p. 12 | The Deceitfulness of Dosing by Mrs. I. H. E.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 29, 1916

The Deceitfulness of Dosing

By Mrs. I. H. E.

There seems to be an inborn desire in the various members of the big human family, no matter of what age or race, to put their faith in remedies that can be taken from a spoon or a bottle or a box. Even babies have been known to show a fondness for the medicine bottle,—provided the concoction is not too full of bitter. “Only so he can take it from a spoon, he likes it,” said one young mother of her little son.

At a banquet of physicians held in Portland a few years ago, one of the guests told a story—on himself, as he jokingly explained. But the attitude of mind that it illustrates is, unfortunately, no joke. The physician in question was called to a poor home in the slums of the city to attend an ailing baby. Examination proved that the child needed only to be bathed and kept clean and have proper and sufficient food. As the mother was poor, he did what doctors are not in the habit of doing,—handed her two dollars, and instructed her to buy milk with it for the baby, giving careful directions as to the place and quantity. A day or two later he met an older sister of the babe, and asked how it was getting along. “Oh, he’s all right!” was the reply; “ma took the money you gave her, and got a real doctor!”

The campaign of education that has been waged in recent years against what has been well called “the great American fraud,” has done much to weaken that blind confidence in labels that made so many millionaires in the closing decades of the preceding century. But not America alone, and not only the present age, has shown a willingness, almost an eagerness, to be victimized after this fashion. Even a casual study of the various panaceas that have been foisted on a world in which health would seem to be an almost unnatural condition, is sufficient to convince us that people really like to be humbugged.

James I of England, whose famous “Counterblast” against tobacco shows him to have been observing and thoughtful, believed in the power of a certain “elixir” to render him ailment-proof. A certain Duke of Burgundy paid ten thousand florins for the formula of a balsam warranted to make his memory “transcendently good”—with what results it is not hard to surmise. And Mary Granville Delany, who lived in the eighteenth century, and has left six volumes of her autobiography and letters, gave this advice to a friend:—

“Does Mary cough in the night? Two or three snails boiled in her barley water, or tea water, or whatever she drinks, might be of great service to her; taken in time, they have done wonderful cures. She must know nothing of it. They give no manner of taste. I should imagine that six or eight boiled in a quart of water, and strained off and put into a bottle, would be a very good way, adding a spoonful or two of that to every liquid she takes. They must be fresh done every two or three days; otherwise they grow too thick.”

We shudder as we read of the nauseous and horrible mixtures compounded by the native Chinese physician, whose idea seems to be “that almost anything disgusting is good to be used as a medicine;” yet at their worst they hardly surpass the old wives’ remedies in England two hundred years ago. Then millepedes were recommended as an “excellent medicine that might be of use to the eyes;” powdered wood lice were taken in wine for the asthma (and there have been many other remedies as nonsensical since then for this stubborn ailment); and various other bugs, with spiders’ webs, ants and their eggs, etc., were used for fever, ague, and other ills.

Dangerous “Cures”

Coming down to our own times, we find the nauseous and revolting giving way to a new set of “cures,” often based on drugs that are in themselves deadly poisons, flavored with various herbs, diluted with sugar sirup, and preserved with alcohol. Such habit-forming drugs as opium and cocaine have had a large place in the patent medicine business, though fortunately their use has been somewhat restricted recently. The long list of coal-tar derivatives, of which acetanilide is one of the best known, has formed the basis for numbers of deadly headache powders and other remedies.

Few diseases and apparently few conditions known to medical science are beyond the skill of the patent medicine miracle workers, according to their printed promises. Cancer cures, consumption cures, catarrh cures, constipation cures, cures for dropsy and epilepsy and paralysis, cures for locomotor ataxia and rheumatism and gout, remedies to restore youth to the aged, sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and even to turn black persons white and make kinky hair straight, have been (and many of them still are) widely exploited in this country. It seems incredible that one single remedy, no matter how daring its advertisers, should pretend to cure “asthma, biliousness, headaches, colds, catarrh, and grip (dose: powder every four hours during the day for a week), diarrhea, hay fever, insomnia, influenza, neuralgia, seasickness, and sciatica;” yet this is what, according to Samuel Hopkins Adams, one well-known headache powder claims for itself.

In the light of the widely disseminated information on such remedies as soothing sirups, headache powders, catarrh cures, tonics and sedatives, “beautifiers” and “removers,” it seems strange that so many should be found who still spend their money for that which not only fails to fulfil its glowing promise, but often does positive harm. Yet in this very year the people of the United States will place from seventy-five to one hundred million dollars in the tills of the patent medicine fakers.

A “Soothing Sirup” Victim

The list of those who have paid for their blind trust in patent medicines with their lives is a long one, well attested, and very convincing to any one who will take the pains to look into the matter. A priceless toll to gullibility—when human lives are the price; but how much more pitiful when the ranks of the victims are recruited from helpless infancy! It is distressing to realize that, in the face of repeated warnings, many mothers still resort to soothing sirups, more often than not, if all the truth were told, to gain a few hours’ “quiet” for themselves.

In a recent number of Good Housekeeping, Dr. Harvey W. Wiley describes the death of a little victim of home dosing, thus:—

“In Portage, Pa., on the sixteenth of last August [1915], at three in the afternoon, a three-months-old baby was given a dose of soothing sirup (one-half teaspoonful, according to the directions on the label). About five-thirty o’clock it was taken to drive by the parents. At six o’clock the baby was dead, and the coroner rendered a verdict that she came to her death from ‘respiratory failure due to an overdose or continued use of a morphine-containing soothing sirup.’”

“It is not for me to say which of the two causes assigned by the coroner was the active cause of death. A young child is always in danger when it has put into its stomach so dangerous a drug as morphine. Even if the infant were under his personal observation, the physician would hesitate to administer it. The label says:—

“‘This bottle contains five per cent of alcohol, one tenth of a grain of morphine sulphate to each fluid ounce, oil of anise seed, caraway, coriander, jalap, senna, sugar sirup. . . . For a child under one month old, six to ten drops; three months old, half a teaspoonful; six months old and upward, a teaspoonful three or four times a day. For diarrhea repeat the above dose every two hours, until the character of the discharge is changed for the better. . . .’”

“The mother in this case had been giving the half-teaspoonful dose since the child was about two weeks old; it had one dose the night before its death. Sometimes it was dosed twice a day, sometimes not for four or five days, but in three months two and one-half bottles had been given. Read the label, with its counsel to ‘repeat,’ and see if there is anything to warn a mother that such dosage might be fatal. The label describing its contents carried no warning with it; the ingredients named were but mystic terms to the uninitiated. . . . What wonder that a woman with no special training or knowledge on the subject should have been cajoled into gradually doping the child to death by such alluring and misleading promises and labeling, albeit there is nothing that our present laws could touch, as the label is literally correct, and the curative claims in the circular are for the most part vague.”

Dr. Wiley concludes: “There are just two things to be said about soothing sirups: either they do not ‘soothe,’ and you are burdening the delicate stomach of the infant with a mixture of useless drugs and undesirable cathartics; or, if they do soothe, they may produce a sleep that knows no waking, or undermine the physical and moral fiber of the child in a most insidious way. How long are we, with our much-vaunted protective laws, to permit such an utterly indefensible traffic as this?”

“In the case of the little Portage girl, the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the Pharmaceutic Examining Board of the State found the matter to be without their jurisdiction; there had been no misbranding, and, therefore, no legal crime was committed. The baby is dead. Whose fault is it? In a civilized community such a thing should be impossible.”

It is good advice, and it cannot be too often repeated: When you or the members of your family are sick enough to require help, call a physician. All the mistakes of all the doctors weigh very lightly in the balance over against the results of self-dosing. MRS. I. H. E.