There are Mouths in the Skin

Kind readers, you may not be aware of this but your skin is covered in tiny mouths. Take a look at the picture in this 1905 Ypsilanti Daily Press ad if you don't believe me--there's a handy magnification. And those millions of mouths need food. Have you fed them lately? When was the last time you took a bath in some nice chicken noodle soup?

Never? I think I hear a tiny scream--no, a chorus of agony. Those millions of mouths are toothless and craving food. When they are hungry the skin gets in rough shape. Don't feed those mouths poisonous "cosmetics," "creams," lotions, "skin cures," etc. Give them food--nutrition--and Nature will create a new skin--a healthy skin.

Nutriola Skin Food is the only real skin food made. Took our Chemists 10 years and $50,000 to learn how to make it. It grows new skin fast--off goes the old one. The new skin is soft as velvet--glows with health--fits like a glove. Ye itching, scratching, tortured, disfigured sons and daughters of Adam, try it at our risk.

Sold and guaranteed by Frank Smith, Ypsilanti, Michigan (104 Michigan Ave.).

Let's see what the book "Nostrums and Quackery" says about this wonderful food:The Nutriola Company of Chicago was a Maine corporation organized about 1894, with authorized capital stock of $150,000, divided into 150,000 shares of the par value of $1 each. The capital stock was later increased to $500,000. Edward I'. Hanson was the promoter of the company. The actual business of the concern was that of selling its stock on the installment plan to small investors throughout the country; its ostensible business was the manufacture and sale of certain medical preparations known as "Nutriola" and "Nutriola Preparations." The mail was the principal instrumentality used in the conduct of the business, and practically all of the stock disposed of was sold through that medium. The sale of stock was accomplished by advertisements and the dissemination of various pamphlets and circulars through the mail.

One of the principal arguments made by the company to induce people to buy its stock was that investors would secure an interest in the concern which would earn tremendous profits because the medicines sold by it were new and wonderful. Hanson claimed that the remedies exploited by him had been discovered only after the expenditure of over $50,000.

Analysis of Nutriola showed that this nostrum was 9Q per cent, vaselin with a small quantity of zinc compounds. Nutriola remedies were used chiefly as the means of selling- stock on the mail-order plan. The concern was declared fraudulent by the government.

As a matter of fact, there was nothing either new or wonderful about these remedies, which were actually made for the Nutriola Company by Parke, Davis & Co., Detroit, Seabury & Johnson, New York, and C. L. Patch Manufacturing Company, Stoneham, Mass. The Nutriola Company's medicines consisted of the following products: "Blood and Nerve," "Skin Food," "Liver and Kidney Treatment," "Vaginela" and "Laxative Granules."

"Blood and Nerve" consisted of three different kinds of tablets: red, white and yellow. The red tablets were nothing more than Blaud's mass—that is, simply iron pills; the white tablets were essentially strychnin pills, while the yellow tablets, apparently, consisted of nothing but ginger.

"Skin Food" was an ointment-like substance consisting essentially of over 90 per cent, petrolatum (vaseline) with 7 per cent, of zinc compounds.

"Liver and Kidney Treatment" consisted of brown tablets, containing, as the essential drugs, buchu and potassium nitrate, both of which have a distinct action on the kidneys. Nothing having any selective action on the liver was found by the Government chemists.

"Vaginela" consisted of a greenish-colored, highly aromatic tablets containing large amounts of starch, borax and boric acid with small quantities of salycilic and tannic acids.

"Laxative Granules" consisted of red pills containing cascara, jalap and rhubarb.

The post-office department investigated this concern, examined its advertising claims and the reports of the government's chemists on their analyses of the Nutriola remedies and came to the conclusion that the concern was fraudulent. According to the newspapers, at the time, Hanson was sentenced to one year in the penitentiary at hard labor and fined $5,000. (Abstracted from The Journal A. M. A., April 28, 1906.)