r acetanilid, or
any derivative or preparation of any such substances contained
therein."

What are the motives which impel persons to buy and use patent
medicines? The history of medicine offers a partial explanation. In
somewhat remote times we find that the medicines in use by regular
physicians were of the most vile, nauseating, and powerful nature. We
read of "purging gently" with a teaspoonful of calomel. Then during
the wonderful progress of scientific medicine, beginning a little more
than a half century ago, the most illustrious and useful workers were
so busily engaged in finding the causes of disease and the changes
wrought in the various organs, in observing the noticeable symptoms
and in classifying and diagnosticating them, that treatment was given
but scant attention. This was nowhere more noticeable than in Germany,
the birthplace, home, and world-center of scientific medicine, to
which all the medical profession flocked. Patients became simply
material which could be watched and studied. This was an exemplary
spirit, but did not suit the patients who wanted to be treated and
cured. This fact, together with the peculiar wording of the laws
regulating the practice of medicine, which allow anyone with the
exception of graduates to treat patients, but not to prescribe or
operate upon them, accounts for the number of quacks in Germany.

Dr. Jacobi states that "there is one quack doctor to every two regular
physicians in Saxony and Bavaria."[12]

Another cause for the use of patent medicines is mysticism. Ignorance
is the mother of credulity. It is reported[13] that Cato, the elder,
recommended cabbages as a panacea for all sorts of ills, that he
treated dislocations of the limbs by incantations, and ordered the
Greek physicians out of Rome. The ignorant are greatly influenced by
things that they cannot understand. Therefore, as the mass of people
are utterly ignorant of the changes in structure and function of the
body caused by disease, and also the limitations of medicines in their
power of healing such alterations, their belief in the mysterious
power said to attach to patent medicines is not surprising. When
testimonials of the efficacy of patent medicines purporting to come
from respectable divines, merchants, and statesmen are offered, the
proof of their power seems incontestable.

Economy and convenience are added incentives to the employment of
patent medicines. This method of saving the