Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1883 — Every Man His Own Druggist [ARTICLE]

Every Man His Own Druggist

When heavy rains are prevalent, patches of fine white powder like hoar frost may be noticed on the surface of brick walls. Dr. Joseph Leidy, President of the Academy of Natural Sciences, says that “the efflorescence is simply ordinary Epsom salts.” He also states that a dark fungus that is found on mortar in damp places is sulphate of potash, and he has discovered that a fine article of bromide of something or other oozes out of a tin roof in hot weather. Natural science is a wonderful thing! Who would have thought that a briok is only another form of a dose of salts, or that there is enough sulphate of potash in an old chimney to physio a whole community. If Dr. Joseph Leidy goes on with his investigations he may find that castor oil is the natural sap of an iron gate, or that the perspiration of a shingle roof is the article known to commerce as kidney-wort. Then the doctor can publish his discoveries in a book under the title of “Every Man His Own Druggist,” and the householder who has a copy won’t ever again have to go down town in the middle of the night and wake np a sleeky drug clerk, who is liable to poison him with the wrong medicine. All he will have to do will be to pry a brick out of the chimney and gnaw the comer of it at his leisure, and then he oan fill np his whole inside with materia medica without expense by simply chewing a shingle, sucking an iron gate post, and digesting a section of the tin gntter from the roof. This age is great in discoveries, and Dr. Leidy is a great discoverer. We won’t be surprised to hear of him finding some valuable gargle exuding from a door mat, a healing poultice percolating out of an old hair mattress, or a liver pad leaking out of an eight-day clock.— Texan Siftings.