Part 4

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 Bitt