Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - Martha Meir Allen (readict books txt) 📗
- Author: Martha Meir Allen
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A careful compilation of manufacturers’ announcements list 1,806 so-called patent medicines sold in open markets, in which alcohol, opium or other toxic drugs form constituent parts. 675 of the preparations are known as “bitters,” stomachics, or cordials, and alcohol enters into their composition in quantities varying from fifteen to fifty per cent.; 390 are recommended for coughs and colds, nearly all of which contain opium. Sixty remedies are sold for the relief of pain, and no other purpose. 120 are for nervous troubles, and of this number, sixty-five have entering into their composition coca leaves, or kola nut, or both, or are represented by their respective active principles, cocaine or caffeine. 129 are offered for headaches, and kindred ailments, and usually with a guarantee to give immediate relief. In these are generally compounded phenacetine, caffeine, antipyrine, acetanilid, or morphine, diluted with soda, or sugar of milk. Dysentery, diarrhœa, cholera morbus, cramp in bowels, etc., have 185 quick reliefs or “cures” to their credit, nearly all of which contain opium, many of them in addition, alcohol, ginger, capsicum or myrrh in various combinations, and there are numerous cases on record where children and adults have been narcotized by their excessive use. Some manufacturers print on the labels covering these goods, words of caution limiting the amount to be taken. Forty-eight compounds for asthma contain caffeine and morphine. Sufferers from toothache have their choice from thirty-eight remedies, and thirty-six soothing, or teething, syrups are provided for infants.
Many people have ignorantly and innocently formed an alcohol, morphine, or cocaine habit through the use of patent medicines. Many deaths have occurred from headache powders of which acetanilid is the chief ingredient. Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, says of these headache powders:—
“A woman has a headache and she uses one of these remedies. It relieves the pain. When she has another attack she uses it again and again with the same result. After a while she finds the usual amount of the remedy does not cure the pain. She uses two portions, and so the habit is formed until absolute danger is confronted. For one thing must not be forgotten: these remedies are powerful, for if they were not they would be of no effect. They are in certain doses deadly; they depress the nervous system; they disturb the digestion; they interfere with natural sleep; they require to be used in increasingly larger quantities as the system becomes accustomed to their use; they are almost without exception excreted by the kidneys, thus adding an additional burden to organs already badly overworked. They produce a habit of gaining relief which becomes an obsession and incapable of being resisted.”
It may be asked, “How is it if these mixtures are harmful only, that so many people profess to have received benefit from them?” There are different reasons for this.
1. The nature of such drugs as alcohol, opium and cocaine is to benumb sensation, so that pain is stilled, and the pain, or functional disturbance forgotten for the time, because the nerves are drugged into insensibility. The person feels better while under the influence of the drug, so thinks it is benefiting him.
2. There are people who imagine they have diseases which they do not have; since trained physicians occasionally err in diagnosis, it is not strange if the laity should do likewise. Such persons are always ready to aver that a certain medicine “cured” them.
A ludicrous example of this is a woman out West, whose picture graces the advertisements of a certain nostrum, accompanied by a testimonial that said nostrum cured her of a “polypus”! Upon being written to as to how such a preparation could effect such a cure, she answered that, after giving the testimonial, she found that she had not had a polypus!
3. Some of the cures attributed to drugs, are doubtless due to Nature. It is estimated that from 30 to 90 per cent. of ailments are cured by Nature, unassisted, and often in spite of, the drugs swallowed. Many of the books advertising these remedies (?) give excellent rules of health, which, if followed, would restore persons to vigor more speedily without the accompanying medicine, than they can be restored while the system has the poisonous drugs to throw off. It may be reasonably assumed that a goodly number of recoveries ascribed to drug treatments are due, in reality, to the resisting force of a good constitution, or to obedience to the laws of health given in the circular.
4. It is not uncommon for people suffering from certain diseases to have temporary remissions in the course of the disease. No doubt, some of the cases reported as cures are such spontaneous remissions, which are followed, after the testimonials have been written, by relapse. The majority of people are ignorant of the natural course of diseases—of what happens when no treatment is taken. They do not know that a great many affections are characterized by periods of apparent recovery. For instance in some varieties of paralysis, as well as in consumption, the sufferer may to appearance recover completely for a few months or longer; if a remedy was being used at the time, it would naturally get the credit of causing the favorable change.
However, all of the glowing testimonials of wonderful benefits accruing from patent medicines are not what they seem to be. Dr. J. H. Kellogg says in his Monitor of Health:—
“The average manufacturer of patent medicines regularly employs a person of some literary attainment whose duty it is to invent vigorous testimonials of sufferings relieved by Dr. Charlatan’s universal panacea. In many instances persons are hired to give testimonials, and answer letters of inquiry in such a way as to encourage business. The shameless dishonesty and ingenious villainy exhibited are beyond description.”
Recently an advertisement of one of these nostrums stated in the headlines that said nostrum was used in the Frances Willard Temperance Hospital, Chicago. The testimonial appended purported to be from a nurse in that hospital, but the testimonial did not state, as did the headlines, that the preparation was ever used in that hospital. The president of the hospital board of trustees states that the nurse positively denies having given any testimonial to the company thus advertising. She did give one to another patent medicine concern, but not to this, and never said either was used in the hospital, nor have they been. Suit could be brought for damages, but unfortunately the patent medicine people have unlimited money, and the hospital has not.
Early in the present year there appeared in many daily papers a large advertising picture of a man whose name was appended as a professional nurse of a western city.
The following testimonial accompanied the picture:—
“Mr. —— of ——, who is a professional nurse of experience, writes,—‘My friend is improving, thanks to ——, and you. I am called on to nurse the sick of all classes. I recommend ---- to such an extent that I am nicknamed —— (giving name of nostrum) by nearly everybody.’”
As the writer of this book was acquainted with a physician residing in the small city mentioned in the advertisement, she wrote to him, requesting that he investigate this testimonial.
He replied that he found the chief part of the advertisement, namely, that Mr. —— was a professional nurse, false; “First, by his own statement as he told me this morning that he never claimed to be a professional nurse. And my personal acquaintance with him, as well as that of a number of other physicians in our little city, and reliable men and women of this community who are acquainted with him, all testify to the same thing, namely; that he is not a professional nurse, neither is he a nurse, or even a reliable man. He is an innocent, ignorant man, very close to the pauper class. He told me when I read the commendation to which his name is affixed, that it was all true except the professional nurse part, and that was entirely false, as stated above.”
As the picture was of a fine-looking, intelligent-appearing man it probably was as genuine as the testimonial.
The following was clipped from a copy of Merck’s Report, April, 1899, a druggists’ paper published in New York city:—
A PATENT-MEDICINE ADVERTISEMENT CONTAINS UNAUTHORIZED
ENDORSEMENTS.
“Fully a score of East-side druggists are up in arms over the unauthorized use of their names in a full-page newspaper advertisement of a widely-known specific. This advertisement appeared recently in certain New York daily papers, and retail druggists who have made it a rule of their business never to recommend any particular proprietary article, found themselves quoted in unqualified laudation of the article so liberally advertised. The names and addresses of the druggists were given in full, and when several of the men quoted conferred together they found that the most barefaced misrepresentation had been resorted to.
“One of the pharmacists thus misrepresented, happened to be Sidney Faber, the secretary of the Board of Pharmacy. He was not selling this particular specific, and had never said a word for or against it, nevertheless, six or eight lines of endorsement of the article were directly attributed to him. He called on some of his druggist neighbors whose names he saw in the advertisement, and ascertained that they, too, had been falsely and unwarrantably quoted. Mr. Faber promptly wrote to the proprietors of the specific in question, and denounced the published endorsements bearing his name, as a forgery. His indignation was by no means appeased when he received a letter from the proprietary concern, couched in the following language: ‘We regret to learn that you have been annoyed by any statements that have appeared in New York city papers. We will forward your letter to them.’
“Within the past few days several of the druggists whose names were used in this advertisement without authority, have been considering the advisability of taking legal proceedings in order to ascertain their rights in the matter. It is contrary to pharmaceutical ethics for a pharmacist to specially endorse any proprietary article, or patent medicine. Some of the offended druggists propose to contribute to a fund for the purpose of publicly, and widely, advertising this unwarranted use of their names.”
When patent medicine advertisers would dare to resort to such a wholesale fraud as this, what may they be expected to refrain from?
As an illustration of how commendations from notable persons are sometimes obtained, the following is cited: In the winter of 1899, appeared an advertising picture of the lovely Christian lady from Denmark, the Countess Schimmelmann, who was spending some time in Chicago. Below her picture were the words:—
“Adeline, Countess Schimmelmann, whose portrait is here given, in a recent letter to the —— company, (mentioning proprietors of nostrum) speaks of friends of hers who have been benefited by —— (mentioning nostrum), and who first advised her to recommend it to her sick friends.
“The Countess, as is well known, is a prominent member of the Danish court. Her coming to this country has been much talked of. Her real object is one of charity. She is stopping in Chicago, and from there writes her straightforward endorsement of —— (mentioning nostrum).”
The italics are the writer’s. The picture and the
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