There is another form of misbranding which perhaps is even worse than that of the adoption of foreign names, namely, to advertise a water as of great therapeutic virtue by reason of the content of some rare or especially valuable constituent. Among offenders of this kind lithium leads all the rest, though radium is getting to be a close second. Many so-called lithia waters, as has been shown in the courts, contain less lithium than ordinary river waters. The minute trace of lithium which the water contains must of necessity be entirely obscured by the quantities of other mineral ingredients. The remedial effects of lithium as a remedy for rheumatism and gout have been tremendously exaggerated. Modern therapeutics have begun to acknowledge that the vaunted prowess of lithium as a rheumatism or gout remedy is wholly visionary. Nevertheless the presence of lithium, even in minute quantities, in waters has been regarded as a sufficient basis to offer them to the public under the name of lithia waters. In point of fact, the minute quantities of lithium which these waters contain could not possibly be consumed in sufficient volume to exert any therapeutic effect whatever. Unless we accede to the view that a remedy is more potent as it becomes more dilute, we must exclude from the realm of therapeutic remedies the so-called lithia waters of commerce.

Not only have natural waters appropriated names that do not belong to them and assumed virtues which they do not possess, but the same is true of the synthetic waters of commerce. They also have masqueraded under the name of Vichy, Celestins, Carlsbad, etc. The same remarks may be applied to these offenders as in the case of the natural articles.