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
Another acquaintance writes me that he is unable to dissuade his wife
from the constant use of both Orangeine and Bromo-Seltzer, although her
{036}health is breaking down. Often it is difficult for a physician to
diagnose these cases because the symptoms are those of certain diseases
in which the blood deteriorates, and, moreover, the victim, as in opium
and cocain slavery, will positively deny having used the drug. A case
of acetanilid addiction (in "cephalgin," an ethical proprietary) is thus
reported:
"When the drug was withheld the patient soon began to exhibit all the
traits peculiar to the confirmed morphine-maniac--moral depravity
and the like. She employed every possible means to obtain the drug,
attempting even to bribe the nurse, and, this failing, even members of
the family." Another report of a similar case (and there are plenty of
them to select from) reads:
"Stomach increasingly irritable; skin a grayish or light purplish hue;
palpitation and slight enlargement of the heart; great prostration, with
pains in the region of the heart; blood discolored to a chocolate
hue. The patient denied that she had been using acetanilid, but it was
discovered that for a year she had been obtaining it in the form of
a proprietary remedy and had contracted a regular 'habit.' On the
discontinuance of the drug the symptoms disappeared. She was discharged
from the hospital as cured, but soon returned to the use of the drug and
applied for readmission, displaying the former symptoms."
[IMAGE ==>] {036}
NEW YORK STATE'S NEW POISON LABEL.
On a cocain-laden medicine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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