of total sales. If this be true or anywhere near the truth, the latter sum forms a very respectable item in the interest account of the national debt to the patent medicine business,-a branch of mercantile enterprise exceeded by none.

It is estimated on a basis that can hardly be called statistical, though it may be reasonable and probable, that the people of this country consume between five and six times more medicine per capita than any other nation of the world, and yet the people are taxed for it in such a way that they hardly seem to feel it. Or rather the quack medicine tax is so much better managed than the spirit and tobacco taxes, that it does not cost anything like as much to collect it. A very interesting question in political economy is how much better off would the nation be if these taxes were saved by the cure of these mild but not harmless forms of insanity, which cause the irrational use or abuse of patent medicines spirit and tobacco ?

Suppose there were only fifty patent medicines, with an aggregate sale of $20,000 a week each. That would be a million dollars a week, or fifty-two millions of dollars a year, and this sum if capitalized at 4 per cent. per annum would represent thirteen hundred millions of dollars.

"St. Jacob's Oil" appears to be a feeble and badly made aconite liniment, and it consists mainly of water, ether, alcohol, turpentines, and a small proportion of aconite with red coloring matter. Its whole function is to make money for the enterprising merchants who own it, and in this it is by no means a delusion or a snare.

Its enormous sale is not only of great service in helping the poor to stay poor, but it also relieves a great many people of their money, who are not poor in anything but common sense, and who take their medicines as they do most of their other deceptions, namely, by being advertised into them, since without advertising not one hundred dollars' worth of St. Jacob's Oil could ever have been sold.

This writer has for many years known that his valued friend, Dr. W. C. Reiter, of No. 328 Penn avenue, Pittsburgh, Pa., had suffered from inherited psoriasis, and had accidentally met with a very simple plan of treatment which had relieved him in more than one recurrence of the disease. He has also known that Dr. Reiter as an excellent general practitioner, with a large practice, has been successful in relieving a number of cases similar to his own by the same plan of treatment, and that this treatment was so simple and easy as to be within easy reach of every physician in the United States, without recourse to the druggist or pharmacist, or to anything except the common burdock weed which grows at his door. It was also known that Dr. Reiter would only be too glad to tell all he knew for the benefit of his brother physicians and their suffering patients. But his treatment was so simple, not needing even a fluid extract, that there was danger that if published in these days it would pass as an unscientific vagary, or a small thing. It may therefore be useful to assume, on behalf of Dr. Reiter, the character of the servants of Naaman, and say to the readers of this pamphlet," If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing wouldst thou not have done it?"

The following account was sent by Dr. Reiter some time ago, but not with any view to its publication. Lately, however, his permission has been asked for and obtained for its publication, and the readers are congratulated on the agreeable contrast between his style and anything they are used to find here. Hence his

pleasant letter is given just as it was received from him, with the omission only of proper names.

DR. REITER'S LETTER.

LAPPA MAJOR.

Radix bardanæ, P.G.-Bardane, Fr.-Burdock, E.-Klettenwurzel, G.-Nat. Ord. Compositæ. Cynareæ.

Heads discoid, homogamous; involucre globous, the scales imbrecated and hooked at the extremity; receptacle bristly; pappus bristly, scabrous, caducous, (2) Coarse. European herbs. Leaves alternate, large. Lappa Major, Gaert.

Leaves cordate, unarmed, petioled. Common in waste and uncultivated grounds and fields in the New England, Middle and Western States. Each plant is a large, conical ill-scented and coarse-looking mass of vegetation, surmounted by a branching irregular panicle of ovoid heads, with tubular corollas of an exceedingly delicate pink color. The leaves are very large, with wavy edges. It has a wonderful design for the dispersion of its seeds. The scales of the involucre all end in a minute, firm hook, which seizes hold of everything that passes by.

The root has long been used as a medicine, particularly in Germany; and alterative, diuretic and diaphoretic properties were ascribed to it. It was prescribed for invalids suffering with rheumatism, skin and other chronic diseases, in powder, infusion, decoction, syrups, etc., but never attained a greater popularity. than mint, chamomile, balm and other remedies which the good housewife stores in her medical armamentarium.

It was my misfortune to inherit, from my father, Psoriasis Inveterata, which he told me he had inherited from a long line of progenitors. In youth I had spots on my skin foretelling what adult age developed-psoriasis on left leg and ankle-the same place on my body perfectly imitating my father's plague. He was never healed, although he sought medical advice in Europe.

I was a country doctor, and carried a cane on horseback to relieve the agonizing itching of my leg in warm weather. One warm afternoon (about 1840, I think), I was going to visit a patient with an old farmer, when he exclaimed, "What makes you tear your leg so furiously with the end of that hickory stick?" I replied, "To relieve the maddening itch of my accursed tetter." He said I must cure it; told me he had been afflicted with it on his hands so severely that he had lost his nails. He said I should gather burdock seed and put whisky on it, and take internally. I obeyed; put quite a quantity into gallon bottles and added whisky, of which I had but little; in the others I put alcohol, and stood them in a warm place. After some weeks I began to take a table-spoonful thrice daily, using that steeped in whisky first.

After taking all the whisky tincture I found slight improvement in tetter, but a vast power had been bestowed on my stomach. All my life I had to deny myself many things or suffer; now I could eat sauerkraut, turnips, mince-pie, etc., etc., and only knew I had a stomach from that singular delight we all feel in satisfying a keen appetite with luscious food.

I now began to take alcoholic tincture and found an entirely different preparation. I had to add water, and discovered resin, and at the bottom of each bottle, oil; here was a hint. I put alcohol on the seed which had been macerated in whisky and obtained a resinous tincture. When my old friend and benefactor prepared his tincture, whisky was distilled in copper stills and came off as proof spirits; my whisky was manufactured by steam. My disease improved rapidly and ceased to torture me, although the skin remained dry and furfuraceous.

On the advent of summer I observed in washing my hands (a doctor must do that often) a great increase in sebaceous secretion, which required much soap to remove; now my whole cutaneous surface acquired a condition of the most perfect health. Whilst afflicted with tetter I had learned to eschew hog meat-a meal of sausages or ham was always very aggravating-I became a very sincere and faithful Jew in avoiding swine meat or fat as a diet. For almost forty years I had a healthy skin; but my European tour in 1875 restored my old malady in an aggravated form. Their water, in many of the southern parts full of dolomite, both for drinking and washing, may have contributed; but sandwiches of cold ham and Bologna sausages were the chief enemies. On my return I could not get the tincture, and, when obtained, its effects were not as before. The taste was not a pure, agrecable bitter, but nauseous. Whether this was owing to mould on the seed or to the druggist having ground them, or to the climate I could not tell; Mr. Holland said he had bought the seed in New York.

A pupil of mine, Dr. Clark, took my place (in Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland county, Pa.) when I came to Pittsburgh. He was so kind as to have quite a lot of seed gathered for me; I prepared the tincture myself and am now perfectly well. I felt that it restored a perfect digestive power which my stomach lacked, and hence have prescribed it in atonic dyspepsia with such success that Mr. Holland can with difficulty supply the demand; the crop last summer was impaired so much by drought that he was compelled to order the seed from several western States, and still believes he will run short before the new seed can be gathered. I send to you some of the oil obtained from the bottom of a tincture bottle; some resin I found on a board last fall under a bushel percolator, from which I thought dripping had ended; I send two kinds of tincture, one obtained from contused, the other from whole seed. It can be made in a few days by heating alcohol and keeping warm; the cold preparation is very tedious; much alcohol is lost, the seed absorbing it. We have lost much resin, which clung to percolator and

seed; we now save that by washing seed with warm alcohol, which we use for our fresh seed. The therapeutical action I could best reduce to form by calling it an alterative stomachic; it appears to improve all the nutritive, secretive and assimilative functions. prescribe from two to four drachms, well watered, a half hour before each meal.

I

I have for a long time wished to send to you something on this Bardanas seed, but am lazy. A suffering illness has admonished me to do so before I die, and I am doing it before I can leave my room. You are the proper person to introduce a remedy and promulgate one of the most valuable therapeutic agents in my armamentarium medicorum.

By the way, did I send you my little monograph on diphtheria ? If not, 1 will send one right away. I have, this winter, verified my discovery perfectly. Diphtheria is a functional disease of the liver. This organ has lost its power of destroying fibrine, of which Brown Sequard says: "The liver, in a healthy adult, metamorphoses eighty ounces in twenty-four hours." Here you have the remote causeinspissated blood-and the theses of infection, contagion, micrococci, etc., are moonshine, transcendental tomfoolery. The proximate cause-too much fibrine in blood. Where a case has not reached a fatal condition, from 24 to 40 hours' medication effects a cure. Hear and ponder this: A few weeks ago Dr. Joseph D- —, Jr., lost a fine boy of five or six years with diphtheria. The second son took it, and meeting him one morning on the street, I stopped to inquire about his son. He said "they thought him better." Dr. McC

was with him, and said to me: was going for you to visit and treat my son Jim. He was out and apparently well yesterday, and became suddenly and alarmingly ill early last night; his pain in head is alarming; has but little exudation in his throat."

The patient Jim is a very bright boy of eight years, and much attached to me. I said to him, "Jim, how are you?" Placing one hand on vertex and other to forehead he exclaimed, "Oh, Doctor! I have such pain through my head." His throat had that intense erythematous redness which is pathognomonic of diphtheria; a few spots, like milk-stain, were the only exude. His skin was very pale and very hot, and his pulse very tense and quick, frequency not over a hundred.

I pronounced it a very grave case, gave him one scruple of calomel on a tea-spoonful of cold water, and prescribed ten grains to be taken every hour. I ordered five grs. potass. chlorat. in solution every third hour. Gum-water, barley gruel, lemonade and cold water ad libitum. My visit had been at 9 A.M.; saw him again at 1 P.M. and 4 P. M. but found no improvement. I live in the country, seven miles east of city, on Pennsylvania Railroad, and came to city at 8 P. M. to see Jim. said he had improved. I could not discern it. Begged the mother to continue ten grs. every hour until I came again. She did, faithfully. I saw him at 8 A. M., and said: “Jim, how are you?" He sprung up on his rump

His father and Dr. A