Liquozone and Malaria

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Mar 8, 1906

Liquozone and Malaria

Among the numerous ills for which liquozone is an “unfailing cure,” is that common and distressing malady, “malaria.” But “unfortunately,” says Mr. Adams, “the writer of the liquozone pamphlet, and the experts who edited it, got a little mixed on their germs in the matter of malaria. ‘Liquozone is deadly to vegetable matter, but helpful to animals,’ declares the pamphlet. . . . ‘Germs are vegetables’—and that is the reason that liquozone kills them. But malaria, which liquozone is supposed to cure, is positively known to be due to animal organisms in the blood, not vegetable. Therefore, if the claims are genuine, liquozone, being ‘helpful to animals,’ will aid and abet the malaria organism in his nefarious work, and the Liquozone Company, as well-intentioned men, working in the interests of health, ought to warn all sufferers of this class from use of their animal-stimulator.”

In the later advertisements of liquozone ‘the old claim is repeated that nothing enters into the production of liquozone but gases, water, and a little harmless coloring matter, and that the process requires large apparatus and from eight to fourteen days’ time. I have seen the apparatus, consisting of huge wooden vats, and can testify to their impressive size. And I have the assurance of several gentlemen whose word (except in print) I am willing to take, that fourteen days’ time is employed in impregnating every output of liquid with the gas. The result, so far as can be determined chemically or medicinally, is precisely the same as could be achieved in fourteen seconds by mixing the acids with the water. The product is still sulphurous and sulphuric acid heavily diluted, that is all.”

The Subtle Poisons

There remains to be considered one other class of compounds of the patent-medicine variety,—the dangerous powders and other preparations which are sold in enormous quantities as cures for headache, catarrh, depression, etc., and operate through the presence of some dangerous drug, like acetanilid, opium, or cocain. These are the worst sort of patent medicines, the most deceptive in character and the most deadly in their effects.

Mr. Adams prefaces his observations on this class of nostrums by a death list of twenty-three persons who fell victims to patent medicines containing acetanilid, some “from an alleged overdose, others from the prescribed dose.” “This list of fatalities,” he states, “is made up from statements published in the newspapers. In every case the person who died had taken, to relieve a headache or as a bracer, a patent medicine containing acetanilid, without a doctor’s prescription. This list does not include the case of a dog in Altoona, Pa., which died immediately on eating some sample headache powders. The dog did not know any better.”

Two more paragraphs from Mr.

Adams will be all that space will permit in this article:—

“Ignorance and credulous hope make the market for most proprietary remedies. Intelligent people are not given largely to the use of the glaringly advertised cure-alls, such as liquozone or peruna. Nostrums there are, however, which reach the thinking classes as well as the readily gulled. Depending, as they do, for their success upon the lure of some subtle drug concealed under a trade-mark name, or some opiate not readily obtainable under its own label; these are the most dangerous of all quack medicines, not only in their immediate effect, but because they create enslaving appetites, sometimes obscure and difficult of treatment, most often tragically obvious. Of these concealed drugs the headache powders are the most widely used, and of the headache powders orangeine is the most conspicuous.

“Orangeine prints its formula. It is, therefore, its proprietors claim, not a secret remedy. But to all intents and purposes it is secret, because to the uninformed public the vitally important word ‘acetanilid’ in the formula means little or nothing. Worse than its secrecy is its policy of careful and dangerous deception. Orangeine, like practically all the headache powders, is simply a mixture of acetanilid with less potent drugs. Of course, there is no orange in it, except the orange hue of the boxes and wrappers which is its advertising symbol. But this is an unimportant deception. 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. Thus far in the patent-medicine field I have not encountered so direct and specific an inversion of the true facts.”

(Concluded next week)