Harold Fenlason told a story about Percy L. Lord. "Percy L. Lord had an open prescription room. You know. There were glass show cases in front, but you would look out into the prescription room. Percy L. Lord was a real act. He was tremendous. And, we made things with liquids a lot, and you'd have a bottle, see, and one of these graduates and Percy L. Lord . . . this would be the bottle and let's say this is the graduate. He'd dump it out of the bottle in there and there would be lines on it and he'd go - - must be on the bottom of the meniscus, that's right. (A meniscus is the curved upper surface of a column of liquid.) And, so he'd go like this and he'd go - oh, very serious. And, you know what, he would do that and he'd always over fill it and he'd pour it back in the bottle which nobody ever should do. And, then he'd go back and forth like this and finally - with great gravity - oh, very serious - he would carefully pour that into the four ounce bottle and everybody would say, ‘Oh that Mr. Lord, he's so careful.' So careful, my eye. Any good pharmacist, including Percy L. Lord, would never put it back, and could hit that bottom of the meniscus just right on the button. No problem, you could do it. But, Percy pulled all this nonsense. And, he was a great old humbug, too, I'm going to tell you. This may bother some people. So anyone used to go in and say, ‘Mr. Lord, I don't feel very good. I got chills. I got fever. I got this and that.' And, he'd say, ‘Yes, well I think I could have a remedy for you.' And, he'd go out back and he'd get a four ounce bottle or a six ounce - four ounce usually - thirty five cents - and he'd go and take off this - go through this same routine - oh very carefully - and put it all and he usually have to put a ‘shake' label on it. Put a little powder in there to make it look good. Now, I - ‘If you take this,'- and he would give them directions and put them on the label - ‘I'm sure you will be helped.' And so they'd go away. They'd take the stuff. They would be helped and they would be very happy. So, the punch line of the story is this. A year later, they'd come back with this bottle and say, ‘Mr. Lord, I need some more of that medicine.' And, it didn't faze Percy L. Lord a bit. He'd say, ‘Hum-m, yes, well,' and so he'd go out in the back room and concoct something else, and come back and he'd say ‘Now, I must explain to you, we have recently had some new shipments of drugs and they are somewhat different, and you may notice that this is a slightly different color or it might be a definitely different color. Don't let that worry you, and you may notice that it doesn't smell exactly the same or it doesn't taste exactly the same, but this is the fault of the new material. This is your prescription.' And, they believed him absolutely. P. L. Lord could do no wrong and they were cured. . . . And, a wonderful guy. I have nothing but great admiration for P. L. Lord. And, he was a big man of Calais." Every drug store had a shelf of patent medicine, Lydia Pinkham's and Fellow's Compound and others. One was Dr. Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People. There was Piso's Cure for Consumption with the following advertising. "I believe Piso's Cure for Consumption saved my life. The best cough medicine is Piso's Cure for Consumption. Children take it without objection - by all druggists - 25 cents." Many of the patent medicines including Lydia Pinkham's and Atlas Bitters, had a large percentage of alcohol. Harold Fenlason said, "I must note this that there were many of these patent medicines and they were a high alcoholic percentage and people who took these things a lot were running around half drunk most of the time. Maybe, they didn't know they were drunk, but they felt pretty good." Everyone had to take some "Bitters" in the spring. The worse it tasted, the better it was supposed to be. "It was like putting iodine on a cut - no hurt, no cure." Cascara sagrada was a laxative and a lovely Latin name was Romulus Persiana. Fluid Extract of Romulus Persiana. There were Kickapoo Indian remedies that included Kickapoo Indian Sagwa, Indian Oil, Indian Salve, Indian Cough Cure, and Indian Worm Killer. "They had four or five things and they guaranteed that it would, you know, cure anything." Congress by passing the Pure Food and Drug Act put an end forever to some of the nation's more bizarre nostrums. It was a time of Indian snake root oil, electric belts, tonics and phosphates, pills, powders, elixirs, herb teas and aphrodisiacs. An advertisement for Lydia Pinkham's said, "This applies to women regardless of taste, caste or color. The ambitious girl striving for school honors; the shop girl, anxious, eager, worried, for she must keep her place; the society woman, all climbing too high. What follows? Nervous prostration, excitability, fainting spells, most likely organic diseases of the uterus or womb and many - many other distressing female troubles. Oh, women, if you must bring upon yourselves these troubles, remember that Lydia E. Pinkham's is a vegetable compound that has done more to relieve such suffering than any other remedy known." Lice remedies were the next thing discussed. A woman told a story that when she was in school and Helen Mahaney was her teacher, there was an epidemic of lice in the class. Miss Mahaney had hair long enough so that she could sit on it, and she caught the lice, too. She told the whole class to go home and that the only ones who could come back to school were the ones who did not have lice. Foster Higgens and the woman telling the story were the only students in the class the next day. Helen Mahaney was a good teacher and the school principal. The woman telling the story said that many people didn't want to use the Blue Butter lice remedy and they used Quasher Chips. The chips were steeped in water and you soaked your hair in this water. You wore a cap for three days and used vinegar to get rid of the nits. Kerosene was another home remedy for head lice. Some remedies for rheumatism were: "Wear the eye tooth of a pig. Carry three potatoes in your pants pocket. Carry in your pocket the triangular bone from a ham. Put a copper cent in your shoe. Carry a piece of burn out carbon from the arc light as a prevention or cure for rheumatism. Of course you have to find an arc light in the old cars - might be a little difficult. A ring made of a horse shoe nail is good for rheumatism. Wear a brass ring to cure rheumatism. To prevent rheumatism put glass knobs under the bed posts. Say, that's pretty good. That's easy too. A dried eel skin tied above a joint kills and prevents rheumatism. So all you have to get is a dried eel skin. That'd be pretty good. Do not throw out the water in which you wash your feet in the evening until the next day for fear of rheumatism. That's pretty good. Carry a coffin nail to prevent rheumatism. A salted mackerel tied on the feet cured rheumatism. A raw salt herring with the bone taken out applied to the neck, tie a handkerchief over it and keeping it on all night cures rheumatism. Rheumatism can be cured by sleeping on a sock that contains powdered alum. That would be pretty easy, a little alum. A bee sting will cure rheumatism. Render a buzzard into grease and use this for rheumatism. A red flannel worn about the wrist will cure rheumatism, and it says sleep with a dog to cure rheumatism. The dog will absorb the disease and become crippled."