The Dangerous Fraud in Patent Medicines
By Editor
[The following article is taken from The Literary Digest. We give it entire that the reader may have the benefit of the forceful and approving comments of the editor of the Digest.—Ed.] ALL of the recent exposures and “muck-raking” articles have evoked more or less newspaper comment. But upon the series of articles in Collier’s Weekly by Mr. Samuel Hopkins Adams, laying bare the swindle and quackery of most patent medicines, the press has been absolutely silent. The Literary Digest, accustomed to present newspaper comment to its readers, must in this instance point to the singular scarcity of that commodity. The reason for that, we are told, is that the manufacturers of the nostrums, by means of their enormous advertising contracts, have succeeded in keeping the newspapers muzzled. “I take it,” says Mr. Mark Sullivan in an article in Collier’s Weekly, “I take it if any man should assert that there is one subject on which the newspapers of the United States, acting in concert and as a unit, will deny full and free discussion, he would be smiled at as an intemperate fanatic. The thing is too incredible.” And yet it is shown with documentary proofs in the Collier’s series that contracts for advertising made by patent medicines with newspapers carry what is known as the “red clause,” which in the case of the Cheney Medical Company, makers of Hall’s Catarrh Cure, reads like this: “It is mutually agreed that this contract is void if any law is enacted by your State restricting or prohibiting the manufacture or sale of proprietary medicines.” This is printed in heavy red type across the face of the contract. The J. C. Ayer Company, makers of Ayer’s Sarsaparilla, has a provision against printing in the newspapers anything “detrimental to J. C. Ayer Company’s interests.” These are some of the ways in which the press is muzzled against the great fraud which Mr. Samuel Hopkins Adams has been exposing in Collier’s. The danger in this article of commerce, the patent medicine, is that its fraud is not merely an imposition on the purse of the purchaser, but that usually it is a deadly poison, like the cocain and morphin of the so-called “catarrh cures,” “soothing sirups,” and “cough remedies,” or a mixture largely alcoholic, as the “bitters,” “sarsaparillas,” and “tonics.” By means of these medicines, many people who believe themselves to be leading temperate and exemplary lives are becoming drug fiends and alcoholics without knowing it. In this article we can touch only the high places of Mr. Adams’s able series. We can only mention the better known “remedies,” the widely advertised. The alcoholic stimulants known as Peruna, Paine’s Celery Compound, Duffy’s Pure Malt Whisky, come in this category. Peruna, outside of an insignificant quantity of certain drugs (less than one half of one per cent) is made up of alcohol and water, in the proportion of one to three. The cost is about fifteen to eighteen cents a bottle, which sells for one dollar. A well-known authority on drug addictions writes Mr. Adams as follows:— “A number of physicians have called my attention to the use of Peruna, both preceding and following alcohol and drug addictions. Lydia Pinkham’s Compound is another dangerous drug used largely by drinkers; Paine’s Celery Compound also. I have in the last two years met four cases of persons who drank Peruna in large quantities to intoxication. This was given to them originally as a tonic. They were treated under my care as simple alcoholics.” In short, where a given bottle of whisky would contain 50 per cent of alcohol, the same bottle of Peruna would contain 28 per cent alcohol, Paine’s Celery Compound 21 per cent, Hostetter’s Stomach Bitters 44.3 per cent. The government has prohibited the sale of Peruna among the Indians because of its intoxicating effects. Other “remedies” are similarly alcoholic. As Mr. Adams says: “Lydia Pinkham appeals to suffering womanhood with 20 per cent of alcohol; Hood’s Sarsaparilla cures ‘that tired feeling’ with 18 per cent; Burdock’s Blood Bitters with 25 per cent; Ayer’s Sarsaparilla with 26 per cent.” So far as concerns the testimonials, Mr. Adams finds that in twenty-one of thirty-six letters by members of Congress “there is no indication that the writer has ever tasted the remedy which he so warmly praises.” As a matter of fact, there is a man in Washington who procures testimonials from Congressmen at so much a head. As an example of how patent-medicine manufacturers work on human credulity may be cited Liquozone. Twenty years ago, when microbes became a leading topic, Radam’s Microbe Killer, a compound containing sulphuric and muriatic acids, was a widely advertised remedy. When the microbe gave way to the “germ” and the “bacillus,” Liquozone arose. This “relies on a weak solution of sulphuric and sulphurous acids, with an occasional trace of hydrochloric or hydrobromic acid. Mostly it is water.” It is advertised to cure thirty-seven varieties of disease, including “contagious diseases,” which he admits of further numerous divisions. The claim made is that Liquozone is liquid oxygen. “Liquid oxygen,” says Mr. Adams, “doesn’t exist above a temperature of 220° below zero. One spoonful would freeze a man’s tongue, teeth, and throat to equal solidity before he had time to swallow.” The truth is that the sulphuric acid of Liquozone is oil of vitriol; sulphuric acid is another corrosive poison. In an article entitled “The Subtle Poisons,” Mr. Adams dwells on the danger of the number of ready “remedies” that reach even the thinking class. Orangeine, one of the best-known, prints its formula, but comparatively few people know what “acetanilid” is. To quote Mr. Adams: “The wickedness of the fraud lies in this: that whereas the nostrum, by virtue of its acetanilid content, thins the blood, depresses the heart, and finally undermines the whole system, it claims to strengthen the heart and produce better blood.” Mr. Adams subjoins a heart-rending list of deaths through headache-powders or “bracers,” containing acetanilid and taken without a doctor’s prescription. Bromo-Seltzer, so frequently taken, the usual dose being “a heaping teaspoonful,” contains about ten grains of acetanilid to the dose. Five13grains have been known to produce fatal results. Megrimine is another acetanilid “remedy,” and so, for that matter, are most other nostrums of the “headache” sort. Antikamnia, so often taken by women, is no less dangerous or fraudulent than Orangeine. Mr. Adams warns all against taking without prescription the following acetanilid “remedies:”— “Orangeine, Bromo-Seltzer, Royal Pain Powders, Miniature Headache Powders, Megrimine, Anti-Headache, Dr. Davis’s Headache Powders, Antikamnia, Ammonol, Salacetin, Phenalgin, Cephalgin, and practically all of the drug-store-vended ‘headache cures’ and ‘anti-pain’ remedies.” And so Mr. Adams goes on to show that Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Sirup, for instance, is so often responsible for the opium habit; that Birney’s Catarrhal Powder, Dr. Cole’s Catarrh Cure, Dr. Gray’s Catarrh Powder, and Crown Catarrh Powder—“all of them are co-cain; the other ingredients are unimportant.” He shows that the so-called “consumption cures,” which patients clutch at pathetically, only hasten the progress of the disease, for they contain chloroform, opium, alcohol, and hashish. “Dr. King’s New Discovery for Consumption,” he shows, “is a morphin and chloroform mixture.” He gives a long list containing Rupert Well’s Radialized Fluid, for cancer, Miles’s Heart Disease Cure, and a number of other epilepsy cures and cancer cures of the same sort. All are swindles, and the trail of fraud is over all, regardless of what they advertise.