The Great American Fraud: The Patent Medicine Evil — John Shaqi
The Great American Fraud: The Patent Medicine EvilAdams, Samuel Hopkins
Science
The Great American Fraud: The Patent Medicine Evil
Adams, Samuel Hopkins
Patent medicines; Quacks and quackery
According to an authoritative statement given out in private circulation
a few years ago by its proprietors, Peruna is a compound of seven
drugs with cologne spirits. This formula, they assure me, has not been
materially changed. None of the seven drugs is of any great potency.
Their total is less than one-half of 1 per cent, of the product.
Medicinally they are too inconsiderable, in this proportion, to produce
any effect. There remains to Peruna only water and cologne spirits,
roughly in the proportion of three to one. Cologne spirits is the
commercial term for alcohol.
What Peruna Is Made Of.
Any one wishing to make Peruna for home consumption may do so by mixing
half a pint of cologne spirits, 190 proof, with a pint and a half of
water, adding thereto a little cubebs for flavor and a little burned
sugar for color. Manufactured in bulk, so a former Peruna agent
estimates, its cost, including bottle and wrapper, is between fifteen
and eighteen cents a bottle. Its price is $1.00. Because of this
handsome margin of profit, and by way of making hay in the stolen
sunshine of Peruna advertising, many imitations have sprung up to harass
the proprietors of the alcohol-and-water product. Pe-ru-vi-na, P-ru-na,
Purina, Anurep (an obvious inversion); these, bottled and labeled to
resemble Peruna, are self-confessed imitations. From what the Peruna
people tell me, I gather that they are dangerous and damnable frauds,
and that they cure nothing.
What does Peruna cure? Catarrh. That is the modest claim for it; nothing
but catarrh. To be sure, a careful study of its literature will suggest
its value as a tonic and a preventive of lassitude. But its reputation
{013}rests on catarrh. What is catarrh? Whatever ails you. No matter
what you've got, you will be not only enabled, but compelled, after
reading Dr. Hartman's Peruna book, "The Ills of Life," to diagnose
your illness as catarrh and to realize that Peruna alone will save
you. Pneumonia is catarrh of the lungs; so is consumption. Dyspepsia
is catarrh of the stomach. Enteritis is catarrh of the intestines.
Appendicitis--surgeons, please note before operating--is catarrh of the
appendix. Bright's disease is catarrh of the kidneys. Heart disease is
catarrh of the heart. Canker sores are catarrh of the mouth. Measles
is, perhaps, catarrh of the skin, since "a teaspoonful of Peruna thrice
daily or oftener is an effectual cure" ("The Ills of Life"). Similarly,
malaria, one may guess, is catarrh of the mosquito that bit you. Other
diseases not specifically placed in the catarrhal class, but yielding to
Peruna (in the book), are colic, mumps, convulsions, neuralgia, women's
complaints and rheumatism. Yet "Peruna is not a cure-all," virtuously
disclaims Dr. Hartman, and grasps at a golden opportunity by advertising
his nostrum as a preventive against yellow fever! That alcohol and
water, with a little coloring matter and one-half of 1 per cent, of mild
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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