There is an article which "smells to heaven," the acidiferous title of
which glares in mammoth letters from every road-side, wherein the
audacious proprietor obviates the necessity of alcohol for its preparation
or preservation. It is merely fermented slops--"dish water," minus the
alcohol. Take a few handfuls of any bitter herbs, saturate them in any
dirty pond water,--say a barrel full,--add some nitric acid, and bottle,
without straining! Here you have _Vinegared Bitters_! The cheeky
proprietor informs the "ignorant public" that, "if the _medicine_ becomes
sour (ferments), as it sometimes will, being its 'nature so to do,' it
does not detract from its medical virtues." True, true! for it never
possessed "medical virtues."
The cost of this villanous decoction is _scarcely half a cent a bottle_!
Soured swill! It is recommended to cure fifty different complaints! It
sells to fools for "one dollar a bottle," and will go through one like so
much quicksilver. "Try a bottle," if you doubt it. The "dodge" is in
advertising it as a temperance bitter. Having no alcoholic properties, it
in no wise endangers the user in becoming addicted to _stimulants_.
Sarsaparilla humbugs are only second to the above. But a few years since
an immense fortune was realized by a New York speculator in human flesh on
a "Sarsaparilla" which contained not one drop of that all but useless
medicine; nor did it possess any real medical properties whatever.