"Dietary Supplement"

In easygoing Lafayette, La. (pop. 19,210), 425 factory workers bustled each working day last week turning out more than 100,000 bottles of a murky brown liquid that tastes something like bilge water, and smells worse. The patent medicine called Hadacol has been such a resounding success in 14 Southern states that its backers expect this year to sell $20,000,000 worth (in 8-oz. bottles at $1.25, or in the 24-oz. family "jug" at $3.50).

Very Sassy. The man responsible for the murky brown medicine is Louisiana's plump State Senator Dudley J. LeBlanc, 56, who had to rustle up a new business after he made the mistake of running for governor in 1932 against a Huey Long candidate. Recovering from a bout of rheumatism when his doctors gave him vitamin B-complex, LeBlanc saw that there was money as well as health in vitamins. He boned up on the subject by reading at home, decided that vitamins would be better if mixed with minerals.

LeBlanc got a barrel and a batch of supplies, stirred his mixture up with a paddle, added 12% ethyl alcohol as a preservative, ladled out his first brew with a coffee cup. "I took the first 14 bottles," he says solemnly, "and I was first-rate."

Neither an M.D. nor a pharmacist, LeBlanc is plainly a go-getting businessman. He pushed Hadacol with a down-to-earth selling policy that included Hadacol radio programs featuring the Hadacol Boogie, a specially written hillbilly song, a fervent appeal to folks' fondness for patent medicines. Testimonials have poured in extolling the work of Hadacol on such ills as headaches, gas pains, ulcers, loss of weight, drowsiness. Samples:

From an 80-year-old Mississippian-"I was disable to get over a fence, disable to get up out of chair without help, but after I took eight bottles of Hadacol I can. . .tie up my own shoes and feel like I can jump over a six-foot fence and getting very sassy."

From a 68-year-old "batchelor" in Georgia: "Hadacol has done so much for me and I am looking so much better, think I will put a fence around my house to keep the ladies out."

Pep & Strength. Last fall LeBlanc was selling only 150,000 bottles of Hadacol a month when the advertising began to take. Then there was a sudden shortage. Result: a black market in which Hadaco was bootlegged at $2 or more for the $1.25 bottle. After that the medicine enjoyed such a boom that last month around 2,000,000 bottles were sold.

Taking care not to arouse the Food & Drug Administration or the Federal Trade Commission, which have their own views about cure-all nostrums, LeBlanc merely describes Hadacol on the box as a "Dietary Supplement . . . formulated as an Aid to Nature in rebuilding the Pep, Strength and Energy of Buoyant Health when the System is deficient in the Vitamins and Minerals found in this Tonic . . ."In short: if its what you need, it's what you need. Besides which, the almost one ounce of ethyl alcohol in each bottle (about as much as comes in a double martini) gives the imbiber a warm, cozy feeling

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