Patent medicine

“ A Patent Medicine is a remedy which is patented. In order to secure this patent, an exact statement of the ingredients and the mode of manufacture must be filed with the government. These true "patent medicines" are generally artificial products of chemical manufacture, such as phenacetin. The very fact of their being patented makes them non-secret, and if an intelligent idea is held of their nature and mode of action, they may be properly used. ”

“ Briefly stated, patent medicines are drugs compounded of unknown ingredients, and are intended for the relief or cure of the various ills that flesh is heir to. They always have been, and still are, prepared and put up in an entirely different way from all other medical compounds. In one sense, the word "patent" means plain or unconcealed, but that is the reverse of the meaning of the medicine in question. Time was when the state, for purpose of revenue, allowed the venders of medical mixtures to take advantage of the patent law. ”

“ The patent medicine interests naturally try to obscure the issue. By the art in which they are so skilful, they aim to suggest to the public that physicians are opposed to patent medicines, in order to drive patients to their offices. ”

“ With all this knowledge at hand it is grievous to observe how general the delusion that disease may be eradicated by some much emblazoned nostrum, that some vile ‘Indian compound’ will be thought to have more virtue than the most accurately proportioned prescription which represents the best that modern science can do in the adaptation of a particular remedy to a particular ailment. That the patent medicine business is a most gigantic fraud and curse will I believe be granted by every scientific man who has made himself acquainted with the subject. ”

“ The patent-medicine business as a whole was also entering, just at this time, upon its golden era—the fifty-year span between the Civil War and World War I. Improved transportation, wider circulation of newspapers and periodicals, and cheaper and better bottles all enabled the manufacturers of the proprietary remedies to expand distribution—the enactment and enforcement of federal drug laws was still more than a generation in the future. So patent medicines flourished ”

“ True exposure of patent-medicine evils will enable the average physician and the average layman to distinguish the dangerous from the safe, the fraud from the genuine, lies from truths.
Legislation is needed to crystallize modern knowledge and to establish in courts the right to protection against the evils of patent medicines. ”

“ An intensive study of the methods used to advertise patent medicines will suggest means of extending the usefulness of health-promoting goods. Aside from clever methods of suggestion that lead many people to take medicine for imaginary ailments, especially seasonal ailments, patent-remedy advertisers have employed (as an argument for the efficiency of their cures) scientific theory, bacterial origin of diseases, recent medical or physiological discoveries, and state and national movements for promoting health. ”

“ The patent medicine territory is the whole country. It is a large, profitable field. A movement was once started by certain reputable New York physicians, who were deeply interested in this question, to discover a means to aid the class who buy patent medicines and support the fake medical concerns. It was thought that if an advertising propaganda was instituted, offering to give legitimate and adequate medical advice, at the lowest possible cost, there would be many who would avail themselves of the opportunity. ”

“ Around the turn of the century, the patent-medicine almanac was so common that one could walk into any drug store and pick up three or four of them. Credit for the origination of the free patent-medicine almanac has been ascribed to Cyrenius C. Bristol, founder of the firm which Moore later took over and therefore an indirect predecessor of the Indian Root Pills. ”

“ A drug-tainted patent medicine is absolutely certain to establish a drug habit in any one who, for any length of time, takes it according to directions.
“The proposed law makes such patent medicines, containing any quantity whatever of the habit-forming drugs, illegal. Physicians rarely if ever give prescriptions for them. The public will lose nothing and gain much through their abolishment. ”

“ The patent-medicine advertisers fill the daily columns with their claims, and create a demand by the force of repeated falsehood. Do you know the universal formula for the cost of patent cures? Here it is: Drugs, 3 per cent; manufacturing plant, 7 per cent; printing ink, 90 per cent. It’s a sickening business. If I could afford it, I’d break loose like that fellow McConnell in Chicago and put a placard of warning in my show window. Here’s a copy of the one he displays in his drug-store. ”

“ American manufactories specializing in pharmaceutical glassware continued to offer the various English patent medicine bottles until the close of the century.112
Figure 13.—Opodeldoc Bottle from the collection of Mrs. Leo F. Redden, Kenmore, New York. (Smithsonian photo 44201-E.)
In a thesaurus published in 1899, Godfrey's, Bateman's, Turlington's, and other of the old English patent remedies were termed "extinct patents."113 The adjective referred to the status of the patent, not the condition of the medicines. If less prominent than in the olden days, the medicines were still alive. ”

“ In 1926, original patent models including those related to pharmacy, medicine, and dentistry, were transferred from the U.S. Patent Office to the National Museum. These patent models, together with other apothecary tools and the machines used in drug production took up most of the available space. This unfortunate situation led Dr. Whitebread to turn down significant medical and pharmaceutical collections offered the Museum between 1927 and 1930. ”

“ Humphreys, one of the best known patent-medicine makers, has said to his fellow-members of the Patent Medicine Association: "The twenty thousand newspapers of the United States make more money from advertising the proprietary medicines than do the proprietors of the medicines themselves.... ”

“ If one patent medicine fails, it is because it is not the right patent medicine, and they try another. They prefer patent medicine, partly because there is a certain mystery about the ingredients, and they are put up in an attractive form. ”

“ Yet the patent laws may be used so as to protect and benefit the public and the medical profession. In research laboratories, work is being carried on resulting in the production of new therapeutic agents. It is important that these agents shall be so controlled that they may be made available without subordination to commercial interests. It has become practically necessary, therefore, for research workers to protect their products in the interest of the public welfare and scientific medicine. It has not been an easy matter to decide how best to bring about the desired results. ”

“ It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. ”

“ C. J. S. Thompson, The mystery and art of the apothecary, London, 1929; C. J. S. Thompson, Quacks of old London, London, 1928; and A. C. Wootton, Chronicles of pharmacy, London, 1910, 2 vols.
2 "How the patent medicine industry came into its own," American Druggist, October 1933, vol. 88, pp. 84-87, 232, 234, 236, 238.
3 Benjamin Okell, "Pectoral drops for rheumatism, gravel, etc.," British patent 483, March 31, 1726.
4 British Patent Office, Patents for inventions: abridgements of specifications relating to medicine, surgery, and dentistry, 1620-1866, London, 1872. ”

“ Patent medicines were patent lies, but, like the charms and indulgences of the Middle Ages, they deceived the people. The only difference lay in that the patent medicines were more harmful and more costly. ”

“ Professional men, such as physicians, architects, and engineers, do not, as a rule, look favorably upon the taking out of patents connected with their special work. This is formulated in the code of ethics of physicans in the statement that "it is derogatory to professional character for a physician to hold a patent for any surgical instrument or medicine." ”

“ Concocted, not to benefit humanity, but to enrich their manufacturers, advertised as positive cures of diseases which the utmost skill of the medical profession cannot control, sometimes inert, sometimes dangerous from the poisons which they contain, pressed upon the attention of the people with impudent persistence and colossal mendacity, the infamous compounds, called patent medicines, are purchased by the credulous public in almost incredible amounts. ”

“ Certain mixtures are found to be of great value in the healing art. If the discoverer writes and publishes a book on the subject (as regular physicians generally do) , he gains no exclusive right to the manufacture and sale of the medicine; he gives that to the public. If he desires to acquire such exclusive right, he must obtain a patent for the mixture as a new art, manufacture, or composition of matter. He may copyright his book, if he pleases ”

“ They also add considerably to the revenue, if only through the impost upon patent medicines; for though many may be astonished and horrified to hear it, all patent medicines—i.e., all medicines which bear the inland-revenue stamp—are of necessity quack, and although many partisans may endeavour to prove that in the particular case each may select, this is not so, the qualification must fairly be applied, if applied to anything, to all medicines which are supposed to specifically remedy various diseases in various systems, no matter what the peculiarities of either. ”

“ The retail price of all the patent medicines sold in the United States in one year may be very conservatively placed at one hundred million dollars. And of this one hundred millions which the people of the United States pay for patent medicines yearly, fully forty millions goes to the newspapers. ”

“ Truthfully to declare the composition of many of these proprietary compounds would ruin their sale. Not that the ingredients are often improper or injurious; this rarely occurs; but because the success of these remedies depends in most instances rather on the mystery with which the makers can surround them than on their exceptional merit.
But some old medicines which became popular, including a few the reputation of which lives to this day, were actually patented. The first compound medicine for which a patent was granted under the Act of 1624 was No. ”

“ This fundamental fact was to be recognized by the committee of Philadelphia pharmacists in 1824. "We are aware" the committeemen reported, "that long custom has so strongly associated the idea of the genuineness of the Patent medicines, with particular shapes of the vials that contain them, and with certain printed labels, as to render an alteration in them an affair of difficulty. Many who use these preparations would not purchase British Oil that was put up in a conical vial, nor Turlington's Balsam in a cylindrical one. ”

“ The standardization of preparations of patent medicines, as regards the amount of active principles they contain, can only conveniently and economically be done in operating on large quantities, and must naturally lead to the preparations being standardized at wholesale houses, who issue a guarantee with them, but it is not yet certain that deterioration may not take place after standardization, in such as those of ergot or digitalis, so that it is somewhat questionable whether the standardization is of permanent value in all cases. ”

“ Congress did not act in an irrational manner when it drew a distinction between drugs and medical devices. True, like medical devices, some drugs have a very high cost. See ante, at 673, n. 5. Testing a patented medical device, however, often will have greater effects on the patent holder's rights than comparable testing of a patented drug. As petitioner has asserted, manufacturers may test generic versions of patented drugs, but not devices, under abbreviated procedures. ”

“ It was a doctor who first advertised Anderson's Pills and Bateman's Drops in Williamsburg;49 it was another, migrating from England to the Virginia frontier, who founded a town and dosed those who came to dwell therein with Bateman's Drops, Turlington's Balsam, and other patent medicines.50
Complex Formulas and Distinctive Packages
Indeed, the status of medical knowledge, medical need, and medical ethics in the 18th century permitted patent medicines to fit quite comfortably into the environment. As to what actually caused diseases, man knew little more than had the ancient Greeks. ”

“ In this case the subject of patents would have formed a prominent feature in the second division of our work; for so rapid is the progress of chemical science, and so precarious the language by which its growing objects and phenomena are expressed, that, in the present state of the law, it becomes an extremely delicate task to draw the specification of a chemical patent in such terms as to escape the snares which ingenuity is ever ready to invent for its destruction. ”

“ Ambassador Barshefsky went on to stress that access to modern pharmaceuticals can and should be enhanced in a manner that assures the safety and efficacy of the drugs, preserves intellectual property rights, and promotes the worldwide pursuit of newer, more effective medicines. She concluded by noting that a modern patent system helps promote the rapid innovation, development, and commercialization of effective and safe drug therapies and that sound public health policy and intellectual property protection are mutually supportive. ”