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
While the lawyers continued to practice law, Messrs. Smith and Hopkins
were running the Liquozone Company. An enormous advertising campaign
was begun. Pamphlets were issued containing testimonials and claiming
{025}the soundest of professional backing. Indeed, this matter of
expert testimony, chemical, medical and bacteriologic, is a specialty of
Liquozone. Today, despite its reforms, it is supported by an ingenious
system of pseudoscientific charlatanry. In justice to Mr. Hopkins it is
but fair to say that he is not responsible for the basic fraud; that the
general scheme was devised, and most of the bogus or distorted medical
letters arranged, before his advent. But when I came to investigate
the product a few months ago I found that the principal defense against
attacks consisted of scientific statements which would not bear analysis
and medical letters not worth the paper they were written on. In
the first place, the Liquozone people have letters from chemists
asseverating that the compound is chemically scientific.
Faked and Garbled Indorsements.
[IMAGE ==>] {025}
ANALYSIS OF LIQUOZONE.
SULPHURIC ACID -- About nine-tenths of one per cent. SULPHUROUS ACID --
About three-tenths of one per cent WATER....... -- Nearly ninety-nine
per cent.
Sulphuric acid is oil of vitriol. Sulphurous acid is also a corrosive
poison. Liquozone is the combination of these two heavily diluted.
Messrs. Dickman, Mackenzie & Potter, of Chicago, furnish a statement
to the effect that the product is "made up on scientific principles,
contains no substance deleterious to health and is an antiseptic and
germicide of the highest order." As chemists the Dickman firm stands
high, but if sulphuric and sulphurous acids are not deleterious to their
health there must be something peculiar about them as human beings. Mr.
Deavitt of Chicago makes affidavit that the preparation is not made by
compounding drugs. A St. Louis bacteriologist testifies that it will
kill germs (in culture tubes), and that it has apparently brought
favorable results in diarrhea, rheumatism and a finger which a
guinea-pig had gnawed. These and other technical indorsements are set
forth with great pomp and circumstance, but when analyzed they fail to
bear out the claims of Liquozone as a medicine. Any past investigation
into the nature of Liquozone has brought a flood of "indorsements"
down on the investigator, many of them medical. My inquiries have been
largely along medical lines, because the makers of the drug claim the
private support of many physicians and medical institutions, and such
testimony is the most convincing. "Liquozone has the indorsement of an
overwhelming number of medical authorities," says one of the pamphlets.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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