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His slogan was : "Worth a guinea [about $5.00] a box," but the British Medical Association, which analyzed them and found them to consist of aloes, ginger and soap, declared that they cost him only ¼c to make and a little more to sell.* The wrapper, written in English, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Yiddish, which is found around every box, tells the purchaser that "constipation has been called the penalty for being civilized." And after a gruesome description of the effects of this condition, in which the large intestine is compared to a sewer, the wrapper proceeds: "Everyone knows what happens when a sewer is clogged or stopped up." A.Beecham pill dropped upon a wood floor from a height of three feet will bounce as high as 14 inches.
Sir Joseph was always a kindly man and the enormous amounts of money which he made out of the public, he returned to it in a thousand different charities. His best customers were the poorer middle classes; but, as he proudly said when he visited the U. S. in 1912: "My pills are taken by dukes and lords, who conceal the fact from their family doctors. Medical men take them on the quiet, too." This was the talk of the born advertiser, of the man who was used many times by novelists, notably by William J. Locke in Septimus.
* She married Sir Bache Cunard, grandson of Samuel Cunard, founder of the famed steamship line. * The usual price— 12 pills, 10c; 40, 25c; 90, 50c—at all druggists.