Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry

“ Where wisdom fears to venture, unwisdom and cupidity find ample room. The wise physician knows that there are ills that drugs cannot cure; that drugs generally only aid or relieve; and that to obtain even this aid efficiently and safely, the existing scientific knowledge is none too great. Not so the unwise. He who sees in disease only a name, to him a name is a sufficient cure. Let there be a mixture with a convenient and suggestive name and a pleasant taste, a compendious index of diseases and symptoms—and a lively imagination—and the cure is accomplished. ”

“ Being a theory, it is the province of the wise man to ridicule it and call it absurd. I will confess that your criticism of it is not clear to me and I still do not see its absurdity. I don’t see what relation your argument, that the phosphates of sodium and potassium do not draw the calcium from the blood, brains and bones, has to the theory I advanced. It is true that I have no private mark by which I can identify the amorphous phosphate produced by amorphous phosphorus, but such argument is puerile. ”

“ The bitterly humiliating fact about the whole business is that a preparation, advertised under such palpably misleading claims, could actually be advertised in medical journals, even in journals of a supposedly high scientific standard, and could be bought and prescribed for years by supposedly intelligent and conscientious physicians. It is not supposed that every physician should be enough of a chemist to detect the ridiculous discrepancies between the published formula and the therapeutic claims made for such a mixture. ”

“ Why should the firm have any such deep interest in seeing that an original bottle gets to the patient? Why should it be necessary to do anything more than see that the genuine mixture reaches the patient? ”

“ When an advertising contract is submitted, for a product that physicians would know to be fraudulent, the question that arises is, “Can it be put over?” Manifestly, a medical journal published purely as a business venture would not dare long to fly in the face of the opinions of those from whom it received its support—​its subscribers and contributors. If our correspondents will go through the advertising columns of the Medical Times they will find many, many other frauds, less cruel perhaps than the Kellam advertisement, but no less disreputable or discreditable to the medical profession. ”

“ Thus estimates of the value of a farm crop and cattle fodder are made to do service as testimonials to its therapeutic merit for human beings! Has the “patent medicine” promoter ever dared to insult the intelligence of his patrons by a cruder absurdity? Yet it is not to the nontechnical and unscientific public, but to a profession presumably scientifically trained in pharmacology and therapeutics that this concern presumes to offer its fodder tincture on the basis of testimony to the agricultural value of the fodder plant. ”

“ On exactly the same principle, the government has the right and the duty to protect the uninformed public against the flagrant evil of the patent medicine traffic—and the patent medicine traffic as now carried on is a flagrant evil and series of evils. The government should protect the public against advertisements that are framed to suggest or create imaginary ailments, with their attendant miseries; it should protect the public against being deluded by false promises of cure; against the specious relief that merely hides the disease and blinds the patient to its dangers ”

“ Angier’s Emulsion is essentially a petroleum product. When it was first put on the market commercial interests had been fostering the idea that petroleum products had food-value, and the manufacturers of Angier’s Emulsion, making use of the idea, advertised it as a “food-medicine” and an “ideal substitute for cod-liver oil.” The impression thus created has been kept alive through persistent advertising in spite of scientific proof to the contrary. To-day many who know that petroleum products have no food-value are still likely unconsciously to class Angier’s Emulsion among nutrients. ”

“ Can we blame the layman for using Peruna, Wine of Cardui, etc., simply because they are advertised, when there are physicians who, for the same reason, prescribe concoctions that are just as quackish and just as useless? And can editors of medical journals consistently find fault with newspapers for carrying advertisements of fraudulent “patent medicines” when they themselves admit to their pages advertisements of nostrums that are no less fraudulent and of no more value? ”

“ Should we take the meaningless statement of a nostrum maker, who does not submit evidence of any therapeutic value of his preparation—unless one can call certain careless habits of prescribing evidence—and assume the responsibility of prescribing a nostrum that according to all scientific evidence available is useless, and of no more effect than a few teaspoonfuls of milk, so far as its hypo­phosphite content is concerned? ”

“ Whatever may be the physicians views as to the probable therapeutic value of these organs, the first thing he desires to know is how much of the substance he is giving and from what part of the gland it is obtained.
So much for the facts; yet the physician is asked to jump from this region of solid fact into a sea of hypothesis; to believe that small amounts of the well-known drugs thyroid and pituitary, plus an unknown amount of unknown hormones of the testes and ovary are of great value in conditions that in themselves are often purely hypothetical. ”

“ How can a physician with the slightest sense of responsibility to his patients allow his office to be used as a free advertising bureau for a preparation manifestly founded and developed on deceit and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion?
How can any medical journal, except those avowedly and unblushingly seeking to aid the nostrum maker to exploit the profession, whose interests they claim to serve, continue to carry the deceptive and misleading advertisement of a twice exposed fraud? ”

“ Having learned the name of the remedy that has been prescribed for sleeplessness, let us say, he proceeds to use it whenever he imagines that he needs it; and that need, real or imaginary, has a way of increasing in frequency. As a result, the patient takes far more Neurosine than the physician would think of permitting if the matter had not passed entirely beyond his control.
Not only has the patient acquired a dangerous habit of self-prescribing, but he takes especial delight in recommending his favorite remedy to friends whose symptoms, real and imaginary, seem to resemble his own. ”

“ If a physician, knowing the composition of Labordine, wishes to prescribe it and prescribes it intelligently, he has a perfect right to do so. If he wishes his patient to have 2 grains of acetanilid, 1⁄20 of a grain of quinin, and 1⁄3 of a grain of salicylic acid, and considers a mixture of ground celery seed, starch and milk sugar as a proper vehicle for this medication, no one will question his right to administer it. No physician, however, has any right, either moral or professional, to prescribe a preparation, concerning the ingredients of which he knows absolutely nothing. ”

“ We do not pretend that even the best studied drug has not much to be learned about it; but the nostrum maker who exploits a complex mixture either knows practically nothing of the side actions that it will exert, or, if he knows, he conceals that knowledge. He knows that massive doses of hydrated chloral combined with various narcotics can be relied on to cause unconsciousness in nearly all cases, but he prefers to speak of this as a hypnotic action. This is plain gambling with human life. When the patient dies, it is difficult to prove that death was caused by the mixture alone. ”

“ The existence in the system of a form of phosphorus less highly oxidized than the phosphates is unproved. No evidence has been produced to show that phosphorus acts as an energizer of oxidation. There is no proof that the hypo­phos­phites enter into general metabolism or affect disease processes in any way. Not only is there no scientific evidence for the utility of the hypo­phos­phites, but science has long since demonstrated their worthlessness. ”