Samuel Hopkins Adams

“ Consumption is not the only incurable disease in which there are good pickings for the birds of prey. In a recent issue of the New York Sunday American-Journal I find three cancer cures, one dropsy cure, one "heart-disease soon cured," three epilepsy cures and a "case of paralysis cured." Cancer yields to but one agency—the knife. Epilepsy is either the result of pressure on the brain or some obscure cerebral disease; medicine can never cure it. Heart disease is of many kinds, and a drug that may be helpful in relieving symptoms in one case might be fatal in another. ”

“ The Health Commissioner is now formulating a plan which, with the work of the chemists as a basis, shall check the trade in public poisons more or less concealed behind proprietary names.
It is impossible, even in a series of articles, to attempt more than an exemplary treatment of the patent-medicine frauds. The most degraded and degrading, the "lost vitality" and "blood disease" cures, reeking of terrorization and blackmail, can not from their very nature be treated of in a lay journal. Many dangerous and health-destroying compounds will escape through sheer inconspicuousness. ”

“ I can touch on only a few of those which may be regarded as typical: the alcohol stimulators, as represented by Peruna, Paine's Celery Compound and Duffy's Pure Malt Whiskey (advertised as an exclusively medical preparation) ; the catarrh powders, which breed cocain slaves, and the opium-containing soothing syrups, which stunt or kill helpless infants; the consumption cures, perhaps the most devilish of all, in that they destroy hope where hope is struggling against bitter odds for existence; the headache powders, which enslave so insidiously that the victim is ignorant of his own fate ”

“ In a self-gratulatory dissertation the Peruna Company observes in substance that, while the leading minds of the nation have hitherto shrunk from the publicity attendant on commending any patent medicine, the transcendent virtues of Peruna have overcome this amiable modesty, and, one and all, they stand forth its avowed champions. ”

“ If there is no limit to the gullibility of the public on the one hand, there is apparently none to the cupidity of the newspapers on the other. As the Proprietary Association of America is constantly setting forth in veiled warnings, the press takes an enormous profit from patent-medicine advertising. Mr. Hearst's papers alone reap a harvest of more than half a million dollars per annum from this source. The Chicago Tribune, which treats nostrum advertising in a spirit of independence, and sometimes with scant courtesy, still receives more than $80,000 a year in medical patronage. ”

“ Incurable disease is one of the strongholds of the patent medicine business. The ideal patron, viewed in the light of profitable business, is the victim of some slow and wasting ailment in which recurrent hope inspires to repeated experiments with any "cure" that offers. In the columns of almost every newspaper you may find promises to cure consumption. Consumption is a disease absolutely incurable by any medicine, although an increasing percentage of consumptives are saved by open air, diet and methodical living. ”

“ For fraud, exploited by the skillfulest of advertising bunco men, is the basis of the trade. Should the newspapers, the magazines and the medical journals refuse their pages to this class of advertisements, the patent-medicine business in five years would be as scandalously historic as the South Sea Bubble, and the nation would be the richer not only in lives and money, but in drunkards and drug-fiends saved. ”

“ As it is a morphin and chloroform mixture, "Dr. King's New Discovery for Consumption" is well calculated to strike terror to the doctors or to any other class or profession, except, perhaps, the undertakers. It is a pretty diabolical concoction to give to any one, and particularly to a consumptive. The chloroform temporarily allays the cough, thereby checking Nature's effort to throw off the dead matter from the lungs. The opium drugs the patient into a deceived cheerfulness. The combination is admirably designed to shorten the life of any consumptive who takes it steadily. ”

“ The man who dies in spite of the patent medicine—or perhaps because of it—doesn't bear witness to what it did for him. We see recorded only the favorable results: the unfavorable lie silent. How could it be otherwise when the only avenues of publicity are controlled by the advertisers? So, while many of the printed testimonials are genuine enough, they represent not the average evidence, but the most glowing opinions which the nostrum vender can obtain, and generally they are the expression of a low order of intelligence. ”

“ Making cocain fiends is another profitable enterprise. Catarrh powders are the medium. A decent druggist will not sell cocain as such, steadily, to any customer, except on prescription, but most druggists find salve for their consciences in the fact that the subtle and terrible drug is in the form of somebody's sure cure. There is need to say nothing of the effects of cocain other than that it is destructive to mind and body alike, and appalling in its breaking down of all moral restraint. ”

“ At first thought it would seem that only a cure would bring profit to the makers. But the fact is that most diseases tend to cure themselves by natural means, and the delighted and deluded patient, ascribing the relief to the "remedy," which really has nothing to do with it, sends on his grateful dollar. Where the money is already paid, most people are too inert to undertake the effort of getting it back. It is the easy American way of accepting a swindle as a sort of joke, which makes for the nostrum readers ready profits. ”

“ With a few honorable exceptions the press of the United States is at the beck and call of the patent medicines. Not only do the newspapers modify news possibly affecting these interests, but they sometimes become their active agents. F. J. Cheney, proprietor of Hall's Catarrh Cure, devised some years ago a method of making the press do his fighting against legislation compelling makers of remedies to publish their formulæ, or to print on the labels the dangerous drugs contained in the medicine—a constantly recurring bugaboo of the nostrum-dealer. ”

“ Intelligent people are not given largely to the use of the glaringly advertised cure-alls, such as Liquozone or Peruna. Nostrums there are, however, which reach the thinking classes as well as the readily gulled. Depending, as they do, for their success on the lure of some subtle drug concealed under a trademark name, or some opiate not readily obtainable under its own label, these are the most dangerous of all quack medicines, not only in their immediate effect, but because they create enslaving appetites, sometimes obscure and difficult of treatment, most often tragically obvious. ”

“ Orangeine fulfills the prime requisite of a patent medicine in being a good "repeater." Did it not foster its own demand in the form of a persistent craving, it would hardly be profitable. Its advertising invites to the formation of an addiction to the drug. "Get the habit," it might logically advertise, in imitation of a certain prominent exploitation along legitimate lines. Not only is its value as a cure for nervousness and headaches insisted on, but its prospective dupes are advised to take this powerful drug as a bracer.
"When, as often, you reach home tired in body and mind... ”

“ I, inside of the last two years, have made contracts with between fifteen and sixteen thousand newspapers, and never had but one man refuse to sign the contract, and my saying to him that I could not sign a contract without this clause in it he readily signed it. My point is merely to shift the responsibility. We to-day have the responsibility on our shoulders. As you all know, there is hardly a year but we have had a lobbyist in the different state legislatures—one year in New York, one year in New Jersey, and so on. ”

“ Lend ear to expert testimony from a certain prominent cure-all:
"They see my advertising. They read the testimonials. They are convinced. They have faith in Peruna. It gives them a gentle stimulant and so they get well."
There it is in a nutshell; the faith cure. Not the stimulant, but the faith inspired by the advertisement and encouraged by the stimulant does the work—or seems to do it. If the public drugger can convince his patron [005] that she is well, she is well—for his purposes. ”

“ It seems incongruous, almost humorous, to speak of a national organization of quack doctors and patent-medicine makers; but there is one, brought together for mutual support, for co-operation, for—but just what this organization is for, I hope to show. No other organization ever demonstrated so clearly the truth that "in union there is strength." Its official name is an innocent-seeming one—"The Proprietary Association of America." ”

“ Nevertheless there are in the patent medicine world a set of harpies who, for their own business interests, deliberately foster in the mind of the unfortunate sufferer from tuberculosis the belief that he can be saved by the use of some absolutely fraudulent nostrum. Many of these consumption cures contain drugs which hasten the progress of the disease, such as chloroform, opium, alcohol and hasheesh. ”

“ The press of the state, therefore, consists of very small papers, weeklies, in which the ownership and active management all lie with one man. The editorial conscience and the business manager's enterprise lie under one hat. With them the patent-medicine scheme was not so successful as with the more elaborately organized newspapers of older and more populous states. ”

“ For it is the careless or conscienceless physician who gets the customer for the "ethical" headache remedies, and the customer, once secured, pays a profit, very literally, with his own blood. Once having taken Antikamnia, the layman, unless informed as to its true nature, will often return to the drug store and purchase it with the impression that it is a specific drug, like quinin or potassium chlorate, instead of a disguised poison, exploited and sold under patent rights by a private concern. ”

“ Only "ethical" preparations are permitted in the representative medical press, that is, articles not advertised in the lay press. Yet this distinction is not strictly adhered to. "Syrup of Figs," for instance, which makes widespread pretense in the dailies to be an extract of the fig, advertises in the medical journals for what it is, a preparation of senna. Antikamnia, an "ethical" proprietary compound, for a long time exploited itself to the profession by a campaign of ridiculous extravagance, and is to-day by the extent of its reckless use on the part of ignorant laymen a public menace. ”

“ There is no "certain and never-failing cure" for the diseases in its list, and when the Baptist Watchman sells itself to such an exploitation it becomes partner to a swindle not only on the pockets of its readers, but on their health as well. In the same issue I find "Piso's Cure for Consumption,"
"Bye's Cancer Cure,"
"Mrs. M. Summer's Female Remedy,"
"Winslow's Soothing Syrup," and "Juven Pills," somewhat disguised here, but in other mediums openly a sexual weakness "remedy." ”

“ A great show of frankness was recently made by a certain "patent medicine." The makers advertised that they had concluded to take the public into their confidence, and that thereafter they would print a formula of the medicine on each bottle manufactured.
"There is nothing secretive about our medicine," was the cry. "We have nothing to hide. Here is the formula. Show it to your physician." ”

“ If enthusiastic indorsements poured in on the patent medicine people, the Duffy's Malt Whiskey advertising management would hardly be driven to purchasing its letters from the very aged and from disreputable ministers of the gospel. If all the communications were as convincing as those published, the Peruna Company would not have to employ an agent to secure publishable letters, nor the Liquozone Company indorse across the face of a letter from a Mrs. Benjamin Charters: "Can change as we see fit." ”

“ Restrict the drug by the same safeguards when sold under a lying pretence as when it flies its true colors. Then, and then only, will our laws prevent the shameful trade that stupefies helpless babies and makes criminals of our young men and harlots of our young women. ”

“ Our national quality of commercial shrewdness fails us when we go into the open market to purchase relief from suffering. The average American, when he sets out to buy a horse, or a house, or a box of cigars, is a model of caution. Show him testimonials from any number of prominent citizens and he would simply scoff. He will, perhaps, take the word of his life-long friend, or of the pastor of his church, but only after mature thought, fortified by personal investigation. ”

“ Orangeine prints its formula. It is, therefore, its proprietors claim, not a secret remedy. But to all intents and purposes it is secret, because to the uninformed public the vitally important word "acetanilid" in the formula means little or nothing. Worse than its secrecy is its policy of careful and dangerous deception. Orangeine, like practically all the headache powders, is simply a mixture of acetanilid with less potent drugs. Of course, there is no orange in it, except the orange hue of the boxes and wrappers which is its advertising symbol. ”

“ Some states have made a good start in the matter of legislation, among them Michigan, which does not, however, enforce its recent strong law. Massachusetts, which has done more, through the admirable work of its State Board of Health, than any other agency to educate the public on the patent-medicine question, is unable to get a law restricting this trade. In New Hampshire, too, the proprietary interests have proven too strong, and the Mallonee bill was destroyed by the almost united opposition of a "red-clause" press. North Dakota proved more independent. ”

“ A. Frank Richardson is very much alive, and I trust it will be no surprise to him to see here stated that his Ozomulsion makes claims that it can not support, that his Psychine is considerably worse, that his special cure offer is a bit of shameful quackery, and that his whole Slocum Consumption Cure is a fake and a fraud so ludicrous that its continued insistence is a brilliant commentary on human credulousness. ”

“ There are facts a-plenty. But it is essential to point out the intimate financial relation between the newspapers and the patent medicines. I was told by the man who for many years handled the advertising of the Lydia E. Pinkham Company that their expenditure was $100,000 a month, $1,200,000 a year. Dr. Pierce and the Peruna Company both advertise more extensively than the Pinkham Company. Certainly there are at least five patent-medicine concerns in the United States who each pay out to the newspapers more than one million dollars a year. ”

“ Yet the United States government has long lent its sanction to the "medicine" status by exempting Duffy's Pure Malt Whiskey from the federal liquor tax. In fact, the government is primarily responsible for the formal establishment of the product as a medicine, having forced it into the patent medicine ranks at the time when the Spanish war expenses were partly raised by a special tax on nostrums. Up to that time the Duffy product, while asserting its virtues in various ills, made no direct pretence to be anything but a whisky. ”

“ Normal people do not knowingly take opium or its derivatives except with the sanction of a physician, and there is even spreading abroad a belief (surely an expression of the primal law of self-preservation) that the licensed practitioner leans too readily toward the convenient narcotics.
But this perilous stuff is the ideal basis for a patent medicine because its results are immediate (though never permanent) , and it is its own best advertisement in that one dose imperatively calls for another. Therefore it behooves the manufacturer of opiates to disguise the use of the drug. ”