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
Analysis showed that the powders were an acetanilid mixture. The sample
man didn't wait for the result. He hasn't been back to Rochester since,
although Dr. Goler is hopefully awaiting him.
Bromo-Seltzer is commonly sold in drug stores, both by the bottle and
at soda fountains. The full dose is "a heaping teaspoonful." A heaping
teaspoonful of Bromo-Seltzer means about ten grains of acetanilid. The
United States Pharmacopeia dose is four grains; five grains have been
known to produce fatal results. The prescribed dose of Bromo-Seltzer is
dangerous and has been known to produce sudden collapse.
Megrimine is a warranted headache cure that is advertised in several
of the magazines. A newly arrived guest at a Long Island house party
brought along several lots and distributed them as a remedy for headache
and that tired feeling. It was perfectly harmless, she declared; didn't
the advertisement say "leaves no unpleasant effects"? As a late dance
the night before had left its impress on the feminine members of the
house party, there was a general acceptance of the "bracer." That
night the local physician visited the house party (on special "rush"
invitation), and was well satisfied to pull all his patients through.
He had never before seen acetanilid poisoning by wholesale. A Chicago
druggist writes me that the wife of a prominent physician buys Megrimine
of him by the half-dozen lots secretly. She has the habit.
On October 9, W. H. Hawkins, superintendent of the American Detective
Association, a mar of powerful physique and apparently in good health,
went to a drug store in Anderson, Ind., and took a dose of Dr. Davis'
Headache Powders. He then boarded a car for Marion and shortly after
fell to the floor, dead. The coroner's verdict is reproduced on page 35.
{035} Whether these powders are made by a Dr. W. C. Davis, of
Indianapolis, who makes Anti-Headache, I am unable to state.
Anti-Headache describes itself as "a compound of mild ingredients and
positively contains no dangerous drugs." It is almost pure acetanilid.
In the "ethical" field the harm done by this class of proprietaries is
perhaps {038}as great as in the open field, for many of those which are
supposed to be sold only in prescriptions are as freely distributed to
the laity as Peruna. And their advertising is hardly different.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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