky., and forest hill, w. va., may produce an excellent brand of americanism, but one does not look for a very high average of intelligence in such communities. is it only a coincidence that the mountain districts of kentucky, west virginia and tennessee, recognized as being the least civilized parts of the country, should furnish a number of testimonials, not only to pierce, but to peruna, paine's celery compound and other brands, out of all proportion to their population? on page 65 {065} is a group of pierce enthusiasts and a group of peruna witnesses. should you, on the face of this exhibit, accept their advice on a matter wholly affecting your physical welfare? this is what the advertiser is asking you to do. secure as is the present control of the proprietary association over the newspapers, there is one point in which i believe almost any journal may be made to feel the force of public opinion, and that is the matter of common decency. newspapers pride themselves on preserving a respectable moral standard in their news columns, and it would require no great pressure on the part of the reading public (which is surely immediately interested) to extend this standard to the advertising columns. i am referring now not only to the unclean sexual, venereal and abortion advertisements which deface the columns of a majority of papers, but also to the exploitation of several prominent proprietaries. recently a prominent chicago physician was dining _en famille_ with a friend who is the publisher of a rather important paper in a western city. the publisher was boasting that he had so established the editorial and news policy of his paper that every line of it could be read without shame in the presence of any adult gathering. "never anything gets in," he declared, "that i couldn't read at this table before my wife, son and daughter." the visitor, a militant member of his profession, snuffed battle from afar. "have the morning's issue brought," he said. turning to the second page he began on swift's sure specific, which was headed in large black type with the engaging caption, "vile, contagious blood poison." before he had gone far the 19-year-old daughter of the family, obedient to a glance from the mother, had gone to answer an opportune ring at the telephone, and the publisher had grown very red in the face. "i didn't mean the advertisements," he said. "i did," said the visitor, curtly, and passed on to one of the extremely intimate, confidential and highly corporeal letters to the ghost of lydia e. pinkham, which are a constant ornament of the press. the publisher's son interrupted: "i don't believe that was written for me to hear," he observed. "i'm too young--only 25, you know. call me when you're through. i'll be out looking at the moon." relentlessly the physician turned the sheet and began on one of the chattanooga medical company's physiological editorials, entitled "what {070}men like in a girl." for loathsome and gratuitous indecency, for leering appeal to their basest passions, this advertisement and the others of the wine of cardui series sound the depths. the hostess lasted through the second paragraph, when she fled, gasping. "now," said the physician to his host, "what do you think of yourself?" the publisher found no answer, but thereafter his paper was put under a censorship of advertising. many dailies refuse such "copy" as this of wine of cardui. and here, i believe, is an opportunity for the entering wedge. if every subscriber to a newspaper who is interested in keeping his home free from contamination would protest and keep on protesting against advertising foulness of this nature, the medical advertiser would soon be restricted to the same limits of decency which other classes of merchandise accept as a matter of course, for the average newspaper publisher is quite sensitive to criticism from his readers. a recent instance came under my own notice in the case of the _auburn_ (n. y.) _citizen_, which bought out an old-established daily, taking over the contracts, among which was a large amount of low-class patent medicine advertising. the new proprietor, a man of high personal standards, assured his friends that no objectionable matter would be permitted in his columns. shortly after the establishment of the new paper there appeared an advertisement of juven pills, referred to above. protests from a number of subscribers followed. investigation showed that a so-called "reputable" patent medicine firm had inserted this disgraceful paragraph under their contract. further insertions of the offending matter were refused and the hood company meekly accepted the situation. another central new york daily, the _utica press_, rejects such "copy" as seems to the manager indecent, and i have yet to hear of the paper's being sued for breach of contract. no perpetrator of unclean advertising can afford to go to court on this ground, because he knows that his matter is indefensible. our national quality of commercial shrewdness fails us when we go into the open market to purchase relief from suffering. the average american, when he sets out to buy a horse, or a house, or a box of cigars, is a model of caution. show him testimonials from any number of prominent citizens and he would simply scoff. he will, perhaps, take the word of his life-long friend, or of the pastor of his church, but only after mature thought, fortified by personal investigation. now observe the same citizen seeking to buy the most precious of all possessions, sound health. anybody's word is good enough for him here. an admiral whose puerile vanity has betrayed him into a testimonial; an obliging and conscienceless senator; a grateful idiot from some remote hamlet; a renegade doctor or a silly woman who gets a bonus of a dozen photographs for her letter--any of these are sufficient to lure the hopeful patient to the purchase. he wouldn't buy a second-hand bicycle on the affidavit of any of them, but he will give up his dollar and take his chance of poison on a mere newspaper statement which he doesn't even investigate. every intelligent newspaper publisher knows that the testimonials which he publishes are as deceptive as the advertising claims are false. yet he salves his conscience with the fallacy that the moral responsibility is on the advertiser and the testimonial-giver. so it is, but the newspaper shares it. when an aroused public sentiment shall make our public men ashamed to lend themselves to this charlatanry, and shall enforce on the profession of journalism those standards of decency in the field of medical advertising which apply to other advertisers, the proprietary {071}association of america will face a crisis more perilous than any threatened legislation. for printers' ink is the very life-blood of the noxious trade. take from the nostrum vendors the means by which they influence the millions, and there will pass to the limbo of pricked bubbles a fraud whose flagrancy and impudence are of minor import compared to the cold-hearted greed with which it grinds out its profits from the sufferings of duped and eternally hopeful ignorance. the patent medicine conspiracy against the freedom of the press. reprinted from collier's weekly, nov. 4, 1905. {072} "here shall the press the people's rights maintain. unawed by influence and unbribed by gain." --joseph story: motto of the salem register. _would any person believe that there is any one subject upon which the newspapers of the united states, acting in concert, by prearrangement, in obedience to wires all drawn by one man, will deny full and free discussion? if such a thing is possible, it is a serious matter, for we rely upon the newspapers as at once the most forbidding preventive and the swiftest and surest corrective of evil. for the haunting possibility of newspaper exposure, men who know not at all the fear of god pause, hesitate, and turn back from contemplated rascality. for fear "it might get into the papers," more men are abstaining from crime and carouse to-night than for fear of arrest. but these are trite things--only, what if the newspapers fail us? relying so wholly on the press to undo evil, how shall we deal with that evil with which the press itself has been seduced into captivity?_ in the lower house of the massachusetts legislature one day last march there was a debate which lasted one whole afternoon and engaged some twenty speakers, on a bill providing that every bottle of patent medicine sold in the state should bear a label stating the contents of the bottle. more was told concerning patent medicines that afternoon than often comes to light in a single day. the debate at times was dramatic--a member from salem told of a young woman of his acquaintance now in an institution for inebriates as the end of an incident which began with patent medicine dosing for a harmless ill. there was humor, too, in the debate--representative walker held aloft a bottle of peruna bought by him in a drug store that very day and passed it around for his fellow-members to taste and decide for themselves whether dr. harrington, the secretary of the state board of health, was right when he told the legislative committee that it was merely a "cheap cocktail." the papers did not print one word. in short, the debate was interesting and important--the two qualities which invariably ensure to any event big headlines in the daily newspapers. but that debate was not celebrated by big headlines, nor any headlines at all. yet boston is a city, and massachusetts is a state, where the proceedings of the legislature figure very large in public interest, and where the newspapers respond to that interest by reporting the sessions with greater fullness and minuteness than in any other state. had that debate {073}been on prison reform, on sabbath observance, the early closing saloon law, on any other subject, there would have been, in the next day's papers, overflowing accounts of verbatim report, more columns of editorial comment, and the picturesque features of it would have ensured the attention of the cartoonist. now why? why was this one subject tabooed? why were the daily accounts of legislative proceedings in the next day's papers abridged to a fraction of their usual ponderous length, and all reference to the afternoon debate on patent medicines omitted? why was it in vain for the speakers in that patent-medicine debate to search for their speeches in the next day's newspapers? why did the legislative reporters fail to find their work in print? why were the staff cartoonists forbidden to exercise their talents on that most fallow and tempting opportunity--the members of the great and general court of massachusetts gravely tippling peruna and passing the bottle around to their encircled neighbors, that practical knowledge should be the basis of legislative action? i take it if any man should assert that there is one subject on which the newspapers of the united states, acting in concert and as a unit, will deny full and free discussion, he would be smiled at as an intemperate fanatic. the thing is too incredible. he would be regarded as a man with a delusion. and yet i invite you to search the files of the daily newspapers of massachusetts for march 16, 1905, for an account of the patent-medicine debate that occurred the afternoon of march 15 in the massachusetts legislature. in strict accuracy it must be said that there was one exception. any one familiar with the newspapers of the united states will already have named it--the springfield _republican_. that paper, on two separate occasions, gave several columns to the record of the proceedings of the legislature on the patent-medicine bill. why the otherwise universal silence? the patent-medicine business in the united states is one of huge financial proportions. the census of 1900 placed the value of the annual product at $59,611,355. allowing for the increase of half a decade of rapid growth, it must be to-day not less than seventy-five millions. that is the wholesale price. the retail price of all the patent medicines sold in the united states in one year may be very conservatively placed at one hundred million dollars. and of this one hundred millions which the people of the united states pay for patent medicines yearly, fully forty millions goes to the newspapers. have patience! i have more to say than merely to point out the large revenue which newspapers receive from patent medicines, and let inference do the rest. inference has no place in this story. there are facts a-plenty. but it is essential to point out the intimate financial relation between the newspapers and the patent medicines. i was told by the man who for many years handled the advertising of the lydia e. pinkham company that their expenditure was $100,000 a month, $1,200,000 a year. dr. pierce and the peruna company both advertise more extensively than the pinkham company. certainly there are at least five patent-medicine concerns in the united states who each pay out to the newspapers more than one million dollars a year. when the dr. greene nervura company of boston went into bankruptcy, its debts to newspapers for advertising amounted to $535,000. to the boston _herald_ alone it owed $5,000, and to so small a paper, comparatively, as the atlanta _constitution_ it owed $1,500. one obscure {074}quack doctor in new york, who did merely an office business, was raided by the authorities, and among the papers seized there were contracts showing that within a year he had paid to one paper for advertising $5,856.80; to another $20,000. dr. humphreys, one of the best known patent-medicine makers, has said to his fellow-members of the patent medicine association: "the twenty thousand newspapers of the united states make more money from advertising the proprietary medicines than do the proprietors of the medicines themselves.... of their receipts, one-third to one-half goes for advertising." more than six years ago, cheney, the president of the national association of patent medicine men, estimated the yearly amount paid to the newspapers by the larger patent-medicine concerns at twenty million dollars--more than one thousand dollars to each daily, weekly and monthly periodical in the united states. [image ==>] {074} silence is the fixed quantity. does this throw any light on the silence of the massachusetts papers? {075} naturally such large sums paid by the patent-medicine men to the newspapers suggest the thought of favor. but silence is too important a part of the patent-medicine man's business to be left to the capricious chance of favor. silence is the most important thing in his business. the ingredients of his medicine--that is nothing. does the price of goldenseal go up? substitute whisky. does the price of whisky go up? buy the refuse wines of the california vineyards. does the price of opium go too high, or the public fear of it make it an inexpedient thing to use? take it out of the formula and substitute any worthless barnyard weed. but silence is the fixed quantity--silence as to the frauds he practices; silence as to the abominable stewings and brewings that enter into his nostrum; silence as to the deaths and sicknesses he causes; silence as to the drug fiends he makes, the inebriate asylums he fills. silence he must have. so he makes silence a part of the contract. read the significant silence of the massachusetts newspapers in the light of the following contracts for advertising. they are the regular printed form used by hood, ayer and munyon in making their advertising contracts with thousands of newspapers throughout the united states. on page 80 [image ==>] {080} is shown the contract made by the j. c. ayer company, makers of ayer's sarsaparilla. at the top is the name of the firm, "the j. c. ayer company, lowell,, mass.," and the date. then follows a blank for the number of dollars, and then the formal contract: "we hereby agree, for the sum of............ dollars per year,........to insert in the............. published at............... the advertisement of the j. c. ayer company." then follow the conditions as to space to be used each issue, the page the advertisement is to be on and the position it is to occupy. then these two remarkable conditions of the contract: "first--it is agreed in case any law or laws are enacted, either state or national, harmful to the interests of the t. c. ayer company, that this contract may be canceled by them from date of such enactment, and the insertions made paid for pro-rata with the contract price." this clause is remarkable enough. but of it more later. for the present examine the second clause: "second--it is agreed that the j. c. ayer co. may cancel this contract, pro-rata, in case advertisements are published in this paper in which their products are offered, with a view to substitution or other harmful motive; also in case any matter otherwise detrimental to the j. c. ayer company's interest is permitted to appear in the reading columns or elsewhere in the paper." this agreement is signed in duplicate, one by the j. c. ayer company and the other one by the newspaper. all muzzle-clauses alike. that is the contract of silence. (notice the next one, in identically the same language, bearing the name of the c. i. hood company, the other great manufacturer of sarsaparilla; and then the third--again in identically the same words--for dr. munyon.) that is the clause which with forty million dollars, muzzles the press of the country. i wonder if the standard oil company could, for forty million dollars, bind the newspapers of the united states in a contract that "no matter detrimental to the standard oil company's interests be permitted to appear in the reading columns or elsewhere in this paper." is it a mere coincidence that in each of these contracts the silence {076}clause is framed in the same words? is the inference fair that there is an agreement among the patent-medicine men and quack doctors each to impose this contract on all the newspapers with which it deals, one reaching the newspapers which the other does not, and all combined reaching all the papers in the united states, and effecting a universal agreement among newspapers to print nothing detrimental to patent medicines? you need not take it as an inference. i shall show it later as a fact. [image ==>] {076} "in the reading columns or elsewhere in this paper." the paper must not print itself, nor must it allow any outside party, who might wish to do so, to pay the regular advertising rates and print the truth about patent medicines in the advertising columns. more than a year ago, just after mr. bok had printed his first article exposing patent medicines, a business man in st. louis, a man of great wealth, conceived that it would {077}help his business greatly if he could have mr. bok's article printed as an advertisement in every newspaper in the united states. he gave the order to a firm of advertising agents and the firm began in texas, intending to cover the country to maine. but that advertisement never got beyond a few obscure country papers in texas. the contract of silence was effective; and a few weeks later, at their annual meeting, the patent-medicine association "resolved"--i quote the minutes--"that this association commend the action of the great majority of the publishers of the united states who have consistently refused said false and malicious attacks in the shape of advertisements which in whole or in part libel proprietary medicines." i have said that the identity of the language of the silence clause in several patent-medicine advertising contracts suggests mutual understanding among the nostrum makers, a preconceived plan; and i have several times mentioned the patent-medicine association. it seems incongruous, almost humorous, to speak of a national organization of quack doctors and patent-medicine makers; but there is one, brought together for mutual support, for co-operation, for--but just what this organization is for, i hope to show. no other organization ever demonstrated so clearly the truth that "in union there is strength." its official name is an innocent-seeming one--"the proprietary association of america." there are annual meetings, annual reports, a constitution, by-laws. and i would call special attention to article ii of those by-laws. "the objects of this association," says this article, "are: to protect the rights of its members to the respective trade-marks that they may own or control; to establish such mutual co-operation as may be required in the various branches of the trade; to reduce all burdens that may be oppressive; to facilitate and foster equitable principles in the purchase and sale of merchandise; to acquire and preserve for the use of its members such business information as may be of value to them; to adjust controversies and promote harmony among its members." that is as innocuous a statement as ever was penned of the objects of any organization. it might serve for an organization of honest cobblers. change a few words, without altering the spirit in the least, and a body of ministers might adopt it. in this laboriously complete statement of objects, there is no such word as "lobby" or "lobbying." indeed, so harmless a word as "legislation" is absent--strenuously absent. where the money goes. but i prefer to discover the true object of the organization of the "proprietary association of america" in another document than article ii of the by-laws. consider the annual report of the treasurer, say for 1904. the total of money paid out during the year was $8,516.26. of this, one thousand dollars was for the secretary's salary, leaving $7,516.26 to be accounted for. then there is an item of postage, one of stationery, one of printing--the little routine expenses of every organization; and finally there is this remarkable item: legislative committee, total expenses, $6,606.95. truly, the proprietary association of america seems to have several {078}objects, as stated in its by-laws, which cost it very little, and one object--not stated in its by-laws at all--which costs it all its annual revenue aside from the routine expenses of stationery, postage and secretary. if just a few more words of comment may be permitted on this point, does it not seem odd that so large an item as $6,606.95, out of a total budget of only $8,516.26, should be put in as a lump sum, "legislative committee, total expenses"? and would not the annual report of the treasurer of the proprietary association of america be a more entertaining document if these "total expenses" of the legislative committee were carefully itemized? [image ==>] {078} not that i mean to charge the direct corruption of legislatures. the proprietary association of america used to do that. they used to spend, according to the statement of the present president of the organization, mr. f. j. cheney, as much as seventy-five thousand dollars a year. but that was before mr. cheney himself discovered a better way. the fighting of public health legislation is the primary object and chief activity, the very raison d'etre, of the proprietary association. the motive back of bringing the quack doctors and patent-medicine manufacturers of the united states into a mutual organization was this: here are some scores of men, each paying a large sum annually to the newspapers. the aggregate of these sums is forty million dollars. by organization, the full effect of this money can be got and used as a unit in preventing the passage of laws which would compel them to tell the contents of their nostrums, and in suppressing the newspaper publicity which would drive them {079}into oblivion. so it was no mean intellect which devised the scheme whereby every newspaper in america is made an active lobbyist for the patent-medicine association. the man who did it is the present president of the organization, its executive head in the work of suppressing public knowledge, stifling public opinion and warding off public health legislation, the mr. cheney already mentioned. he makes a catarrh cure which, according to the massachusetts state board of health, contains fourteen and three-fourths per cent, of alcohol. as to his scheme for making the newspapers of america not only maintain silence, but actually lobby in behalf of the patent medicines, i am glad that i am not under the necessity of describing it in my own words. it would be easy to err in the direction that makes for incredulity. fortunately, i need take no responsibility. i have mr. cheney's own words, in which he explained his scheme to his fellow-members of the proprietary association of america. the quotation marks alone (and the comment within the parentheses) are mine. the remainder is the language of mr. cheney himself: mr. cheney's plan. "we have had a good deal of difficulty in the last few years with the different legislatures of the different states.... i believe i have a plan whereby we will have no difficulty whatever with these people. i have used it in my business for two years and know it is a practical thing.... i, inside of the last two years, have made contracts with between fifteen and sixteen thousand newspapers, and never had but one man refuse to sign the contract, and my saying to him that i could not sign a contract without this clause in it he readily signed it. my point is merely to shift the responsibility. we to-day have the responsibility on our shoulders. as you all know, there is hardly a year but we have had a lobbyist in the different state legislatures--one year in new york, one year in new jersey, and so on." (read that frank confession twice--note the bland matter-of-factness of it.) "there has been a constant fear that something would come up, so i had this clause in my contract added. this is what i have in every contract i make: 'it is hereby agreed that should your state, or the united states government, pass any law that would interfere with or restrict the sale of proprietary medicines, this contract shall become void.'... in the state of illinois a few years ago they wanted to assess me three hundred dollars. i thought i had a better plan than this, so i wrote to about forty papers and merely said: 'please look at your contract with me and take note that if this law passes you and i must stop doing business, and my contracts cease.'" the next week every one of them had an article, and mr. man had to go.... i read this to dr. pierce some days ago and he was very much taken up with it. i have carried this through and know it is a success. i know the papers will accept it. here is a thing that costs us nothing. we are guaranteed against the $75,000 loss for nothing. it throws the responsibility on the newspapers.... i have my contracts printed and i have this printed in red type, right square across the contract, so there can be absolutely no mistake, and the newspaper man can not say to me, 'i did not see it.' he did see it and knows what he is doing. it seems to me it is a point worth every man's attention.... i think this is pretty near a sure thing. [image ==>] {080} this is the form of contract--see (a) (b) (c)--that muzzles the press of the united states. the gist of the contract lies in the clause which is marked with brackets, to the effect that the agreement is voidable, in case any matter detrimental to the advertiser's interests "is permitted to appear in the reading columns, or elsewhere, in this paper." this clause, in the same words, appears in all three of these patent-medicine advertising contracts. the documents reproduced here were gathered from three different newspapers in widely separated parts of the united states. the name of the paper in each case has been suppressed in order to shield the publisher from the displeasure of the patent-medicine combination. how much publishers are compelled to fear this displeasure is exemplified by the experience of the cleveland _press,_ from whose columns $18,000 worth of advertising was withdrawn within forty-eight hours. {081} i should like to ask the newspaper owners and editors of america what they think of that scheme. i believe that the newspapers, when they signed each individual contract, were not aware that they were being dragooned into an elaborately thought-out scheme to make every newspaper in the united states, from the greatest metropolitan daily to the remotest country weekly, an active, energetic, self-interested lobbyist for the patent-medicine association. if the newspapers knew how they were being used as cat's-paws, i believe they would resent it. certainly the patent-medicine association itself feared this, and has kept this plan of mr. cheney's a careful secret. in this same meeting of the proprietary association of america, just after mr. cheney had made the speech quoted above, and while it was being resolved that every other patent-medicine man should put the same clause in his contract, the venerable dr. humphreys, oldest and wisest of the guild, arose and said: "will it {082}not be now just as well to act on this, each and every one for himself, instead of putting this on record?... i think the idea is a good one, but really don't think it had better go in our proceedings." and another fellow nostrum-maker, seeing instantly the necessity of secrecy said: "i am heartily in accord with dr. humphreys. the suggestion is a good one, but when we come to put in our public proceedings, and state that we have adopted such a resolution, i want to say that the legislators are just as sharp as the newspaper men.... as a consequence, this will decrease the weight of the press comments. some of the papers, also, who would not come in, would publish something about it in the way of getting square....." [image ==>] {082} this contract is the backbone of the scheme. the further details, the organization of the bureau to carry it into effect--that, too, has been kept carefully concealed from the generally unthinking newspapers, who are all unconsciously mere individual cogs in the patent-medicine lobbying machine. at one of the meetings of the association, dr. r. v. pierce of buffalo arose and said (i quote him verbatim):... "i would move you that the report of the committee on legislation be made a special order to be taken up immediately... that it be considered in executive session, and that every person not a member of the organization be asked to retire, so that it may be read and considered in executive session. there are matters and suggestions in reference to our future action, and measures to be taken which are advised therein, that we would not wish to have published broadcast over the country for very good reasons." now what were the "matters and suggestions" which dr. pierce "would not wish to have published broadcast over the country for very good reasons?" {083} can mr. cheney reconcile these statements? letter addressed to mr. william allen white, editor of the gazette, emporia, kan. by frank j. cheney. dear sir-i have read with a great deal of interest, to-day, an article in colliers illustrating therein the contract between your paper and ourselves, [see p. 18--editor.] {018}mr. s. hopkins adams endeavored very hard (as i understand) to find me, but i am sorry to say that i was not at home. i really believe that i could have explained that clause of the contract to his entire satisfaction, and thereby saved him the humiliation of making an erratic statement. this is the first intimation that i ever have had that that clause was put into the contract to control the press in any way, or the editorial columns of the press. i believe that if mr. adams was making contracts now, and making three-year contracts, the same as we are, taking into consideration the conditions of the different legislatures, he would be desirous of this same paragraph as a safety guard to protect himself, in case any state did pass a law prohibiting the sale of our goods. his argument surely falls flat when he takes into consideration the conduct of the north dakota legislature, because every newspaper in that state that we advertise in hid contracts containing that clause. why we should be compelled to pay for from one to two years' advertising or more, in a state where we could not sell our goods, is more than i can understand. as before stated, it is merely a precautionary paragraph to meet conditions such as now {084}exist in north dakota. we were compelled to withdraw from that state because we would not publish our formula, and, therefore, under this contract, we are not compelled to continue our advertising. extract from a speech delivered before the proprietary association of america. by frank j. cheney. "we have had a good deal of difficulty in the last few years with the different legislatures of the different states.... i believe i have a plan whereby we will have no difficulty whatever with these people. i have used it in my business for two years, and i know it is a practical thing.... i, inside of the last two years, have made contracts with between fifteen and sixteen thousand newspapers, and never had but one man refuse to sign the contract, and by saying to him that i could not sign a contract without this clause in it he readily signed it. my point is merely to shift the responsibility. we to-day have the responsibility of the whole matter upon our shoulders.... "there? has been constant fear that something would come up, so i had this clause in my contract added. this is what i have in every contract i make: 'it is hereby agreed that should your state, or the united states government, pass any law that would interfere with or restrict the sale of proprietary medicines, his contract shall become void.'... in the state of illinois a few years ago they wanted to assess me three hundred dollars. i thought i had a better plan than this, so i wrote to about forty papers, and merely said: 'please look at your contract with me and take note that if this law passes you and i must stop doing business, and my contracts cease.' the next week every one of them had an article.... i have carried this through and know it is a success. i know the papers will accept it. here is a thing that costs us nothing. we are guaranteed against the $75,000 loss for nothing. it throws the responsibility on the newspapers.... i have my contracts printed and i have this printed in red type, right square across the contract, so there can be absolutely no mistake, and the newspaper man can not say to me, 'i did not see it.' he did see it and knows what he is doing. it seems to me it is a point worth every man's attention.... i think this is pretty near a sure thing." to illustrate: there are 739 publications in your state--619 of these are dailies and weeklies. out of this number we are advertising in over 500, at an annual expenditure of $8,000 per year (estimated). we make a three-year contract with all of them, and, therefore, our liabilities in your state are $24,000, providing, of course, all these contracts were made at the same date. should these contracts all be made this fall and your state should pass a law this winter (three months later) prohibiting the sale of our goods, there would be virtually a loss to us of $24,000. therefore, for a business precaution to guard against just such conditions, we add the red paragraph referred to in collier's. i make this statement to you, as i am credited with being the originator of the paragraph, and i believe that i am justified in adding this paragraph to our contract, not for the purpose of controlling the press, but, as before stated, as a business precaution which any man should take who expects to pay his bills. will you kindly give me your version of the situation? awaiting an early reply, i am, sincerely yours, frank j. cheney. [image ==>] {083} [image ==>] {084} valuable newspaper aid. {085} dr. pierce's son, dr. v. mott pierce, was chairman of the committee on legislation. he was the author of the "matters and suggestions" which must be considered in the dark. "never before," said he, "in the history of the proprietary association were there so many bills in different state legislatures that were vital to our interests. this was due, we think, to an effort on the part of different state boards of health, who have of late years held national meetings, to make an organized effort to establish what are known as 'pure food laws.'" then the younger pierce stated explicitly the agency responsible for the defeat of this public health legislation: "we must not forget to place the honor where due for our uniform success in defeating class legislation directed against our legitimate pursuits. the american newspaper publishers' association has rendered us valued aid through their secretary's office in new york and we can hardly overestimate the power brought to bear at washington by individual newspapers."... (on another occasion, dr. pierce, speaking of two bills in the illinois legislature, said: "two things operated to bring these bills to the danger line. in the first place, the chicago papers were almost wholly without influence in the legislature.... had it not been for the active co-operation of the state outside of chicago there is absolute certainty that the bill would have passed.... i think that a great many members do not appreciate the power that we can bring to bear on legislation through the press.") but this power, in young dr. pierce's opinion, must be organized and systematized. "if it is not presumptuous on the part of your chairman," he said modestly, "to outline a policy which experience seems to dictate for the future, it would be briefly as follows"--here the younger pierce explains the "matters and suggestions" which must not be "published broadcast over the country." the first was "the organization of a legislative bureau, with its offices in new york or chicago. second, a secretary, to be appointed by the chairman of the committee on legislation, who will receive a stated salary, sufficiently large to be in keeping with such person's ability, and to compensate him for the giving of all his time to this work." "the benefits of such a working bureau to the proprietary association," said dr. pierce, "can be foreseen: first, a systematic plan to acquire early knowledge of pending or threatened legislation could be taken up. in the past we have relied too much on newspaper managers to acquaint us of such bills coming up.... another plan would be to have the regulation formula bill, for instance, introduced by some friendly legislator, and have it referred to his own committee, where he could hold it until all danger of such another bill being introduced were over, and the legislature had adjourned." little wonder dr. pierce wanted a secret session to cover up the frank {087}naïveté of his son, which he did not "wish to have published broadcast over the country, for very good reasons." [image ==>] {086} example of what mr. cheney calls "shifting the responsibility." this letter was sent by the publishers of one of the leading newspapers of wisconsin to senator noble of that state. it illustrates the method adopted by the patent-medicine makers to compel the newspapers in each state to do their lobbying for them. senator noble introduced a bill requiring patent-medicine manufacturers to state on their labels the percentage of various poisons which every bottle might contain. senator noble and a few others fought valiantly for their bill throughout the whole of the last session of the wisconsin legislature, but were defeated by the united action of the newspaper publishers, who, as this letter shows, exerted pressure of every kind, including threats, to compel members of the legislature to vote against the bill. in discussing this plan for a legislative bureau, another member told what in his estimation was needed. "the trouble," said he--i quote from the minutes--"the trouble we will have in attempting to buy legislation--supposing we should attempt it--is that we will never know what we are buying until we get through. we may have paid the wrong man, and the bill is passed and we are out. it is not a safe proposition, if we consider it legitimate, which we do not." true, it is not legitimate, but the main point is, it's not safe; that's the thing to be considered. the patent-medicine man continued to elaborate on the plans proposed by dr. pierce: "it would not be a safe proposition at all. what this association should have... is a regularly established bureau.... we should have all possible information on tap, and we should have a list of the members of the legislature of every state. we should have a list of the most influential men that control them, or that can influence them.... for instance, if in the state of ohio a bill comes up that is adverse to us, turn to the books, find out who are members of the legislature there, who are the publishers of the papers in the state, where they are located, which are the republican and which the democratic papers.... it will take money, but if the money is rightly spent, it will be the best investment ever made." the trust's club for legislators. that is about as comprehensive, as frankly impudent a scheme of controlling legislation as it is possible to imagine. the plan was put in the form of a resolution, and the resolution was passed. and so the proprietary association of america maintains a lawyer in chicago, and a permanent secretary, office and staff. in every state it maintains an agent whose business it is to watch during the session of the legislature each day's batch of new bills, and whenever a bill affecting patent medicines shows its head to telegraph the bill, verbatim, to headquarters. there some scores of printed copies of the bill are made, and a copy is sent to every member of the association--to the peruna people, to dr. pierce at buffalo, to kilmer at birmingham, to cheney at toledo, to the pinkham people at lynn, and to all the others. thereon each manufacturer looks up the list of papers in the threatened state with which he has the contracts described above. and to each newspaper he sends a peremptory telegram calling the publisher's attention to the obligations of his contract, and commanding him to go to work to defeat the anti-patent-medicine bill. in practice, this organization works with smooth perfection and well-oiled accuracy to defeat the public health legislation which is introduced by boards of health in over a score of states every year. to illustrate, let me describe as typical the history of the public health bills which were introduced and defeated in massachusetts last year. i have already mentioned them as showing how the newspapers, obeying that part of their contract which requires them to print nothing harmful to patent medicines, refused to print any account of the exposures which were made by several members of the legislature during the debate of the bill. i wish here to describe their obedience to that other clause of the {088}contract, in living up to which they printed scores of bitterly partisan editorials against the public health bill, and against its authors personally; threatened with political death those members of the legislature who were disposed to vote in favor of it, and even, in the persons of editors and owners, went up to the state house and lobbied personally against the bill. and since i have already told of mr. cheney's author-ship of the scheme, i will here reproduce, as typical of all the others (all the other large patent-medicine concerns sent similar letters and telegrams), the letter which mr. cheney himself on the 14th day of february sent to all the newspapers in massachusetts with which he has lobbying contracts--practically every newspaper in the state: "toledo, ohio, feb. 14, 1905. "publishers "----mass. "gentlemen: "should house bills nos. 829, 30, 607, 724, or senate bill no. 185 become laws, it will force us to discontinue advertising in your state. your prompt attention regarding this bill we believe would be of mutual benefit. "we would respectfully refer you to the contract which we have with you. "respectfully, "cheney medicine company." now here is the fruit which that letter bore: a strong editorial against the anti-patent-medicine bill, denouncing it and its author in the most vituperative language, a marked copy of which was sent to every member of the massachusetts legislature. but this was not all that this one zealous publisher did; he sent telegrams to a number of members, and a personal letter to the representative of his district calling on that member not only to vote, but to use his influence against the bill, on the pain of forfeiting the paper's favor. now this seems to me a shameful thing--that a massachusetts newspaper, of apparent dignity and outward high standing, should jump to the cracking of the whip of a nostrum-maker in ohio; that honest and well-meaning members of the massachusetts legislature, whom all the money of rockefeller could not buy, who obey only the one thing which they look on as the expression of the public opinion of their constituents, the united voice of the press of their district--that these men should unknowingly cast their votes at the dictate of a nostrum-maker in ohio, who, if he should deliver his command personally and directly, instead of through a newspaper supine enough to let him control it for a hundred dollars a year, would be scorned and flouted. any self-respecting newspaper must be humiliated by the attitude of the patent-medicine association. they don't ask the newspapers to do it--they order it done. read again mr. cheney's account of his plan, note the half-contemptuous attitude toward the newspapers. and read again mr. cheney's curt letter to the massachusetts papers; observe the threat, just sufficiently veiled to make it more of a threat; and the formal order from a superior to a clerk: "we would respectfully refer you to the contract which we have with you." and the threat is not an empty one. the newspaper which refuses to aid the patent-medicine people is marked. some time ago dr. v. mott {089}pierce of buffalo was chairman of what is called the "committee on legislation" of the proprietary association of america. he was giving his annual report to the association. "we are happy to say," said he, "that though over a dozen bills were before the different state legislatures last winter and spring, yet we have succeeded in defeating all the bills which were prejudicial to proprietary interests without the use of money, and through the vigorous co-operation and aid of the publishers. january 23 your committee sent out letters to the principal publications in new york asking their aid against this measure. it is hardly necessary to state that the publishers of new york responded generously against these harmful measures. the only small exception was the _evening star_ of poughkeepsie, n. y., the publisher of which, in a very discourteous letter, refused to assist us in any way." is it to be doubted that dr. pierce reported this exception to his fellow patent-medicine men, that they might make note of the offending paper, and bear it in mind when they made their contracts the following year? there are other cases which show what happens to the newspaper which offends the patent-medicine men. i am fortunate enough to be able to describe the following incident in the language of the man who wielded the club, as he told the story with much pride to his fellow patent-medicine men at their annual meeting: "mr. chairman and gentlemen of the proprietary association," said mr. cooper, "i desire to present to you a situation which i think it is incumbent on manufacturers generally to pay some attention to--namely, the publication of sensational drug news which appears from time to time in the leading papers of the country.... there are, no doubt, many of you in the room, at least a dozen, who are familiar with the sensational articles that appeared in the cleveland _press_. gentlemen, this is a question that appeals to you as a matter of business.... the cleveland press indulged in a tirade against the so-called 'drug trust.'... (the 'drug trust' is the same organization of patent-medicine men--including pierce, pinkham, peruna, kilmer and all the well-known ones--which i have referred to as the patent-medicine association. its official name is the proprietary association of america.) "i sent out the following letter to fifteen manufacturers" (of patent medicines): "'gentlemen--inclosed we hand you a copy of matter which is appearing in the cleveland papers. it is detrimental to the drug business to have this matter agitated in a sensational way. in behalf of the trade we would ask you to use your influence with the papers in cleveland to discontinue this unnecessary publicity, and if you feel you can do so, we would like to have you wire the business managers of the cleveland papers to discontinue their sensational drug articles, as it is proving very injurious to your business. respectfully, e. r. cooper.' "because of that letter which we sent out, the cleveland press received inside of forty-eight hours telegrams from six manufacturers canceling thousands of dollars' worth of advertising and causing a consequent dearth of sensational matter along drug lines. it resulted in a loss to one paper alone of over eighteen thousand dollars in advertising. gentlemen, when you touch a man's pocket, you touch him where he lives; that principle {090}is true of the newspaper editor or the retail druggist, and goes through all business." the trust's club for newspapers. that is the account of how the patent-medicine man used his club on the newspaper head, told in the patent-medicine man's own words, as he described it to his fellows. is it pleasant reading for self-respecting newspaper men--the exultant air of those last sentences, and the worldly wisdom: "when you touch a man's pocket you touch him where he lives; that principle is true of the newspaper editor..."? but the worst of this incident has not yet been told. there remains the account of how the offending newspaper, in the language of the bully, "ate dirt". the cleveland _press_ is one of a syndicate of newspapers, all under mr. mcrae's ownership--but i will use mr. cooper's own words: "we not only reached the cleveland _press_ by the movement taken up in that way, but went further, for the cleveland _press_ is one of a syndicate of newspapers known as the scripps-mcrae league, from whom this explanation is self-explanatory: "'office schipps-mcrae press association. "'mr. e. r. cooper, cleveland, ohio: "'mr. mcrae arrived in new york the latter part of last week after a three months' trip to egypt. i took up the matter of the recent cut-rate articles which appeared in the cleveland _press_ with him, and to-day received the following telegram from him from cincinnati: 'scripps-mcrae papers will contain no more such as cleveland _press_ published concerning the medicine trust--m. a. mcrae.' "'i am sure that in the future nothing will appear in the cleveland press detrimental to your interests. "'yours truly, "'f. j. carlisle.'" this incident was told, in the exact words above quoted, at the nineteenth annual meeting of the proprietary association of america. i could, if space permitted, quote many other telegrams and letters from the kilmer's swamp root makers, from the piso's cure people, from all the large patent-medicine manufacturers. the same thing that happened in massachusetts happened last year in new hampshire, in wisconsin, in utah, in more than fifteen states. in wisconsin the response by the newspapers to the command of the patent-medicine people was even more humiliating than in massachusetts. not only did individual newspapers work against the formula bill; there is a "wisconsin press association," which includes the owners and editors of most of the newspapers of the state. that association held a meeting and passed resolutions, "that we are opposed to said bill... providing that hereafter all patent medicine sold in this state shall have the formula thereof printed on their labels," and "resolved, that the association appoint a committee of five publishers to oppose the passage of the measure." and in this same state the larger dailies in the cities took it on themselves to drum up the smaller country papers and get them to write editorials opposed to the formula bill. nor was even this the measure of their activity in response to the command of the patent medicine association. i am able to give the letter which is here reproduced [see page 86]. {086} it was sent by the publisher of one of the largest daily papers in wisconsin to the state senator who {091}introduced the bill. in one western state, a board of health officer made a number of analyses of patent medicines, and tried to have the analyses made public, that the people of his state might be warned. "only one newspaper in the state," he says in a personal letter, "was willing to print results of these analyses, and this paper refused them after two publications in which a list of about ten was published. in new hampshire--but space forbids. happily there is a little silver in the situation. the legislature of north dakota last year passed, and the governor signed a bill requiring that patent-medicine bottles shall have printed on their labels the percentage of alcohol or of morphin or various other poisons which the medicine contains. that was the first success in a fight which the public health authorities have waged in twenty states each year for twenty years. in north dakota the patent-medicine people conducted the fight with their usual weapons, the ones described above. but the newspapers, be it said to their everlasting credit, refused to fall in line to the threats of the patent-medicine association. and i account for that fact in this way: north dakota is wholly a "country" community. it has no city of over 20,000, and but one over 5,000. the press of the state, therefore, consists of very small papers, weeklies, in which the ownership and active management all lie with one man. the editorial conscience and the business manager's enterprise lie under one hat. with them the patent-medicine scheme was not so successful as with the more elaborately organized newspapers of older and more populous states. just now is the north dakota editor's time of trial. the law went into effect july 1. the patent-medicine association, at their annual meeting in may, voted to withdraw all their advertising from all the papers in that state. this loss of revenue, they argued self-righteously, would be a warning to the newspapers of other states. likewise it would be a lesson to the newspapers of north dakota. at the next session of the legislature they will seek to have the label bill repealed, and they count on the newspapers, chastened by a lean year, to help them. for the independence they have shown in the past, and for the courage they will be called on to show in the future, therefore, let the newspapers of north dakota know that they have the respect and admiration of all decent people. "what is to be done about it?" is the question that follows exposure of organized rascality. in few cases is the remedy so plain as here. for the past, the newspapers, in spite of these plain contracts of silence, must be acquitted of any very grave complicity. the very existence of the machine that uses and directs them has been a carefully guarded secret. for the future, be it understood that any newspaper which carries a patent-medicine advertisement knows what it is doing. the obligations of the contract are now public property. and one thing more, when next a member of a state legislature arises and states, as i have so often heard: "gentlemen, this label bill seems right to me, but i can not support it; the united press of my district is opposed to it"--when that happens, let every one understand the wires that have moved "the united press of my district." {092} the following are extracts and abstracts from various articles in the ladies home journal? a peculiar "etc." a great show of frankness was recently made by a certain "patent medicine." the makers advertised that they had concluded to take the public into their confidence, and that thereafter they would print a formula of the medicine on each bottle manufactured. "there is nothing secretive about our medicine," was the cry. "we have nothing to hide. here is the formula. show it to your physician." then comes the formula: this herb and that herb, this ingredient and that ingredient, and the formula winds up, "etc." all good, old-fashioned, well recognized drugs were those which were mentioned--all except the "etc." a certain board of pharmacy had never heard of a drug called "etc.," and so made up its mind to find out. and the "etc." was found to be 3.76 per cent of cocain!--just the simple, death-dealing cocain!--from _the ladies' home journal_, february, 1906. patent medicine concerns and letter brokers. one of the most disgusting and disgraceful features of the patent medicine business is the marketing of letters sent by patients to patent medicine firms. correspondence is solicited by these firms under the seal of sacred confidence. when the concern is unable to do further business with a patient it disposes of the patient's correspondence to a letter-broker, who, in turn, disposes of it to other patent medicine concerns at the rate of half a cent, for each letter. this information was made public by mark sullivan in the _ladies' home journal_ for january, 1906. [image ==>] {092} an advertisement showing how the names to orders sent to "patent medicine" concerns are offered for sale or rent to be used by others. yet we are told how "sacredly confidential" these letters are regarded and held. (the advertisement is from the _mail order journal_, april, 1905.) says mr. sullivan: "one of these brokers assured me he could give me 'choice lots' of 'medical female letters'... let me now give you, from the printed lists of these 'letter brokers' some idea of the way in which these {093}'sacredly confidential' letters are hawked about the country. here are a few samples, all that are really printable: "'55,000 female complaint letters' is the sum total of one item, and the list gives the names of the "medicine company" or the "medical institute" to whom they were addressed. here is a barter, then, in 55,000 letters of a private nature, each one of which, the writer was told, and had a right to expect, would be regarded as sacredly confidential by the "doctor" or concern to whom she had been deluded into telling her private ailments. yet here they are for half a cent each! "another batch of some 47,000 letters addressed to five 'doctors' and 'institutes' is emphasized because they were all written by women! a third batch is: "'44,000 bust developer letters'--letters which one man in a "patent medicine" concern told me were "the richest sort of reading you could get hold of." "a still further lot offers: '40,000 women's regulator letters'--letters which in their context any woman can naturally imagine would be of the most delicate nature. still, the fact remains, here thy are for sale." is not this contemptible? in the same article mr. sullivan exposes the inhuman greed of patent medicine concerns that turn into cold cash the letters of patients afflicted with the most vital diseases. to quote mr. sullivan again: "all these are made the subject of public barter. here are offered for sale, for example: 7,000 paralysis letters; 9,000 narcotic letters; 52,000 consumption letters; 3,000 cancer letters, and even 65,000 deaf letters. of diseases of the most private nature one is offered here nearly one hundred thousand letters--letters the very classification of which makes a sensitive person shudder." an appeal to the american woman. "if the american woman would withhold her patronage from these secret nostrums the greater part of the industry would go to pieces. i do not ask any woman to take my word for this. let me give her a personal statement direct from one of these manufacturers himself--a 'doctor' to whom thousands of women are writing to-day, and whose medicines they are buying by the hundreds of thousands of bottles each year. i quote his own statement, word for word: "'men are "on" to the game; we don't care a damn about them. it is the women we are after. we have buncoed them now for a good many years, and so long as they remain as "easy" as they have been, and we can make them believe that they are sick, we're all right. give us the women every time. we can make them feel more female troubles in a year than they would really have if they lived to be a hundred.' ".--from "why 'patent medicines' are dangerous," edward bok, ladies' home journal, march, 1905. "repeaters." it is the "repeat" orders that make the profit. referring to a certain patent medicine that had gone to the wall a nostrum agent said that it failed because "it wasn't a good repeater." when these men doubt whether a new medicine will be a success they say: "i'm afraid it wouldn't be a 'repeater.'" "_cure_ rheumatism" said a veteran patent medicine man considering the exploitation of a new remedy; "good heavens, man, you don't want a remedy that _cures_ 'em. where would you get your 'repeats'? you want to get up a medicine that's full of dope, so the more they take of it the more they'll want."--from "the inside story of a sham," _ladies' home journal_, january, 1906. patent medicines and testimonials. in the january, 1906, issue of the _ladies' home journal_ mark sullivan contributes an article on the business of securing from well-known people testimonials indorsing and praising nostrums. mr. sullivan learned that three men, rivals in trade, make a business of securing these indorsements. they are known as "testimonlal-brokers." a representative of a patent medicine who was anxious to exploit his preparation through the press approached one of these brokers and made arrangements for the delivery of one hundred signed testimonials from members of {094}congress, governors and men high in the army and navy. the following is the memorandum of the agreement as drawn up by the broker: "confirming my talk with mr. ------, i will undertake to obtain testimonials from senators at $75 each, and from congressmen at $40, on a prearranged contract.... a contract for not less than $5,000 would meet my requirements in the testimonial line.... i can put your matter in good shape shortly after congress meets if we come to an agreement.... we can't get roosevelt, but we can get men and women of national reputation, and we can get their statements in convincing form and language..." it was for this reason that years ago mrs. pinkham, at lynn, mass., determined to step in and help her sex. having had considerable experience in treating female ills with her vegetable compound, she encouraged the women of america to write to her for advice in regard to their complaints, and being a woman, it was easy for help ailing sisters to pour into her ears every detail of their suffering. no physician in the world has had such a training, or has such an amount of information at hand to assist in the treatment of all kinds of female ills. this, therefore, is the reason why mrs. pinkham, in her laboratory at lynn, mass., is able to do more for the ailing women, of america than the family physician.' any woman, therefore, is responsible for her own suffering who will not take the trouble to write to mrs. pinkham for advice. [image ==>] {094} the way in which the testimonial is actually obtained is thus described by the broker: "the knowing how to approach each individual is my stock-in-trade. only a man of wide acquaintance of men and things could carry it out. often i employ women. women know how to get around public men. for example, i know that senator a has a poverty-stricken cousin, who works as a seamstress. i go to her and offer her twenty-five dollars to get the senator's signature to a testimonial. but most of it i do through newspaper correspondents here in washington. take the senator from some southern state. that senator is very dependent on the washington correspondent of the leading newspaper in his state. by the dispatches which that correspondent sends back the senator's career is made or marred. so i go to that correspondent. i offer him $50 to get the senator's testimonial. the senator may squirm, but he'll sign all right. then there are a number of easy-going congressmen who needn't be seen at all. i can sign their names to anything, and they'll stand for it. and there are always a lot of poverty-stricken, broken-down army veterans hanging around washington. for a few dollars they'll go to their old army officers on a basis of old acquaintance sake and get testimonials." it goes without saying that such testimonials are a fraud on the purchaser of the medicine thus exploited. "not one in a thousand of these letters ever reaches the eyes of the 'doctor' to whom they are addressed. there wouldn't be hours enough in the day to read them even if he had the desire. on the contrary, these letters from women of a private and delicate nature are opened and read by young men and girls; they go through not fewer than eight different hands before they reach a reply; each in turn reads them, and if there is anything 'spicy' you will see the heads of two or three girls get together and enjoy (!) the 'spice.' very often these 'spicy bits' are taken home and shown to the friends and families of these girls and men! time and again have i seen this done; time and again have i been handed over a letter by one of the young fellows with the remark: 'read this, isn't that rich?' only to read of the recital of some trouble into which a young girl has fallen, or some mother's sacred story of her daughter's all! "then, to cap the climax of iniquity, with some of these houses these names and addresses are sold at two, three or five cents a name to firms in other lines of business for the purpose of sending circulars. as a fact, often the trouble is not taken to copy off the names and addresses, but the letters themselves, with all their private contents, are sold! "this is the true story of the 'sacredly confidential' way in which these private letters from women are treated!"--statement of a man who spent two years in the employ of a large patent medicine concern, as told in "how the private confidences of women are laughed at." edward bok, _ladies' home journal,_ november, 1904. file was produced from scans of public domain works at the university of michigan's making of america collection.) [illustration: mr. eastman in costume.] seven and nine years among the camanches and apaches. an autobiography. jersey city, n. j. published by clark johnson, m.d. 1874. entered according to act of congress, in the year 1878, by clark johnson, m.d., jersey city, n. j., in the office of the librarian of congress, at washington. contents. chapter. page. i. introductory 5 ii. the capture 18 iii. a strange adventure 22 iv. again a prisoner 30 v. the indian town 39 vi. the torture 47 vii. wa-ko-met-kla 57 viii. a new vocation 68 ix. the "mystery bag" 78 x. indian life 86 xi. mrs. eastman's story 95 xii. mrs. eastman's story continued 103 xiii. mrs. eastman's story continued 111 xiv. hopes and fears--an adventure 119 xv. treed by a grizzly 125 xvi. some curious customs 134 xvii. the buffalo dance 142 xviii. a strange history 150 xix. a strange history continued 159 xx. the buffalo hunt 171 xxi. mrs. eastman's story continued 184 xxii. feasts, fasts, and facts 192 xxiii. the war party 208 xxiv. my first scalp 222 xxv. the feast of the green corn 238 xxvi. danger ahead 242 xxvii. the escape 249 xxviii. a new departure 263 xxix. the "vigilants" 277 xxx. conclusion 290 [illustration: edwin eastman] seven and nine years among the camanches and apaches. chapter i. introductory. in making my bow to the public as an author, i feel it incumbent upon me to make a brief explanation of the motives that induced me to attempt this autobiographical sketch of nine years of my life. at intervals during the past decade, the country has been electrified by the recital of some horror perpetrated by indians on white travelers, and those, who, having journeyed to the far west, had settled, intending to make the wilderness blossom like the rose. through the medium of the press, the details of these heart-rending cruelties were widely disseminated, and aroused the just indignation of all peaceful and order-loving citizens. to such an extent did popular feeling rise at times, that farmers and drovers on the border, organized themselves into bands, and on the report of some fresh outrage hastened to the scene, pursued the perpetrators of the deed, and not unfrequently visited upon the indians a vengeance ofttimes of a very sanguinary character. in these forays of the savages, they frequently carried off to their mountain fastnesses women and children, who were never heard of more. thus, when our feelings were harrowed up by the report of butcheries, the tales of life-long suffering of the forlorn captives were scarcely ever known. snatched ruthlessly from the bosom of their families, they were mourned for a time and then they, by slow degrees, faded from the memory of their friends and relatives, and when thought of at all, it was as of those dead. in these chapters i will detail the trials and sufferings of such as these, believing that the experiences of my wife and myself, during our captivity among the camanches and apaches, will serve as a prototype of many similar cases. it was some time, and with not a little persuasion before i could be induced to overcome the diffidence i felt about making my private history public, and appearing in print. by those who have become authors, my feelings will be understood and appreciated; but to others who constitute the reading public it would be impossible to describe the trepidation with which the tyro puts forth his first literary venture, and had it not been for the earnest entreaties of my esteemed friend, dr. clark johnson, who used naively to say that what was a source of such pleasure to him must be entertaining to the public, i doubt very much if i should have ever put pen to paper in the capacity of an author. with this introduction, i will, as briefly as may be, relate my experiences, nothing extenuating, and setting down naught in malice. my family were originally from massachusetts, my father being a descendant of the puritans, he inherited many of the qualities of his ancestors, and, joined to a high integrity, he possessed a dogged will that at times amounted to stubbornness. from childhood he had led the life of a farmer, and my earliest recollections are associated with country life. my father's disposition might be characterized as restless; and after sojourning for a time in one place, he would evince symptoms of uneasiness which would result in the family moving to some new spot, and breaking ground in virgin soil on the confines of civilization. by these successive removals we soon found ourselves far to the west of the home of our ancestors, and at the time my father resolved to go to california, we owned a very nice farm in missouri, and as far as i could see were very comfortably situated. on returning from the county seat one saturday, my father electrified us with the intelligence that he thought seriously of going west. had a bombshell exploded in our midst it could scarcely have created greater consternation; on inquiring what had induced such a sudden determination on his part, he was fain to confess that he had met a gentleman in town who had but just arrived from the new el dorado, and who spoke so enthusiastically of this marvelous country, that he led my father's too diligent ear captive, and his mind was saturated with the desire to see, without further delay, this wonderful land. the rest of the family stoutly objected to such a hasty resolve, and we finally effected a compromise, and it was agreed that the stranger should be invited to spend a portion of his time at our house, and during his visit we could consult, argue, and finally conclude what action should be taken in the matter. i had serious misgivings that our fair home was doomed; knowing too well my father's character, and that any objections we might make to the proposed departure would only strengthen his determination to have his own way. such was his intense love for the unknown, that any plausible fellow could induce him to see the advantages of owning a thousand acres of wild land to his own well-tilled homestead. the following week mr. terhune made his advent among us. he was a fair type of the adventurer, and seemed a man who could be equal to any emergency circumstances might demand; of robust form, a complexion bronzed by exposure, and with an address so pleasing when he wished to exert himself, that he soon became a favorite, especially with the female portion of the family. he adapted himself to our mode of life with wonderful ease, and apparently was making preparations for a visit that should outlast our expectations. the beauties and advantages of a home in his adopted state was his constant theme; and so pleasantly did he talk, illustrating his arguments with anecdotes so amusing and apposite, that i felt myself being perceptibly influenced by his views, and used to dream of climbing trees of prodigious height, and gathering nuggets from their branches as if they were apples. when lending an assisting hand at our farm labors, he would descant on the fertility of the soil on the pacific slope, saying that crops grew almost spontaneously, and related what fortunes could be made raising sheep. by such means were we seduced into the conviction that a change of base was not only advantageous, but necessary, and it was finally decided to go. mr. terhune said he could negotiate an exchange, by which we could dispose of our farm for california real estate, whereby we would be the gainers; and one monday morning in april, he left us for st. louis, to complete the trade and purchase. our intentions becoming known in the vicinity, our neighbors seemed to take an especial interest in our movements, and many were the staid old farmers who called to offer us their advice and wishes for our future prosperity. being notified that all was in readiness, and that we could start as soon as it suited our convenience, we lost no time in packing what few articles we required, and bidding our friends adieu, we commenced our journey. arriving in st. louis, we were greeted by mr. terhune who escorted us to the planters' hotel, where we were temporarily to reside until the steamboat on which we were to embark was ready to leave. the few days spent in the metropolis of the west, was thoroughly enjoyed by our little party, as under the guidance of our friend we visited all the places of interest in the neighborhood. on saturday, april 30th, we embarked on the steamboat _prairie flower_, bound for independence, where we were to make the necessary purchases for our outfit in crossing the plains, and were also to join a train that was being formed, and of which we were to become part and parcel. after an uneventful journey we reached independence, only to find that the train we expected to join had left two days previously; here was a dilemma, and we were at a loss what to do. i was in favor of waiting until another train could be formed, but father objected, stating as his reasons, that it would consume both time and money; neither of which did we possess in vast quantities. meantime we had become the centre of attraction to quite a motley crowd, who stood looking on, and seemed to take a lively interest in us, criticising our appearance and indulging in various remarks which were not always of a complimentary character. noticing an old weather-beaten frontiersman, who stood some little distance off, and thinking he could perhaps suggest a way out of our difficulty, i made up to him, and after the usual salutations and a proffer of some tobacco, to which he helped himself in rather large quantities, i asked him his opinion, and what he thought we had best do under the circumstances. drawing his lank form out of the entanglement it seemed to have been in, he delivered himself in somewhat the following manner: "wal stranger, pears to me, i would jist git rite arter that ere party, quicker'n greased lightning, kase you see, they haint been gone long, and if you drive yer animiles rite smart, you will ketch up in jist no time." this advice struck me as excellent, and returning to our party i communicated it to them. we resolved to adopt it at once, only wondering we had not thought of it before. having come to this determination, we busied ourselves with the necessary preparations, and on the third day after the departure of the train, we bade adieu to the few acquaintances made during our brief sojourn at independence, and struck out upon the almost trackless prairie. our equipment was that in general use among prairie travelers, and consisted of a "concord" wagon, covered with white canvas, and drawn by six mules, in the management of which rather intractable animals my father was an adept. in the wagon were stored our few household goods and scanty supply of provisions, and in it rode my wife and mother. my brother and myself figured as a mounted guard, and presented a not unpicturesque appearance in our tunics of dressed deerskin, and leggings of the same material; our revolvers in our belts, and rifles slung over our shoulder, or resting on the pommels of our mexican saddles. everything seemed propitious; the wagon moved off smoothly, the morning was clear, and the great red disc of the sun just rising in the east had scarcely dispelled the haze that enveloped nature as in a fleecy mantle. we little dreamed, alas, of the dreadful fate soon to overtake us. that fate which was to dissever a loving and united family, causing three of its members to pass through the valley of the shadow of death, and subjecting the survivors to suffering that often made them cry out in the bitterness of their hearts "why was i spared to suffer such torture, when death would have been such a welcome relief!" chapter ii. the capture. we were now fairly started on our journey, and but for a singular feeling of depression which weighed down my spirits and seemed a presentiment of evil to come, i should have had little doubt of our ability to overtake the train and travel safely with it to our destination. this feeling, however, caused me to become taciturn and apprehensive, so much so, that i was frequently rallied upon the subject by my companions. for many days, however, we followed the trail without special incident; the tracks of wagons giving us an easy guide. we found grass, wood and water in abundance, and traveling light and unimpeded by others, felt confident that we were gaining upon the train and would undoubtedly overtake them shortly. we crossed several rivers and streams, most of them fordable, but one or two we found wide and deep and were compelled to float our wagon across. we saw some game, antelopes and deer, and shot a few, forming a welcome addition to our larder; but they were generally shy and kept out of reach, without wandering too far from the track. for two days we had been journeying through an entirely different country from that which we had passed. it was almost a barren desert, treeless, without game, and, but little water; on its hard surface the wagon wheels made scarcely an imprint, and it was with the greatest difficulty that we could take up the trail. the evening of the second day found us still on the road, as we could find no water, without which we could not camp. before sunset we had noticed a low fringe along the horizon which looked like timber, and knowing there must be water there, determined to push on and reach it, if possible, before camping for the night. after a weary march we reached the edge of the desert plain, and found a small stream, clear but shallow; its banks lined with tall cottonwood trees. here we rested, and our tired animals fully appreciated the cool water and the luxuriant "gramma" grass which abounded. while standing watch, a precaution we never neglected, i fancied i heard a distant rifle shot, and roused my father and brother, fearing indians might be near at hand, for we were now in very dangerous country and father declared that he had seen "injun sign" the day previous, but a scout through the cottonwood grove revealed nothing, and as the sound was very faint and was not repeated, we concluded it was only fancy; father muttering as he crawled under his blanket that i was getting too almighty scarey for a backwoodsman. this incident however aroused those apprehensive feelings that had before troubled me, but which had been quieted for a time by the uneventful nature of our journey. we were not again disturbed that night, but at sunrise we made a discovery that filled us with dismay--_we had lost the trail!_ this we were convinced was the result of our night journey, and father was confident that we could recover it; but, when after several hours spent in a fruitless endeavor to find where it crossed the stream, i urged that we should take our own trail back to the point at which it diverged from that of the train, he positively refused to do so; declaring that he wasn't a greenhorn to get scared at so small a matter, and that he should push on in a southwesterly direction, and take his chance of intersecting the trail, he asserting that we must have strayed to northward of it. my brother and myself protested against so rash an undertaking, but in vain; and we finally started on what was destined to be our last day's journey together. our route now lay across a verdant and apparently boundless prairie. far as the eye could reach it was a level plain, without landmarks, trackless as the sea, covered with a living carpet of emerald green. at another time i could have spent hours in gazing upon its vast expanse, and fancying its changed appearance when its surface should be furrowed by the plow and its fruitful soil reward the farmer's labor; but the presentiment of evil which i found it impossible to shake off, oppressed my spirits rendering me anxious and fearful. a few moments took us out of sight of the cottonwood grove, and but for the aid of father's pocket compass we could have had little idea of our direction, but by its assistance we traveled steadily in a southwesterly coarse, father being confident that we had strayed north of the trail and that by taking this course we must sooner or later regain it. until nearly noon we kept steadily on, seeing nothing to indicate that we were near the trail. just before noon we halted to rest and feed the animals and prepare a meal for ourselves. the morning had been sultry and we were all sufficiently fatigued to find a brief rest very acceptable. refreshed by half an hour's rest, we were preparing to start, when my brother who had moved off in advance, suddenly exclaimed, "father's right after all, there are mounted men ahead, it must be the train!" animated by the hope that our solitary wanderings were nearly over and our perils past, we pushed ahead, urging our animals forward with all possible speed. the distant horsemen were moving parallel to our route, and apparently had not perceived us. we shouted and fired our rifles, a commotion was visible among them, they halted, wheeled, and a number suddenly galloped towards us with the speed of the wind. my brother, who had ridden far ahead of us swinging his cap and hallooing loudly, suddenly pulled up his horse and with a cry of terror rode back to us with his utmost speed. we were not long at a loss to understand the meaning of this proceeding; as he neared us his warning shout of indians! indians! was borne to us upon the breeze. but it needed not that to apprise us of our peril; ere he reached us the advancing horsemen had approached so near that we could plainly, see instead of the friends we sought, a horde of hideous savages, naked to the waist, besmeared with war paint in many strange devices, their tall lances waving, their ornaments glittering in the sun--on, on they came, giving vent to the most blood-curdling yells it had ever been my fortune to hear. in this desperate strait my father alone preserved his coolness; the warlike spirit of the old frontiersman was roused in an instant. with lightning-like rapidity he had unhitched his team and so disposed them with our horses and the wagon as to form a sort of square, the horses and mules were tied together and to the wagon, thus avoiding the danger of their being stampeded. inside this square we placed ourselves, and levelling our rifles across the backs of our living bulwark awaited the attack. my poor mother and wife, terrified almost to the verge of insensibility, we compelled to lie down in the bottom of the wagon, and so arranged its cargo as to protect them from any stray shot which might strike it. at first it seemed that the savages intended to ride us down by sheer force of numbers, which they might easily have done; but our determined aspect and the three shining tubes aimed at them, each ready to send forth its leaden messenger of death, evidently changed their determination; for before getting within range, their headlong gallop became a moderate lope, then a walk, and they finally halted altogether. a short council followed, during which we had an excellent opportunity to observe our foes, and concert our plans for defence. father cautioned us to hold our fire until absolutely certain of our mark, and that, if possible, but one must fire at a time, as it was of the utmost importance to be prepared for a sudden dash. we examined the loading of our rifles and pistols, put on fresh caps, and with wildly beating hearts and nerves strained to their utmost tension, awaited the onslaught. our enemies now seemed to have arrived at some determination, for their consultation was at an end--an old indian who, from his dignified bearing and authoritative manner appeared to be their chief, made a sign with his hand, and spoke a few words in a loud tone. the incessant jabbering which they had kept up from the moment they halted instantly ceased, and one after another a number of young warriors, perhaps twenty, rode out in single file upon the prairie. after gaining a distance of about one hundred yards from the main body they increased the intervals separating them to some fifty paces, and then inclining the course so as to form a sort of half circle, they increased their speed and came on with the evident intention of circling round us. these manoeuvres had not escaped our notice, but neither my brother nor myself understood their import. that my father did so, however, was evident. "surround!" he muttered, the instant the movement began. "i thought they'd try it, blame their ugly picters." "now boys," he continued, "keep cool and keep your eyes skinned, don't throw away a shot, and don't fire 'till i give the word." he then explained the method of this peculiar stratagem of indian warfare. the twenty picked men were about to ride around us in a circle, at top speed, delivering flights of arrows as they passed, their object being to disconcert us and draw our fire; our guns once empty, the main body whom we observed held themselves in readiness, would ride in, and by a sudden dash, end the skirmish by our death or captivity. father's warning was delivered in far less time than it has taken to write this--and it was barely concluded before the attacking party were circling round us, uttering their vengeful war cries, and gradually drawing nearer and nearer. standing back to back, we watched their every movement, my brother and myself expecting every moment to have an opportunity to tumble one or more of the bold riders from their horses; but a few seconds showed us the futility of this. as they came within range, each indian _disappeared behind the body of his horse_. a hand grasping the withers of the horse, and a foot just showing above his back, were all that could be seen--perhaps a painted face would be seen for an instant under the horse's neck, but instantly disappearing--while the hiss of an arrow would tell that the rider had sped the shaft to its mark; the horse all the while going at full gallop. at no moment could any one of us have fired with any chance of hitting an indian. the horses we could have shot without difficulty, but this was just what our enemies wanted. could they but induce us to waste our fire upon the horses, we would soon be at their mercy. so, with an effort, we restrained our inclination to risk a shot, and watched their every movement with the cat-like vigilance of men who knew that their lives were trembling in the balance. round and round went the circle of the hunt, flight after flight of arrows whistled past us, or spent their force against the wagon, still we were unharmed; although our escapes were narrow and incessant. the mules and horses were struck repeatedly, but so tightly were they bound together with leathern thongs that not even death could separate them. as our tormentors came around for the fifth time, one of the horses stumbled and fell and rolled completely over, pitching his rider headlong upon the prairie. before he could regain his horse, father's rifle cracked and the unlucky equestrian rolled prone upon the ground with a bullet in his brain. [illustration: the capture.] "that's one less," muttered father, grimly. "i thought i'd fetch ye, ye painted varmint." "don't fire for your lives, boys," he continued, "'till i'm loaded." they were the last words he ever uttered. simultaneously with their utterance came the hiss of an indian arrow, and with a deep groan he sank to the ground. terror stricken, and with anguished hearts we raised him in our arms. alas, the deadly aim had been too true; the shaft, entering his right eye had penetrated the brain, and we saw at a glance that our dear father was no more. racked by contending emotions, we had almost forgotten our imminent peril; as we turned to confront the foe, we saw that our hesitation had been fatal; the red warriors were upon us like a living tide, and for a few seconds a wild melee followed; we battled hand to hand with the desperation of fiends; it was but for an instant; my brave brother fell covered with wounds, and his death shriek was still ringing in my ears, when i received a blow upon the head which stretched me senseless upon the ground. i seemed to experience the sensation of falling from a vast height, then came a sudden shock and all was blank. chapter iii. a strange adventure. when consciousness returned, i found myself lying on the ground, tied hand and foot with thongs of buffalo hide; i felt very sore and intensely thirsty. i had not quite yet collected my senses, and when my mind reverted to the scenes i had but just passed through, it was with a sickening sense of their horror that made me yearn for insensibility again. if i could only know what had been done with my wife; had she met the same fate as my father and brother, or was she spared--spared, and for what--to be subjected to a captivity even worse than death, perhaps? it would have been a great relief to have moved even so much as a finger, but being bound so tightly it was impossible to stir, and the thongs had in a great measure impeded the circulation, so that as i lay on my back, gazing pathetically at my feet, it seemed as if they were the appendages of another person, and that my tortures had begun by my being deprived of all that part of my body below my knees. by dint of much turning, i managed to get myself partly on my side, which proved a great relief, besides affording an opportunity to look around me and gain an idea of the state of affairs. day was just breaking, and my captors were, with the exception of the sentinel, asleep. we were on the prairie, and i at once concluded that we must have left the scene of the fight and capture; a small fire had been built, and the warrior who mounted guard was sitting with his legs crossed beneath him, seemingly gazing into the smouldering embers; there was just enough light to discern his features, and i shuddered at their repulsiveness; the hideous war paint was streaked most fantastically across his cheeks and forehead and over his body, for, with the exception of a pair of abbreviated leggings he was quite nude. his scalp-lock was adorned with a profusion of eagles' feathers, and his wrists and arms were set off with bracelets. dangling from his girdle was an object that thrilled me with anguish, as the long white hair covered here and there with dark red splashes, i knew at once to be the scalp of my dear, murdered mother. i had read of the noble red man, and like most romantic people, conceived a very touching picture of his manly beauty and majestic air. one needs but to be among them to have any such illusion dispelled. in my long residence with the tribe, i found some admirable traits, of which i will speak anon, but they had so many counterbalancing vices, that i do not think their best friends can say anything in their praise. this book is a true narrative of my capture and sufferings, and if my readers do not find running through these pages, that sentimental gush about the noble red man, that we have been taught to believe was as much their attribute as they considered scalping their prerogative, it is because i have been disabused of these ideas, by the stern reality of an existence among them. i trust this digression will be excused, but when i stroke my chin, and feel the traces of their delicate attentions, my feelings are apt to get the better of my desire to entertain. soon, however, the camp was stirring, and my friend at the fire roused himself and advanced toward me; whipping out a knife from its sheath, he cut the thongs by which i was bound, and grasping my shoulder jerked me to an upright position and motioned me to follow him. i had not proceeded far, when, emerging from the coppice on the opposite side of the bivouac, i beheld my wife advancing towards me in the custody of an indian. reader, if you can imagine meeting the being you loved best, after having supposed her cruelly butchered, you may have a faint conception of my feelings. with a little cry of joy she rushed into my outstretched arms; sobbing like an infant. this demonstration of affection seemed not to the taste of our guards; and with an ugh, we were admonished to follow them, and we were soon in the midst of a group who were dispatching their breakfast. food was offered us, of which i ate voraciously, after my long fast; not so my wife, however, who could not as yet accustom her palate to the dried buffalo meat. meantime preparations had been making to resume our journey. the horses were brought up, and in a shorter time than it takes to relate it we were under way, the party moving off in single file. i was allowed to ride my own horse, my wife following behind me on one of the mules. we were, as near as i could judge, about the centre of the party. in this fashion we proceeded during the forenoon. the prairie at this point was a succession of gentle undulations, covered with a rich velvety verdure; and, had not my present circumstances been of such a depressing character, the scene would have been inspiriting. away to the far west, as far as the eye could see, this vast billowy plain extended, broken here and there by a grove of the stately cottonwood tree, whose long trunks, and silvery foliage was a pleasing contrast to the vivid green of the prairie. at intervals i had discerned dark objects on the horizon, but, being unaccustomed to note signs with that care and attention that is characteristic of those whose life is spent on the plains, i had paid no particular attention to them. soon, however, i did observe a commotion at the head of the column, and after a brief halt and consultation among the chiefs, our speed was accelerated, and we struck into a canter. this "lope" as it is called, seems to be a gait peculiarly adapted to the mustang, as they will break into, and keep it up the entire day; evincing no more distress than our ordinary horse does in trotting leisurely. that something important was about to transpire, i felt certain, from the energetic way in which our captors spoke and gesticulated; i was not long left in doubt, as on reaching a slight eminence, a sight disclosed itself that i shall never forget; and my blood thrills even now with the remembrance of my first buffalo hunt. it may seem odd to talk of my first buffalo hunt, as the question would naturally be asked, how could a prisoner participate in a hunt; the sequel will explain. the chiefs had halted, and the rear coming up, we were soon clustered in a group on this rising ground. directly in front of us, at the distance of about three miles, i should judge, was an immense herd of buffaloes. the plain was positively black, so numerous were they. all unconscious of their foes, they were quietly grazing, while here and there a watchful old bull seemed to have stationed himself as an outpost, being in readiness, if needs were, to instantly communicate the signal of danger to the herd. it was a glorious sight; even the horses shared in the excitement, and evinced as great a desire to participate in the hunt as did their masters. presently a warrior rode out from the main body a few paces and tossed the feather. this is done to note the direction of the wind, for such is the keenness of scent possessed by these animals, that they will take the alarm and become aware of the approach of an enemy at great distances. if the drove had discovered us at this distance, our visions of fresh hump steak for supper would have resolved themselves into the dried meat of the morning. the wind being favorable, we commenced the advance; slowly at first, but gradually increasing our speed, until the horses were straining every muscle in their headlong race. lances were slung, and bows and arrows got in readiness with an ease and expertness that was truly wonderful, considering our rapid riding. the bridles were dropped on the necks of the mustangs, the riders using their knees both as a steering apparatus and a means of holding on. as near as i could understand, our guard was to keep as close to the hunters as was consistent with our safety, without joining in the fun. everything went on smoothly, and we had approached to within a half mile of the herd before they noticed us. soon, however, the old bulls scented the party, and with a snort and plunge they tore headlong towards the head of the drove, communicating the alarm as they ran. with a yell the savages dashed on, horse and rider worked up to the highest pitch of excitement; arrows began to fly, and here and there a cow would fall, or an enraged bull goaded to fury by a wound rush madly at his enemy, evidently bent on revenge of a most sanguinary character. our little party kept on the flank of the advancing drove, and our escort seemed to find it very irksome doing duty as guards, as with oft-repeated ughs! plainly expressive of disgust, they deprecated the luck that had singled _them_ out to perform such womanly duty. suddenly, and with kaleidoscopic rapidity, the aspect of affairs was changed; for some unknown reason and without apparent cause, the buffaloes made a flank movement, and in a twinkling were dashing right toward us; the mustangs, warned by experience, turned and ran as if their lives were at stake, as they certainly were; and the mule on which my wife was mounted, with an imitation that did her great credit, followed their example. my horse, being unused to such scenes, seemed to lose his senses, and stood looking at the advancing animals in the most abject terror. realizing at a glance my position, and feeling that instant action was demanded, i turned his head, and by word and heel urged him to run. on came these black brutes, sweeping over the ground like an animated hurricane. my poor horse was laboring fearfully, and i knew that our destruction was a matter of a few moments time only. suddenly my horse stumbled and flung me headlong to the ground, then all was bewilderment. i have an indistinct notion of lying on the prairie, and then like a great black wave, this surging mass of buffaloes seem to hover over me; i was conscious of a sharp and severe pain in my side, and then of being suddenly lifted into space. when sufficiently collected to note my position, i found myself on the back of a huge buffalo bull, who, unaccustomed to this strange weight, was making frantic endeavors to clear himself of the herd, which were wedged together with as much compactness as if they were one animal. if i had chosen to fall to the ground, it would have been impossible to do so; but as such a feat would have been almost instant death, my readers will easily understand i had no intention of trying the experiment. i turned my attention exclusively to seating myself firmly on my novel steed, and grasping my hands into the shaggy hair which covered his shoulders, braced myself for the most thrilling ride i had ever experienced. after a few violent plunges the bull cleared the herd, and tore at tremendous speed; on, on until objects lost their character, and all seemed to be an indistinct haze. the buffalo had by this time carried me some distance from the main body, and was beginning to show signs of fatigue. if i was going to leave him, this was my opportunity; and quietly loosening my hold, i slipped off his rump on to the ground, and betook myself in an opposite direction as fast as i could go, and it was with feelings of relief and thankfulness that i had escaped so luckily from my first and only buffalo ride. chapter iv. again a prisoner. footsore and weary i wandered over the prairie, straining my eyes in every direction in the vain hope of beholding the white-topped wagons of the train. my late involuntary journey had borne me far to the southward; and, although my rapid progress had given me but little opportunity for observation, still i was convinced that the direction in which i had traveled was likely to bring me in the track of the prairie caravans. i was not without apprehension of again falling in with my late captors, and hardly knew whether i dreaded or desired it; fully realizing that i had nothing to look forward to in that event but torture and death. still i felt that to see once again the sweet face of my beloved i would risk every peril, even though i was helpless to aid her, and to witness her sufferings would only add to the poignant anguish that tortured me. racked by these thoughts, and with a despairing heart, i walked steadily on. the day was now far spent, and i was beginning to experience the pangs of hunger, for i had eaten nothing since early morning; but i suffered far more from thirst, and for hours searched eagerly for water; scanning the horizon in every direction for a sight of the fringe-like foliage, of the cottonwood trees. stiff and sore from my confinement of the night previous, and suffering intensely from the wound on my head, which had been entirely neglected, my progress grew slower, and when night settled over the prairie my search was still unsuccessful; and without food, water, or shelter, i sank exhausted to the earth. after a time sleep gave me a welcome oblivion; but my rest was disturbed by troubled dreams, and the dawn found me but little refreshed. it was barely daylight when i again started. i felt weak and dizzy; and the conviction, forced itself upon me that i must find food and water before many hours, or perish--my life depended on my finding water--and notwithstanding my intense suffering, it was absolutely necessary to push forward in my search. my thoughts were momentarily diverted by a number of graceful animals that were advancing towards me; when within about two hundred yards, they became affrighted and wheeling around scampered away, running toward a clump of trees not far distant; entering this grove, they disappeared from sight. i had heard many tales about this graceful little animal, the antelope; and among other things remembered, that to the weary and thirsty hunter traversing these boundless plains, their presence was a sure indication that water was not far distant; if these tales were true, why then there was every probability that i might slake my burning thirst, which now had become agonizing torture, from some rivulet within the recesses of that wood; animated by this thought i limped on with renewed energy. what had seemed so near to my vision was in reality quite distant, as i found in my endeavor to reach it; for the sun had begun to decline behind the horizon when i reached the belt of timber. entering this leafy solitude, i had not advanced many steps when my ears were gladdened by the sound of running water. with an exclamation of joy i ran to the banks of the arroyo (as by this name these little streams are called), and, falling on my knees, was drinking with that intense eagerness that is known only by those who, like myself, have felt the delirium of thirst. i was about to rise refreshed, when my gaze was riveted by a reflected image on the bosom of the creek that curdled the blood in my veins, and paralyzed me with terror; it was the image of a hideous indian, bending over me with uplifted hand grasping a long, gleaming knife. i jumped up with a terrified scream, only to find myself in the rough grasp of a brawny savage, and completely at his mercy. with a malicious leer he motioned me to accompany him. feeling sick at heart, and drooping under the weight of my new misfortune, i was led through the tangled undergrowth, and after a walk of about fifteen minutes, we emerged into a small clearing, where i found myself in the midst of a large party of indians. my advent created no little excitement, and i was soon the centre of a circle of curious savages, who were more persistent than pleasing in their attentions. i saw at once that i had again fallen into the hands of the same party by whom i was first captured; for among those who clustered around me, i recognized the old chief who had directed the attack upon us. he approached me in a menacing manner, and uttered some words in the indian tongue. from his gestures i could guess at his meaning, and understood that he was threatening me for my supposed attempt to escape. he then gave some order, and i was instantly seized and conducted to the foot of a large tree; my guards then bound me with a lariat and left me to my own reflections. my first thought was of my wife; and as i had managed to place myself in a sitting posture against the tree, i was enabled to observe all that was passing, and to scan closely the groups around the camp fires. a few moments satisfied me that if in the camp, she was not visible; and left me a prey to many horrid imaginings. the savages were mostly seated around the fires, roasting meat over the embers and eating it greedily, an occupation of which they never seemed to tire; some were renewing the paint upon their bodies, and the grotesque striping and mottling showed in fantastic hues in the red and glaring light; some were smoking curious looking pipes of carved stones; all were chattering, laughing and gesticulating like so many children. for a brief period i contemplated this wild scene with interest; but it soon grew monotonous, and my mind painfully reverted to my perilous position. in satisfying the greater desire for water, i had for a time forgotten my craving for food, but it now returned upon me with redoubled force. the indians had evidently forgotten that even prisoners must eat, and i concluded that it was best to call their attention to my necessities; by a shout i attracted the attention of one of the warriors who was passing near me, and when he approached, i succeeded by gestures in making him understand my wants. uttering a guttural ugh! and slapping his stomach he walked away, but returned in a few moments with a huge chunk of half cooked buffalo meat which he threw down before me, and unbinding my hands motioned me to eat. i did not need a second invitation, but fell to at once, and devoured it with such voracity, that my indian friend seemed both astonished and amused. when i had finished he brought me water in a gourd, and again securing my hands, bound me fast to the tree and left me once more to myself. fatigued by the hardships of the last two days, i soon fell asleep, and knew no more until i was awakened by a rough hand grasping my shoulder, and on opening my eyes saw that it was daybreak, and the band were preparing to move. ten minutes later i found myself mounted on a wiry looking mustang, securely tied, and my horse led at the end of a lariat by the same indian who had brought me food the evening previous. looking about me, my eyes were soon gladdened by the sight of my wife, mounted behind an indian warrior; she saw me at the same instant, and with a cry of joy strove to break her bonds and rush to my embrace; it was a vain effort, and only resulted in her receiving a blow from her savage custodian, which cowed her into silence. my feelings at this juncture can be better imagined than described; but i could do nothing but endure as best i might, and hope that a day of reckoning would yet come, in which i should bitterly avenge all the wrongs i had experienced at the hands of the brutal savage, called in books, the "noble red man." for the present, there was nothing but submission and hope. i now saw to my surprise that we were not alone in our misfortune, many other captives, principally women and children, were with the party. from their costume i saw that they must be mexicans, and at once concluded that the indians had been on one of their periodical raids upon the mexican frontier, and were on their return when they had accidentally fallen in with our little party. evidently but a part of the band had taken part in our capture, for the attacking party were less than one hundred in number, while i now counted over four hundred warriors. the chances of escape seemed more unlikely than ever; and my heart sank as i observed their formidable array. i must pass briefly over the incidents of our journey for several days following. we passed through a widely diversified country, and in spite of my mental and physical sufferings, i was greatly interested in its strange scenery. we passed over wide stretches of prairie, dotted here and there by mottes of timber, rising like islands from the sea-like plain; we threaded tortuous defiles of the mountains; and crawled, rather than rode, through terrific _caã±ons_, whose perpendicular walls of many colored rock, rising to the height of thousands of feet, shrouded the narrow pass in majestic gloom. at times we suffered greatly for food and water; making one stretch of sixty miles across the desert, and reaching its border in a state or utter exhaustion. on the seventh day after my recapture we climbed a low mountain range, and on reaching the crest saw before us a deep valley, walled in on every side by towering cliffs of milk-white-quartz; its surface was level, or nearly so; through its centre a crystal line indicated the presence of a small stream. a dense forest of pine fringed it on three sides; vast herds of horses and cattle roamed over the plain, and cropped its luxuriant herbage. the valley was elliptical in form, and measured perhaps twelve miles in length by four or five in width; at its upper extremity a group of strange looking structures were visible, of many forms and sizes; one towering far above the rest had the appearance of a huge pyramid. from the joyful exclamations of the indians i felt confident that our journey was nearly at an end. the tired mustangs were urged forward, and half an hour later we entered a defile, passed round the face of the cliff on a narrow ledge of rock, where two could not ride abreast, and emerged upon a platform from whence an easy descent led to the plain below. on reaching its grassy surface, the indians set forward at full speed, uttering loud yells of delight and exultation; and we could perceive many forms hastening down the valley to meet us. the intervening space was quickly passed, and we soon stood among the strange barbaric structures which form the chief town of the camanches. the captives were halted before the pyramidal building, which, from its great size and peculiar appearance, i supposed to be the council house, or the dwelling of the chief. i afterwards learned that it was the temple, where they worship and sacrifice to the sun-god; for, like all the southern indians, descendants of the ancient aztecs, the camanches worship the sun and fire. but little time however, was given me for observation or reflection. i was rudely jerked from my horse, and with the other male captives led into one of the smaller lodges. descending a rude ladder, we were placed in an underground apartment, and after being supplied with a scanty allowance of food, were again bound and left to silence and darkness. again separated from my wife, and knowing but too well what treatment she would be likely to receive at the hands of the red demons, flushed with victory and spoil, i abandoned myself to the most gloomy reflections, which continued for many hours, until tardy sleep relieved me for a time from my self-imposed torture. chapter v. the indian town. how long i should have lain in this semi-comatose state i know not, had i not been aroused by the indian who seemed to have been appointed my particular guard. bringing me a portion of _tasajo_ and an _olla_ of water, he placed them on the ground beside me, and removing the thongs from my wrists left me to dispatch my unpalatable food as best i might; at noon, and in the evening, he repeated the performance. with the exception of this interruption i was left to my thoughts. my reflections were of the bitterest and most gloomy nature. from my previous knowledge of the habits and characteristics of my captors i was assured that my fate was sealed; and my death only a matter of time. these savages only captured male prisoners the better to enjoy their destruction. what astonished me most was that they had not put me to the torture on their arrival at the village. the fate of my poor wife was the profoundest mystery to me, as i had not seen or heard of her since our parting on entering the indian town. while i was being conducted to my prison she was hurried off to the other end of the village. the darkening gloom of my chamber informed me of the approach of night; and recognizing how important it was for me to secure all the repose possible, i prepared to retire. the preparations were of the simplest character; my feet being bound it was only necessary to stretch my form along the ground and i was in bed. i courted sleep with persistent endeavor; but my mind was a prey to such agonizing reflections that the drowsy god held himself aloof. i counted backwards, rolled my eyes from side to side in their sockets, and resorted to all the devices known to me, but with indifferent success. all through the night the howling of the village dogs, the wild note of the swan, and the dismal whoops of the gruya, could be heard; and it is very difficult even under circumstances more favorable than those in which i was then placed to sleep with these noises ringing in one's ears. later, when a long residence with the tribe had made me familiar with these sounds, and their causes, i was not unfrequently startled by them. my imagination was constantly dwelling on my approaching fate; and i am sure i suffered enough mental agony to suffice for a score of physical deaths. the next morning my keeper made his entry, this time without any food for me, and i was at once struck by his altered looks; he was oiled, and streaked with paint, from the crown of his head to his waist; his head dress was composed of eagles' plumes stained red, and his limbs were encased in buckskin leggings, the seams of which were fringed with long locks of hair, which attested to his prowess, as they were composed of scalp-locks taken from the heads of his enemies slain in battle; the feet were encased in moccasins, embroidered with beads and the quills of the porcupine dyed in various colors; from his neck was suspended a collar, made of the tusks of the javali; his tomahawk hung gracefully from his waist, and a fine robe of jaguar-skins draped his back. such a costume i felt sure was only worn on state occasions; and his presence filled me with apprehensions. i was not long held in suspense, for stooping over me he quickly cut my fastenings, and motioning me to rise i was presently conducted up the ladder and out into the village street. emerging from the darkness into the bright sunlight, i was at first unable to distinguish objects, but as soon as my eyes became accustomed to the glare, i was struck with astonishment at the scene of bustle and activity that met my gaze. indian women, children, dogs and braves, were hurrying to and fro, seemingly intent on business of a most pressing and important character. my appearance was the signal for a succession of howls and yah! yahs! from the assembled crowd. the women clustered around me and gave expression to their hate in kicks, pinches and jeers; even the dogs snapped at my heels. after a walk of a few minutes, we cleared the skirts of the village, and shaping our course towards the river that ran through the centre of the valley, i was soon among a crowd of other captives. they were composed of mexicans, chiefly, and all bore evidence of the struggle they had passed through, before yielding up their liberty; their clothes were torn, disclosing here and there ugly gashes, from which the blood had not yet ceased to ooze. one man among them especially attracted my attention. he was dressed in the costume of the mountain trapper, and his fur cap, fitting closely to his head, was a fit accompaniment to his tunic and leggings of dressed deerskin; his face had a peculiar expression which i could not account for, until i discovered that he had only one eye. at this time an indian advanced toward us, bearing in his arms a quantity of small stakes; i was at loss to understand what was to transpire, when i heard my one-eyed companion mutter under his breath, "drat 'em, they be a goin' to stake us." sure enough this was their intention; seizing us one by one, they stretched us on the turf in three files, the heads of one file resting between the feet of the row above him; driving the stakes firmly into the ground, they fastened thongs of raw hide to our wrists and ankles, and passing them around the pins, drew our feet and arms out to their utmost tension, making our joints fairly crack. pinioned in this way, our heads were the only moveable parts of our bodies, and our upturned faces had the full benefit of the sun's rays, being subjected at the same time to attacks of swarms of insects. this torture was so very painful that many fainted, but the women soon brought the victims to consciousness by dashing an olla of water in their faces, and with yells of delight witnessed the renewal of the poor fellows' agonies. i was so completely disguised in dirt, that the flies seemed to pass me by in despair; and being thus in a measure relieved, i turned my attention to my companion on my right, the trapper. he seemed to be taking things very quietly, and evinced great patience and fortitude under his trials. the squaws were particularly attentive to him; and at the time i turned my head in his direction, two hags were amusing themselves sticking sharp pointed sticks into his body; he bore it manfully, but i saw tears of agony streaming from under his eyelids. presently the air was filled with yells and whoops; our tormentors rushed off pell-mell, the guards only remaining. i asked what was the meaning of this new outbreak; to which the trapper replied that he supposed it was caused by the arrival of a new lot of those "gosh darned red niggers." deeming this a good opportunity, i questioned him as to the intentions of our captors; to which he replied that we would be kept staked out in this barbarous way until the games and feasting, with which they always celebrated successful forays, had been completed; and then we would be put to torture and death. "how will they kill us?" i asked. "o, darn 'em, the varmints have as many ways as i have fingers and toes, to knock the life out of a chap; they most allus makes us run the gantlet, leastwise the kimanch does; but ye see, they air such mighty unsartin niggers, they does a'most enything but what yer expect them ter." "will we have to remain in this position until the indians are ready to torture us?" i asked. "'spect so," briefly answered my neighbor. the guard was now nearing us, and we remained silent. the feasting and festivities had now begun. we were unfastened and removed to the centre of the village, where a dance was about to begin. our feet were still bound, but we could assume a sitting posture; thus situated, i saw for the first time the _mamanchic_. the young girls only take part in this celebration; they go through a number of graceful and intricate evolutions, finishing by forming in a semi-circle around the chief and his queen, who are seated on a terrace of the temple. i was so much more interested in trying to discover my wife among the numerous lookers on, that i paid no special attention to the dance. the performance having come to an end, we were again staked out, and our captors returned to their feasting, slaughtering fresh cattle to satisfy the demands of their appetites. our wants were not so well supplied. the next morning the games were renewed; this time we were taken out on the prairie to witness the feats of horsemanship, performed by the braves and their visitors. these were very fine, and for the time being i forgot my own position in the interest excited in the daring feats of these children of the plains. they rode their horses at top speed; vaulting on their backs and discharging arrows with as much apparent ease as if they stood still. they went through all the evolutions of indian warfare, and ended with a mock battle; their yells alone would have dismayed an ordinary adversary. thirsty and tired, i and my companions were led back to our old position and again securely fastened. turning to black, i said that i supposed they would open the festivities to-morrow with our torture and death; to which he replied that he "'spected they would." at least i thought, it will only be another species of torture, and we would be quickly released from it by death. our guard now brought us some water and burnt meat, of which we were allowed to partake. the thongs are again tightened; our guards move among us to see that all is secure; and the sentinel for the evening watch having been detailed, we are left to silence and our own thoughts--thoughts of our approaching doom, and perhaps of the loved ones far away in some mexican border town, whose unavailing prayers are being offered up for our safety. filled with these emotions, some poor fellow would give expression to his pent-up feelings in a long drawn sigh; the only sound that broke upon the stillness of the night. the moon's beams penetrated into the valley; the argent rays shedding a soft and subdued light, as they pierced the mist that was rising from the river. i knew that death was our portion, but little did i dream that on such scenes such awful morn should rise. chapter vi. the torture. another morning dawned; again we were brought forth, and from the information gained from the old trapper, i knew that our time for action had come. lying in a group on the green sward, we watched the movements of our enemies with painful interest. our hands and feet were bound, but we were not otherwise secured, and were therefore enabled to sit up and look around us; we saw that the indians were divested of every superfluous article of dress or ornament, that their movements might be light and unimpeded. we saw them enter the woods and return with clubs freshly cut from the trees, an ominous indication of the fate in store for us. to the number of several hundred the savages had gathered upon the plain, and were arranging the preliminaries for their fiendish sport. we watched their preparations with a peculiar interest; at length all seemed in readiness--two rows of indians stretched along the plain for a distance of about three hundred yards--all were armed with clubs, and stood facing each other; an interval of three or four paces separating the ranks. between these lines we had to run and receive blows in passing, from all who were quick enough to hit us. we were told that if any of our number achieved the apparently impossible feat of passing the entire line, and could reach the foot of the cliff without being overtaken that our lives would be spared. i asked the old trapper if he believed this. "not by a durn sight," was his reply; "its all a cussed injun lie, just to make us do our puttiest; they'll roast us all the same, blast 'em." i was satisfied that the promise was of no value, even if they should adhere to it; for the fleetest runner could never pass the lines. several of the warriors now approached us, and untied one of the mexicans; he was to run first. although an athletic and active specimen of his race, he was quickly disposed of; running barely ten paces before he was stretched senseless, and brought back helpless and bleeding, while the air resounded with the wild yells of the savage bystanders. three of the other captives soon met the same fate, and then it came my turn; i was unbound and led forward and stood awaiting the signal to begin the terrible race. within a few moments a wild scheme had formed itself in my mind, and although fully realizing its desperate nature, i had determined to make the effort, even if i perished in the attempt. i had noticed that, with the exception of those forming the lines between which i was to run, the indians all stood _behind_ me; and for a considerable space around me the ground was entirely clear. my plan was to start as if with the intention of entering the lane of savages, but to suddenly diverge to the right or left, as might seem most expedient, and run directly down the valley, with the hope that i might be able to reach the dense and tangled forest which fringed it, and conceal myself in its recesses until i could find some way out of my rock-environed prison. as i look back at it _now_, i can only wonder that i should have had the hardihood to attempt it. not an indian among the hundreds around but knew well all the paths and windings of the wooded borders of the valley, even supposing that i were fortunate enough to reach it; but that was improbable. among so many it was likely there would be several able to outstrip me in speed, fast runner as i deemed myself; and if overtaken, i could expect nothing but more cruel treatment than i had yet experienced. besides, although i did not know it at the time, the valley had but two entrances, and these were constantly guarded by a watchful picket. but at the time i thought of none of these things--"drowning men will catch at straws," says the old adage--and my hastily formed plan seemed to me to promise success. having formed my resolution i was necessitated to put it in practice at once. the indians were already impatient for another victim, and the signal being given i started on my race for life at the top of my speed. at first i ran directly for the living lane, where my enemies waited with poised clubs each eager to strike the first blow, but as i neared it i made a sudden break to the right, and gathering all my energies for one mighty effort, i broke through a group of old men and idlers who were watching the sport. despite their efforts to intercept me i cleared them in an instant, and ran down the valley with the whole yelling mob at my heels. some half dozen of my pursuers being swifter of foot forged ahead of their comrades, but they did not seem to gain upon me, and for a time it seemed that i would distance them entirely; but i had overestimated my strength, and to my alarm found myself growing weak, and running heavily and with painful effort. i had now, however, nearly reached the timber, and strained every nerve to gain its welcome shadow; looking back, i saw that one of my pursuers was within two hundred yards of me, and gaining rapidly; straining every nerve, i kept up my headlong pace, but when within fifty paces of the woods and with my enemy but little further behind me, i tripped and fell, and had barely time to spring to my feet before he was upon me; he was entirely unarmed, having thrown away his club during the chase. as he rushed upon me, i met him with a blow from my fist, delivered with all the force of which i was capable. striking him directly under the chin, it knocked him completely off his feet, and he measured his length upon the grass. i turned with a spring, and was about to plunge into the thicket, when the dense undergrowth parted directly before me, and i stood face to face with an indian of gigantic size and most singular appearance. for a moment i was completely paralyzed; not so my new opponent. realizing the situation at a glance, he sprang upon me, and bore me to the ground with scarcely an effort. emerging from the lethargy which had enthralled me for a moment, i struggled frantically to free myself, but in vain. several others had now come up, and my fallen antagonist, who had been stunned for a moment, recovered himself, with his temper not at all improved by the rough handling he had received, and snatching a knife from the belt of one of the new comers, aimed a blow at me which would have ended my life on the instant, and prevented this narrative from being written. my captor seized his arm, and rebuked him so sternly, that he slunk away abashed. i was then allowed to rise to my feet, and my hands being bound, the huge indian, who seemed to be in authority, and of whom the others evidently stood in awe consigned me to the custody of two warriors, and dismissing the rest with a wave of his hand, again disappeared in the thicket. led between my two guards, i was soon taken back to the village, followed by an excited crowd of indians, who showed a disposition to handle me pretty roughly, but their unwelcome attentions were prevented by my conductors who pushed rapidly through the crowd, and soon reached the lodge in which i had previously been confined. i was soon reinstalled in my gloomy prison, and after tying me in the usual manner, my attendants left me to solitude and misery. bitterly disappointed by the failure of my daring scheme at the very moment when it seemed to promise success, my thoughts were the reverse of pleasant; and when my mind reverted to the fate of my wife, i suffered such mental agony, as i pray that you, kind reader, may never know. another night passed, and remembering the words of the old trapper, i awoke filled with the conviction that it was to be my last day on earth. the usual scanty meal was supplied to me, and about an hour later i was again brought forth upon the plain. i was soon among my companions in misfortune, and like them securely tied to stakes; but allowed to sit upright, as if the red demons wished us to fully observe the preparations now going forward. [illustration: the torture.] upon the level plain facing the temple, and at a short distance from it, scores of brawny savages were busily engaged planting firmly in the ground a row of massive posts; they were arranged in a semi-circle, and were about twenty in number. we saw many of the indians go to the woods, tomahawk in hand; we heard the sounds of chopping, and saw them return with bundles of faggots; we saw them fastening curiously fashioned chains of copper to the posts; we observed them painting their faces and bodies in hideous stripes of red and black. it was a scene of fearful import, for we knew but too well that it was the prelude to the torture. what were my companions' reflections i knew not, for they spoke but little. but the set and stern expression that showed itself on every face, told me plainly that they fully realized the terrible drama in which they were to be the principal actors. the appearance of all was ghastly in the extreme. travel-stained, covered with dust, and with spots of dried blood, some showing fresh and bleeding wounds--souvenirs of yesterday's rough sport--our clothing torn and disarranged, we were indeed objects of pity, calculated to excite commiseration in the breasts of any others than the brutal and sanguinary wretches who were about to put us to a terrible death. as for me, my brain was on fire; and could i but have freed myself from my bonds i would gladly have sought instant death at the hands of the nearest savage, rather than to longer endure the ever present torture of mind, and the not more acute physical suffering which i was soon to undergo. at last their preparations seemed completed, and the audience assembled. camanches and apaches alike gathered before the temple, forming a vast semi-circle. the terraces of the temple were occupied by the older men, and upon its summit were seated a group of men in strange costumes, the priests of quetzalcoatl. directly in front of the temple a sort of throne had been erected, and upon it sat the aged chief, with his subordinates grouped around him. an old indian of most repulsive aspect, seemed to direct the proceedings, assisted by about a hundred of the younger warriors. a number approached us, we were released from our fastenings and led forward; our ragged garments were soon stripped from our bodies, and with dextrous rapidity we were bound singly to the stakes already prepared for us. to the hour of my death i can never forget that scene. for years it haunted me, and even now, at times i start from my sleep with a cry of terror as i fancy i see again that mob of yelling, painted demons, the crowded terraces of the temple gay with the bright colors of barbaric costumes, the little band of doomed captives, the fagots, stakes, and all the terrible instruments of death. back of all, the snow white cliffs, fringed with the dark green foliage of the pines, and heaven's sunshine falling over all, as if in mockery of the awful tragedy about to be enacted. i wake--and shuddering, thank god that it is only a dream. but it was all too real then. at a signal from their leader the savage executioners heaped the fagots around us, placing them at a sufficient distance to insure the prolongation of our sufferings, so that we might die slowly, and afford them ample time to fully enjoy our agonies. the fires were lighted, and the smoke rolled up in volumes, and threatened to suffocate us and put a speedy end to our torments. in a few seconds however, as the wood got fairly blazing, the smoke lifted, and as we began to writhe in agony, a yell of delight went up from more than three thousand savage throats. the heat grew more intense; my skin was scorched and blistered; dizzy and faint, i felt that the end was near, and longed for death as a speedy escape from such terrible pain. some of my companions, rendered frantic by their sufferings, gave vent to screams of anguish; others endured in silence. mustering all my fortitude, as yet not a sound had escaped me; i had closed my eyes, and was fervently praying for the relief which i knew death must soon give me, when i was startled by a wild cry, followed by a yell of astonishment from the savage spectators. opening my eyes i saw the same gigantic indian who had recaptured me on the day previous, making his way rapidly through the crowd, who fell back to right and left with precipitate haste. rushing directly towards me he scattered the blazing brands, released me as quick as thought, and dragged me to the front of the temple, while the air resounded with the yells and exclamations of the indians. raising his hand he hushed them into silence, and uttered a few words in the camanche tongue; their meaning was lost upon me; i could only distinguish the word "quetzalcoatl," which i knew to be the name of their god. but the revulsion of feeling, and the terrible ordeal through which i had passed, proved too much for my exhausted frame; i swooned and sank insensible to the earth. [illustration] chapter vii. wa-ko-met-kla. the indian to whom i owed my life a second time, and who had braved the wrath of the fiends to snatch me from a death, in comparison to which all others pale into insignificance, the tried friend, whose friendship stood as a shield between me and petty persecution during my captivity, i shall ever hold in grateful remembrance. to him i owe the only hours of contentment that were vouchsafed me during seven years of existence; seven long years of toil and mental anguish. how can i picture to the imagination of my readers the noble qualities of head and heart with which this child of nature was endowed? he was a rough diamond, and it was only by the attrition of constant intercourse that his best qualities displayed themselves. physically he was perfect; his movements were instinct with that grace and ease that are the attributes of those alone whose lives have been spent in the cultivation of all exercises that look to the development of the muscles. how vividly his image presents itself to my mind as i write; his body, which was nude to the waist, except on occasions, when religious observances demanded peculiar attire, was streaked most fantastically with different colored pigments. the head-dress, that consisted of two war eagles' plumes, one dyed vermilion, the other its natural hue, served only the more to distinguish a head that would have been conspicuous in any company. suspended from his neck by a massive chain hung a disc of beaten gold, on which was rudely engraved the figure of a tortoise, the symbol of priesthood. pendants of gold depended from either ear, and his arms were encircled above the elbow with broad gold bands. the limbs were encased in leggings of dressed fawn skin, ornamented along the seams with a fringe of scalp-locks; a guarantee of his personal bravery. moccasins worked into grotesque designs with beads and porcupine quills covered his feet. pervading all like an intangible essence was that ever present frank bearing and dignified courtesy, that at once marked him as a chieftain and ruler among men. such was the medicine man of the camanches and the high-priest of quetzalcoatl, wakometkla. with returning consciousness, i found myself extended along the sward, the indian kneeling by my side and holding in the palm of his hand some crushed bark, of a peculiarly pungent and aromatic odor. clustered around me were a group of savages, who, judging by their menacing looks and excited gestures were not wholly pleased with the new turn which affairs had taken. one among them, emboldened perhaps by the unconcern of the chief, approached more nearly, and unsheathing his knife, raised the long, glittering, and murderous looking blade in mid air, preparatory to burying it hilt deep in my unresisting body. in a moment wakometkla was on his feet, his proud form dilating with wrath. grasping the culprit by the throat, he hurled him from him with tremendous force, sending him reeling through the crowd and to the ground; then turning to those that remained, he administered a sharp rebuke and motioned them away; they dispersed without delay, leaving me alone once more; the priest, meantime having entered the temple. i could distinctly hear the crackling of the fagots and the agonizing wail of some poor victim, as the greedy flames, leaping higher and higher devoured his quivering flesh. intermingling with the groans of the dying captives could be heard the triumphant yells of the blood-thirsty savages, which were echoed by the women that everywhere filled the terraces of the lodges and temple; their bright-hued robes forming a striking contrast with their dark complexions. over this scene of butchery shone the sun, which had now reached its zenith, in all its unclouded brilliancy; the mountainous walls of milky quartz that enclosed the valley, catching his beams and reflecting them in myriad prismatic hues, that gave one the impression that he was in some enchanted domain. the priest soon returned accompanied by a young girl, who bore in her arms a quantity of roots and strips of long bark, and placing them on the ground at my feet commenced applying them, first the leaves, then the bark, to my limbs. soon i was swathed and bandaged like a mummy; which operation being performed, i was taken in their arms and carried inside the temple. descending a ladder we entered a darkened chamber, the walls of which were hung with robes and curious devices; passing through this room i was conducted to an inner apartment which was partitioned off by a curtain of buffalo robes. in the corner of this room was a couch on which i was placed. after giving the girl some brief directions, the priest left us, the girl following him, after having brought me an earthen vessel filled with a dark liquid, which i understood by her gestures i was to drink. such was the magical effect of the leaves in which my burned limbs were bound, that i no longer felt any pain, and taking a deep draught of the liquid, i was soon asleep. i must have slept many hours, for on awakening i found that it had grown quite dark, the only light being supplied by a small bluish flame that was dimly burning on a tripod in the center of the room. my attention was attracted by the peculiar furniture--if such it might be called--of this strange place. the walls are hung with hideous shapes and skins of wild beasts; in which ever way i turn, i am attracted by odd shapes, such as the fierce visage of the grizzly bear, the white buffalo and panther; while interspersed among the horns of the cimmaron, elk and bison, are grim idols carved from the red claystone of the desert. all these, i feel sure, are the symbols of a horrid and mystic religion. the fumes of the charcoal begin to affect me, my head grows hot; the pulse beats quicker; i fancy i hear strange noises; i think there are animals moving on the stone pavement; the fitful flame discloses a shining object, whose sinuous and gliding movements betrays the presence of the dreaded _crotalus_; it approaches my bed; its bead-like eyes glittering with a baleful light. my terror and excitement have now become agonizing; the veins stand out upon my forehead like whip cords; i am bathed in a cold perspiration. making a mighty endeavor, i free my feet from the thongs that bind them, and springing from the bed, rush wildly towards the center of the room. once the sacred fire is reached, i can partially protect myself by scattering the glowing coals on the floor, and fight the reptiles with what they dread the most. in leaving the couch my foot becomes entangled, i give a sudden jerk, and to my horror and dismay, pull down a section of the fur-covered wall; a sight discloses itself that curdles the blood in my veins and thrills my frame with a paralyzing honor. _i have disturbed a nest of huge serpents!_ they move; uncoil themselves, and join the _crotalus_; suddenly the room seems alive with the venomous creatures. i hear the dreaded rattle and the sibilant hiss; rushing toward the fire, i seize the tripod and dash it to the ground, scattering the glowing embers in every direction. my fright becomes terrible, and i imagine the monsters are crawling over my body. with the frenzy of despair i rush to the door that leads out of this chamber of horrors, all the while uttering the most fearful shrieks. in a twinkling i am confronted by indians, bearing lighted torches; taking in the situation at a glance, they enter the apartment, chase the serpents back to their hiding places, while i am hurried away to less disagreeable quarters. i have passed through many thrilling adventures, but for unparalleled horror, this one was without its peer. the following morning, i was taken into the presence of the priest. that something of unusual moment was about to transpire, i felt sure, from the general air and appearance of those in the room. wakometkla was seated on a throne, around him were grouped a number of chiefs in all the bravery of war paint, plumes and robes. it was the council chamber, and i was about to go through the ceremony of adoption into the tribe. it might have been interesting had i understood their tongue, but as it was, i played the part of a puppet. the profoundest silence reigned throughout the apartment, and the gray dawn, stealing in through the door of the lodge, pervaded the room and made it colder and more desolate than before. a chief advanced to my side, and muttering something in which i could only distinguish the words "americano" and "quetzalcoatl," led me to the foot of the dais. wakometkla arose and addressed me at length; then the warriors formed in a circle and moved around me, accompanying their movements with a wild sort of chant. a young boy and girl, standing on one side supplied the music, using for this purpose an indian drum, which produced a monotonous but rhythmic sound. this ceremony over, i am again led out and my clothes stripped from my back; substituting in their stead leggings and moccasins only. my body is then besmeared with paint and oil. my hair is shaved with _scalping knives_, leaving only a small ridge on my head, that ran from my forehead to my neck. thus disguised and regenerated, i am again led into the presence of the chief, who embraces me, and waving his arm a young warrior advances with a necklace, shield, bow and quiver, tomahawk and lance; these are given to me in addition to a tobacco pouch filled with _k'neck k'nick_, the indian substitute for tobacco. thus accoutered, i am once more placed in the center of a circle, this time outside of the lodge; a small piece of turf is removed and the savages again commence their incantations. the dance is exceedingly grotesque, and consists of a series of yells, jumps and jarring gutterals, which are sometimes truly terrifying. every step has its meaning, and every dance its peculiar song. when one becomes fatigued by the exercises, he signifies it by bending quite forward and sinking his body towards the ground, then withdraws from the circle; when all have retired in this manner the dance is ended, and all that remains to make me one of them is _branding_. during these ceremonies, i often wondered why i should have been singled out for adoption, when there were others who would, in my opinion have answered their purposes so much better; the mexicans, for instance, with whose language they were familiar, would have been more serviceable; again, why should they take anyone into the tribe? later, all this was explained. it seems that the medicine man is averse to initiating any of his _own_ people into the secrets and hocus-pocus of his art, as the apprentice, with the knowledge thus gained, might in time become a formidable rival. by adopting a captive this risk is obviated, as under no circumstances could he aspire to the honors of priesthood. in the event of his escape, the only damage would be the loss of an experienced assistant. from this time i was always addressed by my new name tah-teck-a-da-hair (the steep wind), probably from the fact that i outstripped my pursuers in my vain effort at escape. i was allowed to roam at will through the village, but i noticed that wherever i went, watchful eyes followed my every motion. i was actuated in my rambles solely by the desire to see my wife; vain effort. i entered lodge after lodge, climbed from terrace to terrace, but my patient and loving endeavor was unrewarded. fatigued, and with a desponding heart, i retraced my steps towards the temple. morning once more dawns; it is the hour of worship; groups may be seen at the doors of the different lodges; they separate, some incline their course to the river, where sparkling waters are just discernible, as the blue mist, that during the night had hung over the valley, rises upward. filling their _ollas_ they return, carrying the earthen vessels on their heads. others may be seen wending their way to the temple; i, among others ascend; arriving at the top, i find a number already congregated there; they make way for me, showing a deference as new as it is unexpected. i have a fine view of the village, and what an odd look it has; what strange structures meet my view; some are one, others two, three, and even four stories in height; they resemble pyramids with a piece of the top cut off; each upper story is smaller than that below it; the lower one serving as a terrace for the one above, and thus up to the top. the clay of which they are built is of a yellowish tinge. leaning against each terrace is a ladder, that serves as stairs to the story above; no windows are to be seen, but doors lead into the lodge from every terrace. those lodges occupied by warriors and chiefs are ornamented by long poles projecting from the top of the structure, from which float pennants, bearing various devices; the temple looms up over all. the corrals, in which the cattle are secured during the night, are near the houses of their owners. close to the staff of the temple stands an altar, on which a fire is burning; and huddled in a small group near its base are a group of female captives; their forms are almost shrouded in the long striped indian blankets. impelled by a resistless force i near them; one turns towards me, it is my wife; opening my arms i rush wildly forward, overturning men and women by this sudden and precipitate movement. my wife is apparently as much frightened as the others; then recognizing my voice she breaks from the group and is soon in my arms. we were not long allowed to remain in each others arms; recovering from their surprise, the indians seized and parted us. during the remainder of the time spent on the top of the temple, mrs. eastman was kept guarded and separated from tahteckadahair, the indian brave. there is a commotion, the crowd part, and wakometkla advances to the altar. the drum beats, all prostrate themselves; the drum again beats, and the initiatory ceremony is concluded; the crowd is motionless; all face to the east. the quartz wall that shuts in the valley, and whose pinnacles point heavenward in needle-shaped spires, brighten; the points sparkle like diamonds; a ray penetrates into the valley; the mountain suddenly seems on fire, and, as if by magic, the god of light flashes on our upturned faces, bathing the surrounding objects in a flood of glory. all nature seems jubilant. the birds carol forth their blithest songs; the river sparkles and dances in the sunlight; the drum is heard once more; the devotees prostrate themselves and bend in submissive adoration before the coming of the fiery god, quetzalcoatl. chapter viii. a new vocation. this ceremony over, the priests and worshipers withdrew; my wife was led away by her guards, and i was left for a moment alone with wakometkla; he stood gazing toward the distant mountains and seemed lost in reverie. at length he roused himself, and turning towards me, approached and taking me by the arm, conducted me once more to the lower part of the temple. we descended to the subterranean apartments, and passing through several, at length entered a room of good size, but so littered with the various utensils of his profession as to be almost impassable. huge earthen cauldrons, set upon blocks of stone, were ranged across one end, and these were filled with a thick liquid of a dark brown color. bundles of dried herbs were suspended from the walls and ceiling; the plants seemed to be of many species, but were all strange and unknown to me. a large block of stone standing in the center of the room served as a table, and upon this were a number of piles of bark and small lumps of a thick resinous gum; in one corner, were two or three smaller stone blocks, each with a cavity in the center, and evidently used for the same purpose as a druggist's mortar. [illustration: mrs. eastman in costume.] i viewed the strange apartment and its contents with much interest, for i saw that in this place the old man compounded such simple remedies as he had been taught by experience, were necessary for the treatment of the ailments to which his tribe was subject. on entering, he had motioned me to a seat, and i had accordingly placed myself upon a fragment of rock and sat quietly observing his proceedings and reflecting upon the strange situation in which i found myself. my companion, for sometime paid no attention whatever to me; divesting himself of his robes and ornaments, he enveloped himself in a sort of tunic made from the skin of some wild beast; to what particular kind of animal it had once belonged i was unable to form an idea, as the hair had been removed and the surface painted in many colors, with curious designs; it was without sleeves, showing his muscular arms bared to the shoulder, and with bracelets of roughly beaten gold upon the wrists. taking a piece of wood, shaped something like a paddle, he commenced stirring the contents of the cauldrons and tasting the mixture, occasionally adding small portions of a transparent liquid of a pale yellow color, which he poured from a small earthen vessel. for some time he continued his employment while i watched and meditated, but at length he ceased his labors and beckoned me to approach him. taking a portion of bark from the table he placed it in one of the stone basins, and seizing a stone utensil, similar in shape to a large gourd, began crushing the bark, motioning me meantime to watch him, and working with great energy. he continued in this manner for some minutes, until he appeared to conclude that i had become sufficiently familiar with the process, and then directed me by gestures to take his place, and i soon found myself busily engaged reducing the bark to powder. at first the change from my hitherto enforced idleness was a pleasant relief, but i soon found that it was hard and exhausting labor; the perspiration rolled down my face in streams, and i felt a strong inclination to cease operations. my new master, however, plainly looked with disfavor upon such an intention, for the moment that i slackened in my toil, he would shake his head gravely and motion me to continue, and to work more rapidly, and i had no alternative but to obey. of one thing i was satisfied, my new occupation was likely to be no sinecure; there was evidently work enough to keep me constantly employed, and wakometkla would no doubt see to it that i wasted no time. for the remainder of the day i was kept hard at it, with the exception of the brief period allowed me for partaking of my food. so far as quantity was concerned, i had no reason to complain of the fair supplied me, but its quality was not so satisfactory, it was a species of _tasajo_, or dried meat, but of what animal it had originally formed a part, i was entirely unable to determine. in place of bread, i was given a sort of cake made from the _piã±on_ nuts, and not unpalatable, but a poor substitute for the food to which i had been accustomed. when my day's toil was over, wakometkla, motioning me to follow him, led the way into an adjoining apartment, and pointing to a rude couch of skins, indicated that it was to be my resting place for the night. wearied by my unaccustomed labor, i threw myself down without the formality of undressing, and was soon buried in deep and dreamless slumber. at an early hour on the following morning i was awakened by wakometkla, and found myself much refreshed by the first night's sound sleep i had enjoyed for many days. i was again conducted to the scene of my labors of the day previous and soon found myself at work again. this time, however, i was set at a different employment from that in which i had been hitherto engaged. seated upon the earthen floor, with a large flat stone before me, i picked over and separated the various strange herbs, sorting them into heaps; the medicine man stood by and directed my operations, uttering a grunt of approval when he saw that i comprehended his pantomimic instructions. at length, seeming satisfied that i could complete the task without further assistance, he left me, and for several hours i worked on alone. about the middle of the forenoon, i had nearly finished my labor, when wakometkla suddenly entered and motioned me to rise and follow him; we passed through several apartments and entered the mystery room. approaching a recess in one corner, my master drew back a curtain of skins and disclosed an aperture of considerable size; this he entered and disappeared for a moment, but quickly returned, bearing in his hand a metallic circlet which glittered in the light of the lambent flame that arose from the altar; as he approached me i saw that it was a rudely fashioned collar of silver, its surface covered with engraved lines and strange cabalistic characters; this he speedily fastened around my neck in such a way that i could not displace it, and again motioned me to follow him; leaving me entirely in the dark, as to the object or meaning of this singular proceeding. reaching the first terrace of the temple, we descended to the plain and passed through the main street of the village until we reached its outskirts. although wondering greatly what new experience i was about to meet with, i could not fail to notice the great respect with which my strange protector was treated, a respect seemingly not unmixed with awe. many curious glances were cast at me as we passed through the crowd of idlers and "dandies" who lounged about the open space before the temple, but no word was spoken as they drew back to make way for us. at the edge of the plain, and standing apart from the other structures, i had observed a small lodge; it differed in no respect from the others except in size. we walked directly towards this, and on reaching it wakometkla entered, motioning me to remain outside. laying down upon the green turf, i abandoned myself to rest and reflection. naturally, my thoughts were mainly of my wife; and the mystery as to her whereabouts and probable fate constantly occupied my mind. had i but known it, my suspense was soon to be at an end; but i little dreamed that i was soon to see her again, to meet only to part for years, and with the certainty that she would be subjected to every degradation; and had i known it, such knowledge would have only caused me additional misery. for over an hour i laid motionless; at times watching the movements of a party of indians who were engaged in ball play; at times lost in thought. at last my savage master, having finished his visit, the object of which i knew not, emerged from the lodge and signed me to rise. we retraced our steps until we reached the temple, when he indicated by gestures that i might remain without. i concluded from his manner that i was at liberty for a time at least to follow my own inclinations, and accordingly occupied myself in making a tour of the village, thinking it possible that i might see something of my wife. as i strolled about, i was surprised to find that i was entirely unmolested, although many of the red warriors looked at me with an expression that indicated a desire to "lift my hair." i afterward learned that the silver collar i wore was itself a safeguard which the boldest "buck" in the village would not dare to violate. my search was for the time unavailing; returning to the vicinity of the temple, i laid down upon the ground and awaited the summons of wakometkla, which i momentarily expected. it seemed, however, that he had either forgotten me, or was busied with something of more importance, as i was suffered to remain by myself for several hours. watching the various groups around, i saw many sights, both new and strange to me. a number were engaged in gambling for the various trinkets they had procured in their successful foray. their implements for this pastime were simple enough. several indians who sat quite near me were engaged in this amusement, and by watching them carefully, i was soon able to understand the game. they sat in a circle, with a heap of small stones in the center; one of them, grasping a handful of the pebbles would conceal them behind him, at the same time placing before him the article which he wished to wager. the player on his right would then stake against it any article which he deemed of equal value; and if the leader accepted the bet he would signify it; his opponent had then to _guess_ the number of pebbles taken by the first indian; and if his conjecture was correct, became the possessor of the articles wagered. if he failed to guess the right number, the holder of the stones was the winner; then the next savage seized the pebbles, and so it went round and round the circle, the winners venting their exultation in yells and laughter, while the losers clearly indicated by grunts, expressive of disgust, their disappointment when fortune went against them. suddenly my attention was attracted by a party of indians who came forth from one of the more pretentious lodges. among them were a number of the principal warriors including the head chief himself; with them were also several of the apaches, who seemed, by their dress and bearing, to be men of some rank. they were engaged in a very animated discussion, accompanied with as much gesticulation as if they had been a parcel of frenchmen. directly two of the camanches re-entered the lodge, and returned leading three women, white captives. without a moment's warning my wife was before me, and i sprang to my feet and ran towards her, scarcely knowing what i was about. my darling saw me at the same instant and stretched out her arms as if to clasp me in her embrace, but she was firmly held in the grasp of one of the savages and could not stir. seeing that i would not be permitted to approach her i halted, wondering what new scene of savage cruelty was about to be enacted. i was not long in doubt--from the gestures of the indians, and the exhibition of some gaudy ornaments by one of the apaches, i was convinced that a barter or trade of some sort was in progress, and a few moments sufficed to satisfy me that my surmise was correct, and to plunge me into still deeper wretchedness. the camanche head chief, and one who seemed to be the leader of the apaches conversed apart, the latter frequently pointing to my wife and evidently arguing with great persistence. at length the bargain seemed completed, and tonsaroyoo the head chief of the camanches led her to the apache chieftain and consigned her to his custody; the other women were also taken in charge by the apaches who delivered a number of ornaments and trinkets and two horses to their camanche friends. the leader of the apaches now uttered a peculiar cry, apparently a signal, for immediately the warriors of his party assembled from all parts of the village and ranged themselves before him. he seemed to give some order, for they ran instantly to where their horses were picketed, and with marvelous celerity prepared for departure. the being i loved best was about to be torn from me, probably forever, and subjected to the most terrible fate that could befall one of her sex. as the fatal truth impressed itself on my mind, i seemed paralyzed in every limb, and stood riveted to the spot, gazing hopelessly upon those dear features, as i then thought, for the last time. my poor wife was quickly mounted behind an apache warrior, and, as the cavalcade moved off, she uttered a despairing scream, which seemed to rouse me from my lethargy. i endeavored to reach her, animated by a wild desire to clasp her once again to my heart, and welcome death together; but at my first movement i was grasped by a strong arm, and with her cry of anguish sounding in my ears as the party rode away, i found myself drawn within the temple and firmly held by wakometkla; he did not relax his grasp until we entered the mystery chamber, then releasing me, he regarded me not unkindly, and muttered to himself in his own language. sinking under this last terrible blow, i threw myself upon the floor, and in the bitterness of my heart prayed for death. but death shuns those who seek it, it is said, and we were destined to suffer for years from the doubts and suspense occasioned by our sudden separation, neither knowing the fate of the other, and each scarcely daring to hope that their loved one could be yet alive. after a time wakometkla raised me to my feet and led me to the room in which i had slept previously; here he left me, and for hours i lay in a sort of stupor, sinking at last into a heavy but unrestful slumber. following, came many weary days, during which i paid little attention to things passing around me. absorbed in my sorrow, i took no note of time, until a change in occupation brought forth new plans in my mind, causing me to entertain hope for the future. but of this anon. chapter ix. the "mystery bag." several months had elapsed since i entered upon my new duties. at first i was stimulated to extra endeavor by that curiosity which impels all novices to take an especially active interest in their profession, but i soon found that pounding bark, and gathering herbs, could become as monotonous as other less novel employments. i envied the women their tasks, as it would have been a change, and consequently a relief. it was a treadmill existence, and day succeeded day with unvarying sameness. i arose before dawn and went to the river; after a plunge in the sparkling water i returned to the temple and renewed the paint on my person, which had been effaced by the water. constant exposure to wind and weather had tanned my body to the color of leather, and it did not require a great amount of art to enable me to imitate the true indian complexion. exposure and coarse wholesome food had made me very hardy, and i found that i could bear fatigue and work that i should have thought i was never capable of performing. to this training i was indebted for the strength that supported me in my arduous journey through the deadly jornada, when in quest of my wife. when my preparations were completed, it was time to ascend to the top of the temple and join in the morning's devotions. these over, i returned to the underground room and commenced the day's work. at first wakometkla would signify what he required by signs, and later, as i acquired a knowledge of the language, he would more fully detail his wishes, and ofttimes explain the effects and purposes of the drug. in this way i became as familiar with his materia medica, as himself; and from time to time offered suggestions that occurred to me, which seemed to please him. by constant and steady application i amassed a fund of knowledge concerning vegetable medicines that enabled me, on my return to civilization, through the co-operation of dr. clark johnson, to make my knowledge available in alleviating suffering humanity. in my excursions into the woods i was accompanied by the chief, who instructed me how to gather the medicine plants, and where to find them. after a day spent in this manner, we would return to the village each carrying a basket on his back, filled with the results of our labor. by far the most important part of my work, in the estimation of the indians at least, was the concoction of "medicine," or mystery in which my master and myself were supposed to be all potent the red men are slaves to superstition, and in order to gain control over them it is absolutely necessary to profess a thorough intimacy with everything that is mysterious and supernatural. they believe in the power of talismans; and no indian brave would for a moment suppose that his safety in this world, or happiness in the next, could be secured, did he not possess, and constantly keep about him his "mystery bag." a description of this article, and the manner in which it is made may not prove uninteresting. when a youth has arrived at the age of sixteen it becomes necessary for him to "make his medicine;" to this end he leaves his father's lodge, and absents himself for one or two days and nights; entering the woods, where he may be secure from interruption, he seeks some quiet nook, and stretching his length upon the ground, remains in that position until he dreams of his medicine. during this time he abstains from food and water. when in his dreams the bird, reptile, or animal, that is to act as his guardian angel through life appears to him; or rather he imagines it does. as soon as he has learned what to seek for, he retraces his steps and joins his family again, who receive him with demonstrations of great joy; a feast is made in his honor, and he is treated with marked consideration. the festivities having come to an end, he arms himself with bow and arrows, or takes his traps, whichever may be best adapted to secure the animal he seeks, and leaving the village once more goes in pursuit of his quarry, not returning until his hunt has been crowned with success. great care is to be observed in securing the "medicine" intact. the skin is then stuffed with wool or moss, and religiously sealed; the exterior is ornamented as the fancy of the owner may dictate; the decoration in most instances being of a very elaborate character. the bag is usually attached to the person, but is sometimes carried in the hand. feasts are made, and even dogs and horses sacrificed to a man's medicine, while days of fasting and penance are suffered to appease his medicine, when he fancies he has in some way offended it. the indian will not sell this charm for any price; indeed, to part with it is considered a disgrace. in battle, he looks to it for protection from death, and if perchance he is killed, it will conduct him safely to the happy hunting grounds, which he contemplates as his inheritance in the world to come. if he should lose it in the fight, let him battle never so bravely for his country, he suffers overwhelming disgrace, and is pointed at by the tribe as "a man without medicine," and remains a pariah among his people until the sacred mystery bag is replaced. this can only be done by rushing into battle, and wresting one from the enemy, whom he slays with his own hand. once this is accomplished, lost caste is regained, and he is reinstated in the tribe, occupying a position even higher than before he lost the charm. medicine thus acquired at the risk of life and limb is considered the best, and entitles the wearer to many privileges to which he could never have aspired before. when a brave has captured a mystery bag belonging to his opponent, he has performed a feat of great valor, far surpassing the glory of innumerable scalps. it is somewhat singular that a man can institute his medicine but once in a lifetime; and equally curious that he can reinstate himself by the adoption of medicine captured from the enemy. in these regulations are concealed strong inducements to fight: first, to protect himself and his medicine; and again, if the warrior has been unfortunate enough to lose the charm, that he may restore it and his reputation, while in combat with the foes of his community. i had been for a long time in the village before i was allowed to wander beyond its limits. indeed, i was kept so constantly employed that i had no opportunity to explore the valley, even if i had been permitted to do so. but the efforts i made to please my indian master were not without their effect. wakometkla soon began to place confidence in me, and allow me more freedom of action. i had, it is true, very little spare time, but occasionally my master would dispense with my services while he was occupied with the ceremonies of the temple, and at such times i found myself free to wander where i pleased. in this way, at odd times, i made myself familiar with the topography of the entire valley. at first i was not without hope, in my solitary rambles, that i might devise some plan of escape; for i had not by any means abandoned all hope of that nature, or resigned myself placidly to my fate. but i was not long in discovering that without a good horse, a supply of provisions, and some weapons of offense or defense, any such idea was entirely futile. the valley was of itself a prison, for it had neither entrance nor exit, except at its two extremities. the one by which i had entered i have already described in a previous chapter, and will not weary the reader by repeating it. the pass at the western end of the valley was simply a narrow caã±on cut through the mountain, during centuries perhaps, by the action of water; its precipitous walls rose to the height of over two thousand feet, and in its gloomy recesses it was always twilight; its length was nearly a mile; and at its outer extremity it debouched upon a barren plain. at each end a guard of two men was constantly posted, relieving each other at regular intervals, and being changed every third day. to pass these vigilant sentinels, afoot and unarmed, was plainly impossible; and i soon banished the idea from my mind. i had noticed that wakometkla sometimes left the village and was absent for two or three days, returning laden with various herbs and plant, freshly gathered. i concluded from this that they were of species which did not grow in the valley, and to procure which he was obliged to ascend the various mountain ranges that barred my vision in every direction. i was anxious to accompany him on some one of these expeditions, thinking that i might thereby gain an opportunity for flight; but many long and weary months were to pass before i was to be granted that privilege. my life at this time was monotonous in the extreme; and so severe was the labor required of me, that i was frequently too tired even to think. in his trips to the borders of the valley in search of the materials for his medicines, wakometkla often took me with him, and by these means i gradually became familiar with many of the ingredients used. it was a source of never-ending wonder to me that this untutored savage should have been able to discover and prepare so wonderful a remedy as i found it to be. i had many opportunities of observing its effects upon the indians; for the camanches, although naturally a hardy race, partly from their mode of life, and partly from the fact that few of them are of pure indian blood, are subject to very many of the same ailments that afflict more civilized communities. as the assistant of the great medicine man, i found myself treated with far more consideration than i would have supposed possible, and, in fact, it appeared after a time, as if the indians considered me one of themselves. this state of affairs was not without its advantages. it ensured my freedom from molestation and at the same time gave me complete facilities for becoming familiar with the indian character, their manners and customs, and mode of life. of these i shall treat at length in another chapter. at the time i was occupied in making the observations and investigations which i shall lay before the reader, i had no expectation of ever placing a record of my experiences before the public. hence in many things my knowledge of the subject is but superficial. of those things which interested me, or from their strange nature made a deep impression upon my mind, my recollection is clear and vivid. but many details which might be of interest to those who have never seen, or been among the prairie indians, have by the lapse of time and the many exciting scenes through which i have passed become in a measure effaced from my mind. but i shall endeavor to relate as fully as possible my checkered experiences; and this narrative, whatever its demerits, will have at least one attribute of excellence, it will adhere strictly to facts. chapter x. indian life. the camanches are supposed to be a branch or subdivision of the shoshone or snake nation, who, under various names or tribal appellations, dominate the entire area from the borders of british america to the rio grande. although these tribes are known by many different names, such as "shoshones," "bonacks," "utahs," "lipans," "apaches," "navajoes," "pawnee picts," "camanches," or "cayguas," they vary but little in their general habits of life. such differences as do exist are mainly the result of variations of climate. until within a few years, the camanches were undoubtedly the most warlike and powerful race of indians on the continent. with the apaches, navajoes, and lipans, they formed a sort of indian confederacy; rarely at war among themselves, but always with the whites; and when united, able to put a force in the field which would ride over the texan frontier like a whirlwind; and without hesitation penetrate hundreds of miles into mexico, desolating whole provinces, returning sated with slaughter, and burdened with plunder. the camanches are, or rather were at this time, divided into five bands, usually acting entirely independently of one another, but uniting in case of emergency; or for the purpose of making their annual raid on the mexican towns. this occurs at the season when the buffaloes have migrated to the north, and is jocularly termed by the savages the "mexican moon." it was on their return from one of these expeditions that the band of tonsaroyoo, the head chief of the nation, had intercepted our unlucky party. the band of tonsaroyoo (lone wolf) was the most numerous and powerful of the five, and hence was usually able to undertake their forays without the assistance of the other parties. twice only during my long residence among them was a general levy or muster of the whole nation deemed necessary; and it was a spectacle not easily forgotten. in the first instance a raid of greater magnitude than usual had been determined upon, and every warrior was assembled to take part in it. assembled at our village, they were joined by nearly five hundred apaches, led by mah-to-chee-ga (little bear), their second chief. thus, when they defiled through the western portal of the valley, tonsaroyoo rode at the head of nearly seven thousand warriors. with the camanches, as with most other tribes, the chief rank is held by hereditary descent. thus, the son of a chief usually succeeds his father in the rulership of his tribe or band; there are, of course, exceptions to this; but it is the general rule. the head chief and second chief of the nation, however, are chosen from among the chiefs of each tribe; the selection being made by the council. this body numbers twelve members, and are chosen by the whole nation; holding their positions during life, or until incapacitated by old age. among them are found the most distinguished warriors of the tribe, and the head priest is also included in their number. the installation of a new counselor is considered by the indians an occasion of great importance; and as it is a very interesting ceremony, i will briefly describe it. on the occasion in question, ar-ran-e-jah (bloody arm), had announced his determination to retire from the position of first counselor, which he had held for many years. calling together the chiefs and braves, he addressed them somewhat as follows: "brothers, warriors of the hietan; for many winters bloody arm has faithfully served you. he is no longer young, his body is weakened by the many wounds he has received in your defence, and he wishes for repose; and to be no longer burdened with the cares of the council. bloody arm's medicine is no longer good upon the war path; and he will enter the medicine lodge so that he will not be obliged to go to war, but can end his days in peace. we have many brave young warriors, who are deserving of promotion, let one of these be selected to fill my place; and may his medicine be good and his war-path be fortunate warriors, i now give up the office of first counselor i have done." tonsaroyoo replied as follows: "arranejah, our hearts are sorry that you have decided to cease to be our first counselor. you have served the nation long and faithfully; your counsel has been wise; under your guidance we have greatly prospered, and we would rather that you should still direct us. but you say that your body is weak, and that you desire repose. it is well--we know that you have received many wounds at the hands of our enemies; that you were always first in the charge, and never turned your back upon the foe. we honor you, for your bravery, and you will always possess the love and respect of your people. "now we must select a twelfth counselor. will you name him for us?" "no, tonsaroyoo," said the old man: "i never had an enemy among my warriors, and i will not begin to make them now. they are all brave, and i should not know whom to choose. let the nation decide who is to succeed me. i have done." the form of an election was then gone through with; two braves being named for the position by the counsel, and a vote taken in the following manner: two heaps of shells, one black, the other white, were placed upon the ground before the temple. each warrior selected one from either pile, as he preferred, and placed the shells so taken so as to form a third pile. when all had deposited a shell in this heap, they were counted by two of the elder counselors, and the first candidate, who was a protã©gã© of tonsaroyoo, was declared rejected, having received too many of the black shells; as the rule is that if more than a certain prescribed number (which varies according to the number taking part in the election), are cast against a candidate he must be withdrawn, and another presented for approval. on the second ballot, nau-ce-dah (strong shield), was chosen without opposition. he belonged to the band of ston-ha-won, and was selected as much because of the personal popularity of his chief as from any merit of his own; for, although a daring warrior, he was a reckless fellow, and scarcely fitted to command or advise. the ceremony of his installation followed, and was conducted within a medicine lodge, erected for that especial purpose. here were assembled the chiefs, priests, members of the council, and the leading warriors, with as many of the other braves as could possibly crowd into it. the new dignitary was then presented with a _white_ buffalo robe, and a head-dress of eagle's plumes, stained red, the insignia of his office. new arms and equipments were given him, and it was formally announced that naucedah was the twelfth counselor of the camanche nation; and that the next war party should be led by him. more speech-making followed, some of it decidedly eloquent, but with which i will not weary the reader. tonsaroyoo presented the new counselor with twenty horses and a magnificent white shield; the assemblage then separated. the remainder of the day was devoted to feasting in honor of the event; the younger warriors amusing themselves as usual with horse racing and ball play. naucedah failed to justify the wisdom of this selection, for his first war party resulted in disaster. starting with about eighty warriors on a raid into the utah country to steal horses, he led his unlucky band into an ambush, and barely twenty of them escaped; their leader being among the killed. the marriage relation can hardly be said to exist among the camanches. each chief or warrior, it is true, may have as many wives as he pleases, and they generally please to have a rather liberal number; but the tie is not a sacred one as with us; and no ceremony is required to legalize it. the commerce of the sexes is practically unrestricted. the camanche procures his wife, or more properly his slave, by purchase, by barter, or as in the case of the white captives, by force of arms; and he disposes of her in an equally summary fashion when wearied of her. one particularly horrid custom to which their white prisoners are frequently subjected is the following: it sometimes occurs that a dispute will arise as to the ownership of a white captive; in this event it is referred to the council for settlement; and should they be unable to agree upon a decision, she then becomes _common property_, the victim of _all_! the camanche has the same aversion to labor of any kind which characterizes all the aboriginal races. when not on the war path, or engaged in the pursuit of game, his time is about equally divided between eating, smoking, gambling, and sleeping. all the burdens of life fall upon the women, and they must endure them as best they may. their duty it is to plant and cultivate the maize, and the few fruits and berries which the indians deem necessary for food. they gather and prepare the piã±on nuts, and _cure_ the tasajo, and prepare the food for their brutal masters. in the dressing of skins, and the manufacture of leggings, moccasins, and the few other articles of apparel which are required for comfort or ornament, they are especially skilled; and despite their multifarious duties they manage to accomplish a great deal of this work. in the matter of diet the camanches are not by any means particular. buffalo meat is their staple, and they prefer this to any other food; but when this fails them, there are always horses in plenty; and i found "horse-beef" to be very good eating, although at first the very idea of tasting it was repulsive to me. before i had returned to civilization, however, i had partaken of so many queer dishes, and strange articles of food, that, if hungry, i do not think i would hesitate at anything short of cannibalism. a sort of stew, of which the flesh of young puppies forms the principal ingredient, is another camanche luxury, and i learned in time to consider it very palatable; but i fancy most people would rather take it for granted than put it to the test. however, if any of my readers feel disposed to try the experiment, i can assure them that they may do so without fear of unpleasant consequences. the camanches, in common with all the other "horse-indians," are much addicted to horse racing; and almost every afternoon some sport of this kind would take place on the plain before the village. these trials of speed were for some wager, and the younger warriors would frequently lose all their worldly possessions in backing some unlucky steed, whose powers of speed or endurance they had overrated. at such times the taunts and exultation of the victors would sometimes give rise to a quarrel; knives would be drawn and brandished, and a bloody fight seem imminent, but the "yau-pa-sai-na," or indian policemen, would usually succeed in quelling the disturbance before much harm could be done. if his efforts seemed unavailing, the appearance of tonsaroyoo, battle axe in hand, would be the signal for an immediate dispersion of the crowd; the intending combatants, especially, sneaking off with great precipitation. knowing the fiery temper of lone wolf, and the fact that he looked upon these brawls and affrays with great disfavor, and had strictly prohibited their occurrence, the quarrelsome young warriors fully apprehended that he would have no hesitation in braining the first offender who came within his reach. this warlike chieftain was a man of very marked ability, and governed his tribe with admirable skill and judgment. from his severity, however, he was feared rather than liked by his people, and although implicitly obeyed at all times, he did not possess a tithe of the popularity which stonhawon, the second chief, enjoyed. the latter was a bold, manly fellow; a really brave man and a sagacious leader; unusually successful in war, his parties never returned without either "hair or horses," as was frequently the case with others, and his invariable good nature and lavish generosity rendered him a universal favorite with his people. he was a pure-blooded camanche, and altogether, one of the finest specimens of his race i ever beheld. to him i am indebted for many acts of kindness, and but for his favor, the opportunity of which i availed myself for making my escape, might never have occurred. chapter xi. mrs. eastman's story. i had intended to relate the experiences of my wife in such a manner that they might serve as a sequel to my narrative; but on reflection, the better plan seemed to be to portray, as graphically as possible, the events that influenced her life, in separate chapters, so arranged that the account should be distinct, yet in point of time, contemporaneous. the scene of her captivity, and the treatment she received at the hands of her captors, have made such a vivid and lasting impression on my mind, that in speaking of them, i seem almost to have undergone the torture in my own person. in writing her story therefore, i shall speak in the first person. the reader will, i think, see the superiority of this plan at a glance. who has not felt his pulse quicken, and his heart go out in warmest sympathy at the recital of some tale of flood or field, as told by an eye-witness, when the same events related by a third party will only awaken a mild interest in the minds of his hearers. i crave the sympathetic attention of my readers, and this is my explanation for the plan i have adopted. * * * * * after the assault on our party had culminated in the death of my poor father and brother, the indians surrounded our wagon, and lifting the canvas flaps, discovered my mother and myself ensconced behind our bulwark of blankets and boxes. they bade us come out by gestures so menacing, and scowls so terrifying, that it had a contrary effect on us than the one they wished to produce; for instead of obeying the command, we only shrank back into corners more remote, vainly thinking that the bales and robes, with which loving hands had surrounded us, would form a sufficient protection against the dreaded savage. at this critical juncture, my poor mother swooned back into my arms, overcome by fright. seeing that their commands were not obeyed, the foremost indian climbed into the wagon, and rushing on us with uplifted knife, grasped me by the hair and dragged me over the obstructions and out onto the ground. i cried aloud in my anguish, which only seemed to afford them the more amusement; the savage who had performed the manly deed, displaying for the edification of his comrades, a quantity of my hair, which he still held in his clenched hand. the wagon and the plunder it contained seemed to be the center of attraction. a dozen had entered in as many seconds, and although the canvas top hid them from view, they could be heard quarreling over the division of the spoils. during these fearful scenes, the events of years seemed crowding into minutes. never have i suffered such mental or bodily torture before or since. my faculties succumbed to the severe strain, and i found myself falling into a kind of stupor, in which, though perfectly conscious of all that was transpiring, i seemed not to have been one of the principal actors, but an observer merely. suddenly i was made aware that something unusual was taking place; the indians crowded about the wagon, all the time gesticulating wildly, and yelling in a blood-curdling manner. i heard voices raised as if in altercation within the wagon. rising above the din i distinguished the loved tones of my mother's voice, as if crying for help, and entreating for mercy. the noise grows apace; wild with terror, nerved with the resolution of despair, i rushed towards the wagon; reaching it a sight meets my eyes that petrifies me with horror; i try to move, speak, act; my limbs and tongue refuse to obey my will; this is what i see: a couple of brawny savages, maddened by strong drink, stand over the kneeling figure of my mother, their eyes inflamed with satanic passion. holding together her torn garments with one hand, she parries with feeble and fast declining strength their revolting advances. with a mighty effort she reaches up and snatches a knife from the belt of the savage nearest her, and with the rapidity of thought plunges it into his body. he reels and falls against his companion. it is her last act on earth. with a yell of rage the tomahawk is lifted above her murderer's head, and descending is buried in her brain with a dull thud. a mist passes over my eyes; my brain reels, and the last thing of which i am conscious is the white tresses of my saintly mother, held high in air by this monster in human guise. god grant that it may never be my fate to pass through such scenes again. during the next twenty-four hours, my existence is that of an automaton merely. i know i am being conducted away from the spot where this awful tragedy was enacted. i am mounted behind my guard, to whose waist i am firmly bound by raw hide thongs. we encamp in a belt of cotton woods, near a small stream. fires are lighted, food prepared; some is offered me, but i turn away from it in disgust; the hand that proffers the smoking meat seems covered with blood. i am taken from my couch of skins at the foot of a tall tree, and led through the underbrush into an open space, where the main party are assembled. emerging into this clearing, my eyes fall upon my husband, who is approaching me from the other side of the encampment. it was as if i saw one who had arisen from the dead; with an effort i free myself, rush past the guard, and am in my husband's arms. leaning my head on his shoulder, i give expression to my feelings in tears; they are the first i have shed, and seem to break the spell which has encircled me like an iron band. i am not long permitted to remain in my husband's embrace, as the indian with an ugh! expressive of displeasure, grasps edwin by the arm, and rudely separates us; we are led to opposite corners of the enclosure, there to await our departure, preparations for which are being rapidly completed. the lariats are coiled, blankets adjusted, and at a signal from the chief we mount, and defiling through the wood, emerge on the open prairie, pursuing our journey in indian file. before starting, one of our mules is brought up, on which i am mounted, a warrior riding by my side and holding in his hand a hair rope that passes through the bit ring that is attached to my animal. all day we keep up the march. look in any direction and the eye meets one vast expanse of living verdure, the vision only interrupted by the horizon. north, south, east, and west stretches the prairie meadow, green as the sea, and in many respects not unlike the calm surface of the ocean. as the wind sweeps across its bosom, the silken blades bend in gentle undulations, and they are dappled into lighter and darker shades, like the shadows of summer clouds flitting across the sun. it was a scene of pure enjoyment, and i only realized, on being awakened from my day dreams how miserable was my lot. with slight interruptions, notably when my husband was lost in the buffalo hunt, and his recapture, we progressed steadily towards the village. on arriving i was taken at once to the temple, where i found myself among some eight or ten more female captives, who had but recently arrived. they were mexican women, and, not understanding their language, i felt somewhat constrained. i was attracted to one fragile looking girl, whose age could not have been more than fifteen. she appeared utterly heartbroken and cast down by her misfortunes. i suffered enough, god knows; but my heart yearned towards this little stranger with tender sympathy; and in comforting her i seemed to lessen my own burdens. although the others were kind to her to a degree, yet she seemed to evince a fondness for my society that was very flattering. the others addressed her as "zoe," and in this way i learned her name. henceforth we became inseparable; and as she accompanied me in my captivity, the reader will learn more of the sad history of this heroic girl, whose impulses, both of head and heart, added to her splendid courage, were the salient points in a character of surpassing sweetness. we were not allowed to leave the temple, although we were free to wander from terrace to terrace. food and water was supplied us by the indian women, who seemed to have us under their sole control. how can i describe the scenes of the next few days; the games, festivities, and most horrible of all, the torture; when we were compelled to stand on the lower terrace, and witness the agonies and death struggles of fathers, husbands and lovers; not even the poor consolation of indulging our grief undisturbed was permitted us; the indian women who surrounded us seemed lost to all feelings of pity and humanity, and when one of our number was suffering tortures of mind, little inferior to the physical pain undergone by the object of her devotion, the fiends would give vent to derisive cries and jeers that were maddening to the poor creature. one of the mexicans, whose father and lover were burned to death before her eyes, suffered such poignant anguish that her reason gave way, and she was borne inside the temple a raving maniac. after the events just related, nothing of moment occurred to break the monotony of our captivity. we were confined to our quarters under a surveillance that did not relax for a moment. it was understood that we were awaiting the announcement that was to decide what our future lot should be. the mexicans learned from our attendants that the chiefs had decided to share the female captives with their apache visitors; the selection to be made by lot. i had not seen my husband but once since we entered the village, and that sight was fraught with the most painful emotions. i knew, however, that for the present he was safe; the future i confided to him whose loving care would protect and aid us in our trials. during this time my mind was in a state of complete despondency; no bright visions of future liberty and happiness came to relieve the dreary forebodings that oppressed me. in my wildest imaginings of the suffering that might be my portion, i did not approach the realities of my future existence. those dark days of toil and degradation which succeeded each other in unvarying monotony, with blows for a welcome, and kicks as an incentive to labor. even at this remote period i cannot recall the experiences of those times without a shudder; when the horizon of hope was environed by the dull blank of despair; and as each year dragged its weary length along, it almost seemed as if i was, "the world forgetting, and by the world forgot." chapter xii. mrs. eastman's story continued. one morning we were aroused quite early, our guard informing us that the lots had been cast and the captives disposed of. we were divided into equal numbers, the home tribe retaining one half, while their visitors appropriated the remainder. we quickly descended to the ground floor of the temple, and clustering about the door leading into the village street, awaited the final word from the chief, that was to deliver us into the hands of our new masters. on occasions like the present, the whole community was in a ferment of excitement, and crowded around us in great numbers, each more anxious than the other to have a view of the bartered captives. the apaches seemed to be particularly anxious to take stock of their new acquisitions, and not a few scrimmages occurred between them and the camanche women on this account. the men elbowed and the women bit and clawed at a furious rate. it might have been very amusing, but unluckily we came in for our share of the blows and objurgations. the mob pushed us against the walls of the temple so violently that we were in imminent danger of suffocation. to escape, and free ourselves from this unpleasant situation, it became necessary to exert ourselves and deal blows at the surging crowd, and in this way keep them back. of course, such measures on our part met with a ready response, and soon we were in the midst of a row that threatened to assume large proportions. a chief who happened to be passing at the time, dashed into the crowd and soon quelled the rioters. had it not been for this timely assistance we should certainly have been crushed to death. after a time we were left in comparative quiet; most of the idlers betaking themselves to the various groups scattered over the plain. some of these parties attracted quite a number of spectators, and judging from their animated gestures, something of a very interesting character was taking place. one of the indian women informed me that they were probably gambling. my attention was attracted to a small lodge, about one hundred yards to our right. something of unusual moment seemed to be taking place. warriors were seen to enter, and others would emerge and go in different directions, as if in great haste, and on urgent business. pennants were flying from poles on the roof, and altogether the place presented a gala appearance. on inquiry, i learned that this was the council lodge, and that at the present moment, the final negotiations for our barter were being consummated. a short time afterwards, the chiefs and their attendants defiled into the street and approached us. meantime, the number of horses that had been agreed upon as an equivalent for the captives, were brought up and delivered over to their purchasers. just as i was brought forth to be delivered over to the apache chief, my glance was arrested by the figure of my husband, who stood upon the outskirts of the circle. the recognition was simultaneous, and with a cry of joy i sprang towards him, but was instantly grasped by a savage and thrown violently back among my companions. the apache chief put a small whistle to his lips, and blowing a shrill blast, soon assembled his party. i struggled to free myself from my tormentors and rush to my husband, but my efforts were of no avail. half fainting, and wild with the agony of this rude parting, i was taken out on the plain, where the bulk of the party were making their preparations to depart. the pickets were drawn, lariats coiled, and the horses brought up. every warrior had provided himself with an extra horse on which to mount his newly acquired property, but for some reason we were mounted on the horses ridden by our captors, and it was not until the next day that we made use of the "extra" horses. the indians rode without saddles, as is their custom when on the war trail, but the women were provided with saddles; these saddles were peculiar contrivances, and the best description of them that occurs to me, is to have the reader picture to himself an ordinary saw-buck with the top cut off, so as to leave an inverted v. there were two of these fastened together by parallel strips of wood about eighteen inches in length; this was placed on the mustang's back, and a buffalo robe thrown over it, and fastened by a girth. stirrups depended from the lateral sticks that kept the v's in position. the horse's bridles were mostly composed of hair, in some instances, however, they were of leather worked and stamped into elaborate designs; these were, no doubt, the fruits of their foray among the mexican _pueblas_. we were mounted man fashion, each riding by the side of the indian who claimed us as his property. farewells having been exchanged, lances were poised, bows and quivers slung, and amid a fearful uproar of voices, intermingled with the howling of dogs, we took our departure. as we passed through the village i strained my eyes to catch a glimpse of my husband, but even this poor consolation was denied me. passing up the valley we entered the caã±on, traversing its rocky bed for a distance of several hundred yards; on entering this gloomy pass, we formed into single file, each captive falling into line immediately in the rear of her guard; this order was henceforth maintained throughout the journey. leaving the caã±on we debouched upon an arid plain, and continued our line of march along the bank of the stream. the first day's journey was devoid of interest; we traversed long stretches of sandy plain, with scarcely any signs of vegetation, save here and there a clump of sage brush, or the wild pita plant, whose stalk towered into the air like a sign-post to guide the wanderer over these sandy wastes. the cactus and fetid creosote plant lined our path, the latter giving forth a most disagreeable odor as it was crushed beneath the horses' hoofs. towards night we approached the base of a mountain, and entering a grove of willows and cottonwoods, halted, and dismounting, made preparations to encamp. the horses were staked out on the prairie and allowed to crop the gramma grass. the long lances were firmly planted in the soil, and bow, quiver, and shield, deposited on the ground in close proximity, together with the buffalo robes and bear skins. after watering the stock at the small stream that ran through the grove, wood was collected and fires built. around these fires clustered the dusky warriors cooking the evening meal, which consisted of tasajo, and the nuts gathered from the piã±on, which were roasted in the ashes. long into the night the feasting was kept up, and as the fires languished fresh fuel was thrown on until they were blazing and crackling more cheerily than ever. the flames caused the forms of the savages to stand out in bold relief against the dark background of the surrounding gloom, and lighting up their faces displayed in all its fantastic repulsiveness, the war paint with which their bodies were bedaubed. early the next morning the march was resumed. towards noon the heat became so intense as to be hardly endurable, still we pushed forward with unvarying speed. after journeying in a southerly direction for a few hours we defiled into the bed of a river and followed its course for several hundred yards, when, striking a new trail, our course was laid in a westerly direction. the character of the country underwent a complete change; instead of the sandy desert, we were now passing over a prairie clothed with verdure. at intervals we would enter dense thickets of chaparral, and then emerge into glades, that were veritable flower gardens. at evening a halt was called, but only long enough to water the horses, and partake of a hasty meal; and continuing the march we forged ahead with increased speed. i judged by the animated gestures of the indians that we were nearing our destination; my conjectures were not ill-founded, as about midnight we entered a valley, and passing through green fields, came in view of the lodges of the apache encampment. our approach was heralded by the barking of dogs, and soon we were surrounded by a vast multitude of women and children, who greeted the returning braves with great enthusiasm. we halted in the center of the village, and presently a large fire was blazing in front of the chief's lodge, around which the warriors assembled. the captives were placed in a row to one side, and except to be stared at by the women no further attention was taken of us. each brave seemed bent on feasting himself, and while we were left to suffer the pangs of hunger and thirst, our masters indulged in gluttony of a most riotous and bestial nature. as the night advanced more fuel was added to the fires, until they crackled and blazed with tremendous fury. it was not long before the remains of the feast were cleared away, and the indians reassembled, each with tomahawk in one hand, and a rattle in the other; then began the scalp dance, with which these tribes always celebrate their successful forays. a number of young women are selected who step into the ring, and holding up the recently taken scalps, begin a low chant. the braves circle round, brandishing weapons of various kinds, whilst they distort their faces and bodies into the most horrid shapes. simultaneously jumping into the air, they come down on both feet with a blow and thrust of their weapons, while it would appear as if they were indulging in the most horrible butchery. darting about their glaring eye-balls, as if actuated by the most fiendish passions. as the dance continues the excitement grows apace; the bystanders wave their torches and urge the actors on to renewed endeavor. the scene becomes one wild orgy, in which the lowest and most blood-thirsty passions are excited. the drums continue beating, the women shriek, men yell, dogs bark, and the whole scene becomes wild and terrible in the extreme. no description can do justice to this remarkable performance, but once seen it leaves a vivid impress on the mind that time can never efface. the dance was continued until the stars gradually disappeared, and the gray streaks of dawn ushered in the new day. tired, and trembling with nervous excitement, i was conducted within the lodge; and throwing myself on the ground, i sought that repose that my body and mind so much needed. chapter xiii. mrs. eastman's story continued. years have dragged their slow length along; once again i am surrounded by friends, and a husband's love shields me from the persecutions of a cruel captivity: yet, scenes and incidents of that terrible time recur to my memory with a vividness only too real. the capture, torture, and fatiguing marches, have left their imprint on my memory in ineffaceable characters. these were, however, but the overture to the drama. my intense sufferings commenced, and were comprised in the nine years of my life among the apaches. i had passed a restless night; my couch was haunted by dreams of ill omen, and it was with a sigh of relief that i saw the morning's rays peeping through the crevices of our lodge of skins. i was enabled to look upon my surroundings, and take stock of my future home. the lodge was circular in form, measuring a circumference of about fifty feet at the base, narrowing as it extended upwards, until a space of about six feet was left open at the top; the framework consisted of poles driven firmly into the ground, and held in position by a covering of dressed buffalo skins. the floor in the center of the lodge was depressed sufficiently to form a fire-place, in which a few glowing embers could yet be seen. ranged around the walls were the beds, seven in number, which were occupied by the chief and his six wives. i, of course, was included in the number. some of the beds were tastefully draped with curtains of dressed skins, ornamented in various styles. the bed of the chief was perhaps the most gorgeous; on it could be seen the labor of five jealous women, each more anxious than the other to propitiate her lord by some extravagance of decoration, which would deflect the sunshine of his favor on her head to the envy and exclusion of the remaining members of the family. suspended from stakes driven into the ground near the head of his couch rested the implements of warfare; lance, shield, bow, and quiver, together with the deadly tomahawk and murderous scalping knife. extended along a line that bisected the wigwam, at a distance of perhaps twelve feet from the floor, were the scalps of his enemies. judging from the great quantity of these ghastly trophies, my master was a man of immense valor and shocking brutality. soon there was a movement, the curtains of one of the beds parted, and the head, shoulders and body of a tawny savage appeared. leaving the lodge for a short time, she again returned with an armful of brush which she threw upon the fire; then falling upon her knees she blew the smoldering embers into a bright flame. the noise of the crackling wood aroused the others, and soon all the women were engaged in their household duties; one busied herself in preparing the morning meal; another was collecting into one pile a number of queer looking instruments, with whose use i was to become acquainted only too soon; still another, was devoting her attention to a young babe. thus all were occupied. i was not long allowed to remain in undisturbed possession of my quarters. the woman in charge of the cauldron placed over the fire called for assistance, all were too busy to lend her aid, and one suggested that i should be aroused. this remark was received with general approbation, and soon i was on the floor, lifting kettles, fetching fresh fuel, and in fact, doing the bidding of my task-makers as best i might. this was the commencement of a life of unceasing toil. i was the pariah of our little community; having no rights that compelled respect, and being looked upon with feelings of suspicion and distrust by the indian women, i was driven to perform the menial tasks and endure the ill-treatment of those who were only too happy, to visit on my unoffending and unresisting body, the ill-treatment _they_ had to endure from higher quarters. breakfast being ready, the chief was aroused and the family clustered around the fire, attacking the contents of the kettle. to have seen them eat, one would have supposed that they had been strangers to food for a very long period; food was not eaten, it was devoured. after having partaken of the cakes of maize and tasajo, the work of the day began. mahtocheega, of course, did nothing but smoke his k'neck k'nick and lounge about the lodge. his favorite pastime was to lie at full length in front of the door, and like any dog, bask in the rays of the sun. it was now the planting season, and from morn till night we were in the field, breaking the ground and sowing the grain. the implements used, were of a very rude character, the hoes being fashioned from the shoulder bone of the bison; the earth was broken by these, and all the cultivation that was required was performed with the aid of this article. such was the great fertility of the soil, that maize and squashes grew almost spontaneously when planted. all through the day, we were compelled to stoop and bend over the ground, while the sun's rays becoming more and more intense, made life intolerable. did we lag but for a moment, the ever vigilant eye of some adjacent indian would note the movement, and swooping down on us would urge us to renewed exertion, by word or blow. my first day's experience in this species of farming, was excruciating agony. being unskilled in the use of a hoe, i bruised myself severely, for, instead of breaking the soil, i came down with full force on my own limbs and feet; at such times a groan of agony would escape me, which, instead of eliciting sympathy, would only excite laughter. maimed and bleeding, i toiled on, and wishing, oh! so fervently, that the next blow might be on my head, instead of the inferior parts of my body. towards evening, my torture became unendurable, and throwing my tired body on the ground, i determined not to work longer, let the consequences be what they may. this conduct was so entirely unexpected, that it took my captors by surprise, and finding blows of no avail, they desisted, and left me to suffer alone. i had to be carried home, much to the disgust of those whose duty it was to bear the burden; arriving at the lodge, ointment was prepared from the juice expressed from the leaves of the pita plant, and being applied to my bruised limbs, soon allayed the inflammation and soreness. a brief description of this remarkable plant may not be without interest to the reader; what the _zamias_ is to the east indian, the pita plant is to the southern indian--it is food, medicine, stimulant, and clothing. it is to be found in the greatest abundance along the great american desert, near the base of the rocky mountains. in places where it would seem impossible for living plants to thrive, there may be found the _lechuguilla_, its stalk rising to the height of twenty feet, and its thorny leaves branching out in clusters along its length; its fiber is made into rope; the sap expressed from its leaves, when boiled to the consistency of honey is an admirable dressing for wounds, causing light cuts to cicatrice almost immediately, and even ugly gashes will yield to it in time. the juice distilled, produces the fiery _mezcal_, familiarly known among the trappers as "pass whiskey." it is made quite extensively at el paso, hence the _sobriquet_. the egg-shaped core, when cooked, yields a thick, transparent body, similar to jelly; it is very nutritious, and is used to a great extent by one branch of the apaches, who bake it with horse-flesh; this tribe is called by the frontiersmen, _mezcaleros_ on this account. without the aid of this plant, there are seasons when the lipans, apaches, and camanches would perish from starvation. too much cannot be said in praise of the wild aloe; it is one of the many striking instances in which an all-wise providence has furnished man with a medicine and food combined. the laboratory of nature is full of similar plants whose uses are as yet imperfectly known, and have perhaps never been applied to the relief of the suffering. during my sojourn among the indians i became familiar with the names and uses of many of these roots and plants, which i believe were never before known to civilized man. several months had elapsed, the corn was planted and had nearly ripened. as i became hardened by exposure and toil, my lot seemed somewhat softened; i say seemed mitigated; the work was none the less arduous, only my capacity to bear toil had been strengthened. one day, eeh-nis-kin (the crystal stone), intimated that i was to be branded; this intelligence filled me with terror. i had never seen any one marked in this manner, and i presumed the process was a painful one. after having finished the morning's work i had retired into the lodge, in order to complete some garments i was making, for eehniskin's little boy, when a messenger arrived, announcing that the medicine man wished to see me, and bade me follow him. arriving at the lodge in the center of the village, i joined a throng of captives, who like myself had been summoned to appear and receive the mark of bondage. presently the crowd gave way, and the "hush-sh" that was echoed from mouth to mouth, warned us of the approach of pa-nis-ka-soo-pa (the two crows), the high priest and great medicine of the nation. we were required to form a ring, leaving a space of some thirty feet in diameter. silence reigned supreme; nothing was heard save the light tinkling of the rattles upon his dress, as he cautiously and slowly moved through the avenue left for him. he neared us with a slow and tilting step, his body and head entirely covered with the skin of a yellow bear, the head of which served as a mask to his own, which was inside of it; the huge bear's claws were dangling on his wrists and ankles. in one hand he shook a frightful rattle, with the other he brandished his medicine spear, to the rattling din of which he added the wild and startling yells and jump of the indian, and the appalling grunts and snarls of the grizzly bear. after prancing around us for a short time, he built a small fire, and threw into it some bits of bluish clay, which turned black when subjected to the fierce heat; these were then pounded into fine powder. taking a sharp-pointed stick, he pricked our chins in semi-circles with the point of this stick dipped in a lotion of the powdered clay and a blackish gum, which he poured from a stone vial. the sensation was as if one was sticking needles into your face. soon after the operation was performed the skin began to burn and the punctured portion inflame; it then became very painful, but an application of the never-failing aloe soothed the inflammation. this was the ceremony of branding, and i carry the scar, and will continue to wear it to my latest hours. returning to the lodge, i was greeted with jeers and derisive laughter by the women of my household; the dogs joined in the uproar, barking, perhaps, because others pointed the finger of scorn at me, and to be in sympathy with their masters. even the filthy little children raised their tiny voices, accompanying their laughter with volleys of stones and sticks, thus "catching at little bits of fun and glee, that's played on dogs enslaved, by dogs that's free." chapter xiv. hopes and fears--an adventure. for over two years my life was one unvarying monotony; a ceaseless round of toil. day after day i was occupied with my duties in the laboratory, or in gathering roots and herbs for the preparation of the medicine. the daily life of the village presented a wearying sameness after i had become accustomed to its more novel peculiarities. there was little of excitement or interest in my surroundings. at first the arrival and departure of war parties, or the bands, who at regular intervals went forth to hunt, or to steal horses, attracted much of my attention; but eventually all these became tiresome; for when you have seen one of these gatherings, you have seen all, so little do they differ. many times i accompanied wakometkla in his trips beyond the valley, in search of those ingredients for his medicine, which could not be procured within its limits. i had not yet abandoned the idea of escape, should an opportunity offer, and i had hoped that in those expeditions beyond the valley, i might find the occasion for which i longed. but in this regard fortune did not favor me; i was always too closely watched to make the attempt with any hope of success; and it was not long before i satisfied myself, that even if i should succeed in getting clear of the valley, there was very little chance of my finding my way back to civilization. gazing from the summit of one of the "spurs" of the mountain range east of the valley, i found my path to liberty barred by the desert, which stretched for many miles to the north and east. southward, the prospect was scarcely more inviting; the country was almost equally barren, although more broken, and affording a better chance for concealment. but i knew that the expert indian "trackers" would find my trail, no matter what course i might take; and an attempt to escape on foot could only result in my being overtaken, brought back, and probably tortured; for not even the influence of the high-priest himself would avail to save me, if detected in an effort to escape. with a good horse, success was possible; although it was an open question, whether i would be able to find my way through a country of which i knew so little. it seemed far more probable that i would either perish in the desert, or only survive its dangers to fall into the hands of other savages, more cruel and relentless than the tribe of which i had become an unwilling member. so i reluctantly concluded that the idea of flight must be abandoned, unless unforeseen circumstances should arise, giving me a far better opportunity then had as yet offered. that i should ever meet with such an occasion, however, was altogether unlikely; and in time, the very thought of escape was almost entirely banished from my mind. in the autumn of the second year of my captivity, the monotony of my existence was broken by a rather exciting adventure; and as it is the only experience of the kind i ever met with, i will briefly narrate it. in company with wakometkla, i had gone in the early morning to the lower end of the valley to procure an herb, called by the camanches "iakara," which grew in great abundance along the sides of the cliffs. hitherto we had been able to gather it at a short distance from the village, but having used it in large quantities, we had stripped the shrubbery on both sides of the valley of all that was fit for use, and were every day compelled to go to a greater distance, in order to obtain it in sufficient quantities. hence on this occasion we had reached a distance of nearly ten miles from the village, before we were able to collect enough for our purpose. by this time we were considerably fatigued by our exertions, and sat down at the base of the cliff to rest and partake of such simple fare as we had brought with us. while thus occupied, my attention was attracted by an animal which suddenly appeared upon a ledge far above our heads. a singular animal it was, and would naturally excite the curiosity of any one who beheld it for the first time; to me, however, it was no stranger, as i had frequently seen others of the same species upon the cliffs bordering the valley, although i had never before had so favorable an opportunity for a close examination. commonly known as the "big horn" or "rocky mountain sheep," and found inhabiting all the mountain ranges which divide the continent, it seems a sort of cross between goat and sheep, having much of the appearance of the latter, with more of the habits of the former. standing upon a rocky ledge which jutted out from the face of the cliff, it surveyed me with great apparent curiosity, and without any signs of fear. as soon as i perceived it, i sprang to my feet, and seizing my bow, in the use of which i had become quite expert, i quickly sent an arrow through the unsuspecting animal, and it tumbled headlong from its lofty perch and fell dead at my feet. wakometkla, who had been rather taken by surprise by the suddenness of my movements, now came up to me, and praised my skill and quickness; he then condescended to assist me in skinning and cutting up the carcass. we then packed in the skin, such portions of the meat as we could carry with us, and hung the rest upon a tree, high enough to be out of the reach of the wolves and coyotes, so that we could return or send for it if we chose to do so. i supposed that we were to return at once to the village, but my companion directed me to remain, as he wished to proceed down the valley a short distance, in search of a species of bark for which we had been looking during our ramble, but had been unable to obtain. telling me that he would return in a few minutes, he started off and was soon lost to view in the thicket. reclining upon the ground i filled my pipe with the "k'neck k'nick," or indian tobacco, and proceeded to make myself as comfortable as possible. wakometkla's absence was prolonged far beyond what i had expected, and i was considering the advisability of starting in search of him, when a sound reached my ears as of some one breaking through the undergrowth, and concluding that it was my master returning, i laid back and abandoned myself to the contemplation of the blue smoke wreaths that curled above my head. as the sounds came nearer, i began to doubt whether it could be wakometkla after all, for _his_ progress through the thick undergrowth that skirted the valley, was usually comparatively noiseless, but i was so absorbed in my own reflections, that i did not give it a second thought, but lazily awaited the appearance of the new comer, whatever he or it might be. in a few moments the mystery was solved, and in a manner the reverse of pleasant. emerging from the dense undergrowth through which he had forced his way, the new arrival entered the little clearing near whose center i was reclining, and on turning to discover what had occasioned the noises i had heard, i beheld an object that sent a thrill of terror to my heart, and for a moment rendered me incapable of motion. the object in question, was a large animal, which i at once recognized as the _grizzly bear_; the most dreaded of all creatures that inhabit this region. chapter xv. treed by a grizzly. the bear was one of the largest of his kind, but it was not so much his size that impressed me with fear, as the knowledge of his fierce nature. it is true, that personally i knew but little of the habits of the animal, although this was not my first introduction to "old ephraim," but from the tales of the indians, i had learned enough to cause me to feel certain that i was in deadly peril. when my eyes first rested on the monster, he had just emerged from the thicket at the same point at which wakometkla had entered it. on reaching the open ground he advanced a pace or two, and then halting, reared himself up and stood upon his hind legs, at the same time uttering a sound which resembled the "blowing" of hogs when suddenly startled in the forest. he remained in this upright attitude for some moments, rubbing his head with his fore paws and playing them about like a monkey; in fact, as he stood facing me, he looked not unlike a gigantic ape. he was of a yellowish red color, with legs and feet nearly black, but color is no characteristic among these animals, scarce two of them being alike in this particular. to say that i was not terrified by the arrival of this unwelcome intruder, would be to state an untruth. i was frightened, horribly frightened, and with good reason. to suppose that he would not attack me would have been absurd; i knew that in nine cases out of ten, the grizzly bear is the assailant; that no animal in america will willingly engage in combat with him, and that man himself shuns the encounter, unless well mounted, and even then, the prudent hunter always gives "old ephraim," as the "mountain men" call him, a "wide berth," and rides on without interfering with him, unless the ground is perfectly open, so that his horse is not likely to be impeded. the white hunter considers the killing of a grizzly bear a feat of prowess equal to the destruction of _two_ indians; while to the indian, the destruction of one of these animals is one of the greatest feats in his life's history. among indian braves, a necklace of bear's claws is a badge of honor, since they can only be worn by a man who has himself slain the animals from which they have been taken. on the contrary, the grizzly bear fears no antagonist; he attacks the largest animals on sight. the moose, the elk, the buffalo, or wild horse, if caught is instantly killed. a blow from his paw will lay open the flesh as if gashed with an axe, and he can drag the body of a full grown buffalo, to almost any distance. he rushes upon man without the slightest hesitation, and frequently a dozen hunters will retreat at his approach. nearly twenty bullets have on some occasions been fired into the body of a grizzly, without killing him, and only a shot through the brain or heart is certainly mortal. with such sanguinary fierceness of disposition and extraordinary tenacity of life, it is no wonder the grizzly bear is a creature to be dreaded. had he the swiftness of the lion or tiger, his haunts would be inapproachable by man, and he would be a far more terrible assailant than either. fortunately, however, he is slow compared with the horse, although he can easily outrun a man, and there is another peculiarity about him, which detracts somewhat from the danger of an encounter with this savage beast, he is not a _tree climber_, and many a life has been saved by this circumstance; for although he does not affect the forest, there is usually some timber in the vicinity of his haunts, and in many instances his intended victim has saved himself by taking refuge in a tree. knowing well, by hearsay, all these facts, you can easily imagine my feelings, at finding myself face to face with one of these fierce animals, alone and without weapons, save my bow and arrows and knife. it is true, there was abundance of timber near at hand, but unfortunately the bear was decidedly nearer to me than any tree of sufficient size to promise a safe refuge. on lying down, i had, without thought, placed myself in the very center of the clearing, and i found myself at least one hundred yards from any of the larger trees; the bear had approached before halting, to within about eighty yards, and stood watching me, apparently surprised at our rencontre. without doubt he would overtake me before i could reach and ascend a tree, and i was fairly bewildered by the utter helplessness of my situation. these reflections occupy many minutes of your time to _read_; i _thought_ them in as many seconds. indeed, i had not time to form a plan of either defense or escape, when my antagonist, evidently concluding that i was fair game, dropped upon all fours, uttered a loud roar and rushed upon me with open mouth; simultaneously, i turned and fled with all my speed. before i had covered half the distance that separated me from the tree towards which i had directed my flight, he was almost at my heels, and i had about determined to stop and engage in the desperate conflict that seemed inevitable, when his attention was attracted by an object in his path, and although the halt he made was but momentary, it enabled me to gain some ground, and i ran on with redoubled speed. the object in question was none other than the carcass of the "big horn," which lay fresh and bloody, rolled up in the skin, directly in my line of flight. the bear pawed it over, snatched a hasty mouthful, and then resumed the pursuit; but his brief hesitation had been my salvation, and i had reached the tree which i had selected before he could overtake me. my climbing experience gained during my expeditions with wakometkla, now stood me in good stead, and i "shinned" up the tree with the agility of a monkey. i had no time to spare, however, for my ursine friend reached the base of the tree before i had ascended far enough to be entirely out of reach, and rearing up, succeeded in getting a slight hold of my right foot. i clung to the tree with the desperation of despair, and the moccasin giving way, i soon drew myself above his reach, with no other injury than a severe scratch. in a few seconds i was safely ensconced among the branches, about thirty feet from the ground, while my baffled antagonist was walking round and round it, uttering growls of rage, and stripping the bark from the tree with his terrible claws. during my hasty flight i had slung my bow across my back, and had fortunately preserved it safely. my quiver, well filled with arrows, being attached to my person by a belt, i was well supplied with ammunition; and thinking it about time to commence offensive operations, i secured myself to the tree with strips of leather cut from my shoulder belt, and commenced trying my skill as an archer, with the bear as a living and movable target. owing to my cramped position in the tree, my aim was necessarily uncertain, and many of my shafts went wide of the mark; still, i did succeed in hitting the brute several times, but with no other effect than to increase his rage and apparent determination to watch until he should tire me out, and overcome by fatigue or sleep, i might fall from the tree, and thus become an easy victim. seeing this, i desisted after a while, and settled myself down to wait as patiently as i might for him to tire of his watch, or for relief of some sort to arrive. perhaps an hour had elapsed when i heard a noise on the opposite side of the clearing, and on looking in that direction i saw wakometkla just emerging from the woods. the bear saw him at the same instant, and abandoning his post of sentinel, rushed towards his new enemy. the old indian waited long enough to discharge three or four arrows with great rapidity, and then ascended the nearest tree with a rapidity quite surprising in a man of his age and build. two of his shots had taken effect--that is, they had hit the bear; but they caused no diminution of his energy or fierceness. he rushed to the base of the tree, and vented his rage in stripping the bark from its trunk. finding that his intended prey had escaped him, he soon desisted from this occupation, and returning to the carcass of the "big horn," began devouring it, at the same time keeping a constant watch upon our movements, so as to preclude the possibility of our slipping away. in spite of the uncomfortable nature of our position, i could not help laughing at the ludicrous picture we presented, perched in the trees like a couple of monkeys, hardly daring to move lest we might lose our hold and tumble into the clutches of our unpleasant neighbor. the bear soon finished his repast, indeed it was but a mouthful to an animal of his size and appetite, and he commenced walking back and forth between the two trees in which we were severally ensconced, evidently trying to form some plan by which he could get at us. but his cogitations apparently resulted in nothing; and in fact, we were not at all disturbed as to the probability of his being able to reach us. we knew that we were perfectly safe in our lofty retreat, but how long we might have to remain there was another matter, and _i_ for one was decidedly wearied of my airy prison. i knew that no search would be made for us for several days, as we frequently remained absent two or three days at a time when on these expeditions. our only hope was that our self-appointed jailor might weary of the task he had set himself, or be compelled to go in search of food or water; and in that case we could improve the opportunity, and get out of reach without difficulty. for hour after hour, however, he kept up his sentinel-like tramp from tree to tree; at times varying the monotony of his proceedings by frantic attacks upon their trunks. the tree to which i had retreated was not more than eighteen inches in diameter, and i was not without fear at one time that he would succeed in demolishing it altogether, and bringing me "down by the run." i was not destined, however, to find out whether he was able to accomplish that feat or not, for after tearing away at it for a while, and making the splinters fly in a rather alarming manner, he seemed to tire of it, and resumed his patrolling between the two trees. the day had worn away to near its close, and i was contemplating the unpleasant prospect before me of passing the night in my very uncomfortable quarters, when the sound of hoof-strokes reached my ears. looking out through the opening, upon the plain, i saw a party of about a dozen indians riding leisurely up the valley, evidently one of the hunting parties on their return. they were nearly a mile from our position, but in these elevated regions sounds can be heard at almost incredible distances, and i at once shouted at the top of my voice, to attract their attention. wakometkla did the same, and we were evidently heard, for they halted for a moment, and after a glance in our direction, galloped towards us. as they neared us i expected to see the bear take himself off without ceremony, but to my surprise, he showed no signs of such an intention. on the contrary, when they had passed about half the distance at first separating us, he advanced to the edge of the plain and stood as if inviting attack. the indians rode up to within a few rods of the grizzly, and then seeing us in our haven of safety they realized the situation at a glance, and burst into uproarious laughter. this seemed to irritate the grizzly, for he uttered a roar of rage and rushed fiercely at them; then ensued an exciting and amusing scene. the indians at first used only the lasso, and in a few seconds three or four of them had "roped him," and by spurring up their horses, he was dragged first one way and then another, making frantic efforts to free himself, and growling savagely all the while. meanwhile the other horsemen rode up as near as safety would permit, and fairly riddled him with arrows. overcome by superior numbers, "old eph," at length succumbed to his fate, and a few lance thrusts soon put an end to his existence. wakometkla and myself quickly descended from our tree fortresses and joined the party, who greeted us with exclamations expressive of satisfaction, at having rescued us from our unpleasant predicament: the bear was soon skinned and cut up, and we returned to the village with our rescuers. as far as i was concerned, i felt fully satisfied with my experience as an interviewer of grizzly bears, and had no desire to repeat it, for although hunting the bear may be a pleasing pastime, it is not quite so pleasing when the bear _hunts_ you. however, "all's well that ends well," and if this narrative affords my readers any amusement, i shall never regret my day spent in a tree top. chapter xvi. some curious customs. the winter had been unusually severe, in several instances snow had fallen; a thing of rare occurrence in these latitudes. not having prepared for such weather, by laying in an unusual supply of provisions, we were reduced to the verge of starvation, having recourse in our dire extremity to roots and berries, which we dug from the ground. during one week, i lived solely on the juice expressed from the cactus leaves, which i procured by stripping the plant of its thorny excrescences and paring the leaves with my knife. the juice yielded was thick and gummy, and of a sweetish taste. this diet could not sustain life for any length of time. fortunately i had the good luck to discover some mesquite berries, that had been secreted by one of the tribe. this discovery proved my salvation, as without this timely addition of food, i should certainly have perished. during this season of hardship, many died of starvation. when a death occurred, the family of the deceased would yield themselves up to the most heart-rending grief. their lamentations would succeed in attracting a crowd of sympathizing mourners who would join the family, and by indulging in yells, groans, and screeches, convert the whole scene into the most hideous travesty, which did violence to all those feelings of awe and solemnity, that are experienced by viewing the last sad rites of christian burial. when an indian dies, his body is painted, oiled, and dressed in its best attire, a fresh buffalo skin (if it is to be had), and failing this, a blanket is wound tightly around the body, and bound with thongs, then other blankets are soaked in water until they become very soft and elastic, when they also are wound around the body with great care and exactness, so as to exclude the air. this done, the dead warrior's arms are placed by his side and a liberal supply of food (when the article is plenty); placed on the scaffold. these scaffolds are constructed by placing three upright posts in the ground in the shape of a parallelogram, and connecting them by lateral bars. over these bars are placed a number of willow rods, on which the body rests, in such a position that the feet will be towards the rising sun. the scaffolds are placed high enough to be out of the reach of dogs and wolves, yet not so high as to be inaccessible to the family, some portion of whom visit it daily, bringing food and water, which they place near the head of the corpse. the spirit is supposed to be in need of this sustenance on his journey to the happy hunting grounds. once there, his spear, bow, and arrows will enable him to kill game in plenty. when the scaffolds decay and fall, the relatives collect the bones and bury them. the skull, which by this time has become perfectly bleached and purified, is taken and placed among a number of others which form a circle, the faces turned inward and facing a large shaft, around which is heaped a quantity of buffalo skulls. in this position they are preserved for years, the objects of religious veneration. the scaffolds of the chiefs are distinguished from the others by pieces of red or blue cloth which are thrown over the bodies. a party had been dispatched in search of food, and were expected back hourly. how anxiously we awaited their arrival none may know, who have not suffered the pangs of hunger. at last they made their appearance, bringing with them a quantity of berries called by the indians oth-to-toa. this berry was pleasanter to taste than the mesquite. the juice, when extracted and mixed with water, tasted very much like the orange. in one of my strolls i had observed some blackbirds, and in the hope of finding their nests, i was induced to wander to a greater distance from the village than i had been at any previous time. my search was rewarded by a quantity of eggs, and filling my indian shirt with as many as i could carry, i retraced my steps. in struggling through the tangled underbrush, i lost my way, and after wandering about for some time in the hope of finding the path, i came to a small spring that was bubbling up from a crevice in the rock. the night had closed in rapidly, and, finding it was too dark to prosecute my journey further, i concluded to remain here for the remainder of the night. gathering a few dried leaves, i soon had a fire lighted, and then securing enough brush to last me until dawn, i set about preparing my supper, which was merely roasted eggs. this frugal meal was soon dispatched, and heaping more wood on the fire, i selected a dry spot, and stretching my tired limbs, was soon in a sound slumber. how long i slept i know not, but i was awakened by peals of thunder and flashes of the most vivid lightning. these sounds were unusual in this country, as rain rarely fell in these latitudes. should a storm of any magnitude pour its waters through the gorge in which i then was, i felt my position would be perilous in the extreme. i gathered up my supplies, that were collected at such an expenditure of labor, and scrambled over rocks and through sand towards the side of the mountain. i had not gone far when the rain commenced--first in large drops, and then in a steady patter; before many minutes the storm burst upon the mountain in all its fury. the rain fell in sheets, and literally deluged surrounding objects. my resting place was becoming untenable, and my life was momentarily imperiled by huge masses of falling rock, which had been loosened from its bed and came tearing down the mountain side, carrying all before it. shielding myself behind trees and boulders, i climbed upwards, in the hope of finding a more permanent shelter than that afforded by the stumps of trees. the rain continued to pour down with increasing fury, and anon the vivid flash quickly followed by the startling roar of the thunder, and the noise of the seething flood, which by this time was bounding through the caã±on, conspired to make the scene more terrible. almost despairing, and thoroughly drenched, i was about yielding myself up to the fury of the tempest, when my eye fell upon what appeared to be a crevice in the rock. hastily making towards it, i entered. the deeper i penetrated the larger it became, and i found myself at last snugly ensconced within the recesses of a vast cave. congratulating myself on this good fortune, i was about preparing to resume my rudely interrupted slumber, when i was startled by the sight of two glaring eyes that were peering at me from the depth of the cave. here was a dilemma. i had certainly intruded on some wild animal, and penetrated its lair. my situation became unpleasant in the extreme. turn in whichever direction i might, those fiery eyes followed me, and at last i found that i was being subjected to the influence of a horrible fascination. my unpleasant experience with "old eph" recurred to me with more force than pleasure; and the thought that i might have to deal with a grizzly, made doubly ferocious by being bearded in his den, caused the cold perspiration to stand out in beads upon my forehead. suddenly i was startled by a roar that echoed through the cave. those piercing eyes approached nearer. mad with fright, i rushed to the mouth of the cave, and began a headlong descent down the steep banks of the cliff. in my wild scramble i dislodged stones and brush, which came tumbling precipitately after me, and i also heard another noise which struck terror to my heart; it was the foot stroke of the infuriated animal that was pursuing me! not knowing whither i was going, but actuated by the sole desire to escape from this new danger, i very shortly found myself nearing the swollen river that was bounding through the caã±on. there was no alternative, and, bracing myself for a final effort, i plunged into the swollen stream and breasted the waves, hoping to reach a rock that raised its head above the water, about an hundred yards down the stream; struggle as i might, i felt the rapid current sweeping me on with the rapidity of an avalanche. should i reach it or be borne down the torrent, and be dashed to pieces against some hidden boulder? nerving myself for one grand effort, i breasted the current, and, to my joy, found i was nearing the rock; striking out with the strength of despair i reach the refuge--the waves dash me against its sides--i clutch at the jagged ends that project out of the water, and by their aid clamber out of the reach of immediate danger! finding myself safe, i look about me. the first object that attracts my attention is the lithe form of my pursuer who is running up and down the bank lashing his tail in fury, and occasionally breaking forth in the most savage roars. in its yellow coat and cat-like movements i recognize the dreaded cougar--the tiger of the western mountains--an animal that, when once aroused, will not hesitate to attack man or beast. he seemed to be deliberating whether to follow me into the stream. it was plain he disliked entering the water, and after pacing to and fro for some little time, turned abruptly and left the bank. thinking i had achieved a victory, and finding that now i was safe, my courage was assuming a very bold front; i picked up a stone and threw it in the direction of the beast. foolish action! it hit the cougar, and turning, he now rushed to the bank, and, bellowing with rage, plunged into the river. my position now became critical in the extreme. once the rock was gained, i would certainly be mangled by the fierce creature. i could not take flight by water, as he could easily overtake me. my terror was extreme, and i lost the power of will. fright had made me imbecile, and i rushed about the crest of the rock like a crazy man. all this time the enraged brute drew nearer; his paws touch the base of the rock; he is in the act of drawing his dripping limbs out of the water. mouth open, tongue extended, and eyes inflamed with rage, the cougar prepares for the deadly spring. but look! the surface of the rock moves, gives way, and slides with a gentle motion towards the river. he makes a desperate effort to free himself from this natural trap, but in vain; the rock moves faster every moment, and with one grand rush this land slide is engulfed in the turbid waters. instantly the body is thrown back into the seething flood, and my last view of him is as he turns a bend and disappears forever. after waiting several hours for the waters to subside, i am enabled to wade to the opposite shore, and, discovering my own trail by accident, wend my way back to the village. my adventure is related to wakometkla, and soon spreads throughout the village. from this time forth i am regarded in the light of a hero, but on what grounds i was never able to satisfactorily determine, as i could scarcely consider running away from a danger heroic. chapter xvii. the buffalo dance. the buffalo being the main dependence of the camanches for food, it naturally follows that they are fully alive to the importance of securing an abundant supply of meat during the season in which these animals migrate to the southern prairies. the superstition which forms so large a part of the indian character is especially noticeable in the ceremonies in which they engage every year for the purpose of securing a successful hunt. this ceremony, although not peculiar to any special tribe, is a very novel one, and may be of interest to the reader. like all other tribes, the camanches lead lives of idleness and leisure, and consequently devote a great deal of time to their sports and amusements, of which they have a great variety. of these dancing is one of the principal, and may be seen in a variety of forms. among these are the scalp dance, the boasting dance, the buffalo dance, and a dozen other dances, all of which have their peculiar characters and meanings or objects. [illustration: the scalp dance.] these exercises are extremely grotesque in their appearance, and to the looker-on, who knows not their meaning or importance, they are an uncouth and frightful display of starts, jumps, and yelps, and jarring gutturals, which to a stranger are truly terrifying. but when one gives them a little attention, and becomes initiated into their mysterious meaning, they become a subject of the most intense and thrilling interest. each dance has its peculiar step, and every step has its meaning. each dance also has its peculiar song, and that is frequently so intricate and mysterious, that not one in ten of the young men who are dancing and singing it know the meaning of the song they are chanting over. none but the medicine men are allowed to understand them; and even they are generally only initiated into the secret on the payment of a liberal stipend for their instruction, which requires much application and study. there is evidently a set song and sentiment for every dance, for the songs are perfectly measured and sung in exact time with the beat of the drum; and always with a uniform set of sounds and expressions, which plainly indicate certain sentiments, which are expressed by the voice, though sometimes not given in any language whatever. they have other dances and songs which are not so intricate or mysterious, and which are understood by every person in the tribe, being sung in their own language. some of these have much poetry in them, being perfectly metred, but without rhyme. it is of the buffalo dance, however, that i propose to treat in this chapter, and of which i will try to give the reader as clear an idea as is possible from a mere description; but no words of mine can enable you to fully realize the strange tumult, scampering, grunting and bellowing with which my ears have been so often assailed. the buffalo is essentially a wandering creature, congregating at times in huge herds, and roaming from north to south or from east to west, apparently without any directing impulse, but in reality in search of forage. although their movement to the southward usually takes place at a stated season of the year, it varies greatly in the number who take part in it. hence it sometimes happens that the camanches are unable to procure their necessary supply of meat, and in some cases, when the migration occurs at a later period than usual, the indians find themselves practically without food, and disastrous seasons of famine ensue. this involves the sending forth of expeditions in search of the tardy herds. these hunting parties, having to pass through the country occupied by other tribes, are almost certain to be assailed and harassed by them, and sometimes compelled to return with the loss of many of their number, and without accomplishing the object of the expedition. hence the indians are loth to undertake these hunts, and prefer to depend upon the means which their superstition leads them to believe will have the effect of bringing the buffaloes within their hunting grounds. this is nothing more than the buffalo dance, and when the emergency arises, every indian musters and brings out his mask (the skin of a buffalo's head, with the horns on), which he is obliged to keep in readiness for this occasion. then commences the buffalo dance, which is held for the purpose of making "buffalo come," as the indians term it, or, in other words, of inducing the buffalo herds to change their feeding grounds, and direct their course towards the vast prairies to the eastward of the camanche villages, where the young braves can shoot them down, and the tribe be enabled to procure an abundant supply of food. during the greater part of the year the hunters can find the buffaloes within twenty miles of the village, and entirely within their own territory; but in some seasons the young men range as far about the country as they can safely venture on account of their enemies, without finding meat. when this intelligence is brought back to the village, the chiefs, medicine men and counselors sit in solemn council until they have decided upon the most practicable expedient for overcoming the difficulty, and they rarely fail to decide upon the old and only expedient, which has never failed. the chief issues his orders to the runners or criers, who quickly proclaim it throughout the village, and in a few moments all are assembled to take part in the dance, which at once begins. the place where this strange performance is carried on is the public area in the center of the village, directly in front of the temple. about ten or fifteen indians join in the dance at a time, each with the skin of the buffalo head, with the horns on, placed on his head, and armed with his lance or bow, with which he is accustomed to kill these animals. i have said that this dance always has the desired effect of making "buffalo come." it never fails, from the simple reason that when it is once begun it cannot be stopped, but is kept up incessantly night and day until the welcome herds are descried by the watchful look-outs. drums are beaten and rattles shaken, songs and yells are continually shouted, and lookers on stand ready, with masks on their heads and weapons in their hands, to take the place of each dancer who becomes fatigued and falls out of the ring. a chain of look-outs is established connecting the hills surrounding the village with those to the eastward, and the moment buffaloes are discovered by the distant watchers, they speedily pass the signal from one to anther until it reaches the village. it is instantly understood by the whole tribe, and the joyful intelligence is received with shouts of thanks to their strange god and to mystery men and the dancers, who have been the immediate cause of the successful result. during my residence in the camanche village, these dances were sometimes kept up for two or three weeks without intermission, until the buffaloes made their appearance. hence the buffalo dance can never fail, and the indians consider it an infallible means of bringing the herds into their country. every man in the tribe is obliged to be provided with the mask of the buffalo, which he can use whenever he is called upon to dance to make "buffalo come." the mask is put on over the head, and has a strip of the skin hanging to it of the whole length of the animal, with the tail attached to it, which passes down over the back of the wearer and drags on the ground. when one of the dancers becomes wearied of the exercise, he indicates it by leaning forward and sinking his body to the ground. one of the lookers-on then draws a bow upon him and hits him with a blunt arrow, and he falls like a buffalo and is immediately dragged out of the ring by the bystanders, who brandish their knives about him, and, having gone through the motions of skinning him and cutting him up, they release him, and his place is at once supplied by another who dances into the ring with his mask on. by thus relieving one another the dance is kept up day and night until they reach the desired end, and make the "buffalo come." when the signal is given that the buffaloes have made their appearance, the dance is discontinued at once, and a scene of great excitement ensues. the masks are quickly thrown aside; the indians prepare for the hunt with marvelous rapidity, and mounting their horses, gallop wildly down the valley to pass the eastern entrance. in the village, where all had been enduring the utmost privation, with starvation staring them in the face, a scene of feasting and carousal would follow. each would bring out their private stores, and the provisions that might in an emergency have lasted for several weeks would be consumed in a day. even the dogs were not forgotten, but received a liberal share of the refuse portions of the feast. the usual games and amusements followed, and from the deepest gloom and despondency all seemed to pass at once to the other extreme, and joy and exultation to reign supreme. from the distance required to be traversed, the hunting parties would usually not return until the third day after their departure. then came another scene of feasting, but this time on a far larger scale. the choicest pieces are sacrificed to appease their mysterious god, without which ceremony the indians believe that all their future hunts would be unsuccessful. the largest portion of the meat is cured and made into tasajo, so that the proceeds of one successful hunt will often provide the entire community with food for many weeks. [illustration: the buffalo dance.] when i first saw the buffalo dance, i viewed it with much interest, but when continued for days and weeks, it becomes excessively wearisome from the perpetual howling din and clamor kept up, keeping the village in a continual uproar, and usually causing me to offer up most fervent prayers that the buffalo would "come," if it was only to be relieved from the noise and confusion which are occasioned by this curious ceremony. unlike the northern indians, the camanches resort to the buffalo dance only on rare occasions, but when they do undertake it, their persistence is admirable; and for this reason, the other tribes have a saying, or sort of proverb, that when the camanches dance for "buffalo" it is a good moon to hunt, but a bad moon on the war-path. their meaning probably is, that the buffalo are sure to "come," when the camanches dance for them, but that the camanches are equally sure to "go for" any other tribe who encroach upon their hunting grounds at such times. such is the buffalo dance; one of the most curious of the many strange customs of the prairie indians. chapter xviii. a strange history. one of the most noted warriors of tonsaroyoo's band was a pure blooded mexican. a man of medium size, but athletic and well-proportioned, and not more than thirty years of age; he was distinguished even among these savages for his cruelty, nay, even ferocity of disposition, and lust for bloodshed. his position in the tribe was that of a sub-chief, and he had attached to himself a chosen body of about sixty warriors, all men of bad standing and little character in the tribe, but all noted as desperate fighters. with this party "hisso-de-cha" (the spanish serpent), might be said to be on a perpetual war-path, for he was never contented to remain idly in the village for any length of time, but was continually instituting private forays in all directions. in these operations he was in no wise particular as to the objects of his attacks. plunder and slaughter being apparently his only motive, he would attack any party he met with that was not too numerous, and in this way had several times embroiled the camanches in war with friendly tribes, despite the stern reproofs he received from tonsaroyoo for his lawless conduct; his uniform good fortune in these enterprises, however, had thus far prevented him from falling into entire disrepute with the leaders of the tribe. "success covers a multitude of sins," says the proverb, and so it proved in his case. notwithstanding his evil nature, i was for various reasons strongly attracted towards this man. chief among these was the fact that he spoke english--not very fluently, it is true, but sufficiently to be able to carry on a conversation without much difficulty. then, from the time of my first entry into the village he had treated me with uniform kindness; why this was so i know not, but the fact remains that he did so, and it was by his assistance that i was enabled to perfect myself in the indian language, and also to gain some knowledge of spanish, which afterwards did me good service. much of my spare time, when he was not absent with his band, i spent in his company, and in our talks i had gained considerable knowledge of his past history. what i had heard, however, only made me more curious to hear the whole, and one evening i importuned him to give me some account of his past life. after some hesitation he consented, and filling our pipes, we reclined upon a buffalo robe before the entrance to his lodge, while he told me his story. the renegade's history. "my real name is pedro vargas--_carrai_! it sounds strange enough in my ears now, for it is many years since i have heard it uttered. "i was born on the banks of the del norte, where my father was a _vaquero_ on the estate on don ramon d'echeverra. i remember but little of my childhood, except that my life was a hard and unhappy one, for i was one of eleven children, and we were miserably poor. when i reached my eighth year, i was considered old enough to assist my father in his daily duties; under his tuition, i was able in a few months to ride like a camanche, to fling the lazo with unerring aim, and to perform with credit most of the drudgery which fell to my share. in this manner the time passed until i was about eleven years of age, when the events occurred which separated me from home and friends, and indirectly made me what i am--the boldest warrior of the hietans--"hissoo-de-cha," the renegade, the terror of the frontier. "the estate of don ramon was situated so far down the river as to be out of the track of the indian raiding parties, and for a generation the red-skinned warriors had never troubled that region. but in the autumn of the year of which i speak, a large party of camanches had entered chihuahua, and penetrating almost to the very center of the province, had there met with a severe reverse, and were compelled to retreat without plunder, scalps or captives. not daring to return to their village empty-handed, for, as you know, the very squaws would have hooted them, they recrossed the grande above san vicente, made a wide detour, and coming down the pecos, again entered mexican territory, and made a flying raid upon the river towns. "from its remoteness from the usual scene of these indian forays, the inhabitants of this region were resting in fancied security, and had made no preparations to resist such an attack. as a natural consequence, they fell an easy prey to the savage invaders. "the rancheria of don ramon was one of the first attacked, and the proud old don and his three sons, with most of their rancheros and vaqueros, were surprised and slaughtered. of my own family, my sister conchita, a girl of sixteen, and myself, alone escaped death; and we, with many other captives, were hurried off in charge of a small detachment of camanches. of the journey to this village i need not tell you, as you have, perhaps, passed through a similar experience. "on our arrival here, my sister soon became the wife of a chief, and to this circumstance i was indebted for much better treatment than usually falls to the lot of a captive. and here let me tell you that your own escape from torture and death was little less than miraculous. in my long experience with the tribe, i have never known of a similar incident. but wakometkla is a very singular man, and so greatly is he reverenced by his nation, that he can do many things which tonsaroyoo himself would hesitate to undertake. "_carrambo_, but this story-telling is dry work. see if there be not a flask of mezcal within the lodge. _caval_--you have found it? so--that is better;" and my strange companion, having swallowed a copious draft of the fiery liquid, resumed his narrative: "the first two years of my captivity were comparatively without incident, but at the beginning of the third year i was formally adopted into the tribe. as you yourself have gone through the ceremony, it is unnecessary to describe it, but as the circumstances in my case were somewhat different from yours, i found myself on an equality with such of the young braves as had never been on the war-path. "a few months later i joined a war party led by one of the subordinate chiefs, and during the expedition i was fortunate enough to take two scalps. this at once constituted me a warrior, and, liking the excitement and adventurous life, i soon became noted among the young men of the tribe. i joined every war party, and, being singularly fortunate, soon gained distinction as well as scalps and plunder. by the time i was twenty years of age, i was admitted to be one of the first warriors of the nation, and had attracted to myself a number of the more reckless spirits, who would follow anywhere that i would lead. "i had long been desirous of taking the command of a war party, thinking thereby to gain notoriety, and if fortunate enough to be unusually successful, i might thereafter be entrusted with the leadership of expeditions of more importance. "i had frequently importuned tonsaroyoo, then as now the head chief of the nation, to allow me to undertake such an enterprise, but up to this time he had persistently refused to do so. "finding that i could not obtain his permission, i determined to do without it, and secretly assembled those warriors on whose fidelity and silence i could rely. i made known to them my plans, and succeeded in inducing about thirty braves to take part in the rash undertaking. "leaving the village under the pretense of hunting, we crossed the "llano estacado," to the head waters of the pecos; and descending that stream nearly to its mouth, diverged to the west and crossed the rio grande. we traveled by night and remained concealed during the day, and by the exercise of the utmost caution, succeeded in evading the lipans and cayguas, through whose territory we had to pass. i had laid all my plans before leaving the village, and was quite confident that the raid would be a successful one. it was my intention to attack only the haciendas, and if possible to effect my object by surprise, for i knew that if i could return without the loss of a man, with a few scalps and a moderate amount of plunder, i would receive far more praise than if i had brought back twice as much booty, but with the loss of one or more warriors. "after crossing the river, the first hacienda within reach was that which had been my former home. it had passed into the possession of don rafael d'echeverra, the brother of don ramon, and presented much the same appearance as in former times. unfortunately for the success of my project, there was present at the hacienda a small party of american trappers, who had for some reason strayed into this region. these men had known don rafael, at santa fã©, where he had at one time resided, and they had accordingly been made welcome at the hacienda. "two of their number, while out on a hunt at a few miles distance, had crossed our trail, for i had led my party as near to the hacienda as i dared; and, having concealed ourselves in a dense chaparral, we were waiting for night, it being my intention to attack in the darkness, when the smallness of my force could not be easily discovered. scenting danger at once, the hunters returned by a circuitous route to the hacienda, and warned its occupants. as a natural consequence, when we made our assault some hours later, they were fully prepared for us, and instead of surprising them we were ourselves surprised and greeted with a withering volley from the rifles of the trappers. at the first fire i received a severe wound, and fell from my horse with a broken leg. panic-stricken at the fall of their leader, and demoralized by the unexpected reception they had met with, my followers quickly retreated in confusion, and i was left wounded and a prisoner in the hands of the men i had sought to destroy. "upon discovering that i was a white man, so great was the indignation of the americans, that i should have been put to death on the spot but for the intercession of don rafael. finding that i was a native mexican his sympathy was excited, and at his entreaty my life was spared, and the don's own surgeon attended to my wounds. it was nearly two months before i had sufficiently recovered to be able to go about, and by that time every one on the estate knew my history, or rather that version of it which i saw fit to give them. i had represented to don rafael that i had been compelled to accompany the war party against my will, and concealed the fact that i had been the leader of the band. my story was easily credited because of my youth, and i was treated with great kindness. in another month i had entirely regained my health, and don rafael proposed to me to enter his employ as a vaquero. to this i assented, although i had fully determined to return to my tribe at the first opportunity. but i had first several objects to accomplish, and i was therefore compelled to bide my time, and wait for a favorable occasion. "accordingly i joined the vaqueros of the rancheria, and for two months performed my duties to the entire satisfaction of my master. my object in thus remaining, when i might have made my escape at any time without difficulty, was twofold. in the first place i knew that it would not do for me to return to the indian village empty-handed. my ill-considered and unauthorized foray having resulted in defeat and disaster, i could not expect a very cordial reception on my return, unless i performed some very daring feat in making my escape, or returned with a more than ordinary share of booty. the last i could not hope to accomplish, but the former was quite possible. "my second design was of an entirely different nature, and its successful accomplishment promised to be a very difficult matter. "don rafael's immediate family consisted of a wife and daughter, the latter a girl of fifteen, and one of the most rarely beautiful women it has ever been my fortune to behold. her i had resolved to possess, and it was this reason more than any other which impelled me to the execution of the bloody deed i am about to relate. "guadalupe, as she was called, evidently viewed me with marked disfavor, but this only intensified the passion i felt for her. i was consumed with desire, and determined that no obstacles should prevent me from accomplishing my purpose. "it was not long before the opportunity i sought presented itself, and the events took place which rendered me doubly an outcast from those of my race and color." chapter xix. a strange history continued. "the hacienda of don rafael was a stone building, or rather a collection of buildings, forming a square. like nearly all mexican dwellings it was but one story in height, but covered a large extent of ground. it was flat roofed, with a parapet, breast high, running around the edge. there were few external windows, and these were mere slits in the wall, guarded by heavy iron bars and massive wooden shutters. the interior of the square formed a large court-yard, entrance to which was gained by two archways, one at each extremity. these were closed by great jail-like doors--in fact, the whole structure had some resemblance to a fortress, a style of architecture peculiar to this region, and rendered necessary for security against the annual raids of the indian warriors. "on entering the _patio_ or court-yard, you saw the real front of the house. here the windows had glazed sashes reaching to the ground, and opening on curtained verandahs. the surface of the _patio_ was paved with brick, and in the center stood a fountain, surrounded by orange trees. "since the attack which had resulted in my becoming an inmate of the hacienda, more care had been taken to guard against future attempts of a like nature. the great gates were closed at sundown, and some attempt was made at keeping a regular watch or guard during the night. at first the sentinels were tolerably vigilant, but the lazy rancheros soon wearied of their unaccustomed duties, and before long the detail of a guard was omitted, and affairs subsided into their accustomed quiet. "the american trappers had departed, and all seeming favorable for the accomplishment of my plan, i was not long in putting it into execution. i had taken pains to become familiar with the internal arrangements of the mansion, and knew exactly where the different members of the household slept. selecting a night when there was no moon, i picked out two of the fleetest mustangs from the corral, and secured them, fully prepared for flight, among a clump of trees at a short distance from the hacienda. "during my residence among the camanches, i had become familiar with a certain herb possessing strong narcotic properties. this i had searched for and found without difficulty, and with it i had managed to drug a portion of the food prepared for the evening meal, so that at a comparatively early hour, the entire household was wrapped in profound slumber. my preparations were all completed, and when i deemed that the proper hour had arrived, i descended from the _azotea_, where i had been lying in wait; and noiselessly entered the apartments of the family. reaching that occupied by don rafael, i sought his bedside, and placing one hand over his month, i stabbed him to the heart, and he died with scarcely a struggle. quickly transferring his scalp to my belt, i proceeded with my bloody work, passing from room to room, until eight victims had perished beneath my blows, and eight bleeding scalps garnished my waist. "knowing that i had but little time to spare, i now prepared for flight. hastily collecting such articles of use or ornament as would be likely to seem of great value in the eyes of the indians, and such as i could easily carry, i made them into a pack of small compass, and returning to the _azotea_, i lowered them to the ground with a lariat, which i had previously placed there. i then sought the apartment of guadalupe. entering it without noise, i beheld her, by the dim light of a night lamp, reclining upon her couch, buried in profound sleep. i quickly bound her hands and feet, and gagged her in the indian fashion, with a pear-shaped piece of wood secured by a strip of leather. i then raised her to my shoulder, and bore her to the roof, and by the aid of the lariat, which i had secured to the parapet, i easily descended with her to the plain below. a few seconds rapid walking enabled me to gain the horses, and a few minutes later i had fastened her to the saddle, and we were riding at full speed to the northwest. knowing the route well, i lost no time, and at daybreak had nearly reached the point at which i intended to cross the rio grande. "day was just breaking when i rode through a belt of chaparral, and emerging upon the prairie beyond it, came suddenly upon a horseman, whom i at once recognized as one of the mexican hunters attached to the hacienda d'echeverra. before he could recover from his astonishment at our unexpected meeting, i had literally ridden him down, and brained him with a single blow of my steel mace, one of the weapons which i had taken from don rafael's armory, and the same one you have frequently seen me carry. adding his scalp to those i had already taken, and rifling his person of whatever of value he possessed, i resumed my flight, and traveling steadily all day, found myself by nightfall practically beyond pursuit. "my fair captive had long since recovered consciousness, and i had removed the gag from her mouth. i will spare you a recital of her prayers and entreaties when she realized her position. suffice it to say that, after a perilous and wearisome journey, i reached this village in safety with my prize, and was greeted as one returned from the dead; for the survivors of my party had brought back the news of my fall, and i had been mourned by my wives and my poor sister as dead. now all was rejoicing; a feast was made, the scalp dance was performed, and i found that by my bold exploit i had fully recovered my standing among the warriors of the tribe. "guadalupe was added to the number of my wives, and until her death three years later, remained my favorite. about a year after my return my sister sickened and died, during my absence with a war party, thus leaving me without ties, save such as i had made for myself in my tribe. "i was now completely indianized, and began a series of expeditions which resulted so successfully as to cause my advancement to the position of a sub-chief, and to my being frequently entrusted with important enterprises. in fact, the more desperate an undertaking, the more certainly would i be called upon to achieve it. to this state of affairs i made no objection, for i coveted the sort of distinction or notoriety it gave me, and as i rarely failed of success, i steadily gained in prestige and influence. but i have never been able to attain a seat in the council, or to reach any higher rank than that i now hold. this i attributed to the influence of tonsaroyoo and wakometkla, both of whom regard me with ill-concealed dislike, although they are compelled to acknowledge me as one of the best warriors of their nation. "i have led my chosen band in many a daring adventure, and have never returned without some trophy of my prowess. among the many scenes of this nature through which i have passed, i will recount the following, which will prove to you that in what i have said of myself i have made no idle boast. "on one occasion stonhawon, the second chief, went with about two hundred warriors into the utah country, with a view of replenishing our stock of horses, as we had lost a large number through the polite attentions of the utahs and arapahoes. his party was gone some fifteen days, and returned with only eight horses, and with the loss of five men. this was considered a terrible disgrace, and many of the young warriors begged me to lead them, and by a successful raid remove the shame they felt at the defeat of stonhawon's party. "selecting barely fifty men, but those the most daring braves of the tribe, i left the valley by the eastern entrance, and crossing the desert, struck southward into the lipan country. with this tribe we were at the time at peace, but i cared little for that, and the warriors of my party were equally unscrupulous. i sent forward a dozen spies, and moved forward cautiously with the main body. my reputation was committed to my present success, and i took more than ordinary pains to sustain it. every man of my band was well armed and mounted, and i had full confidence in our ability to overcome double our number. one of the spies now returned and informed me that they had discovered a lipan village of seventeen lodges, situated on the banks of a small stream. i directed them to return and watch them closely, and to apprise me of any movement they might make. the spy went back, but soon returned and informed me that they had moved down the creek, which was a tributary of the pecos, had passed through a small caã±on, and were encamped near its mouth. i ordered him to send in all the spies except three, and direct these to keep a sharp look-out. "i then determined to follow them down the caã±on, and attack them at its mouth, thus cutting off all chance of their retreating into the caã±on; but a spy now brought me word that they had moved further down and encamped on the edge of the timber, with the evident intention of remaining there. i then made a wide circuit, and crossed the ridge lower down with the largest division of my party but left about twenty warriors ambushed in the caã±on. "from the summit of the hill i had an excellent view of the enemy's position, and my plans were quickly formed and executed with almost equal rapidity. under cover of the timber i led my party until we gained the rear of the encampment. then spreading out widely, we advanced to the edge of the timber, and shouting our savage war-whoop, rushed upon the lipans. they were so completely surprised that we were among the lodges before they could make scarcely a semblance of defense, and many of them were cut down as they emerged from the lodges. "those who escaped the first attack retreated towards the caã±on, but on attempting to enter it were met by my detached party and repulsed with considerable loss. they then retreated to the west and gained the shelter of the woods, while we hastily collected our plunder and prisoners and retraced our steps towards our village, our spoils consisting of thirty-nine scalps, forty-eight captives, women and children, and over two hundred horses; and this notable victory was gained without the loss of a warrior, although we had twenty-three wounded. "the lipans gathered reinforcements from other bands, and followed our trail, but did not succeed in overtaking us before we reached our village; and here we are too strong to be attacked. great was the rejoicing upon our return; the scalp-dance was performed, feasts prepared in our honor, and i found myself looked upon as a greater brave than ever. "this expedition was but the prelude to a series of similar ones, and as my luck did not desert me, i soon found that more than half the tribe were anxious to accompany the war parties which i led. it suited me better, however, to operate with comparatively small parties, say of fifty or sixty men, and to take only those who would render unquestioning obedience to my authority. for this reason i selected men of no great prominence in the tribe, but whom i knew to be good fighters, to accompany me on these expeditions, so the victories we achieved might redound mainly to my credit. "one day i started out to hunt, accompanied by only five young warriors. after five days journey, during which we found no game, we ascended a slight eminence, and saw before us a large prairie. at some distance out a party of about thirty indians were engaged in killing buffaloes. we could also see their village at about four miles distance. here was an opportunity not to be lost. we passed along behind the crest of the hill until we had gained a position between them and their village, and then passed through a gully and concealed ourselves in the path they must necessarily take. we were able to discover by their costume that they were pawnee picts, a tribe with whom we were generally at peace, but i considered that fact of no importance. "the unsuspecting hunters, having finished butchering and dressing the buffaloes they had killed, began to approach us in straggling parties of four or five, their horses loaded with meat which they were bearing to the village. when the first of them came abreast of us, i made a signal, and five of them fell before our arrows. as the next party came up we brought down three more, and then rushed from our hiding place, and some began scalping the dead, while the remainder were cutting the lashings of the meat in order to secure the horses. having taken eight scalps, we sprang upon the horses we had freed from the packs, and retreated precipitately, fearing to be overpowered by numbers. we made direct for the timber, and having secreted our horses, took refuge in a rocky place in the mountain, where we felt protected for a while from their attacks. to attack us in front they had to advance right in the face of our fire, while to reach our rear they had to take a circuitous route of several miles around the base of the mountain. "the enemy had now gathered in force, and displayed the utmost bravery, for they made repeated assaults nearly up to the position that sheltered us. their arrows showered around us without injury, but we could bring one man down at each shot. to scalp them, however, was impossible. one of the enemy, who seemed to be a great brave, charged right into our midst and inflicted a severe wound on one of my party. before he could retire, i cut him down with one stroke of my battle-axe, and added his scalp to those we had already taken. by this time the enemy had nearly surrounded us, which led me to believe that retreat would be our safest course; so when night came we evacuated our fortress unperceived by our enemies. "they, deeming our escape impossible, were quietly resting, intending to attack us with their whole force in the morning, and take our scalps at all hazards. moving with the stealth of the cougar, we proceeded along the summit of a rocky cliff until we came to a ravine, through which we descended to the plain below, which was here covered with heavy growth of timber. we reached the spot where we had concealed our horses without difficulty, and made the best of our way home. in order to avoid hostile war parties we were obliged to take a roundabout course, and it was not until the eighteenth day after our departure that we reached the village. the tribe had given us over for lost, but when they saw us returning with nine scalps and with but one of our party hurt, their grief gave way to admiration, and we were greeted with shouts of applause. "the years i have spent among the camanches are filled with such exploits as these, but their recital would weary you, and i will not further prolong my story." as the renegade finished his narrative, we sat and smoked for some time in silence. then a sudden thought struck me and i said to him: "hisso-de-cha, i have often thought that i should like to go on the war path. why can you not take me with you when you next go forth with a war party?" "that i would willingly do," he replied, "but it would never be permitted; or at all events, i never could gain wakometkla's consent to such a thing; but perhaps you can induce stonhawon to let you accompany him, and i think he could manage it. he is now preparing to go on an expedition of some sort, as he is anxious to surpass my recent success against the arapahoes. but come, it is time we were asleep, and if you are not tired of listening to me, i am decidedly tired of talking; so permit me to bid you a _bueno noche_;" and so saying, the renegade arose and retired to his lodge. i was not long in following his example, but sleep did not close my eyelids until nearly dawn. reflecting upon the strange story of my still stranger companion, and seeing in imagination the many bloody scenes through which he had passed, my mind gradually turned to the subject which had so long lain dormant--the hope of escape from my hated bondage. at last there seemed a chance that my intense longing for freedom might be gratified; and i determined to spare no effort towards inducing stonhawon to consent to my forming one of his war party. hastily formed plans and wild schemes of all descriptions chased one another through my brain, and it was nearly morning before i fell into a troubled sleep, haunted even in my dreams by visions of blood and slaughter. chapter xx. the buffalo hunt. the season was now approaching when the buffalo might be expected in great numbers on the plains to the east of us, and all the warriors were making the most extensive preparations for their grand buffalo hunt. they had commenced the ceremonies by song and dance, as related in another chapter and now, all that was necessary for their happiness, was the actual appearance of the bison. young men left the camp daily, and scoured the plains, in order to get the first news of the herd; while others stationed themselves on high cliffs, and patiently waited the advent of the animal which was to supply them with food. a signal had been agreed upon, by which the village would be made aware of their presence as soon as the buffaloes were in sight. meantime every indian was busy, perfecting his arrangements for the chase. lances were re-pointed, arrows headed, and bows strengthened. most of the time, however, was employed in training the ponies, and the plain, in front of the village, presented a very animated appearance as the horsemen were seen dashing along at top-speed, throwing the lasso, or rushing headlong up to another warrior, who personated a buffalo, go through the motions of killing him. these scenes fired me with a desire to see a buffalo hunt myself. i had reason to believe that the indians trusted me sufficiently to permit of my accompanying them on the proposed expedition; but then i was totally inexperienced in the management of their weapons, on horseback, never having had occasion to use them when mounted. however, i determined to try, and going to wakometkla, i made known my wishes. he concurred quite heartily in my request, and even went so far as to offer me his own lance and spear. my determination to accompany the party was soon bruited throughout the village, and many were the offers of advice, ponies, and implements of the chase, that were pressed upon my acceptance. after some hesitation, i selected a pony that pleased me, and arming myself with bow and arrows, sallied forth upon the plain, to put into practice the hints that had been imparted to me in regard to hunting the bison. at first it was up-hill work; and my frantic endeavors to slide on the side of my pony and discharge an arrow from under his neck, caused my instructors no small merriment. after a severe fall--and i had many such--i would be assisted to my horse's back, and recommended to try it again, with as much coolness as if i had merely fallen from a chair. [illustration: the buffalo hunt.] notwithstanding the many times i came to grief, in trying to wield bow and arrow, or lance, effectively, i kept persistently at it, and in a week's time i had become a somewhat expert horseman, and could shoot an arrow with tolerable accuracy. i now wished that buffaloes would be signaled as approaching, quite as ardently as did the warriors; but in the meantime, i persevered in my practice. one day it occurred to me that i should like to learn to throw a lasso, and procuring one, i coiled it, mounted, and went in search of some object on which to practice. by some mutability of fortune a donkey had strayed into our midst, and had remained with the tribe for many years. no one used him, but all considered it their privilege to tease the poor brute. he bore it calmly and with that fortitude which is a distinguishing trait of his species. deeming him a very fair substitute for a buffalo, i gave my pony a sharp cut with the whip, and dropping the rein upon his neck, prepared to throw my lasso. my imaginary buffalo seemed to suspect that all was not right, and acting on his suspicions galloped away, not giving my intentions the benefit of the doubt. it was of no avail, however, for, urging my pony to increased speed, i was soon within range, and twirling the lasso around my head a few times, i launched it, directing its course, as nearly as my poor skill would permit, towards the donkey's head. it would certainly never have touched him had he pursued the direction in which he was then running. but his evil genius prompted him to turn, and, shaping his course so as to bisect mine at right angles, he raised his head, and, giving vent to one of those musical neighs (?) for which the animal is somewhat famous, rushed on in his mad career. poor brute! the noose hovered over him a moment, like some bird of prey about to swoop down on its quarry, and then settled over his head and shoulders. my horse knew more about the use of this peculiar instrument than i did, for no sooner had the lasso passed over the head of the donkey than he planted his fore feet firmly on the ground, and braced his body to receive the shock. before i was aware of anything, i felt a sharp jerk at my wrist, and the next moment i was sailing over my pony's head, and going in the direction of the donkey at a more rapid rate than was agreeable. i soon struck _terra firma_, but with such force that the concussion caused me to see more stars than i thought the heavens were capable of containing. to add to my embarrassment, the rope had become fastened to my wrist, and in such a manner that i could not free myself. the donkey, recovering from the effect of the shock, started off at headlong speed, dragging my unresisting body after him. how long this novel journey would have continued i have no means of knowing had i not fortunately been rescued by a passing indian. after an examination, i found that with the exception of torn clothing and a few scratches, i had come out of this adventure safely; but i never more had any desire to run amuck with donkeys. the indian then explained the manner in which the lasso was thrown, and under his tuition i became somewhat of an adept in this novel art. the following morning the signal from the look-out announced that the herd were in sight. then there was hurrying to and fro, and mounting in hot haste. indians were seen rushing frantically in every direction, whilst the greatest hilarity prevailed among the squaws. horses were driven into the corrals and quickly bridled, whilst those who were to participate in the hunt were busy divesting themselves of all superfluous clothing. some armed themselves with a bow and a few arrows, while some depended on their lances only. the party had by this time assembled in front of the lodge where tonsaroyoo was standing giving the final instructions to the band. these were very brief, and as soon as he had finished speaking, everything being in readiness, we mounted our horses, and were off like a whirlwind. passing up the valley, we climbed the cliff and defiling around the narrow ledge of rock that guards this entrance to the village soon deployed upon the prairie. as we swept along over the plain on this glorious morning, my spirits rose, the blood coursed through my veins in rapid pulsations, and i felt as if i could have destroyed a herd of buffaloes single handed. in these latitudes such is the purity of the air that one seems to be taking in at every breath the veritable elixir of life. your spirits are buoyant, and all nature seems to be smiling and gay. as we journeyed we overtook the scouts, who were returning to apprise us of the exact location of the buffaloes. after making their report, they would wheel into line and sweep on with the main party. we had proceeded about twenty miles, when we reached a level stretch of prairie, and directly in front of us, at a distance of perhaps two miles was the herd quietly grazing, all unsuspecting of the danger that menaced them. it was not a very large drove, and they kept quite close together. it was the season when the buffaloes wandered off from the main herd in small bands, and the prairies were dotted for miles with these black clumps, like great dark splashes on a carpet of emerald. the plan of attack was decided upon in council, and the band disposed of in a manner that would insure the complete and speedy extermination of our game. we were about to make a "surround." the warriors were divided into two columns, and taking opposite directions, drew themselves gradually around the herd at a distance of about a mile from them. we continued to deploy in this manner until a complete circle was formed, and then, at a given signal, we closed in upon the buffaloes, keeping our impatient steeds at a moderate pace. the herd soon got the wind of the advancing enemy, and fled in a body in the greatest confusion. to the point where the buffaloes were aiming to cross our line, the horsemen were gathering, and forming in column, brandishing their weapons and yelling in the most frightful manner, by which means they turned the surging mass. seeing themselves baffled at this point, they would rush off in an opposite direction, when they would again be met by a formidable column and again repulsed in utter confusion. by this time we had closed in from all directions, forming a continuous line that circled the throng like the deadly coils of the cobra. the buffaloes had become completely demoralized, and were eddying about in a crowded and confused mass, hooking and climbing upon each other. now was the time for the onslaught. tonsaroyoo, by whose side i was riding, placed the whistle to his lips and gave the signal. then followed a scene of wild confusion. the horsemen dashed upon the bewildered buffaloes with the rapidity of thought almost, using their lances and arrows with murderous effect. in the turmoil a cloud of dust was raised which in part obscured those of the band who did not immediately surround me. the excitement was intense, and soon all became one immense blur, in which hunters and buffaloes were indiscriminately mixed. i could see the indians galloping their horses around the animals and driving the whizzing arrows or long lances to the hearts of their quarry. my own pony had penetrated deep into the herd, and with a sagacity that a long experience alone could develop, was laying his course straight for an enormous bull that was flanking the herd. had _my_ taste been consulted, i should certainly have declined to try conclusions with such an ugly customer, but there was no avoiding the encounter, and, selecting an arrow, i drew my bow and waited a favorable opportunity to send it through the bison. on sped the pony, and in a few moments i was brushing the flank of the buffalo. at a glance i saw that he had been wounded and was tearing along, blind with rage. i let fly my arrow, which pierced his neck; its effect was only to increase his fury, and, wheeling round, he rushed on me with savage desperation. never can i forget the sight as he bore down upon us. infuriated with the wounds already received, his shaggy mane partly concealing his bloodshot eyes, and bellowing fiercely, he poised his head for a final charge. my horse tried to escape the onslaught, but we had penetrated into the main body, and our actions were impeded by the other buffaloes. i concluded our destruction was inevitable, but, as a last resort, i had determined to leap to the ground and trust to luck to lead me out of this dilemma. as i was preparing to dismount, a lance lying upon the ground caught my sight, and i instantly changed my resolution. if i could secure the weapon all might yet be well. i determined to make the effort at all hazards, and throwing my arm into the sling that depended from the neck of my horse, i swung lightly from his back, and hanging by my arm and foot, made ready to grasp the lance with my disengaged arm. as we swept along i succeeded in securing it, and reseating myself, prepared to drive it deep into the side of the enraged bull. i had scarcely time to poise the instrument when the buffalo charged down on us like a whirlwind. bracing myself as best i might, i pulled violently on the reins and threw my steed to one side, just in time to prevent his being gored to death, at the same time lunging out savagely at the animal. the shock was terrific, and i went whirling from my horse's back some twenty feet on the prairie. i was not so violently stunned but that i was quite conscious of the danger i was in of being trampled to death by the hoofs of the demoralized herd, and, gathered myself up in time to grasp the trailing lasso that was fastened to my pony, i was dragged far out on the prairie. badly bruised, my skin lacerated and in places bleeding profusely, i felt in no condition to take an active part in the hunt; in fact, my unique experience was, i thought, sufficient to last me a lifetime. riding at some distance from the _melee_, i had an excellent opportunity to watch the progress of the hunt. the slaughter continued with unabated fury. the plain was covered with dead and dying buffaloes. horses could be seen galloping over the prairie riderless, while their dismounted masters were flying for their lives before the infuriated animals. sometimes the serried ranks would open, and the blinded horsemen, so intent upon their prey, amidst the cloud of dust, were wedged and hemmed in among the crowding beasts, over whose backs they were obliged to leap for security, leaving their horses to the fate that might await them in the results of this wild and desperate war. many were the bulls that turned upon their assailants and met them with desperate resistance, and many were the warriors who were dismounted and saved themselves by their superior running abilities. some who were closely pursued by the bulls, would wheel suddenly around, and snatching the part of buffalo robe from their waists, throw it over the horns and eyes of the maddened animal, and darting to one side, drive an arrow or lance to its heart. others dashed upon the prairies by the side of the affrighted beasts which had escaped from the throng, and closely escorting them for a few rods, bring down their hearts' blood in streams, and their huge carcasses upon the enameled turf. in this way the whole herd was quickly annihilated. the war lasted perhaps thirty minutes, and resulted in the total destruction of the herd, which, with all their strength and fury, were doomed, like every beast, to fall before the destroying hands of mighty man. i had sat trembling on my horse, and witnessed this extraordinary scene. although i was not enabled to accurately estimate the number killed, yet i am sure several hundred buffaloes fell in this grand onslaught. after the battle the scene was curious in the extreme. the hunters were moving about amongst the dead and dying animals, leading their horses by their halters, and claiming their slain by the private marks upon their arrows, which they were drawing from the wounds in the animals' sides. a few buffaloes had the good fortune to escape, but, after wandering off on the prairie for some distance, they would stop, stand a while, looking around as if in bewilderment, then turning, as if bent on their own destruction, return to the herd, and mingling with the dead and dying, swell the slaughtered throng with their numbers. when all was finished, and the arrows had been claimed, a general council was held, the indians seated in a circle on the ground. the pipe was passed around, each taking a few whiffs. it was decided to wait until the women and extra horses had arrived from the village, a messenger having been despatched to announce our success, and ordering the squaws to repair to the scene and carry the meat back to the encampment. we had not long to wait for the arrival of the women. they came in a gang, making the air resound with their yells of rejoicing. as soon as they came up they were greeted with disdainful silence by the assembled warriors, and tonsaroyoo having issued a few directions, they fell to, and were soon deep in the mysteries of skinning and butchering the slain buffaloes. as soon as a carcass had been cut up, it was placed in a covering of the hide, and placed upon the pony's back waiting to receive it. as soon as one was loaded, an indian boy took him in charge and led him off to the village. the plain presented a peculiar appearance, dotted here and there with the ladened ponies returning to camp, and reminded me of a caravan on the african deserts, such as i had seen in books, more than anything else. the warriors soon rode off, leaving the women, boys, and dogs to complete the destruction. our entry into the village was an ovation. conquering heroes could not have been more graciously received. during the next week all hands were engaged in a round of feasting and dancing, interspersed with religious ceremonies, and in some instances of self-immolation. no scene of the long series in which i was both actor and spectator, gave me a better idea of the indian character. to fight, slaughter, prey, eat and sleep, seemed to be the end and aim of their existence. to outnumber his adversary and hence consummate his destruction, was the highest possibility of prowess. to bear torture without evincing the weakness of physical suffering was the sublimity of courage; and when death finally overtook them, to go to the happy hunting grounds well supplied with the implements that would produce carnal enjoyment was the apotheosis of enjoyment! chapter xxi. mrs. eastman's story continued. i had now been five years among the indians, and during that time my life was chiefly trials and hardships. rest, a word unknown in my vocabulary. it would appear that i owed allegiance to no particular individual, but on the contrary, i was called upon to perform the most arduous tasks by man, woman, and child. my labors in the field having come to a conclusion, i was inducted into the mysteries of curing and dressing skins of various animals, making moccasins and gathering berries for the winter stock. during a period of three months rain had not fallen, and this fact gave rise to a peculiar ceremony, which i will briefly relate. the crops were suffering severely from the drought, and it was decided in council that the "rain makers" should invoke the clouds, and by a series of conjugations cause the heavens to open their floodgates. the women had become clamorous and implored the medicine-men to intercede for rain, that their corn patches, which were now turning pale and yellow, might not be withered and they be deprived of the customary annual festivity and the joyful occasion of the "roasting ears" and the "green corn dance." the plaints of the women were entertained, but these wise (?) men discreetly recommended caution and deliberation, lest by undue haste the great spirit might become incensed and defeat their endeavors. this stratagem was very pellucid, because the longer they delayed the formalities, of course the greater would be the chance of success; but the importunities of the women became daily more persistent, and the council was at length convened. the medicine-men assembled in all the bravery of their grotesque trappings, and the fires being lighted, a large quantity of wild sage and other aromatic herbs was thrown upon the flames, that their savory odors might ascend as a peace-offering to the great spirit. some twelve or fifteen young warriors volunteered to try their medicine and see if the clouds could not be made to yield their vapor by the charm of their eloquence. it was a dreadful alternative, as, failing to produce any result, they suffered everlasting disgrace at the hands of the entire tribe. the preliminaries having been arranged, the candidates were drawn by lot and a day assigned to each one to lift his voice on high and persuade the rain to descend. the celebrant took up his position on the top of the council lodge, while below the worthy doctors continued to burn their incense, and with song, prayers, and incantations, commanded the clouds to obey them. wah-kee (the shield), ascended the wigwam at sunrise and made elaborate preparations to frighten the clouds into obeying him. after indulging in war-whoops, brandishing his lance, shield and tomahawk, and going through various other absurd performances, he subsided and betook himself to counting his mystery beads. the whole village had assembled, and were howling lustily for his success. not a cloud appeared--the day was calm and hot; and when the sun declined behind the mountains, he descended from his exalted position, and withdrew with a crestfallen air. he returned to his lodge a sadder if not a wiser man, disgraced and with no prospect of ever attaining to the dignity of a medicine man. the next morning the performance was repeated, om-pah (the elk), saying that his importunities would certainly be heard. he was quite nude, and his body besmeared with yellow clay. a beautiful shield was displayed on his left arm, and his right hand grasped a long lance. the skin of a raven adorned his head. shield and lance were flourished, but in vain. not a cloud obscured the brightness of the noon-day sun. the squaws were crying, and the corn was withering at its roots. war-rah-pa (the beaver), was the next, but he, like the others, spent his time in vain; and wak-a-dah-me took the stand the next morning. he was much more gaily attired than any of his predecessors. in addition to a shield ornamented with "red chains of lightning," he carried in his left hand a bow and single arrow. the concourse was as great as on any previous day. striking an attitude, he tossed up a feather to ascertain the course of the wind, then turning to the mob below, began a lengthy harangue, something after the following manner: "apaches! children of the sun!--you behold me here a sacrifice. i shall this day relieve you of your distress and bring joy to your lodges, or i shall live among the dogs and old women for the remainder of my days. my friends, you saw which way my feather flew. i shall hold my shield in that direction, and the lightning will draw a great cloud, and this arrow, which is feathered with the quill of the white swan will make a hole in it. "warriors! this opening in the lodge at my feet shows me the medicine-men. they are seated in a circle and are crying to the great spirit above who commands the sun and clouds. three days they have sat there. have they done aught to relieve your distress? om-pah tried and failed, because on his head was the raven. it flies _above_ the storm. war-rah-pa is the beaver, and he lives _under_ the _water_. how could he succeed? my friends, i see you are in great distress, and nothing has yet been done. this shield belonged to my father, the mad bull. it was taken from a black cloud, which will come over us to-day. i am the son of my father, and will surely bring you relief. i have done." thus flourished wakadahme, alternately addressing the clouds and the people. it so chanced that as he was speaking, a small cloud appeared on the horizon, and as it approached grew larger, until the heavens were overcast. then drawing his bow to its utmost tension, he let fly the arrow, which sped up into the gathering blackness, and was lost to view. presently the sky was illumined with a vivid flash, and peal upon peal of thunder followed in rapid succession. the crowd dispersed, running to their lodges in the greatest confusion; but the great warrior who had brought about this happy state of things remained at his post, strutting around the apex of the lodge in all the might and majesty of his new made glory. even rain could not drive him away from the scene of his triumph. there he stood, the moist cynosure of all eyes. after this all was joy and gladness. wakadahme was loaded down with honors, and every chief in the tribe was anxious to have him select one of his daughters for a wife. he accommodated six of them, but prudential reasons interposed between him and the seventh. from this time forth he was an honored and puissant warrior, chief, and mystery man. numerous amusements were indulged in by the tribe, and all had for their end and aim some gambling operation. the youths had an exhibition of arrow shooting which they called the "game of the arrow." those most distinguished in this exercise assembled on the prairie a little distance from the village, and each one having paid his "entrance fee," such as a shield, robe, pipe, or other article, would step forward to the mark, and, selecting ten arrows, proceed to shoot them in the air in rapid succession. the one who could get the greatest number up before the _first_ fell to the ground claimed the "pool" and went away in the best of spirits, displaying his gains as he journeyed through the village. the older braves passed their time in horse racing. this species of sport varies but little among the indians from that which obtains among civilized communities. a track is mapped out upon the level prairie, and a couple of lances, from which pennants are streaming, are planted firmly in the ground at a point which denotes the goal. the riders start from the upper end of the course, and plying the whip with all their vigor, come thundering down the course with the speed of the wind. a judge is appointed whose decision is irrevocable, and grouped around him are the spectators intent on making their bets and watching the progress of this tournament of speed. occasionally sham fights are inaugurated, when brave meets brave in all the fierceness of battle array to go through the motions of indian warfare, circling around the foe, or bunching together, come down on the enemy with startling suddenness, discharging a cloud of arrows, then, wheeling short around, retrace their steps and prepare to receive the shock of their enemy's advance. one day a messenger brought the news that buffaloes had made their appearance on the plain, and a numerous party was at once formed to go in their pursuit. after having been gone about two days they returned laden with the fruits of victory, and throwing the meat down in one pile, issued their orders to have it cured at once. this arduous task was delegated to the women, and in a very short time poles were planted in every direction. the meat was dressed and then cut in long strips of about a quarter of an inch in thickness, and, being hung over the lines, was left to dry in the sunshine. when it is cured the buffalo meat becomes _tasajo_, and in this state may be preserved for a great length of time. it is cured without salt; in fact, the indians rarely if ever use this condiment, which is so essential to the civilized white. this seems to be accounted for by the fact that they use very little vegetable food. hence, during my captivity, i became quite reconciled to the absence of salt, and for months after my return to the whites did not feel any desire to use it. so strong is the force of habit. it had been announced that during the annual religious ceremonies soon to commence, we would have the pleasure of entertaining a band of "club" apaches, who would participate in the festivities, and preparations of the most elaborate character were made for their reception and entertainment. of all my experience in the character of a captive, these were, perhaps, the most shocking. never shall i forget the terrible ordeal of that bloody week, when human gore ran like water, and it seemed a miracle that such a band of fiends were not swept off the face of the earth! chapter xxii. feasts, fasts, and facts. this chapter is to be a faithful description of mystery, hocus-pocus, _vou-doo_, and indian superstition, concrete and abstract. the entire ceremonial of indian worship has for its groundwork the basest and most groveling superstition. all events in any way out of the ordinary run of human affairs are directly traced to the good or evil spirit. if their affairs are in any way confused, or do their war parties come to grief, the misfortune is laid at the door of o-kee-hee-de (the evil spirit), and when fortune smiles upon them, and bountiful harvests, game, scalps, and victories are theirs, it is directly attributable to the influence of the great spirit. an infant's knowledge begins by the inculcation of this proposition, and during its lifetime, existence is enjoyable or the reverse, according as the good or evil spirit smiles on him. in this fact is displayed the resemblance between a savage _fetich_ and the ideal christian religion. it is the distinction that exists between the bud and full-blown flower,--a wild, barbarous groping after the perfected civilized idea. the indian has his ideas of a heaven and a purgatory, but they are carnal and material. as he lives in this world, so he proposes to exist in the world hereafter. the happy hunting grounds are merely a repetition of his present life, only in those blissful elysian fields a good spirit wills that game shall always be in abundance, and hunting facilities inexhaustible. contrary to the faith that obtains among christians, the indian maintains that the good spirit inhabits the realms of the evil spirit, while his opposite, the evil one, haunts the domains of the blest. this curious, not to say absurd state of affairs, is accounted for in the following manner: it is maintained that an indian suffers for his crimes only for a length of time commensurate with the sins committed. hence, while professing their conviction in a future administration of rewards and punishments, they also maintain that a very judas of his tribe will, after expiating his sins, enjoy the fullest delights of his more upright companions. thus it becomes very necessary, in their opinion, that the good spirit should meet them in purgatory, and by word and act increase their sufferings and bring them to a realizing sense of the power of him whom they have offended; while, on the other hand, the bad spirit roams through their paradise still tempting the happy. those who have gone to the regions of punishment, they believe will be tortured for a time proportioned to their offences, and then, being transferred to the land of the happy, they are again liable to the temptations of the evil spirit, and answerable again at a future time for their new offences. it will be seen that this scheme of salvation is rather crude and not as satisfactory in its details as one might desire. in regard to the topographical positions of these two places--heaven and hell--little can be ascertained. as near as i could learn, the offenders inhabited a county lying far to the north, where snow and ice were the minor concomitants of a bleak and barren land; whilst they suppose the happy hunting grounds to be in the region of perpetual sunshine, where every prospect is of the most charming character, and only the keenest enjoyment is experienced; where buffaloes and other indian luxuries abound. to such lengths was superstition carried, that the young warriors of the tribe deemed no tortures, however brutal or sanguinary, too severe that would by their endurance gain them the admittance to this favored region; and to this end, annual feasts and religious ceremonies were instituted, that the appalling cruelty of the rites might well make the stoutest heart tremble, and the most valiant spirit quake with fear. the apaches were now on the eve of one of these festivals, and those who aspired to be considered as braves, and to establish a reputation for endurance under pain and suffering, were making minute and careful preparations to endure the infliction creditably. there was to be a series of performances under the sole supervision of one grand master of ceremonies. this worthy was the head medicine of the nation, and was looked up to with a species of veneration verging upon adoration. the rites were to be inaugurated by a grand dance in the open air. the ground selected for this performance was immediately in front of the medicine lodge, and embraced an area of about half an acre. previous to the inception of the ceremonies, a number of the women were set at work with large wooden mallets, pounding the turf, which was done in order to make the ground hard, smooth and level. as soon as this was accomplished, a curb was erected in the centre of the space by driving stakes in the ground in the form of a circle, just leaving sufficient space between each one to admit of a free passage of air. the curb rose to a height of about three feet, the top being covered by stretching a buffalo robe over the stakes. within this enclosure was placed a small stone altar, on which burned the sacred flame. under no circumstances was the flame allowed to be extinguished. in the event of its ceasing to burn, it would have been considered an ill omen, and in order to propitiate the good spirit, it would have become necessary to sacrifice a female captive. all was now in readiness, and on the following morning mahtocheega and the chiefs of the nation assembled in the medicine lodge preparatory to commencing the "death dance." sixteen young men participated in the dance. they stood to one side in a group, isolated from the crowd. they were decked out in the most gorgeous trappings, each one personating some animal which they imitated as closely as possible, both in action and sound. beginning by circling around the curb in a measured tramp to the sound of the indian drums and rattles, they gradually accelerated their pace until they were going at full speed, meanwhile indulging in the most frightful yells, groans, whoops, and cries. this was kept up without intermission for, perhaps, fifteen minutes, when the medicine man sounded a shrill blast on his whistle, and, as if by magic, the performers dropped upon "all fours" and began to practice the distinctive peculiarity of the animals they personated. their actions were a source of considerable amusement to the bystanders, and each actor was applauded vociferously when by some particular gesture, or trick, he faithfully portrayed the habits of the animal he represented. some of these actions were of a very gross, not to say revolting character. in the heat of the excitement a wild scream startled the bystanders, and soon the women were rushing in every direction, seemingly in the most abject terror. pursuing them was a hideous monster entirely nude, his body being blackened with charcoal and bear's grease until it shone like ebony; his face was marked with a profusion of white rings about an inch in diameter, and around his mouth were frightful indentures which closely resembled canine teeth. in addition to his hideous appearance, he gave the most frightful shrieks as he dashed through the crowd. this unearthly creature carried in his hand a staff of about six feet in length, with a red ball at the end of it, which he pushed along the ground in front of him as he ran. all eyes, save those of the braves engaged in the dance, were upon him as he dashed on in pursuit of the women. they fled in the wildest disorder falling over each other in their frantic endeavors to elude the monster's grasp. the master of ceremonies now interfered, and advancing from his position beside the chief, ran up to where the women were struggling with the demon, and, thrusting his medicine pipe before the black monster, held him immovable under its charm. this action enabled the females to get safely out of his reach, and when free from danger, although their hearts still beat with the excitement, they soon became calm, and, seeing that he was ignominiously subjugated by the charm of the all-potent pipe, indulged in the most extravagant laughter, and shouts of applause at his sudden defeat, and at the ridiculous posture in which he was held. they presented a striking picture as they stood there face to face--the old man standing erect, his face tremulous with suppressed emotion, while his eyes gleamed with rage and hatred. the evil spirit on the other hand, cowed, and trembling, seemed transfixed with terror. at intervals he would make an effort to break the spell, and darting to one side attempt to break off in the direction of the prairie; but the ever-vigilant chief was at his side in a twinkling and holding the potent charm _to his nose_, reduce him to instant obedience. thus they stood, the one with his body painted black and representing the evil one, frowning everlasting vengeance on the other, who sternly gazed him back with a look of exultation and contempt, as he held him in check and powerless under the influence of his magic charm. when the superior power of the chief had been fully tested and acknowledged, and the women had been allowed ample time to remove themselves to a safe distance and place innumerable barriers between themselves and this fiendish monster, the pipe was gradually withdrawn from before him, and he was once more allowed to follow the dictates of his low and bestial mind. no sooner did he feel himself free from this constraining influence than he dashed into the center of the group of dancers, and attacking one of the young men who was dressed in the guise of a buffalo, _hivung ee a wahkstia chee a nahks tammee ung s towa; ee ung ee aht ghwat ee o nungths tcha ho a tummee osct no ah ughstom ah hi en ah nohxt givi aht gahtch gun ne_. after this performance he visited three others in succession, and indulged in antics of a light character, that elicited shouts of laughter and rounds of applause. the indians considered the strict observance of this particular ceremony as highly important, and calculated to be of great benefit in attracting game to their vicinity in the coming season. during the scene okeehede had become quite exhausted by his exercise, and seemed to be anxiously looking around for some feasible means of escape. the women had by this time overcome the fear which his entrance had caused, and now gathered about him in shoals, poking him with bits of stick, throwing stones at his body, and giving expression to their dislike in various ways that suggested themselves on the spur of the moment. at length, one more courageous than the rest gathered a handful of yellow clay, and drawing quite near, awaited her opportunity when the fiend's attention was directed to another quarter, then dashing up to him, emptied the contents of her hands over his body. the change was magical; the yellow clay was attracted and held by the grease with which his body was besmeared, turning his color from black to bright yellow. he seemed to become quite heartbroken at this signal disgrace, and losing control of his feelings, commenced crying vehemently, when, as quick as thought, a fearless young maiden made a frantic clutch at the magic, ball-tipped wand. she was successful beyond her most sanguine anticipations, and flew through the crowd, bearing the trophy high above her head. the other women gathered around her, beseeching her to let them break the wand, and thus end the spell. their entreaties were at last acceded to, and the stick was broken into fine bits, which were hurled at their whilom owner. his power was now gone; his strength also, and, gathering his energies for one grand and final effort, he plunged headlong towards the prairie with a howling mob of women at his heels. as he struggled along his movements were impeded by every known device, and at each fall he was set upon by the enraged and triumphant females, who exulted in his ignominious downfall, supplementing their jeers with blows from sticks, stones and whips, until he at length escaped by diving into the underbrush that grew at the base of the hills, and disappeared from view. the dance had by this time come to an end, and preparations were made for the commencement of the cruelties which were about to take place within the lodge. the medicine chief, who acted as master of ceremonies, approached mahtocheega, and made a requisition for musicians, and after a brief consultation he gave orders to have two of the female captives perform this arduous and monotonous task. zoe and myself were chosen, and we were at once ushered within the sacred precincts of the lodge. we were the only women who were permitted to view the scenes which i am about to relate. would to god i had been spared the revolting spectacle! as we entered, the candidates for the cruelties were about taking their places in spaces assigned them, as also the chiefs and doctors of the tribe, whose duty it was to look on, bear witness to, and decide upon the comparative degree of fortitude with which the young men sustain themselves in this most excruciating ordeal. the chiefs situated themselves on one side of the lodge, and opposite them were seated the musicians. the medicine chief took up his position in the center of the circle, near a small fire, with his big pipe in his hands. gravely filling it with k'neck k'nick, he lighted it at the flame, and began puffing great clouds in the faces of the aspirants, that the great spirit might give them strength to bear their tortures manfully. directly under the aperture in the roof of the lodge was a curious arrangement of buffalo and human skulls, which were divided into two parcels. placed over them at an elevation of about five feet was a delicate scaffold made of four posts, not larger than a willow rod. in the crotches of these poles were placed lateral rods of about the same thickness, and resting on these transversely were a number of still more delicate sticks. on the center of this frame was a small stone altar, from which issued the sacred fire. immediately under the frame on the ground was placed a knife and a bundle of splints, which were kept in readiness for the infliction of the cruelties which i shall endeavor to explain. from the top of the lodge depended a number of cords, which, passing through the roof, were held by men on the outside, who, on a given signal, were to suspend the victims between heaven and earth. an attendant now advanced to our side of the structure, bearing in his arms two curious looking objects, which, on investigation, proved to be sacks containing in each about two gallons of water. these were articles of superstitious regard, and held in great veneration by the indians. they were constructed of the skin of the buffalo's neck, and most elaborately sewed together in the form of a large tortoise, with a bunch of eagle's quills appended to act the part of tail. accompanying each was a drumstick, and, with a few directions how to use it, he left us. after a brief incantation, accompanied by more vigorous puffs at the big pipe, the order was issued to remove the scaffold. the skulls were placed on posts at the back of the lodge, and two stalwart savages took up their positions in the center of the open space, one with the knife in his hand, the other holding the splints. one by one the candidates advanced; their frames were greatly emaciated by the fasting, thirsting, and wakefulness to which they had subjected themselves during four days. placing themselves on their hands and feet, or otherwise, as was best suited for the performance of the operation, they were grasped roughly by the attendants, and an inch or more of flesh taken up between the thumb and finger of the man who held the knife. the knife had been ground sharply on both sides, and then notched, so that the effect of pushing it through the skin might be made as painful as possible. as soon as the incision was made, the attendant ran a skewer through the still quivering flesh. the cord was then lowered from the roof and fastened to the splints, when, the signal being given, the cords were tightened and the victim was suspended in mid-air. more splints were passed through his shoulders, arms, thighs, and legs. in some instances, they remained upon the ground until this painful operation was completed. the time consumed in preparing the victims for suspension was about five minutes. as the body dangled in mid-air, and while the blood was streaming down the victim's sides, the bystanders would grasp at the body, and hang upon the splints each man's shield, bow, and quiver. in some instances, a buffalo's skull was attached to his lower limbs, to prevent the struggling which would otherwise have taken place, to the disadvantage of the sufferer. when these were adjusted, the body was raised higher until the weight swung clear. in this plight they became a fearful sight to look upon. the flesh, to support their bodies with the additional weights attached thereto, was raised some eight inches by the skewers, and their heads sinking forward on their breasts, or thrown backward in a much more frightful condition, was a sight that made one's blood curdle, and the heart turn sick at the ghastly, bloody spectacle. the fortitude with which the victims bore this torture almost surpasses belief. as the knife was thrust through the flesh not a muscle moved, and some even called attention to their faces, and challenged the judges to detect the first symptom of weakness or faint-heartedness. truly it was a fearful sight, and as the knife _ripped_ through the flesh, it was more than i could bear, and, throwing down the drumstick, i give way to the most violent grief. it was not until i was severely admonished to continue my task, that i could sufficiently control my emotion and resume the horrid thrum thrum of the monotonous music. as soon as a victim was thoroughly suspended, a number of demons in human guise clustered around him, devising means that would make this exquisite agony more intense. one would advance with a long pole in his hand and commence turning the bleeding body, slowly at first, but the motion would be gradually accelerated until the victim would cry out in bitterness of spirit and in tones the most lamentable and heart-rending that the human voice is capable of producing; appealing to the great spirit and beseeching him not to forsake his servant in this, his hour of severest agony. he is turned faster and faster. there is no hope for escape; not the slightest respite, until by fainting he is relieved from his tormentors, and left to hang, apparently a lifeless corpse. when it has been ascertained that he is, as they term it, "entirely dead," his torture ceases, and there hangs suspended by cords, all that remains of a form that a few hours since was instinct with life and vigor. his medicine bag, which he has clung to all through the trying ordeal with the tenacity of despair, has dropped to the ground. even this potent charm deserts its owner in his hour of greatest need, when, if at any time, its supposed supernatural protection should be most felt. the signal is now given to the men on the outside of the lodge to lower the body, and he is gently laid upon the ground. in this helpless condition he lies, looking like some mass of putrefaction that has just been removed from a charnel-house. during this time he is said to be in the keeping of the great spirit, whom he trusts will protect, and finally give him strength to get up and walk away. after lying some time on the ground, an attendant removes the splints from the breasts and shoulders, thereby disengaging him from the cords by which he has been suspended, but the others, with the weights attached, are suffered to remain imbedded in the bleeding wounds. as soon as consciousness returns he attempts to move. no one is allowed to assist him or offer him aid, as he is now in the enjoyment of one of the most exalted privileges that apaches can lay claim to--that of trusting his life to the keeping of the great spirit. presently he crawls away, dragging his weights after him, which, as they clatter over the hard earthen floor of the lodge, make a mournful accompaniment to his groans and sobs. he creeps to another part of the lodge; where a savage sits in grim silence awaiting his coming. in his hand is a hatchet, and immediately in front of him is a dried buffalo skull. the sufferer draws near, and, holding up the little finger of his left hand, makes a short speech, and calling upon the great spirit to witness his self-sacrifice, unflinchingly lays the doomed finger on the skull. one quick, sharp stroke by the indian who wields the hatchet and the finger drops from the hand--a sacrifice to a fanatic's zeal. no bandages are applied to the fingers, nor are any arteries taken up; in fact, no attention whatever of a surgical character is paid to the wounds, lacerations, and bruises. they are left for the "great spirit to cure." it is rather remarkable that the bleeding is not so profuse as might be expected from the severity of the torture, and soon ceases, probably from the fact of their extreme exhaustion and debility; the want of sustenance and sleep, checks the natural circulation, and is at the same time an admirable preparation for the tortures, and enables them to bear the infliction without the same degree of pain that might, under other circumstances, result in inflammation and death. during these cruel scenes, the chiefs and dignitaries of the tribe are looking on unmoved, and by taking mental notes of the way in which the victim bears this terrible torture, decide who are the hardiest and stoutest hearted, who can hang the longest by his flesh without fainting, and who will be the soonest up after he is cut down. in this way they judge of the physical capacity of the young braves to bear hunger, fatigue, and suffering; and to those who acquit themselves the most worthily is entrusted the leadership of "forlorn hopes," war parties resolved on desperate enterprises, etc., etc. this scene was enacted during a whole day, and in that time some forty or fifty young men went through the agonies of suspension and amputation. all the while the din and clatter was undiminished. did we but relax our efforts for a moment, a brawny savage was at our side, and by word and blow commanded us to recommence. what with the physical and mental fatigue caused by this continuous and seemingly everlasting thrumming, joined to the horrid sights, sounds and emotions to which we were subjected, and the revolting and bloody nature of the drama, it seemed as if we were under the influence of a horrid nightmare. as if we had suddenly been wafted away in the arms of some hideous genii to realms of darkness, and were maliciously compelled to be the unwilling spectators of scenes which even at this day, the bare remembrance of, causes the blood to chill with horror and the frame to vibrate with agony at their recollection. god grant that such cruelties may soon disappear off the face of the earth, _together with the actors and instigators of these horrible rites!_ chapter xxiii. the war party. the following morning found me entirely occupied with my new plan of escape, and i lost no time in gaining such information as i could, concerning stonhawon's intentions respecting his projected expedition. by making a few cautious inquiries of some of the warriors whom i knew to be favorably disposed towards me, i learned that the party would probably depart within three days. the first point necessary to the success of my plan was to obtain the consent of wakometkla, and this i feared would be no easy task. after considering the matter fully, i concluded that my best course would be first to get stonhawon's permission to accompany the party, and, if possible, induce him to intercede for me with the old medicine man. to the lodge of this redoubtable chief i accordingly bent my steps, and, on approaching it, found him seated without, engaged in conversation with several of the older warriors. not daring to interrupt their conference, i remained at a little distance until the interview was ended. from the few sentences i overheard i concluded that the chief was unfolding his plans or some portion of them to the principal warriors of his party. directly the council seemed to be over, and the warriors separated, leaving the chief seated as before at the entrance to his lodge. i was about to approach him and proffer my request, when hissodecha, the renegade, suddenly made his appearance, and walking directly up to stonhawon addressed him as follows: "my brother is going on the war-path?" "yes, hissodecha," said the chief; "i am weary of this idleness, and my young men are impatient and clamor to be led against the arapahoes, who have invaded our territory and cut off several of our hunting parties. i have therefore determined to take out a strong party and strike a blow that will teach these cowardly horse thieves a lesson!" "stonhawon," said hissodecha, "it is my wish that we should be friends, and that the ill-feeling which has existed between us and our young men should cease. for this reason i have come to offer you my services on your expedition as a volunteer, and if you accept my offer, i will join your party with my entire band and serve under your orders. let my brother speak. i await his decision." while hissodecha was speaking, i observed a gratified expression upon the countenance of stonhawon, and i saw that he would gladly avail himself of the renegade's offer. but why hissodecha should make so unusual a proposition puzzled me extremely, and i waited anxiously to hear the remainder of their conversation. as the renegade ceased speaking, stonhawon arose in silence, filled and lighted his pipe and passed it to hissodecha, who took a few whiffs and returned it to the chief. the latter followed his example, and then, emptying the pipe, he returned it to its case of fawn skin, gaily decorated with the quills of the porcupine stained in bright colors, and spoke as follows: "hissodecha, your words are good; you are a great brave, and you shall ride with me on the war-path. with your aid i shall surely be successful, and when we return in triumph, who shall deny to the friend of stonhawon a seat in the council? i know my brother's wish, and it shall yet be gratified. now, let us assemble our warriors and make ready for departure, as i wish to start before sunrise to-morrow." to this the renegade yielded a ready assent, adding that his party could be ready to leave in an hour if necessary. he then said: "i must ask my brother one favor, and that is that tahteckadahair may accompany our party." "why does hissodecha ask this?" said the chief, looking at me in surprise; for, on hearing my name mentioned, i had drawn nearer. "does my brother not know that no one but wakometkla can grant his request?" "because," said hissodecha, "if stonhawon asks the medicine chief, he will not refuse; but were i to make such a request, it would be in vain." stonhawon reflected for a moment and then addressed me so abruptly that for an instant i was confused and unable to make a reply. "tahteckadahair," said he, "why do you wish to join the war party which i am about to take out?" i was endeavoring to frame a reply when the renegade answered for me. "the young man is tired," he said, "of being left in the village with the squaws and old men while the other young braves are going to war or to hunt and winning scalps and plunder. he thinks that he should be given the same privileges as others since he has been regularly adopted into the tribe, and i think his request is a reasonable one and should be granted." i now added my persuasions to those of hissodecha, and stonhawon finally said that if wakometkla's consent could be gained he would have no objection to my forming one of his party. he also said that he would speak to the medicine chief and use his influence to get his consent to my making my first appearance as a warrior. he was as good as his word, and a few hours later i saw him enter the temple, evidently in search of the old man. hissodecha was confident that his request would be granted, and i accordingly busied myself, under his direction, in preparing to make my _debã»t_ as a camanche brave on the war-path. the renegade easily supplied me with the necessary weapons and equipments from his own stock, and i soon found myself provided with a long steel-pointed lance, adorned with a crimson pennon, and a sort of battle-axe of an ancient pattern, evidently the spoil of some mexican hacienda. besides these a war bow, a quiver of arrows, their points dipped in the subtle poison used by the camanches, and a tomahawk and scalping-knife were given me. these completed my offensive equipments. for defense, besides all these, i received a circular shield made of the tough hide of the buffalo bull stretched upon a wooden frame, and dried and hardened until it was almost of the consistency of iron. to provide me with a horse was the next thing in order, and this did not promise to be very difficult, as more than two thousand mustangs were grazing upon the plain. the renegade, however, was not easily suited in his choice of a horse. thorough horse jockeys as all the camanches are, hissodecha seemed the sharpest of the tribe in this particular. of this fact i had become aware long before, for in the races which the indians so frequently indulged in, he was almost invariably the winner, thus showing that he possessed rare knowledge and judgment of the points of a good horse. on this occasion i began to think that he would exhaust the supply before he found one to his mind, but after rejecting about forty for one fault or another, most of which blemishes i was entirely unable to discover, he fixed upon a large piebald mustang as the one who should have the honor of bearing me upon my first war-path. leading the horse back towards the village, we soon reached the spot where the warriors who were to form the expedition had already picketed their horses for the night, so as to be ready for an early start on the morrow. staking my new acquisition out upon the plain, we returned to the lodge, and my strange friend, handing me a hair bridle and a buffalo robe and leathern girth, told me to get some food and return to his lodge in an hour, and he would "paint" me for the war-path. i was too much excited to eat much, and my simple meal was soon dispatched. on entering the temple, i had looked around apprehensively, expecting to meet wakometkla, and rather dreading to encounter him, feeling uncertain what sort of a reception i would meet with. the old medicine man, however, was not to be seen, and i wandered through the various apartments with which i had become so familiar during the long years of my captivity, wondering if this was really to be my last look at them, or if my desperate scheme was to result in failure, and end in my being brought back, perhaps to torture and death. it was now time for me to return to hissodecha, and i started to leave the temple for that purpose. crossing the mystery chamber, i was about to ascend the ladder, when a tall form suddenly emerged from the obscurity of a recess in the wall, and wakometkla stood before me. the old man seemed strangely moved for one of his stern nature and practical stoicism. taking me by the hand, he led me to the center of the room, where the light of the sacred fire enabled him to more plainly discern my features, and gazed upon me for a moment without speaking. at length he spoke in a low tone, unlike his usual sonorous accents: "so my son is not content to remain in peace and safety with me here, but longs to go forth in search of adventure, and to emulate the deeds of the foolish young braves, who imagine that they are already great warriors?" i was at a loss what to reply, but managed to mutter a few words expressive of my desire to take part in at least one war party, and assured him that i would be certain to return in safety. "you cannot be sure of that;" said the old man, in what seemed to me a sad tone, "we cannot control our fate; but as you wish to go you shall have your wish. at stonhawon's request i have given my consent, and i shall sacrifice to quetzalcoatl for your speedy and safe return. now go and complete your preparations, for you have no time to lose." so saying, he turned and left the apartment without another word. at this moment, despite my ardent longing to escape from an existence that was loathsome to me, and return to my own people, i could not avoid a feeling of regret at the idea of parting from this noble specimen of his race, to whom i was indebted for my life, and for the many acts of kindness which had rendered my captivity endurable. but the measure of regret i felt was not sufficient to turn me from my purpose, and remembering my appointment with hissodecha, i hastened to fulfill it. in crossing the open square before the temple, i met stonhawon, who informed me that the party would start at daybreak, and warned me to be in readiness. assuring him that there was no danger of my forgetting it, i hurried to the lodge of the renegade, whom i found in no very amiable humor at my delay. on explaining the cause of my detention, his ill temper was abated, and he quickly proceeded to prepare me for my appearance in my new rã´le of an indian warrior. stripping me entirely, he invested me with a new pair of leggings and mocassins; leaving me naked to the waist. producing a number of little packets containing pigments of various colors, he commenced operations by painting my face, neck and breast blood red, and my arms and the rest of my person that was exposed in alternate bands of black and yellow. upon my breast he delineated with considerable skill the figure of a grizzly bear; upon my forehead a star, and across my face narrow stripes of black. my arms he encircled with black and white rings at regular intervals, and then laying aside his colors, held up before me a small mirror, that i might view the picture i presented. my contemplation of myself satisfied me that i made about as hideous looking a savage as any in the village--but of that the reader can judge for himself from the accompanying picture, which is a very accurate representation of me as i then appeared. hissodecha finished his work by saturating my hair, which reached nearly to my waist, with a mixture of oil and some black coloring, which rendered my appearance more savage then ever. he then bound about my head a narrow fillet or band of scarlet cloth, and placed in it two feathers or plumes stained blue. he then stood off and viewed me for a moment, and pronounced my toilet complete, with the exception of a few ornaments. these he soon provided in the shape of a pair of bracelets of roughly beaten gold. my necklace of silver, which wakometkla had placed upon my neck when he first took me in charge, i still wore, and the renegade, surveying his work with some complacency, remarked that no young brave of the party would present a finer or more warlike appearance from the indian point of view than myself. he then presented me with a fine _serape_ for protection against the weather, and advising me to get what sleep i could, dismissed me for the night, bidding me lie down in his lodge upon some skins. my excitement, however, was so great, that i found it impossible to sleep, i was impatient for the dawn, that i might be in motion, and leaving my hated valley prison, as i fondly hoped, for the last time. the hours dragged wearily away, and it seemed as if the morning would never come; but at last a faint glimmer of light in the east showed that the time for action had come. i started up, and taking my simple horse furniture, made my way to where the horses were picketed. i found many of the warriors already astir and lending their horses to the water. joining them, i had soon attended to the wants of my charger, bridled him, and snapping the buffalo robe upon his back, i mounted him and rode back to the lodge of hissodecha. at the same time he emerged from the lodge in all the full glory of his war paint. his horse had already been brought up by one of his band, and advising me to eat as hearty a meal as possible, he mounted and rode down to where the warriors were assembling. hastily devouring a few mouthfuls of tasajo, i speedily followed him, and although but a few moments had elapsed, found the party almost ready to start. the entire population of the village had by this time assembled to see us off, and i found myself the subject of some very flattering remarks as i rode through the throngs of women, children, and dogs, while immediately surrounding the war-party were grouped all the male members of the community who were not of the expedition. the renegade had directed me to attach myself to his band, and i accordingly did so, being received with great cordiality by the younger braves, who complimented me on my warlike aspect and fine equipments. stonhawon, who had been holding a hurried consultation with tonsaroyoo, who stood aloof as though not wishing to compromise his dignity by evincing any interest in an expedition which he did not lead, now rode up and gave the signal for departure. instantly the band, numbering about five hundred warriors, wheeled, and forming with the rapidity of thought in single file, the only formation used on the march by the prairie indians, rode off at a rapid pace down the valley, amid the shouts and yells of those we left behind. by this time the sun had fully risen, and on looking back i could see upon the summit of the temple the usual group of priests and their assistants, and among them i could plainly distinguish the tall figure of wakometkla. i fancied that i could see him wave his hand as if in adieu, but it may have been only fancy, for the distance was too great to decide with certainty. as we rode rapidly along, i noted every object rendered familiar by my long residence in the valley with a peculiar interest, for i hoped that i was looking upon the well-known scene for the last time. it was a glorious morning, and the exhilaration of the rapid motion, as my horse bore me along with proud, springy step, seemed to increase my strength, and i experienced a buoyancy of spirits and a vigor of body i had never known before. i felt strangely hopeful and exultant--in fact it seemed as if i were already free. riding rapidly we soon reached the valley's lower extremity, and passing around the face of the cliff upon the narrow ledge described in a previous chapter, we crossed the crest of the mountain range, and descended by a zig-zag trail to the plain below. our route lay directly across the desert to the eastward, and it was well into the afternoon before we had passed it and reached the great grass prairie beyond. on reaching the prairie our course was deflected to the north, and about sundown we halted at a spring known as the "_ojo caliente_," which the leaders of the party had evidently selected as our camping ground for the night. the order to halt once given, we went into bivouac with marvelous celerity. our horses were picketed in a wide circle far out upon the plain, as the gramma grass there is longer and more luxuriant than in the immediate neighborhood of the springs. stripping our animals of their equipments, we bring them to within about a hundred yards of the spring. each man strikes his spear into the ground, and rests against it his shield, bow and quiver. he places his robe or skin beside it. there is his tent and bed. the row of spears are soon aligned upon the prairie, forming a front of several hundred yards, and our camp is complete. no drilled troops in the world can equal the rapidity with which these indians form or break camp; and yet every movement is executed without orders, and as if by intuition. fires were soon kindled, and strips of tasajo brought forth and cooked. pipes were lighted, and the warriors sit in groups around the red blaze, recounting their adventures, and laughing and chattering incessantly. the paint glitters upon their naked bodies in the glare of the fires; it is a wild and savage scene, and yet grotesque in its very savageness. for two hours we remain about the fires, some cooking and eating, others smoking, others freshening the hideous devices of the war paint with which all are besmeared. then the horse-guard is detailed, and marches off to the caballada, and the indians, one after another, spread their robes upon the ground, roll themselves in their _serapes_ or blankets, and are soon asleep. for a time i found it impossible to sleep, although wearied with the unaccustomed exercise of the journey. reclining upon my robe in a half sitting posture, i watch the scene around me. the fires have ceased to blaze, but by the light of the moon i can distinguish the prostrate bodies of the savages. white objects are moving among them; they are dogs, prowling about in search of the remains of their supper. these run from point to point, growling at one another, and barking at the coyotes that sneak around the outskirts of the camp. out upon the prairie the horses are still awake and busy. i can hear them stamping their hoofs and cropping the rich pasture. at intervals along the line i can see erect forms standing motionless; these are the guards of the caballada. at length i begin to grow drowsy, and lying down upon my robe, i wrap myself in my _serape_, and in a few moments am asleep. chapter xxiv. my first scalp. i was roused before dawn by the stir and bustle around me. on rising to my feet, i found the party preparing to march. every warrior ran out for his horse; the pickets were drawn, and the animals led in and watered. they are bridled; the robes are thrown over them and girthed. we pluck up our lances, sling our quivers, seize our shields and bows, and leap lightly upon horseback. our line is already formed, and, wheeling in our tracks, we ride off in single file to the northward. from conversation with my companions the night previous, i had discovered that only the leaders of the party knew our destination. the rank and file were as ignorant of the intentions of their commanders as is usually the case among the armies of more civilized peoples. the young braves who were my chosen companions on the march and in the camp, neither knew nor cared whither we were bound. they expected the expedition to result in our return with an abundance of scalps and plunder, and that was all they cared about. during the forenoon we passed over a "_motte_" of prairie or park. its surface was nearly level, but it was studded here and there with clumps and coppices of cottonwoods and other trees and shrubs. to the north the horizon was shut in by a lofty mountain chain which seemingly barred our pathway, although at a great distance, and between us and this barrier was a range of much less elevation, such as are called "foot hills" in this region. about noon we came upon a small stream which crossed our line of march, running off to the eastward. upon its banks we halted for a short period, watering and feeding our horses, and satisfying our own appetites from our supply of dried meat. this done we resumed our march. we now found the timber islands became less frequent, and in half an hour's ride we left them altogether behind, and rode for several miles over an open plain. we saw timber ahead of us, and had approached within about a mile of it when one of the runners or spies, about fifty of whom were scouting ahead, came back and reported to the chief that they had discovered a small herd of buffalo grazing upon a small prairie or sort of natural clearing beyond the belt of woods. although we were well provided with dried meat, the prospect of fresh buffalo steak was not unpleasing, and a hunt was at once determined upon. halting the party stonhawon directed the renegade to take his own band and join the scouts ahead. together the bands would constitute a hunting party of about one hundred warriors, quite large enough for the destruction of the small herd before us. as i had attached myself to the band of hissodecha, i found myself destined to take part in the enterprise, and anticipated no little amusement and sport. riding forward cautiously until we reached the timber, which was a not very dense chaparral, we rode slowly and silently through the bushes until we encountered a number of scouts _cached_ in the thicket, and evidently waiting for us. "what is it han-na-ta-mauh?" asked hissodecha of the leader of the scouts as they rode up. the scout replied that they had found the fresh tracks of a small herd of buffaloes, and on following them up had found the animals feeding upon a small prairie beyond the chaparral in which we were concealed. the renegade dismounted, and telling me to accompany him, walked forward with the scout to the edge of the thicket. peering cautiously through the leaves, we had a full view of the open ground. the buffaloes were upon the plain. it was, as hanatamauh had said, a small prairie about a mile and a half in width, closed in on all sides by a thick chaparral. near the center was a _motte_ of heavy timber growing up from a dense underwood. a spur of willows running out from the timber denoted the presence of water. "there's a spring there," said the renegade, turning to me; "i have been here before, and know the ground. how can we get at them?" he continued, turning to the scout; "do you think we can approach them?" "no," said hanatamauh, "there is not cover enough; and besides, they are getting further away from the bushes as they feed." "what then?" asked hissodecha; "we can't run them; they would be off through the thicket in a moment, and we would lose them all." "yes," replied the scout, "that is certain; but we can get them for all that. i never saw a better place for a 'surround,' and it will take but a short time to get your braves in position." "true," said hissodecha, "if the wind is right. how is it?" "there is none," said the scout taking a feather from his head-dress and tossing it in the air. "you see it falls direct." "i see," said hissodecha; "let us divide the men. we have enough to pen them in completely. you can guide one-half of them to their stands. i will go with the rest. you, tahteckadahair," he continued, "had better bring up your horse and stay where you are. it is about as good a stand as you can get. you will have to wait patiently, as it may be an hour before all are placed. when you hear the signal, which will be the hunter's whistle, you may gallop forward and do your best. if we succeed we shall have plenty of sport and a good supper, and i suppose you are ready for that by this time." the renegade now left me, followed by the scout, and went back to the rest of the party. their intention was to separate the band into two equal parties, and each taking an opposite direction, to place men at regular intervals around the prairie. they would keep in the chaparral while on the march, and only discover themselves when the signal was given. in this way, if the buffaloes did not take the alarm, we should be almost certain of securing the entire herd. as soon as hissodecha left me, i selected my hunting arrows, which, unlike those used for war, are not poisoned. then i brought up my horse, and having nothing else to do, i remained seated upon his back watching the animals as they fed on, unaware of their danger. the screaming of birds who flew up from the thicket showed that the hunters were proceeding to their stands. now and then an old bull, standing like a sentinel on the outskirts of the herd, would snuff the wind and strike the ground violently with his hoof as though suspecting that something was wrong; but the others did not seem to mind him and kept on cropping the luxuriant grass. suddenly an object made its appearance, emerging from the _motte_ in the center of the prairie. it looked like a buffalo calf proceeding to join the others. as usual, a pack of coyotes were sneaking around the herd, and these, on perceiving the calf, made an instant attack upon it. to my surprise, it seemed to fight its way through them, and soon joined the herd and was lost to view among them. i thought no more of it, and was wondering how much longer i would have to wait for the signal, when i noticed that the buffaloes were lying down one after another. in a few minutes eight or ten were stretched upon the turf, and i observed that they fell suddenly as if shot, and some of them appeared to kick and struggle violently. i had heard of a curious habit of these animals known as "wallowing," and concluded this must be it. as i had never witnessed this manoeuvre, i watched them as attentively as possible, but the high grass prevented me from seeing much. at all events, i thought, the "surround" will be complete before they get ready to move, and i waited patiently for the signal. the buffaloes still continued to lie down one after another, and at length the last one of the herd stretched himself upon the prairie. at this instant the shrill notes of the indian whistle reached my ears, and a wild yell arose from all sides of the prairie. i urged my horse forward; a hundred others had done the same, all yelling at the top of their voices as they shot out of the thicket. filled with the wild excitement incident to such a scene, i galloped forward with my bow strung and arrows ready, intent upon having the first shot. to my surprise the buffaloes did not stir. the indians closed in, yelling as they came, and we pulled up our horses in the very midst of the prostrate herd. i sat upon my horse as if spell-bound, looking about me in consternation and wonder. before me lay the bodies of the buffaloes, and i seized with a superstitious awe when i perceived that every one of them was dead or dying. blood flowed from their mouths and nostrils, and from wounds in the side of each the red stream trickled down. the prairie carpet was dyed with it. my companions seemed at first as much surprised as myself, but some of the more astute quickly divined the mystery and commenced looking about with keen scrutiny. suddenly the renegade urged his horse forward, and on turning to see what he had discovered, i saw the buffalo calf, whose existence i had for a time forgotten. the calf had been concealed behind the carcass of one of the buffaloes, but now appeared to be endeavoring to make off into the timber. hissodecha rode up to it, evidently intending to pierce it with his lance, when the animal suddenly reared up, uttering a wild human scream. the shaggy hide was thrown aside, and a naked savage appeared, holding up his arms as if pleading for mercy. his appeal was a vain one, however, for the ruthless renegade pinned him to the earth with a thrust of his lance, and, springing from his horse, finished him with his tomahawk. he then scalped him, and, remounting his horse, directed some of the warriors to scour the prairie, as they might find another "calf" concealed in the long grass. with the rest of the party he rode up to the _motte_, and they quickly formed in a circle, around it. familiar as i had become with indian cruelty, i felt a sensation of horror and disgust at this cool shedding of blood, and i halted irresolutely by the body of the dead indian. he lay stretched upon his back, naked to the breech clout, the red stream flowing from the lance wound in his side. his limbs quivered, but it was in the last spasm of departing life. the hide in which he had been disguised lay near him, where he had flung it at the moment he was discovered. beside him were a bow and several arrows. the latter were covered with blood, the feathers steeped in it and clinging to the shafts. they had pierced the bodies of the buffaloes, passing entirely through. each arrow had taken many lives. i was still contemplating the dead man, when a yell from the _motte_ attracted my attention, and i rode thither. i reached the spot just in time to see the body of another indian dragged out from the thick undergrowth, and his fortunate slayer, who happened to be one of the younger braves, took the scalp with great complacency, as it was his first trophy of the kind. the indians evidently believed that another of the _coyoteros_ or wolf apaches, for to this tribe the two dead savages were declared to belong, was concealed in the thicket, for they were formed in a sort of irregular circle around the copse, peering into it from every direction. hissodecha now ordered the warriors to close in from every direction and search the thicket. in this manoeuvre i found myself compelled to take part, as otherwise i would have incurred the stigma of cowardice. we dismounted from our horses and pressed into the thicket from all sides. for a few seconds nothing could be heard but the cracking of the undergrowth as we forced our way through it. suddenly a yell arose from the side opposite to my position, and almost instantly a third _coyotero_ sprang from a dense clump of willows near the spring, and made for the opening. it chanced that i was directly in his path, and he was rushing upon me with upraised knife. strong as might be my repugnance to taking human life, the instinct of self-preservation was still stronger, and before he could reach me i had pierced him with an arrow, and he fell dead almost at my feet. in an instant the warriors had gathered around me, and i was being congratulated upon my bravery and skill. not feeling particularly proud of the achievement, i was about to remount my horse, when hissodecha reminded me that i had neglected to scalp the fallen foe; so i was compelled to perform that operation, which i did rather clumsily. a thorough search through the thicket and over the prairie having satisfied my savage companions that no more of the _coyoteros_ had been present, we returned to the dead buffaloes and began skinning and cutting them up. stonhawon soon arrived with the remainder of the band, and as it was nearly sundown, we encamped upon the spot; the spring furnishing water, and the grass of the prairie an abundance of rich food for the horses. as for ourselves, we feasted in true savage fashion, finding the fresh steaks, tongues, and hump ribs a decided improvement upon the tasajo which had previously been our diet. i was compelled to listen to many encomiums upon my courage and dexterity, and some of the young braves ventured the opinion that tahteckadahair would soon be as great a warrior as hissodecha. painfully impressed by the scene of slaughter in which i had been an unwilling participant, i held myself aloof as much as possible from the merry groups around the camp fires, and at an early hour wrapped myself in my blanket, and wearied by the fatigue and excitement of the past two days, i was soon buried in a heavy and dreamless sleep, which continued until the dawn of another morning again compelled me to come forth; and this time it was not as an inexperienced brave, but as an acknowledged warrior; for i had slain an enemy and taken my first scalp. i cannot say, however, that my increase of notoriety was a source of satisfaction to me, but quite the contrary. somewhat to my surprise we remained by the _motte_ spring for three days. this was necessary in order to convert the buffalo meat into tasajo, as we had not a sufficient supply for our purpose. on the evening of the third day, the meat being sufficiently "cured," we "struck camp" and rode off to the north until we had reached the chain of mountains which crossed our path. here we turned to the eastward, and journeyed along their base intending to cross at a well known pass about twenty miles above. reaching it at nightfall we again encamped, designing to pass the mountain range the next morning. chapter xxv. the feast of the green corn. the fields, or more properly speaking, the patches of corn were quickly ripening, thanks to the arduous efforts of wakadahme and his wonderful arrow, and the whole tribe was waiting impatiently the time when the signal should announce that the feast of the green corn was about to commence. next to fighting, your indian likes eating; about one half of his time is employed in catering to the cravings of his stomach. when not engaged in fighting his enemies, or marauding in the vicinity of the mexican border-towns, he occupies his energies in the hunt or chase. at the time of my enforced residence among the apaches, they were not restricted and confined to reservations as at present. they considered themselves masters of the country which they inhabited, and were free to roam in any direction their fancy might dictate. when in search of game, they would scour the plains to the northward, and on some occasions would penetrate deep into the country of their enemies, the crows and blackfeet. numerous encounters would result from this intrusion on the rights of others. at times they would meet and repulse their opponents, and continue the hunt, return laden with the fruits of the chase, and girdles plentifully garnished with their victim's scalps. at such times, their return home partook of the character of an ovation; fires would be lighted, food prepared in abundance, and high revelry be the order of the day. gathered around the council fires, with an eager and attentive multitude of old men, women and children, constituting themselves an audience, the braves would indulge in the most fantastic and highly colored narratives of their deeds of valor and heroic bearing in the presence of an enemy. seated in a circle around the blazing fire, and smoking their clay pipes, each one in turn would relate the incidents of his particular case, reciting the most improbable deeds of valor, and ending up, usually, with the oft-told tale, of how he gained his _sobriquet_. his listeners had doubtless heard the same story on many similar occasions, but repetition has no horror for an indian, and judging from the flattering silence with which his speech is received, and the many complimentary expressions with which he is greeted at its close, one would at once conclude that the remarks were new and original. boasting is an indian's weak point; given a listener, and the amount of bombast and mock heroics which he will inflict on one, simply staggers belief. if, on the contrary, the hunting party has not been successful, but defeat and misfortune has been their portion, then the scene is changed. in place of feasting and revelry, they are greeted with a death-like silence, and, as the remnant of the party defile through the village, they are objects of the closest scrutiny by anxious mothers and wives. if the keen eyes of love, search in vain for the form of him, who a few weeks before left the village in the glory and vigor of manhood, a heart-rending wail goes up, which is instantly echoed by the assembled women, until the welkin resounds with mournful cries. as on more joyful occasions, a rush is made in the direction of the council lodge, and it then becomes the painful duty of the survivors to relate their mishaps, and how such and such an one met the enemy with his accustomed bravery, and foremost fighting, fell. in these recitals, the party in question always meet a foe who vastly outnumbers them, and according to their account, their opponents always suffer terribly in slain, and would have eventually been overcome, and completely routed, had not some trifling accident--which could not be foreseen--occurred to mar the effects of their stunning prowess. i have never seen an indian fight, and am not able to judge of their actions on the field of battle, but, if observations of the red man in his home, is any criterion, i should venture the opinion that an apache would fight valiantly under one condition, namely: when his party were numerically stronger than the opposing force. i think they have a just appreciation of the falstaffian method of conducting warfare, and are firmly convinced that "he who fights and runs away," has better opportunities for glory, rapacity and booty, another day. as these pages are being written, the country is again startled by the news of fresh indian outrages, this time, against the constituted authority of the country, and close on the heels of the news of the reopening of indian hostilities, comes the thrilling intelligence that a general has been shot in cold blood, and whilst under the protecting and sacred influence of a flag of truce. such dastardly and treacherous conduct, thrills one with a righteous indignation, and we are more than ever impressed with the belief that measures, the most rigorous, should be instituted, and that the government should put to one side any feelings of mawkish sentimentality, and mete out to these red-handed savages the retribution their desserts merit. the case under consideration is only one among many. how many immigrant trains dragging their slow length over the trackless and boundless prairies, have met a similar fate; and their misfortune never so much as heard of. whole villages on the borders have been attacked, captured and pillaged; their inhabitants murdered in cold blood, or carried off into a captivity that was worse even than the knife of the savage. who can count the lonely victims who have been waylaid on their toilsome journey, by a party of howling savages, and being surrounded, before they were aware almost of the presence of an enemy, set upon and brained in the most cruel manner, and their bodies left weltering in their own gore, a repast for wolves and coyotes--horrible reflection; to think of the numbers who have suffered this fate, and died unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown; while their murderers were these same gentle red children, of whose interests the government has exercised such a watchful care, guarding them against the rigors of winter by a plentiful supply of food and blankets, and during the spring furnishing them with powder and the most improved fire-arms, that they might thereby be enabled to steal forth from their reservation, prey on helpless travelers, and returning covered with the blood of their white brothers; praise their great father at washington, and thank him, through their agent, for the many inestimable gifts he has placed in their hands, by whose judicious use they have gratified their dominant passions, and turned many a happy home into a chamber of mourning. out upon such a policy! war, to the bitter end, is the only "policy" that should be for a moment entertained, in dealing with these fiends; and when they are at last exterminated off the face of the earth, it may, perhaps, be safe for a man to undertake to travel through his own land. my readers may think i speak with undue heat on this subject, but the memory of my sufferings and trials, during the time that i remained among the apaches, make it almost imperative that i should speak freely and without reserve. those who are at home, and surrounded by the protecting influence of a father's or husband's care, cannot fully appreciate the perils and degradation consequent upon a life of bondage, and i sincerely trust that it may never be their misfortune to undergo similar experiences. i must apologize for this lengthy digression, and will hereafter endeavor to keep more closely to the thread of my narrative. as before stated, the indians always made the most extensive preparations for the feast of the green corn; and it was looked forward to with the most eager anticipations. several weeks before the corn had fairly ripened, the head chief and medicine men met in conclave, and decided on what measures were to be pursued during the festivities. in most instances, a few of the older women of the tribe were selected, and appointed to watch the patches of corn attentively. every morning they were required to pick a few ears of corn, and without dividing the husk, bring it to the medicine chief; eeh-tohk-pah-shee-pee-shah (the black moccasin), who would examine it, and if it was not deemed sufficiently ripe, they would be dismissed with an injunction to appear again on the following morning, with another handful of freshly gathered corn. this performance was continued until the samples examined were considered to have arrived at a stage of sufficient ripeness, when the fact was announced by criers, who went through the village proclaiming the joyful intelligence. for several days previous to the announcement of this gratifying news, the indians had subjected themselves to a thorough purgation, using for this purpose a decoction of various bitter roots and herbs, which they termed _asceola_ (the black drink). this course of treatment enabled them to attack the corn with ravenous appetites, and to gorge themselves until they could scarcely move. on the appointed day the tribe are all assembled, and in the center of the lodge a kettle is hung over a fire, and filled with the coveted grain. this is well boiled, and offered to the great spirit as a sacrifice. this is an imperative ceremony, and must be performed before any one can indulge the cravings of his appetite. during the time that the cauldron is boiling, four chiefs and mystery men dance around the steaming kettle. they are painted with white clay, and in one hand they hold a stalk of the corn, while with the other they grasp the rattle. as they move around the fire, they chant a weird song of thanksgiving, taking particular pains to remind the great spirit that they are doing all this in his honor, and restraining their appetites that he may be pleased, and propitiated, to the extent of furnishing them with a bountiful supply during the ensuing season. whilst the medicine men are performing in this manner, a number of others form in a circle, outside of the inner one, and with stalks of corn in each hand, go through a somewhat similar ceremony. wooden bowls are placed on the ground immediately under a tripod, formed by joining together three poles, of about twelve feet in length, which are also ornamented with ears of corn. in each of the bowls is placed a spoon, made of the horn of the buffalo, or mountain sheep, in which the feast is to be served. the dance is continued until the chiefs decide the corn is sufficiently boiled; when, at a given signal, the dance is stopped for a few minutes, and again resumed, this time to a different tune. then the master of ceremonies removes the smoking vegetable and places it upon a small scaffold of sticks, which they erect over the fire. having done this, the _first_ fire is removed, and the ashes are gathered and buried. a new fire is then made in the place occupied by the old one. the new one is started by a very painful process. three men seat themselves on the ground, facing each other, and procuring a hard block of wood, commence drilling violently with a stick, by rolling it between the palms of the hand. each one catches it in turn from the other, without allowing the motion to stop, until smoke, and at last, a spark of fire is seen, and caught in a piece of punk, whereat there is great rejoicing among the bystanders. when this fire is kindled, the kettle is again placed over the fire, and refilled with the vegetable. now the feast begins, an onslaught is made on the contents of the pot, and the indians rush off in all directions to devour the corn. soon fires are blazing in every lodge, and all are indulging in the grossest gluttony. this feast lasts until the corn is exhausted, or becomes too hard to eat with any degree of comfort. when an indian has gorged himself to the fullest capacity, he has recourse to his _asceola_, and is soon in a condition to recommence with as much vigor as at first. these scenes filled me with disgust, and i often thought how happy those brutes would be if they were only endowed with the wonderful attributes of that little sea monster, the polyp, who, when his body is cut in half, suffers no inconvenience, but gormandizes as much as ever, with this advantage, that the food, instead of remaining in his stomach, passes out at the other end; thus allowing him to indulge in the pleasure of gluttony, without the inconvenience of being gorged. chapter xxvi. danger ahead. we started again at early dawn, and commenced the passage of the defile through the mountain. the pass was tortuous and rugged, but as we rode in single file we experienced but little difficulty, and after about three hours of alternate ascents and descents, we gained its outlet and debouched upon the plain beyond. it was a timber prairie, studded with _mottes_ of tall cottonwoods, and bisected near its center by a small stream. a heavy belt of timber fringed the northern horizon, and towards this we directed our course. as we were now liable to come in contact with hostile parties of other tribes, stonhawon exercised great caution. nearly a hundred runners or spies were sent in advance, while the main body advanced slowly; the chief receiving frequent reports from the scouts. about ten o'clock we halted on the banks of the _arroyo_, and while watering our animals, one of the scouts returned and made some communication to our leader. in a few moments it became known to the entire band that a large war party of arrapahoes had been discovered ahead. beyond the belt of timber was a large grass prairie, a favorite haunt of the buffalo and upon this the arrapahoes had halted to hunt, and after getting a good supply of meat, were engaged in converting it into tasajo, preparatory to an extended raid upon the tribes to the southward. it is probable that we, ourselves, were intended to receive their polite attentions, but if this had been their object it was frustrated by the fact that we were out upon the same errand as regarded themselves. at the eastern extremity of the prairie, a mountain rose from the plain; it was an isolated peak of small altitude, its height being but a few hundred feet, and in shape almost a perfect "sugar loaf." the belt of timber which formed the southern boundary of the prairie, extended to the mountain, and fringed its base. near the foot of the mountain the arrapahoes were in bivouac, their horses grazing upon the plain. long rows of stakes and lines were erected, and upon these the buffalo meat was hung in strips, and was fast blackening in the hot sun. evidently a few more hours would complete the process of its conversion into tasajo. a number of fires were kindled near the base of the mountain, and around these were grouped the arrapahoe warriors, engaged in the usual indian pastime of eating. a more favorable opportunity for attack could not be wished, provided we could approach near enough to take them by surprise; but to effect that, promised to be difficult, as we would certainly be seen the instant we passed the timber; and in that case, surprise would, of course, be out of the question. our leaders, stonhawon and hissodecha, stood apart, apparently holding a sort of "council of war." their conference, however, was quickly ended; the renegade made some proposition to which stonhawon seemed to assent, for he signed us to mount, and we instantly resumed our march. in a few minutes i was able to fathom their design from the course taken. skirting the belt of timber, and screened by it from the views of the arrapahoes, we directed our course towards the lone peak. the timber belt was perhaps two hundred yards in width, and filled with a dense undergrowth. in its shadow the spies crept along its northern margin, moving parallel to our course, and keeping a close watch upon the enemy. the renegade's plan seemed to be to approach them as closely as possible under cover of the forest, and then make a sudden dash, taking them by surprise, and effecting their utter rout. as events showed, i had judged correctly of the intentions of our leaders, or at least partially so; but there was one detail of the plan, which i had not thought of, which was presently put in execution. after riding slowly for about two hours we reached the point, trended off to the north, and encircled the mountain. here stonhawon halted the main body, but the band of hissodecha, which numbered about sixty warriors, was reinforced by about the same number detailed from the chief's party and sent round the mountain to attack the enemy in the rear. i was about running off with this party, when stonhawon beckoned to me, and on my riding up to him, directed me to remain with him. i was quite surprised at this, and looked towards hissodecha, expecting that he would urge that i be permitted to accompany him; but to my still greater surprise, he did not seem to notice me at all, and with his band soon disappeared behind a spur of the mountain. i had little opportunity, however, to reflect upon this circumstance, for our party was quickly put in motion, and passing through the wood, were soon ranged along its outer margin, sheltered from view by the thicket, and awaiting the signal to charge upon the foe. [illustration: massacre of whites on the western frontier.] we were barely two hundred yards from their position, and could plainly distinguish the varied hues and designs of the war paint upon their persons. their number was about equal to our own, and with the advantage of a surprise, it seemed probable that we might utterly destroy them. like hounds held in the leash, we awaited the signal--at last it came--the shrill notes of the war whistle pierced the air, and it was instantly followed by the wild intonation of the camanche war whoop as we burst forth from the timber and charged with headlong fury upon the foe. for a moment i thought that the surprise would be complete, for our sudden appearance seemed likely to completely demoralize the enemy. but the arrapahoes, although greatly surprised and alarmed at our sudden onslaught, showed no signs of panic, indeed, it is next to impossible to really surprise an indian. a few of those that were nearest to us were ridden down, transfixed with lances, or brained by blows from our war clubs and battle axes; but the larger number, hastily plucking up their lances and seizing their other weapons, rushed for their horses, and before we could reach them were mounted and forming to receive us. riding at a headlong pace, a few seconds brought us upon them, and we closed at full speed. a confused and deadly _melee_ followed, the combat being mainly hand to hand. blows and lance thrusts were exchanged, arrows whistled through the air, ghastly wounds were given and received; the air resounded with the groans of wounded and dying men, and the wild war cries of the contending warriors. exactly what i did i hardly know, so great was the excitement and confusion. i know that i gave and received blows, and mechanically defended myself from the attacks made upon me; but the incidents of that brief yet terrible struggle seem like a dream to me now. the impetus of our first charge had carried us entirely through the enemies line. we then wheeled and charged them anew; and this manoeuvre was repeated many times. our adversaries seemed to be getting decidedly the worse of the conflict, and we could see unmistakable signs of an inclination on their part to take refuge in flight, when something seemed to suddenly change their determination, and they again assaulted us with renewed fury. we were not long in discovering the cause; during the fight we had many times changed positions with our adversaries, and we were now facing towards the mountain. attracted by a noise in our rear, we glanced in that direction, to behold a sight that filled us with dismay. approaching us at fall speed was a party of fully one hundred arrapahoes, evidently a detachment from the band we were fighting. coming from the north, they had got within a quarter of a mile of us before we had discovered them, the tumult and confusion of the conflict preventing us from perceiving them sooner. as hissodecha and his party, from some unaccountable delay, had not arrived upon the ground, our position was a perilous one. in a moment, the new enemies would be upon us, and without doubt we would be overwhelmed. instant action on our part was imperative, and our leader, with ready perception of that fact, gave the signal to close in together and charge upon our immediate opponents. with a wild yell we rushed upon them, breaking through their line, and retreating rapidly towards the base of the mountain. here a number of large rocks had fallen upon the plain from the cliffs above, and laid in such positions as to form a sort of natural breastwork. indeed, the masses of rock, from their peculiar formation and grouping, had a striking resemblance to the ruins of some vast building. behind these rocky bulwarks, we sheltered ourselves, and prepared to receive the attack which we felt sure the arrapahoes, strengthened by their opportune reinforcement, would certainly make upon us. indeed, we could see that they were preparing to do so, and i, having by this time had quite enough of fighting, was awaiting the assault with dread, when i was suddenly called by stonhawon. hastening to his side, as he sat on his horse, he directed me to accompany one of the young braves who was standing by him, and had apparently received his instructions. these the chief repeated for my benefit. we were to ascend the mountain, with all possible speed, and send up from its summit a "signal smoke," to hasten the arrival of hissodecha and his party, still unaccountably delayed. leaving our horses and most of our weapons with the party, we set off at once; the wild yells of the arrapahoes, as they advanced to the attack, ringing in our ears, and being echoed by the defiant war-cry of the camanches, as the latter prepared to receive the onslaught. chapter xxvii. the escape. turning in the direction of the mountain, we put our horses into a hard run, and in a few moments were tearing our way through the mezquite bushes that fringed its base. the undergrowth became denser as we advanced, and it was found advisable to abandon the ponies and forge ahead on foot. the safety of our party depended in a great measure on the celerity of our movements. hastily dismounting, and tying the cattle to some sturdy sage bushes, we continued our ascent, and it was not many minutes before we had reached a portion of the mountain that shelved out over the ravine, thus forming an admirable position for the signal operations. my companion briefly explained the method of smoke signals, which were made by gathering a quantity of very dry underbrush for the fire, and green twigs, boughs of pine, balsam, and hemlock, being placed upon the blazing wood, covers the flame and throws off a dense smoke that may be seen at great distances. after ascertaining his views, and receiving my instructions, i plunged into the wood and busied myself collecting materials for our telegraph operations. it was not long before we had a sufficient quantity of material gathered, and placing the dry wood in such a manner that it might be easily ignited, my companion produced his tinder apparatus, and was soon at work drilling the block of hard wood, and frantically endeavoring to coax a spark that might set the pile in a blaze. as few, if any, of my readers understand the method by which indians light their fires, i will hastily describe it. the indian is unfamiliar with the use of matches; even the more primitive flint and steel is a sealed book to him; hence he resorts to a very simple but laborious contrivance. each indian supplies himself with two dried stalks of the mexican soap plant, about three-fourths of an inch in diameter. one is made flat on one side; near the edge of the flat surface a small indentation is made to receive the point of the other stick, and a groove cut from this down the side. the other stick is made with a rounded end, and placed upright upon the first. placing the stick with a flat surface between the feet, the point of the other is placed in the hole made to receive it, and turning it between the palms with a backward and forward motion, and pressing the point forcibly into the lower stick, a fine powder is made, which runs through the groove and falls on the ground. by constant and rapid motion the wood begins to smoke, and at length the fine particles take fire; the spark is soon nursed into a flame, and the brushwood ignited. in this manner our fire was lighted, and heaping up the pine and hemlock boughs, the surrounding atmosphere was one dense cloud of smoke. stealing to the very edge of the cliff, i peered over and anxiously scanned the plain below. i could see stonhawon's band fighting desperately with their foes, who, by their superior numbers, were overpowering the camanches. immediately behind the belt of timber, and to the left of the contending factions, was the party comprising the band under the leadership of hissodecha. they were moving cautiously around the timber, and had not as yet observed the signal. once more the signal was worked, this time sending up a denser cloud than before. it was observed by the ambushed party; they drew rein, and after a hasty consultation, turned and retraced their steps. the movement was not executed any too soon, as the main party were retreating before the successful assault of the enemy, and endeavoring to gain the friendly cover of the wood. hissodecha pressed rapidly forward, and emerging on the plain, swooped down upon the flank of the victorious arrapahoes. this sudden movement entirely changed the aspect of affairs. the arrapahoes fell back precipitately in the direction of the ravine, hoping by this means to gain shelter, and if the worst came to the worst, disband and scatter over the mountain. it was a thrilling scene, and i almost wished i was one among them. our mission was accomplished, and my companion intimated that we should descend the mountain and join the war-party. as we descended, the camanche preceded me, pushing his way through the bushes with a rapidity only acquired by long practice. suddenly the thought flashed across my mind that now, if ever, was my golden opportunity. what would there be to prevent my braining the indian in his tracks and then escape? it was a savage and brutal alternative, to be sure; but it was my only chance, and i might wait years in vain before another opportunity would present itself. as i revolved the scheme in my mind, my hand went instinctively to my belt and grasped the tomahawk. i trembled with excitement, and as if to keep pace with my thoughts, my steps quickened, and a few strides brought me close upon my victim. my quick and labored breathing must have attracted his attention, as, suddenly wheeling, he confronted me, and evidently read the murderous intention in my eye, he sprang lightly to one side, and unsheathing his knife, stood as if expecting an attack. simultaneously with this action, i drew my tomahawk and rushed upon him, aiming a blow at his head. he adroitly parried it with his arm, but in so doing received a severe wound in the shoulder. darting at me, he clutched my arm, and twining his limbs about my person, made a desperate endeavor to bring me to the ground. the tomahawk was of no use now; i allowed it to fall from my grasp, and with the disengaged hand clutched my knife. my antagonist's superior strength began to tell. i felt powerless, and his eyes gleamed with fiendish triumph. he raised the shining blade preparatory to sheathing it in my body, when i suddenly felt the ground giving way beneath my feet, and in less time than it takes to relate it, we were rolling over a precipice with a sheer fall of about ten feet. the savage clung to me with a death-like grip, and encircling my neck with his arm, grasped my throat _with his teeth_. those were fearful moments. i struggled to disengage my hand from his vice-like grip. the blood gurgled from my mouth, my tongue protruded, and i was gasping for breath in the last throes of strangulation, when we came to the ground with a terrific shock. the savage gave one yell that curdled my blood, and instantly relaxed his hold, falling limp and lifeless by my side. i was not many minutes in disengaging myself from my antagonist, and in doing so i was made aware of the cause of the sudden turn of events that had saved me from a horrible death. it would appear, that during the struggle and fall, the hand that grasped my knife was encircled around the body of my foe, and when we struck the ground, my body being uppermost, the knife had been driven to the hilt into his back by the force of the concussion. everything now depended on the celerity of my movements. the remainder of the party would no doubt wonder at our long absence, and despatch runners to seek the missing "signal" makers. it would require but a glance at the prostrate form of their comrade to enable them to realize the true state of affairs, and to make instant preparation to follow, overtake the fugitive, and mete out to him the reward of his perfidy. hastily possessing myself of what few arms i needed, and taking the bag of parched corn that was suspended from the girdle of the fallen savage, i made my way to where the ponies were _cached_, and springing on my animal, urged him forward at the top of his speed, leading the indian's pony by the lariat attached to his bridle. my plan was to strike out over the prairie in a southerly direction, and by traveling without cessation, endeavor to put a wide gap between pursuer and pursued, and thus be enabled to reach in safety some of the mexican frontier towns. i was certain that this plan was feasible, from the conversation i had heard from time to time among the warriors of our band. indeed, it was proposed by hissodecha, to raid on some one of the _pueblas_, if they were unsuccessful in their attack on the arrapahoes, as by this means they would avoid the ignominy of returning to the lodges of their people, without being able to display the fruits of a successful foray; such as scalps, horses, captives, etc. by riding my pony until he dropped from exhaustion and then availing myself of the fresh lead horse, i could travel an immense distance without drawing rein. it was growing dark when i started, and i had not traveled far before the night closed in, and i had to trust to the instinct of my horse to carry me safely over the prairie. my course was shaped by a certain star that would keep me on the right trail if i held it steadily in view. about midnight i halted at a small stream to water the horses, and hastily prepare for myself a small portion of the parched corn, which was done by mixing a handful in a gourd filled with water. this corn is invaluable to those who wish to traverse long distances, without being hampered with unnecessary luggage. with a sack or gourd of this article, containing about an half bushel, one can travel fifteen or twenty days without other sustenance. on we sped, the animals straining every muscle and nerve, their flanks heaving and flecked with foam. no sound broke upon the stillness of the night, save the rapid hoof-strokes of the mustangs, and occasionally the yelp of a coyote that was startled in his midnight prowlings by our sudden and rapid advance. directly in my coarse loomed up a huge mound, and further on the dark forms of a range of low hills were outlined upon the horizon. i concluded to push on and gain their shelter. once within their protecting shadow, i could pursue my course more leisurely, and without the fear of immediate detection. my grand anxiety was to hide or blind the trail, and by this means baffle the sleuth hounds, who were by this time in full pursuit. i had not proceeded far when the pony came to a sudden halt, which almost unseated me. i tried to urge him forward by word and action, but it was of no avail; he refused to move, and stood trembling like an aspen. leaning forward and peering over his neck, i discovered, to my dismay, a wide chasm, which fully explained why the mustang had refused to be urged forward. the banks on either side were quite level, and no indentations or ruggedness marked the line of separation. one could ride up to its very brink without being aware of a break in the prairie level. i had thus come upon one of those _barancas_, the result of volcanic action, that are so frequently met with in this country. there was no alternative but to ride along its edge until i came to a point where its sides were depressed to the level of the plain. this, of course, involved a long detour, and a consequent loss of valuable time. my only consolation was in the reflection that my enemies, in following the trail, would be compelled to resort to the same tactics. i had journeyed down its banks about three miles, before i found an opportunity to cross. as i reached the opposite side, i turned and looked back. away to my right, and in the direction from whence i came, i discerned a number of dark specks on the horizon, which filled me with the direst apprehensions. these dark objects were, doubtless, the forms of my pursuers, who had, it would seem, traveled with a celerity almost equaling my own. the chase now assumed a desperate aspect; before me lay life, hope, and freedom; behind was a nemesis that represented captivity, torture, and death. i plied the whip vigorously to the flank of my jaded steed, in the frantic endeavor to reach the cover of the mountain. i had not proceeded far on my course, when my pony showed unmistakable signs of giving out. indeed, i had not made more than a mile on my course, when the animal stopped abruptly. i could feel him tremble under my weight; and dropping on his knees, i had scarcely time to leap to the ground before he fell, and drawing a deep sigh, he turned on his side and died, being absolutely ridden to death. i had no time to waste in mourning the brave little animal that had carried me thus far so faithfully. my robe was quickly transferred to the other horse, and the flight resumed. reaching the base of the hills, i was so fortunate as to find water; and throwing myself at the foot of a tall cottonwood, with the lariat of the mustang attached to my wrist, i determined to snatch an hour's rest, of which both my mustang and myself were very much in need, after our long and arduous ride. i was awakened by a violent pulling at my wrist, caused by the horse, in trying to reach fresh grass. in a few moments i was up, mounted, and away once more in the direction of the mexican towns. towards evening i came to a river of some magnitude. it was now the dry season, and the stream was only a rivulet compared to what i judged it must be, when swollen by the rains and melting snows from adjacent mountains. i had, during the latter part of my journey, been casting about in my mind a series of plans, which would enable me to blind my trail, when lo! here was an opportunity that surpassed my most sanguine expectations. to urge my horse into the stream was the work of a moment, and then turning his head with the current, i continued the journey. at times the water would brush the animal's flanks; again, it would suddenly shallow, and scarcely cover his fetlocks; occasionally i would strike a deep hole, and be obliged to swim the animal some rods, before reaching _terra firma_. these irregularities in the river-bed were due to its quicksand formation, which was constantly shifting, shallowing here, deepening there, and it would have been sure destruction to horse and rider, if we stopped for a moment in our tracks. after journeying in this manner for about a mile, i entered a caã±on, whose walls ascended to a height of thousands of feet, perpendicularly. on emerging from this gloomy pass, a sight met my gaze that made me shout for joy. gaining the bank of the stream, i saw extended before me, waving fields of grain, and in the background, the modest spire of a little church, which was surmounted by a gilt cross, that fairly scintillated under the rays of the noon-day sun. i had arrived then, at last, within the confines of civilization, and my career as a savage, was about to be abruptly terminated. as i pushed forward, along the road that skirted the grain fields, and the familiar sounds of former days fell upon my ears--the tinkle of the cow bells, the busy hum, that filled the air like the whisper of early recollections, wafted down through the airy halls of time--made the scenes, trials and sufferings, appear but as a horrid dream, and i seemed to be just waking to reality. a glance at my tattooed and painted form, however, soon brought me back to a realizing sense of my position, and set me to reflecting how i should explain my presence in this hostile guise, to any chance inhabitant whom i might meet. * * * * * after much cogitation on the subject, i concluded it would be best to ride boldly into the village, and seeking the _alcaid_, explain my situation in as good spanish as my limited knowledge of the tongue, would permit. i had not gone far, when i was encircled by a crowd of bewildered and frantic mexicans, who were shouting, "_indios!_" "_los indios!_" at the top of their squeaky voices; while i made a running accompaniment to their remarks, by holding up my hands, with the palm outstretched towards them, and shouting in my turn, "_amigo!_" reaching the _plaza_, i dismounted, entered the _cantina_ and called for a basin of water. stripping the plumage from my head, and relieving my body of its meretricious adornment, i plunged into the bath prepared for me, and came out, an entirely different looking individual. the news of my arrival had collected an eager and enthusiastic multitude, who filled the _patio_. i said enthusiastic, but all due allowance must be made for the natural and inherited indolence of the mexican. on emerging from the inn, i was greeted with several shouts, and fifty people were asking me questions in one breath, all bent on having them answered in less than no time. i finally succeeded in relating my history, adventures and escape, and wound up with an appeal to their charity; setting forth my utterly destitute condition, in the most glowing terms my execrable spanish would permit. it was an animated scene; the men in the checkered serape, or stripped blankets, conical sombreros, with broad brims, calzoneros of velveteen, with rows of shining buttons, and a sash of gaudy color, encircling their waists. the women were no less conspicuous; draped in the graceful sebazo, the short vogna, and the finely embroidered chemisette. my appeal was not met with that spontaneous generosity that i could have wished; in fact, they contributed nothing, and as a last resort, i was compelled to offer my horse for sale; which venture was more successful, and i soon disposed of him at a very fair price. i was now enabled to buy the few articles of clothing that i was most in need of, and after lingering a few hours in the village, i concluded to push on towards santa fã©, in the hope of falling in with some party of traders, or miners, and then trust to the chapter of accidents for the rest. fortune favored me in my designs, as i soon had an opportunity to join a party of mexicans, who were _en route_ for the capital of new mexico, on trading schemes intent. i accompanied them in the capacity of muleteer. arriving in santa fã©, i immediately repaired to the largest inn, being attracted thither by a number of uncouth characters, in hunting shirts, and slouch hats. i entered unobtrusively, and took a quiet survey of the scene. the room was the _cantina_, and all were indulging in potations, more or less deep, of el paso whiskey. the atmosphere was redolent of the fumes of tobacco, and commingled with the shouts and coarse language of the men, was the shrill treble of the women, who darted here and there, through the throng, like sunbeams. i was attracted by one rude specimen, who seemed bent on getting up a fight. this great rough fellow, of six feet and over, called a trim little _poblana_ to him, with, "hyar, my little muchacha! vamous, and git me some of that'er pass, good now, and clar!" then, as the liquor was produced, he offered the waiter a quantity of money, which was unhesitatingly accepted, with a "_mucho bueno, seã±or_." "hooraw for you! come along, let's licker up all round, and have a dance; you're the gal for my beaver; bully for old missouri!" suddenly, a pistol was discharged in a remote corner of the room, and there was an instantaneous rush in that quarter, succeeded by loud cries, oaths, blows, shooting, din, and confusion. sick and weary of such scenes, i left the _cantina_, and sallying forth into the _plaza_, wandered down the street, not knowing where to go, or what was to become of me. i cared less. chapter xxviii. a new departure. glad to escape from such a scene of riot and violence, i walked rapidly along the narrow street, without any definite idea of where i was going. i soon passed the low and squalid looking rows of _adobe_ buildings, which compose the greater part of the famous "cuidad de santa fã©," and came out upon the open plain beyond. my attention was attracted by a small group of wagons parked upon the plain a short distance off, and i walked towards them, thinking perhaps, to fall in with some of my own countrymen, of a different class from the brutal roughs i had lately met. the wagons were but four in number, and the party to which they belonged comprised only twelve or fifteen persons. they were mostly americans, and from their dress and manner i took them to be a party of miners. all were stout, hardy looking men, with an air that bespoke familiarity with hardships and adventure. they had just struck camp, and were evidently preparing for departure. one, who seemed to act as their leader, was directing operations, and apparently exercised a degree of authority unusual among men of this class. he was a stout, broad-shouldered man, with a good natured expression of countenance, and from his voice and features, easily distinguishable as an englishman. the others addressed him as "harding," or "ned." one or two giving him the familiar appellation of "hard pan," which seemed a sort of _sobriquet_ by which he was known. there was something in his appearance which inspired me with the belief that in him i might find a friend; and impelled by this feeling i approached him, and addressed him as "mr." harding, explained that i was a stranger and destitute, in what was to me a strange land, and implored him to give me employment of some kind with his party, so that i might in time be enabled to return to my home in the distant east. "where do ye come from, lad?" said he, looking at me with some interest, and noticing the ineffaceable marks upon my face--my legacy from the camanches, and which i am destined to carry to my grave. in as few words as possible i told him my story, interrupted by many exclamations of wonder and sympathy from my simple-minded listener. as i concluded he slapped me on the back, and declared that i should join his party, and should never want for a bite or sup while ned harding was to the fore. by this time the other men of the party had gathered around, and i was compelled to repeat my tale, which excited both pity and interest in the breasts of the kind-hearted miners, who declared that the "cussed kimanch ought to be wiped out." "aye, every mother's son of them," added ned, "for playing such tricks upon travelers, the bloody-minded heathen." it was soon agreed upon that i should accompany the party, who were on their way to the old spanish mine of san ildefonso, formerly noted as one of the richest in the province of new mexico, but for many years deserted by the mexicans from terror of the savage apache and navajo. the men composing the party of which i had now become a member, were not to be deterred in their search for a golden harvest by any fears of such a nature, and had determined to visit the old mine and "prospect" in its vicinity, with the hope of finding a paying lead. they had with them all the necessary utensils for their purpose, were well-armed, and with an abundant stock of provision, and seemed one and all to be confident of success in their enterprise. i will spare the reader unnecessary details, and merely state that we started within an hour on our journey, and after a wearisome and uninteresting trip of eighteen days, reached the scene of our future operations, and which was destined to be my abiding place for nearly two years. a suitable spot was selected, convenient to both wood and water; a few rude huts were erected, and the town of "harding" sprang into being. after getting fairly settled, and resting somewhat from the fatigue incident to our journey and our labors in preparing our camp, we divided in parties of three and four, and went to "prospecting" in various directions for the precious metal, which was the object of our expedition. in this we were moderately successful and we soon had our mining operations in full blast. i always worked in company with "ned," as i had learned to call him, and although he favored me to a degree, assigning to me all the lighter portions of the work, i soon found that it was the most severe labor i had ever undertaken, although i had been inured to toil and hardship of almost every kind daring my long residence with the camanches. the old mine was situated at the base of a precipitous cliff of quartz rock. a number of rude shafts pierced the mountain side. some had penetrated to a considerable depth; others more shallow, showing that the _lead_ had proved unprofitable, and been speedily abandoned. on the banks of a little stream which wound around the base of the cliff, stood the old smelting house and ruined ranches of the mexican miners. most of them were roofless and crumbling to decay. the ground about them was shaggy and choked up. there were briers, mezcal plants, and many varieties of cactus; all luxuriant, hirsute, and thorny. these we speedily cleared away, and selecting one of the largest of the old smelting houses, we soon put in order for work. besides our "quartz" mining in the old shafts and in new ones which we opened we also engaged in "gulch" and "surface" mining in the vicinity. as some account of the different modes employed to get at the precious metals, with which the rocks and soils of the far western states are so richly stored, may not be uninteresting to the reader, i will briefly give it. mining for gold alone is divided into two general classes: that which seeks the metal from the solid rock or quartz, and that which finds it in sand, gravel, or soil. the former process is the universal and familiar one of all rock mining, following the rich veins into the bowels of the earth with pick and powder, crushing the rock and separating the infinitesimal atoms of metal from the dusty, powdered mass. the theory of the geologists is, that this is the original form or deposit of the precious metals; that the gold found in gravel, sand, or soil, lying as it does almost universally in the beds of rivers, or under the caves of the mountains, has been washed or ground out of the hard hills by the action of the elements through long years. washing with water is the universal means of getting at these deposits of the gold. but the scale on which this work is done, and the instrumentalities of application vary from the simple hand-pan, pick, and shovel of the original miner, operating along the banks of a little stream, to grand combination enterprises for changing the entire course of a river, running shafts down hundreds of feet to get into the beds of long ago streams, and bringing water through ditches and flumes, and great pipes for ten or twenty miles, and withall to wash down a hillside of golden gravel, and extract its precious particles. the simple individual pan-washers are the first in the field, but it soon ceases to be profitable to this class of operators, and they soon move on in search of richer "diggings." the other means are employed on greater or less scales of magnitude, by combinations of men and capital. all the forms of gold-washing run into each other, indeed; and companies, sometimes consisting of only two or three persons, with capitals of a few hundred dollars merely, buy a sluice claim, or seize a deserted bed, and with shovel and pick, and a small stream of water, run the sands over and over through the sluiceways, and at the end of the day, or week, or month, gather up the deposits of gold in the bottoms and at the ends of their sluices. from this, operations ascend to a magnitude involving hundreds of thousands, and employing hundreds of men as partners or day laborers for the managers. sometimes, too, the enterprise is divided, and companies are organized that furnish the water alone, and sell it out to the miners or washers, according to their wants. the raising of auriferous sands and gravel from the deeply covered beds of old streams, by running down shafts and tunnels into and through such beds, is called "deep diggings," or "bed rock diggings;" and in their pursuit, the bottoms of ancient rivers will be followed through the country for mile after mile, and many feet below the present surface of the earth. the miners in this fashion go down until they reach the bed rock along which the water originally ran, and here they find the richest deposits. the other sort of heavy gold washing, employing powerful streams of water to tear down and wash out the soil of hillsides that cover or hold golden deposits, is known as "hydraulic mining." this is the most unique and extensive process, involving the largest capital and risk. the water is brought from mountain lakes and rivers, through ditches and flumes, sometimes supported by trestle work, fifty or one hundred feet high, to near the scene of operations. then it is let from the flumes into large and stout iron pipes, which grow gradually smaller and smaller. out of these it is passed into hose, like that of a fire engine; and through this it is discharged with terrific force into the bank or bed of earth, which is speedily torn down and washed with resistless separating power into narrow beds or sluices in the lower valleys; and as it goes along these, the more solid gold particles deposit themselves in the rifts or slight barriers placed for that purpose across its path. usually, in large operations of this kind, the main stream of water is divided in the final discharging hose into two or more streams, which spout out into the hillside as if from so many fire engines, but with immensely more force. one of these streams would instantly kill man or animal that should get before it; and fatal accidents frequently happen from this source. sometimes a water company taps lakes fifteen or twenty miles off in the mountains, and turns whole rivers into its ditches. there are in some localities supposed rich gold banks and beds, which only require water for development, but to get which would require an outlay for ditches of many hundred thousand dollars. it is probable that it would be richly paying investment, however, and the principal reason why it is not undertaken is the lack of certain laws, regulating mining claims, and the conflicts and doubts that are occasioned by the neglect of the government to establish the terms of ownership in mining lands. as it is now, possession is the principal title to mining properties; prospectors and miners have established a few general rules for determining the rights of each other, and they can occupy the properties that they discover or purchase to a certain limited extent. no one person is permitted to take up more than a certain amount in feet or acres. the government so far has done nothing with these mineral lands, whose real ownership is still in itself, and derives no revenue from them. whenever difficulties arise and are brought before the courts, the regulations of the miners of the district where the properties are located has generally been sustained. but the apprehension that the government will yet assume its rights and establish different rules for the possession and use of these lands, and the uncertainty and controversies growing out of the present loose ways of making and holding claims, are a serious obstacle to large enterprises, and a hindrance to the best sort of mining progress and prosperity throughout all the western mining country. the profits obtained in some cases of extensive deep diggings and hydraulic mining are very great. a thousand dollars a day is often washed out by a company holding rich soil and employing a large force; and a run of several weeks, averaging from fifty to one hundred dollars a day for each man employed is frequently recorded. a single "cleaning up" after a few weeks' washing in a rich place has produced fifty thousand dollars in gold dust and nuggets; and in some cases, even one hundred thousand dollars has been reported. these are the extreme cases of good fortune, however; other enterprises are run at a loss, or with varying result; but the gold washing, as a general thing pay good wages, and a fair return to the capital invested. it is hardly possible to imagine, and wholly impossible to describe the ruin and wreck to be seen everywhere in the path of the larger gold washing operations. streams naturally pure as crystal, become changed to a thick, yellow mud, from this cause, early in their passage out from the hills. many of them are turned out of their original channels, either directly for mining purposes, or in consequence of the great masses of soil and gravel that come down from the gold washings above. thousands of acres of fine lands along their banks are ruined forever, by deposits of this character. the mining interest respects no rights but its own. a farmer may have his whole estate changed to a barren waste, by a flood of sand and gravel from some hydraulic mining up the stream. if a fine orchard or garden stands in the way of the working of a rich gulch or bank, orchard and garden are doomed. they are torn down, dug out, washed to pieces, and then washed over side hills. where the process of hydraulic mining has been, or is being carried on, the country presents an appearance of devastation and ruin that is scarcely imaginable; forming a frightful blot upon the face of nature. for this sort of mining on a large scale, we had no facilities, so we were compelled to work in a very small way, and be satisfied with correspondingly small results. news of our successful establishment of the old mine, in some way reached santa fã©, and, rushing to the conclusion that we had found a new eldorado, all the floating population of that decaying city swooped down upon us, and we soon found quite a populous settlement growing up around us. a very decided change in our situation resulted from this, and some rather exciting events transpired, but these i will leave for another chapter. soon after the accessions to our community had become so numerous, my friend and partner, ned harding, fell ill. this put a sudden stop to our mining operations, and for several weeks i was compelled to remain by the side of his rude couch, attending to his wants, and doing all that i could to facilitate his recovery. among the new arrivals at our "diggings" was a mexican, who had followed the profession of a _medico_ in former times, but who was now an inveterate gold hunter; one of the sort who are perpetually on the move from place to place, seeking placers of fabulous richness, but never working any claim long enough to fairly develop it. perhaps they have no sooner commenced operations in one place, when a rumor comes of rich finds at some far distant point, and off they go, to repeat the same performance indefinitely. when ned was first taken sick, i thought of this mexican doctor, and at once went in search of him. with some difficulty i persuaded him to get out of the hole in which he was working, and go to see my friend. we had a few simple medicines among our supplies, and from some of these the ex-doctor prepared a potion for ned, which he declared would be "_mucho bueno_," and that the patient would be all right in "_tres dias_," at the most. the result, however, failed so justify his expectations, for ned became no better, although there was no marked change for the worse. it went on in this way for several weeks; i continuing to give the medicines prescribed by the mexican physician, but without any apparent result. ned seemed to be in a kind of low fever, and to constantly lose strength. the stomach seemed to entirely refuse its office, and it was almost impossible to give him any food, however light, that he could keep down much longer than while eating it. he complained greatly of pain in the back and head, and a constant feeling of nausea at the stomach, or, as he expressed it, "i tell ye, lad, theare's something thear as wants to come up and can't." finally, seeing no signs of improvement from the treatment pursued by our mexican friend, and becoming greatly alarmed at ned's condition, i was sitting one day, in great despondency, upon a stump in front of our hut, when it suddenly flashed upon my mind that i had never tried the indian remedy, in the preparation and administration of which i had spent so great a part of my life. for some reason it had never occurred to me to use it, and indeed, i did not know whether it was possible to procure the necessary ingredients, in my present location, although i judged it probable that i might do so. at all events, i determined to make the attempt, and accordingly i went "prospecting" for the required herbs, roots, etc., that very day. after two days spent in this way, i succeeded in procuring all the ingredients which i had so many times compounded under wakometkla's direction, and lost no time in preparing the medicine. i then commenced giving it to my patient in small doses, at intervals of four or five hours, through the day, and was soon gratified to find an almost immediate improvement in his condition. the second day after commencing this treatment, the fever left him; he broke out into a profuse perspiration, and fell into a deep sleep, which lasted for many hours. when he awoke he complained of feeling very hungry; and when i prepared some food he ate quite heartily, and retained it on his stomach without difficulty. encouraged by these favorable indications, i continued the medicine, and with surprising results. his recovery was so rapid that it seemed almost miraculous. in eight days he declared himself entirely well, and almost overwhelmed me with expressions of gratitude, declaring that i had saved his life. i told him that his thanks were due not to me, but to wakometkla, the strange old medicine-man of the camanches, or, more properly, to that higher power, which had enabled this uneducated savage to discover and prepare from the simple growths of the forest and mountain, so wonderful a remedy for "all the ills that flesh is heir to." ned was so universal a favorite among the miners, that his illness had excited great sympathy and commiseration. as he went about, trumpeting forth my praise as a medical practitioner, i soon found that i had gained considerable notoriety. the miners dubbed me "doctor," and called for my services in all cases requiring medical assistance. with wakometkla's remedy alone as my entire pharmacopoeia, i battled with many forms of disease incident to our rough and exposed life, and met with almost unvarying success. in fact, in that region i expect i shall never be known by any other title than "doctor," although i do not claim or fancy such a designation. it would be well for the people if the old school mineral physicians, who are rapidly ruining the health of the entire nation by the free use of deleterious and poisonous drugs, would take a leaf from the book of nature, and re-study their profession in the same school from which i graduated--the school of nature. chapter xxix. the "vigilants." with the influx of population to our settlement came adventurers of all classes; desperadoes, gamblers, broken down professional men, _nymphs du pave_ of the coarse and vulgar sort, gentlemen who "had interests" in "wild-cat" mines in half the counties of the pacific states, _greasers_, or mexicans, indians (_pueblas_)--in short, a conglomerate mass of humanity; or, judging by later events, one might rather say _inhumanity_--such as is nowhere to be seen but in the mining towns of the far west. under the instructions of ned harding, we had on our first arrival "located" all the "claims" that there was any probability of our working, and we were therefore secured against interference on the part of the new comers, who went prospecting all over the adjacent country, locating claims by the hundred. as the process of "locating" claims may be new to the reader, i will give a brief description of it. the first thing is to find your "lead," for this precious metal is not found indiscriminately in every rock or ledge you may chance upon. it is found only in the quartz rock, a ledge of which, say twenty feet in thickness, may run like a curbstone set on edge for many miles across hills and in valleys. it may be a mile in depth, and maintain a nearly uniform thickness, being perfectly distinct from the casing rock on each side of it, and keeping its distinctive character always, no matter how deep or how far into the earth it extends. wherever it is bored into, gold and silver are found; but none in the meaner rock surrounding it. this peculiar rock formation is called a "lead;" and one of these you must first find before you have anything to "locate" a claim upon. when your prospecting has resulted in the discovery of a "lead," you write out and put up a "notice" as follows: notice. i (or we), the undersigned, claim one (or more, according to the number of the party) claim of three hundred feet, and one for discovery, on this silver--(or gold) bearing quartz lead, or lode, extending east and west from this notice, with all its dips, spurs, and angles, extensions and sinuosities, together with fifty feet of ground on each side for working the same. then you file a copy of the same with the mining recorder in the town, and your claim is "entered." in order to secure it, however, you must, within ten days, do a certain amount of work upon the property, or any one may re-enter it at the expiration of that time. among the most important citizens in every mining community are the assayers, of whom there are generally a swarm to be found about every new strike; some of them the veriest charlatans that ever disgraced an honorable profession. when you have located your claim, the next thing is to select some specimens and subject them to the test of the "fire assay." for this purpose it is customary to select the richest lump you can find, and take it to the assayer. on the result of his assay, he will predicate that a ton of such ore would yield hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars; and in this way many a worthless mine has been sold for a large price. in fact, i think, as a rule, the speculators made far more than the miners themselves. we had at one time an assayer in our camp, who obtained such rich results from every specimen of rock brought to him, that he soon had a virtual monopoly of the business. no matter what specimen might be brought to him, he would demonstrate that it contained so large a portion of gold or silver, that the development of the mine could not fail to be profitable. some of his rivals in the trade, becoming jealous of his superior success, conspired together and concocted a plan for his overthrow. one of them procured somewhere an old lapstone, and breaking it into small fragments, selected one as the specimen to be subjected to the intended victim for testing. they let several of the principal miners into the secret, and as there had been some doubts of the reliability of the reports of the assayer in question, they readily assented to assist in proving the truth of the matter. so one of them brought him the "specimen" and left it for assay. the result was encouraging in the extreme; for in the course of an hour the assayer sent in his report, from which it appeared that a ton of rock equal to the sample, would yield $1,324.80 in silver, and $214.58 in gold. the whole matter was at once made public, and the discomfited charlatan immediately found that important business called him elsewhere, and departed between two days. it was well for him that he did so; for so great was the popular indignation, that it is probable he would have found a _permanent_ residence in the vicinity, could the excited miners have laid hands on him at this time. the town of "harding" had now developed into an embryo city. we had nearly two thousand inhabitants, representing every grade of civilization and barbarism, principally the latter. at night the place presented an animated spectacle; for about every third shanty was either a drinking den or a gambling hell. all were brilliantly lighted and wide open to the street, from which you could see the excited groups around the gaming tables, or before the bars. every man went armed to the teeth. fights and affrays were of almost daily--nay, hourly--occurrence. the crack of the pistol became a very familiar sound in my ears, and so frequent were the scenes of violence and murder, that i began to think that the men i was among were worse than the savages with whom my lot had been cast in former years. to such a pass did the insolence and brutality of these desperadoes come at last, that the better class of the miners began to talk among themselves of the necessity for doing something to check it; but none seemed disposed to take the lead, and things went on from bad to worse, until the arrival of a new actor upon the scene brought them to a climax, and disorder and violence culminated in a sudden and severe spasm of justice. the new arrival, who was destined to be the principal figure in the tragic scenes about to be enacted, was a kentuckian, named reid. he was some twenty-eight or thirty years of age, of medium size and finely proportioned, but very athletic. he had a frank and engaging expression of countenance, and nothing in his appearance would seem to indicate the hardened ruffian; yet he was reported to have slain thirty-two men in affrays or personal difficulties since he came into the mining country. from the very day of his arrival, this man became the acknowledged leader of all the lawless elements of our community; and as he seemed to be thirsting for notoriety, outrage followed outrage in rapid succession. among our own original party was a quiet, inoffensive german, named schaeffer, than whom a more peaceable man could nowhere be found. against him reid seamed to have a special spite from the moment he first encountered him; and finally, meeting him one evening in the "el dorado" saloon, he forced a quarrel on him, and then shot poor schaeffer dead, before the latter had time to make a movement in his own defense. he apparently supposed that this would be passed over in the same manner as his previous ill deeds; but for once he was mistaken. in killing schaeffer he had roused against him a determined and bitter enemy, none other than ned harding himself, who was now acting as mayor, or alcalde, of the town named in his honor. ned quickly gathered together our own party, and some twenty-five of the leading men in the place, and announced his determination to form a "vigilance committee," and rid the town of the desperadoes who infested it. the entire party acquiesced in the wisdom of the proposal, and the committee was organized then and there. after some consultation, a plan of operations was agreed upon, and at once put in practice. the next morning a neatly written note appeared posted in several prominent places in the camp, warning all objectionable characters to leave town within twenty-four hours, or their lives would be forfeited. this document was signed, "the vigilants," and naturally created considerable stir and excitement among the parties at whom it was directed, and many of them took the warning and departed; but some of the more desperate, in all about twenty in number, banded themselves together under the leadership of reid, and swore that they would never leave town, except of their own free will, and defied the vigilants to touch any one of their number. at the expiration of the twenty-four hours, we determined to arrest all the members of reid's party, and deal with them as they deserved. accordingly, we mustered our forces, and at the same time made known our intentions to most of the more prominent men in the camp. when all our arrangements were completed, we proceeded in search of our _game_, and in a couple of hours had caught and caged every member of the gang, with two exceptions. one of these had in some way become aware of our intentions, and he found it convenient to seek another locality without delay. the other man was no less a person than reid himself; and he went about boasting that no man dare arrest him, and threatening with instant death any man who should attempt it. this duty ned harding had reserved for himself, and when all was in readiness, he set out to accomplish it. as he was not known to be a "vigilant," and was noted as a man of very quiet and peaceable character, no suspicion attached to him of being concerned in the matter. arming himself, he went into the main street of the village, and entering one of the principal saloons, confronted the desperado. the latter must have seen in ned's eye that he meant mischief, for he made a motion as if to draw a weapon; but before he could do so, he was seized by the throat, and thrown to the ground with the full force of ned's muscular arm. other "vigilants," to the number of about twenty, closed in around the fallen man and his captor, with drawn revolvers, and guarded against any attempt at rescue. reid was securely bound, lifted to his feet, and placed in close confinement in one of the shanties belonging to our party, under the guard of two well-armed and determined men. two hours later all the prisoners were brought up for execution. the miners turned out in large numbers, and forming in solid column, armed to the teeth, they marched up the principal street and halted in front of the building where most of the prisoners were confined. the doomed men were quickly brought out, and informed of the fate in store for them, at the same time ned harding made his appearance, leading reid, and the same announcement was made to the latter. such a scene as ensued, i hope never to see again. these apparently fearless desperadoes, who had repeatedly imbrued their hands in human blood without an instant's hesitation, were transformed on the moment, into a pack of whining cowards; begging and entreating in the most abject manner, that their lives might be spared. reid, the ringleader of all, was the most utter craven of the whole number, and shrieks, curses and prayers for mercy rolled unceasingly from his lips, until the rope choked his utterance. just outside the camp, stood a considerable grove of trees; to this we repaired with our prisoners, and in ten minutes more they were run up, one after another, and each hung convulsed in the death agony, at the end of a lariat. to me, the utter cowardice displayed by these ruffians was surprising--but there is something about the desperado nature that is unaccountable--at least, it seems unaccountable, and it is this. the true desperado is gifted with splendid courage, and yet he will take the most infamous advantage of his enemy; armed and free, he will stand up before a host and fight until he is cut to pieces, and yet, when brought under the gallows, he will plead and cry like a child. the case of reid, was especially notable, from his bloody reputation, and the many instances of courage he had shown in his conflicts with other outlaws. yet, when brought face to face with death, in a different form, he seemed the veriest poltroon that ever walked. words cost nothing, and it is easy to call him a coward (as all executed men, who fail to die "game" are invariably called by unreasoning people), and when a man like reid, so exhausts himself by tears, prayers and lamentations, that he has scarcely strength enough to stand under the gallows, it seems hardly possible that he could be otherwise. yet he had frequently defied and invited the vengeance of banded rocky mountain cut-throats, by shooting down their comrades or leaders, and never offering to hide or fly; he had shown himself to be a man of unquestioned bravery, for no coward would dare do such things. we often read of the most brutal and cowardly murderers, who, when on the gallows, make their last dying speeches without a tremor of the voice, and are swung off, into eternity, with what seems like the calmest fortitude. hence, it seems clear, that in such low and degraded natures, it cannot be _moral_ courage that sustains them. but if moral courage is not the requisite quality, what is it that such men as reid, lack? bloody, desperate, reckless, and yet kindly mannered and urbane gentlemen, who never hesitate to warn their enemies of their intention to kill them on sight, when next they meet. it seems to me a question worthy of study and solution. the executions over, we returned to the town, first detaching a party to remove and bury the bodies. then the assemblage quietly dispersed, and that night our little community saw the first peace and quiet it had known for many a day. the condition of affairs in the new mining districts was peculiar. one reason why murder and outrage were so prevalent, was, that the rough element generally predominated, and among this class a person is not respected until he has "killed his man," as they express it. when any new arrival came into camp, no one thought of inquiring if he was honest or industrious, but, had he killed his man? if not, he was a person of small consequence, and unworthy of further notice; if he had, the cordiality of his reception, and his standing in the community was graduated according to the number of his victories. no man could rise to any position of influence, with bloodless hands, without long and weary labor, but if he were known to have killed half a dozen men, his worth was at once appreciated, and he became a man of note in the community. hence, it is not surprising that many men were killed without the pretext of provocation; so impatient were these persons to achieve distinction and emerge from their obscurity, and become shining lights among the fraternity of desperadoes. "there goes the man that killed jack smith," was the sort of celebrity mostly coveted by this class of people; and i know of several cases, where persons tried to "kill their men," for no other reason, and in some instances were successful, in others, got killed themselves for their pains. in such communities it is utterly impossible to convict a man of murder, arising from one of these public brawls or affrays, and it is only when patience ceases to be a virtue, and the long-suffering miners and others of the law-abiding classes, rise in their might, and by an indiscriminate execution of all persons of bad character, clear the atmosphere for a time, that such crimes are ever punished. the desperado stalked the streets with a swagger, graded according to the number of his homicides, and a nod of recognition from him, was sufficient to make an humble admirer happy for the rest of the day. the deference that was paid to a desperado of wide reputation and who kept his "private graveyard," as the phrase went, was marked and cheerfully accorded. when he moved along the sidewalk in his excessively long-tailed frock coat, shiny stump-toed boots, and with dainty little slouch hat, tipped over his left eye, the small-fry roughs made room for his majesty; when he entered the restaurant, the waiters deserted bankers and merchants, to overwhelm him with obsequious attention; when he shouldered his way to the bar, the shouldered parties wheeled indignantly, recognized him, and--apologized. they got a look in reply, that made them tremble in their boots, and by this time, a gorgeous barkeeper was leaning over the counter, proud of a degree of acquaintance that enabled him to use such familiarity as "how are yer jack, old feller; glad to see you; what'll you take? the old thing?" meaning his usual drink of course. the best known names in the mining towns, were those belonging to these bloodstained heroes of the revolver. governors, politicians, capitalists, leaders of the legislature, and men who had made big strikes, enjoyed some degree of fame, but it seemed local and insignificant, when compared with the celebrity of such men as these. there was a long list of them. they were brave, reckless men, and carried their lives in their own hands. to do them justice, they did their killing principally among themselves, and seldom molested peaceable citizens, for they considered it small credit to add to their trophies so small an affair as the life of a man who was not "on the shoot," as they termed it. they killed each other on slight provocation, and hoped and expected to be killed themselves, for they considered it almost disgraceful for a man not to die "with his boots on," as they expressed it. gradually their ranks were thinned by the ever ready pistol, but it was not so much this, as the change in public sentiment, that caused them mainly to disappear from the older mining communities. now, except in newly opened diggings, the genuine desperado is a thing of the past. chapter xxx. conclusion. about this time rumors were rife that the indians were contemplating a raid on the mine, and operations were temporarily suspended. meetings were called, and a committee of defence organized, with a view to taking such measures as would place the settlement in a position to successfully resist all, or any attempts of the savages. those who had had any experience in indian warfare were called to the council, and consulted on the best means to avert the impending calamity. the panic was more painfully apparent among those who had come upon the scene hampered with goods and chattels of various kinds. these worthies were brimful of wrath and whiskey, and gave free vent to the expression of their opinions regarding the outside world generally, and indians in particular. they were fertile in suggestion; and the many schemes they advanced for the total destruction of all who threatened their private interests would have reflected credit, not to say renown, on a don quixote. the thought of my enslaved wife was never absent from my mind. day and night, sleeping and waking, her image haunted me. i fancied her suffering every degree of misery; and the consciousness that i was powerless to snatch her from the toils of relentless captors, caused me the most poignant anguish. i had a vague, half formed notion of seeking her unaided, and by once more assuming my indian trappings and cognomen, advance in to the apache country, penetrate to their villages, and by a bold dash, seize my wife and bear her defiantly off in the very teeth of my adversaries. this would have been very spirited and chivalrous, no doubt, but unfortunately, the obstacles that opposed themselves to this plan were legion. no sooner did i convince myself of the impracticability of such a mode of procedure, than other plans would present themselves, which, in their turn would have to be relinquished when submitted to the rigorous test of practicability. this constant strain on my mind interposed stumbling blocks to my material prosperity, as i had no heart for my work, and wandered about the diggings aimlessly. i was rallied by my comrades on my morose temper, and recommended to try work as an effectual antidote for the causes that were preying on my health. one balmy afternoon, as i sauntered among the working parties, gazing abstractedly at their operations, my attention was attracted to a group, who seemed to be very much excited by some event. a few had gathered about an object lying upon the ground, while others were running frantically in different directions as if they were possessed. my curiosity being excited i approached the group, and found that the cause of this alarm was one of their comrades, who had been bitten by a snake. the poor fellow was moaning piteously; and so sure was he that his death was only a matter of a few hours time, that he had begun to make the few bequests that would dispose of all his worldly goods, including the little hoard of "dust," so long and patiently sought for. one of his friends knelt at his side, and was endeavoring to pour the contents of a flask of whiskey down his throat. the poison had taken immediate effect, and he doubtless would have been a corpse in a few hours. i was immediately recognized, and one of the miners accosted me with "hullo! eastman, just the man we want; now is your time to produce some of those marvelous herbs you have told us about, and see what you can do for this poor fellow." my sympathies were awakened; my mind threw off its semi-stupor; and hastily glancing about me on the ground, i sought for some of those simple herbs and plants, that i had seen so effectually used in similar cases. hastily gathering what i needed, i soon had leaves bandaged about the swollen parts, and then turned my attention to making a decoction of the herbs. this i forced the patient to take, and after caring for him assiduously during a few hours, i had the satisfaction of noting a marked change for the better. i was deluged with congratulations, and in a short time the fame of this new exploit in the healing art was noised abroad throughout the mine. my new friends were not miners, in the proper sense of the term, but a party of "mountain men," who had been allured hither by exaggerated reports of the immense wealth that was represented as scattered broadcast over the surface of the earth, and was only waiting for a claimant. arriving on the ground they had staked out a claim, and fell to work without any delay. it is needless to add that they did not realize the immense riches they had so fondly anticipated. the result was that they had sickened of their bargain, and many were for pulling up stakes and returning to the free and easy life among the mountains. a short time after the episode just related, there came to our camp one day, a trapper, who had but just returned from his traps, and was on his way to the nearest trading post, to exchange his peltries for powder, wearing apparel, etc. from him we learned that the indians were preparing for some extensive raid, as he had seen numerous parties who were in their war paint. among other items, he related how he had been captured by a hand of apaches, and had remained among them eight days before he succeeded in eluding the vigilance of his guard. from him i gained the first information concerning my wife. he had been captured by some of mahtocheega's band, and by the description he gave of the white captives at that time in the village, i felt sure that my wife was one of the number. learning that on his return he would proceed to the same locality in quest of "beaver plew," i determined to accompany him. about half a dozen signified their intention of following my example, and a party was soon made up. the trapper bade us adieu, promising to return as soon as his skins were traded for the supplies of which he stood in need. gathering together what little money i had, i purchased a horse, rifle and pistol, and prepared to go in search of my lost wife. we had not long to wait for our new friend; he returned in less than a week's time, and all being in readiness, we gathered up our traps, and took a final leave of the mine of san ildefonso. passing out at the northern end of the settlement, we struck the santa fã© road, and followed its sinuous windings for some days. we passed through the sleepy mexican towns, that were situated along the route, without disturbing in the least degree the habitual drowsiness of their inhabitants. on the fourth day we made a stretch of sixty miles through that terror of travelers in this section--the "jornado del muerto." after having crossed in safety, we rested one day to recuperate the animals, and soon after arrived in santa fã©, halting at the inn that had been the scene of the shooting affray on my former visit. our stay in the capital of new mexico was not of long duration, and once more we resumed our journey, striking out in a westerly direction towards the mountains. our first encampment was on the banks of one of the tributaries of the rio colorado. staking our horses out, as is the custom, we gathered around the camp fire, discussing our evening meal of fresh antelope steaks. many were the stories told of trapper life, and as we filled our pipes for a smoke before retiring, the subject of conversation was upon food. all had some anecdote to relate and after each had spun his yarn, harding, who up to the present had been silent, drawled out, "wal, i 'spect as how yer have had some tol'rable bad jints in yer time, but i think i kin jest lay over anything in this yer party in the way o' supper. howsumever, i will give yer a chance to hear how this nigger once got his supper up on the yallerstone, last season. "yer see, i had been in them parts arter beaver, which war plenty, an' no mistake; an' one day, when i had gone to _cache_ some skins, i left my rifle in the grass near my traps, like a gosh darned fool. who should came along but a party of them black niggers, the crows; and the first thing they sot eyes upon was my shootin' iron. in course, i seed it all, and jist had to lay low and cuss my tarnal stupidity, while them 'ere crows hopped around like mad at finding my rifle and things. they was so pleased, 'peared like they forgot theirselves, and didn't foller up my trail, but galloped off, carryin' my plunder along with them. he! he! they mount a did as well, and let ole harding alone." "i reckon that, too," remarked one; "'taint like they made much out of that spekalashun." "yer see, i war cleaned out, an' left with jest a pair o' leggins, better than two hunderd miles from anywhur. the company's post war the nearest, so i jest took down the river in that direcshun. i never seed varmint so shy. they wouldn't a been, blast 'em, if i had er had my traps, but there wa'n't a critter, from the minners to the buffler, that didn't take on as if they knowed how this nigger war fixed. i could get nothing for two days but lizard, an' scarce at that. i chewed up the old leggings, until i was as naked as pike's peak." "golly! was it winter?" "no, 'twur calf time, and warm enuff for that matter. i didn't mind the want o' garments in that way, but i kud a eat more o' it. i soon struck a town of sand rats, and i made snares of my hair, and trapped some on 'em, but _they_ grow shy, too, cuss 'em, and i had to give up that claim. this war the third day, and i wur gettin' powerful weak. i 'gin to think this child's time had come, and i would have ter pass in my chips. 'twur a little arter sun up, an' i war sittin' on the bank, when i seed something cur'ous like floatin' down stream. when it kim closer, i seed it wur the karkidge of a buffler, and a couple of buzzards floppin' about on the thing, pickin' its peepers out. 'twur far out, an' the water deep; but i said i was goin' to fetch it ashore, an' i did. i took to the water an' swum out. i could smell the animal afore i wur half way. i wur soon close up, and seen at a glimpse that the calf wur as rotten as punk. the birds, they mizzled. i wa'n't agoin' to have my swim for nothin', so i tuk the tail atween my teeth, and wagged my flippers for the shore. i hadn't made three strokes when the tail pulled out. i then swum round and pushed that 'ere thing afore me, until i had got it high and dry on a sandbar. 'twur like to melt when i pulled it out o' the water. 'twa'n't eatable nohow. i see the buzzards still flying about, and fresh ones comin', an' i took a idee that i might get some, so i laid down close to the buffler, and played possum. i wa'n't long there 'fore a big cock com a floppin' up, and lit on the karkidge. i grabbed him by the leg. the cussed thing wur nearly as stinkin' as the other; but it wur die dog, buzzard, or buffler; so i skinned the buzzard." "and ate it?" inquired one. "no-o" slowly drawled the trapper, "it ate me." a general laugh followed this remark. "the rest o' the birds got shy, and kept away on t'other side. 'twa'n't no use tryin' _that_ dodge over again. jest then i 'spied a coyoat comin' lopin' down the bank, an' another follerin' upon his heels, an' two or three more on the same trail. i know'd it would be no joke grippin' one o' them by the leg, but i made up my mind to try it, an' i laid down jist as afore, 'side the calf. 'twur no go! they smelt a rat, an' kep' cl'ar. then i tuk a fresh idee in my head. i went for some o' the driftwood an' made a pen around the buffler; an' in the wink o' my eye i had six o' the varmints in the traps." "then you had 'em, eh, old boy?" said one. "you bet; i jest took a lot of stones, clomb up on the pen, an' killed the hull kit o' them. such a jumpin' an' yowlin, as when i peppered them varmints; he! he! he! ho! ho! arter this i had some 'at to eat; an' in a few days reached the company's post." "did you ever see any of those redskins again?" i inquired. "wal, you jest better believe i did. yer see those five notches on this ere rifle? wal, they stand for crows, they do." a general laugh followed this yarn, and all averred that his experience in the eating line was unequalled. after the trapper had finished his story, we wrapped ourselves in our blankets, and were with the exception of the horse guard, soon in a deep slumber. the next morning we were up and moving at sunrise; and after a march of twenty miles, came to a small stream heading in the piã±on range. it was fringed with cottonwood trees, and there was grass in abundance for our horses. we made a halt for an hour, and then proceeded on our journey. we had not gone far when we made a discovery that changed all our plans. harding had been riding about a hundred yards ahead of the main party, when we observed him suddenly stop, bend down, and then throwing up his hands, beckon us on. we were soon up to the spot, asking in a breath what was the matter. he pointed to the ground, and sententiously replied, "_fresh injun sign_." a consultation was held, and after an interchange of opinions, it was agreed that the trail was made by apaches, and that from the trampled nature of the ground, it indicated the presence of a large party. we had no doubt as to their intentions. they were evidently bound south on their annual foray. now was my time beyond peradventure. never could i have had such another opportunity; perhaps even if i waited patiently for years. i briefly related to my companions the circumstances of my capture, captivity, and subsequent escape, and asked their aid in rescuing my wife. each grasped me cordially by the hand, and expressed their willingness to "see me through;" and after a few moments more spent in consultation, we agreed on the following plan: to push on at once and as speedily as possible for the indian village, secrete ourselves in the adjacent mountains until nightfall, and then leaving the horses concealed in the bushes that fringe the base of the mountain, advance on foot to the chief's lodge. once within its portal, it would be the work of a moment to seek out my wife, apprise her of what was transpiring, and quietly leading her out, hasten to our animals, mount, and ride away. this plan seemed feasible, and as moments were precious, we resumed the march. about noon we debouched through the mountain pass into a country of "openings;" small prairies bounded by jungly forests, and interspersed with timber islands. these prairies were covered with tall grass; and buffalo signs appeared as we rode into them. we saw their "roads," "chips," and "wallows." these signs filled us with pleasurable anticipations; as who has not longed for the delicious "hump ribs," which, when once tasted in all their juicy richness, are never to be forgotten. the full-grown forms of the cacti were around us, bearing red and yellow fruit in abundance. we plucked the pears of the pita-haya, and ate them greedily; in short, we dined on fruits and vegetables of many varieties, indigenous only to this wild region. but our stomachs longed for the favorite food, and we pushed on through the openings. we had ridden about an hour among the chaparral, when harding, who was riding in advance, pointed downward, and intimated by signs that he had struck fresh buffalo tracks. very soon after the animals came in view, and by using the bushes as cover, we made a very effectual "surround," killing some three or four. that night we regaled ourselves on buffalo, and the following morning pushed on with renewed vigor, and in the best of spirits. near evening on the fourth day following, we arrived at the foot of the sierra; and directly in front of us, about midway up the valley, or pass, more properly speaking, lay the apache village. an exclamation of joy escaped my lips. at last, then, the hopes and longings of nine weary years were about to be satisfied. my reflections were abruptly terminated by harding remarking that it was highly important that we seek cover and approach the village cautiously, if we expected our efforts to be crowned with success. all felt the justness of this observation, and seeking the cover of the mountain, we proceeded on our journey. in a short time we had advanced as near as we deemed it prudent, until the night should close in. our reins were tightened, and we sat on our weary horses, looking over the plain. a magnificent panorama under any circumstances lay before us; but its interest was heightened by the peculiar circumstances under which we viewed it. the lodges were dotted over the plain in picturesque profusion, the smoke curling gracefully up in their dreamy spirals. one lodge stood apart, and from its size and decorations, we at once guessed it to be the abode of the chief. harding confirmed our conjectures. several droves of horses were quietly browsing on the open prairie. the sun was setting. the mountains were tinged with an amber colored light; and the quartz crystals sparkled on the peaks of the southern sierras. it was a scene of silent beauty. we remained for some time gazing up the valley, without any one uttering his thoughts. it was the silence that precedes resolve. an hour has fled; the sun sinks below the horizon, and the mountains take on a sombre hue. it is night. we urge our horses forward once more, keeping close to the mountain foot; conversing in whispers, we crawl around and among the loose boulders that have fallen from above, and after an hour's ride we find ourselves opposite the town. the night passes slowly and silently; one by one the fires are extinguished, and the plain is wrapped in the gloom of a moonless night. the swan utters its wild note, the gruya whoops over the stream, and the wolf howls on the skirts of the sleeping village. dismounting, we gather in a little knot, and consult as to what plan we shall pursue. it is finally determined that harding and myself shall penetrate into the village, enter the chief's lodge, abduct my wife, and hastily rejoin our comrades, who will hold themselves in readiness to cover our retreat, and, if the worst comes to the worst, keep our pursuers at bay until we have made good our escape. hastily divesting ourselves of all unnecessary accoutrements, we started out on the plain, and cautiously approached the chief's lodge, which loomed up in the darkness like some hideous genii. an indian dog that was lurking about the door gave the alarm, but harding's knife entered his vitals ere he could repeat it. now was the critical moment. drawing the flap aside that served as a door, i peered cautiously in; all was silent; a small fire was burning in the center of the lodge, its fitful gleam dimly illuminating the interior. a number of low couches were ranged around the wall. but at this juncture a dilemma presented itself. here were a number of women, one of when was certainly my wife; but how was i to ascertain in which of these couches she reposed. if i should trust to chance, advance to the first one and peer in, and by so doing startle its inmate, even though that inmate were my wife, the peculiar nature of the visit would so startle her that she would not be enabled to recognize the intruder. however, i determined to approach the first bed and trust to the chapter of accidents for the rest. advancing noiselessly to the side of the couch, i lifted the curtain of dressed buffalo hide. the fire cast a dim light over the face of the sleeper, and, oh, joy, it was the loved features of my wife. i tried to speak, whisper her name; my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. i trembled like an aspen, and had to grasp the bed for support. this movement awakened the sleeper, and with an half-suppressed exclamation, she sprung to a sitting posture. to breathe her name, clasp her in my arms, and rush for the door, was the work of an instant, and hastily snatching a robe that was suspended from the side of the lodge, i enveloped her in it, and rapidly gained the cover of the mountain. in a few moments our party was in full gallop down the valley. leaving the indian village, we started with all speed on our return. i did not anticipate pursuit, and we made no attempt to conceal our trail. indeed, my mind was so occupied with the grand fact that i had recovered my long-lost darling, that i thought of nothing else. as we rode along, each recounted to the other the story of their toils, trials, and sufferings; a thousand question were asked and answered; and in the joy of the present and hope for the future, we were for a time happy. about the middle of the forenoon we approached a thick chaparral, and were just entering it, when a party of about sixty apaches suddenly rushed out from its leafy coverts, and with the rapidity of thought we were surrounded and captured. my wife was able, by her influence with the leader of the party, to save us from indignity, and a lengthy parley followed. i made known to the chief my desire to recover my wife, and endeavored to arrange some terms of purchase or barter. in this i was, after a time, successful, and, after an interminable siege of pipe smoking and discussion, relative to the price, we came to terms, and in a few minutes i had _purchased_ my wife at the cost of all my _worldly_ possessions. but i cared not for this; on the contrary, i was only too glad to recover my wife at any cost, and felt no regret at parting from the accumulations of two years of toil and hardship. resuming our journey, we reached santa fã© in safety, in a few days, and commenced making preparations for our return to the east. the kind-hearted mexican women overwhelmed my wife with attentions, and she was soon provided with apparel more suitable than the barbaric, although beautiful, indian costume. my principal difficulty was the want of money, and i was much perplexed to know how to secure a sufficient sum to enable us to return to our friends. it is probable that had i freely stated our circumstances and narrated our sad story, generous hearts might have been found among the many american miners and trappers sojourning in the town; for many a noble heart beats beneath a rough and unpromising exterior; but my pride shrank from appearing in the character of a mendicant, and i finally came to the conclusion that we must remain at santa fã© for a time, until i could find some employment by which to earn sufficient means to enable us to return to our former home. i had forgotten the fact that i possessed a warm friend in ned harding, or, if i had thought of him in this connection, it was not with any idea that he could aid me. in this i was mistaken, as the sequel will show. on the third morning after my return, ned called me out under pretence of taking a walk, and after strolling about for a time in silence, he opened his mind as follows: "well lad, what are ye goin' to do next? i suppose you don't intend to stay here in this 'ere god forsaken hole, that these yaller-bellies calls a city; the lord forgive their ignorance; if they could only see lunnon, once--well, as i was a sayin', you can't stay here, and you can't take your little girl back into the mining kentry, very well; so what do you mean to do? let old ned know, and don't go round, keepin' as close as an ister, and never sayin' nothin' to nobody." thus admonished, i forgot my reserve, and fully explained to him my dilemma. he listened in silence until i had finished, and then broke forth with--"why, lord bless ye, lad, yer gettin' foolish, certain, ho! ho! yer little woman has turned yer head, sure; why, you forgot all about the mine, and i reckon there's vally enough to that to send ye home like a nabob, if you like to travel that way." "the mine!" i exclaimed in surprise, "why ned, i thought we had abandoned it altogether, you don't mean to tell me that i can realize anything from the claim?" "you bet, i mean just that;" said harding, his features expanding into a broad grin as he marked my look of utter astonishment. "why lad, if we were all agreed on the thing, i've got a party here that'll give us five thousand apiece for our claim--i ain't such a fool as i look, and it wa'nt for nothin' that i left pete there a holdin' possession, and there he'll stay till he hears from me--so now if you're willin' to take five thousand for your sher, just say the word, and we'll have it settled in no time." further inquiry elicited the information that during the two days previous, while i had spent my time in unprofitable cogitation, ned had been "kinder prospectin' round among the speckilaters," as he termed it, and had found parties willing and anxious to buy the claim held jointly by ned, pete jackson, and myself, for fifteen thousand dollars in cash. ned had brought with him some specimens of the quartz which he had shown to the intending purchasers, and some of which they had subjected to assay, and the result of this had determined them to buy the claim if everything could be satisfactorily arranged. it did not take me long to decide, in fact, i fairly jumped at the offer. the sum mentioned seemed a princely fortune at the time, and, in fact, to one in my situation it really was so, for wealth is but comparative, after all. the following morning the trade was arranged, the necessary papers drawn up, and ned left the same afternoon for the mine in company with the buyers, to deliver the property and complete the transaction. in a few days he returned, and i soon found myself in possession of five thousand dollars in gold coin, the largest amount of money i ever owned. i now hurried the preparations for our departure, and a few days later we joined an eastward bound train, and journeyed with it towards the rising sun! with the details of our journey i will not weary the reader, suffice it to say that we made the trip without trouble or molestation of any sort, and reached st. louis in safety. how strange it all seemed, to walk about the streets of the great city of the west, and as the residents fondly term it "the future great city of the world;" everything seemed so unreal, after the long years of my captivity and wild life among the mountains, that i used sometimes to fancy that it was all but a dream and i would presently awake to find myself again in the temple with wakometkla, in that strange and far off land hidden among the mighty mountains of the sierra madre. we remained but a few days in the metropolis of the west, and then journeyed to a point further eastward, where my wife had relatives living, or at least supposed that some might yet be surviving. on our arrival we found such to be the case, and a joyful reunion was the result; we being received as two risen from the dead. and now our cup of happiness was indeed full; reunited after so long a separation and such bitter suffering we had returned at last to friends and home! in conclusion, i can only express my thanks to those kind readers who have followed me patiently through all my wanderings, and listened to my simple, yet i hope not uninteresting narrative of the hardships and perils through which i have passed. if the story of our captivity has proved a source of entertainment to the reader--if it haply excites a feeling of sympathy and interest for the many wretched captives who yet remain in a servitude worse than death among the rude tribes of the west--if it renders the general public more familiar with a region of which so little is known--if should chance to afford to those officials of our government, to whom the subject is relegated, any new views in reference to the proper method of dealing with the indians--if it accomplishes any of these ends, i shall be more than repaid for my labor in its preparation. my thanks are also due to my kind friend, dr. clark johnson, without whom opportune aid this book would never have been written. and now kind reader, for the present at least, _farewell_. the end. to the public. as there has been considerable inquiry concerning the remedy to which allusion is herein made, i will, by way of explanation, make the following statement, which will relieve me from a large amount of correspondence with anxious inquirers. the remedy is the most remarkable purifier of the blood that i have ever known; it is a tonic, a diuretic, a nervine, and a gentle laxative. is is alterative, sudorific, soporific, and deobstruent. these qualities, harmoniously blended into one single remedy, make one of the very best combinations which can possibly be taken into the human system. it is a very remarkable remedy in disease of the stomach. dyspepsia cannot exist any length of time if the remedy be taken as directed, _instantly_ after eating. all diseases of the liver and bowels readily succumb to its magic influence, while all nervous diseases and all diseases of the blood are speedily eradicated by the peculiar elements in its composition, which act directly upon such difficulties. we have thousands upon thousands of certificates from persons who have been afflicted with various maladies, and who have been cured by the use of this remedy; and i am, myself, frequently made surprised to learn what wonderful results follow the use of this medicine. the remedy, dr. clark johnson's indian blood syrup, is sold by agents in nearly every post-village in the united states; but wherever it happens that i do _not_ have an agent, i shall be glad to make one, and would invite honorable persons to communicate with me upon the subject of an agency. _i require no money from agents except as the medicines are sold._ trusting that the afflicted will make a trial of this remarkable remedy, which has providentially fallen upon my notice, i am, with respect, yours, truly, c. johnson, _jersey city, n.j._ _july 1st, 1873._ +----------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | inconsistent spelling in the original document | | have been preserved. | | | | typographical errors corrected in the text: | | | | page 10 temporarly changed to temporarily | | page 29 by changed to my | | page 34 gutteral changed to guttural | | page 64 gutterals changed to gutturals | | page 68 rythmic changed to rhythmic | | page 70 discernable changed to discernible | | page 73 hugh changed to huge | | page 86 shoshoness changed to shoshones | | page 94 stanhawon changed to stonhawon | | page 95 removed repeated word "the" | | page 109 orgie changed to orgy | | page 114 tassajo changed to tasajo | | page 116 use changed to uses | | page 118 apalling changed to appalling | | page 120 unforseen changed to unforeseen | | page 122 cascass changed to carcass | | page 136 otb-to-toa changed to oth-to-toa | | page 153 vanqueros changed to vaqueros | | page 168 circuituous changed to circuitous | | page 176 buffoloes changed to buffaloes | | page 234 conlcude changed to conclude | | page 235 occaions changed to occasions | | page 235 foreseen changed to foreseen | | page 236 goverment changed to government | | page 236 deseerts changed to desserts | | page 239 wierd changed to weird | | page 242 is changed to it | | page 244 stonawon changed to stonhawon | | page 247 imperitive changed to imperative | | page 249 "tying the cattle" should read "tying | | the horses" | | page 259 by changed to my | | page 260 meritricious changed to meretricious | | page 260 encirling changed to encircling | | page 264 soubriquet changed to sobriquet | | page 266 deleted extra word "under" before | | "undertaken" | | page 267 mental changed to metal | | page 269 rifs changed to rifts | | page 270 goverment changed to government | | page 291 praticability changed to practicability | | page 296 buzzarts changed to buzzards | | page 297 buzzart changed to buzzard | | page 297 buzzarts changed to buzzards | +----------------------------------------------------+ 