Facing an Internal Revenue demand that he add medicine to his product or pay liquor tax, as well as the impending labeling requirements of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, Hartman published a booklet telling Peruna’s customers he was “shocked beyond all measure” to be accused of trafficking in liquor, framed the newly added laxative as a response to customer requests for “slight laxative effects,” and recommended the product even for children (Adams 1907; Sullivan 2007).

The “not an alcoholic beverage” half of that claim was already contradicted by federal action before Hartman made it: in 1905 the federal government had banned Peruna’s sale on Indian reservations specifically because the tonic was 28 percent alcohol (Lockhart et al. 2025), and a period product label itself stated “Alcohol 28%” (Lockhart et al. 2025, quoting Fike 1987). The claim is logged as testimonial-grade and refuted on that direct factual contradiction: a product already banned from federal land as intoxicating was being marketed, in the same year of its reformulation, as no kind of alcoholic beverage at all. No source in this bundle separately assesses the pediatric-safety half of the claim; the case does not draw an independent medical conclusion about giving the reformulated product to children beyond the documented alcohol content itself.