Secret remedies

BASED ON ANALYSES MADE FOR THE
BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION.
London: BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, 429, Strand, W.C.
1909.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
One of the reasons for the popularity of secret remedies is their secrecy. It is a case in which the old saying Omne ignotum pro magnifico applies. To begin with, there is for the average man or woman a certain fascination in secrecy. The quack takes advantage of this common foible of human nature to impress his customers. But secrecy has other uses in his trade; it enables him to make use of cheap new or old-fashioned drugs, and to proclaim that his product possesses virtues beyond the ken of the mere doctor; his herbs have been culled in some remote prairie in America or among the mountains of Central Africa, the secret of their virtues having been confided to him by some venerable chief; or again he would have us believe that his drug has been discovered by chemical research of alchemical profundity, and is produced by processes so costly and elaborate that it can only be sold at a very high price.
The British Medical Association considered, therefore, that it would be useful if not instructive to make analyses of some of the secret remedies, the virtues of which are so boldly advertised, especially in popular monthly magazines and weekly newspapers, and in diaries and almanacks pushed under the front door or dropped over the area railings. The results are given in the following pages; they have been classified under various heads, according to the particular kind of disorder for the cure of which the preparation is more particularly vaunted. The claims in some instances are so comprehensive that it has not always been easy to assign the nostrum its proper place, and for a few it has been necessary to institute a chapter on Cure Alls.
An inquiry of the kind is, from the analytical point of view, tedious and often difficult; for though the analytical chemist can easily and quickly identify the nature of inorganic salts in a mixture or powder, and estimate their amount, most vegetable drugs which exert any appreciable effect on the body owe their power to the presence of an alkaloid or glucoside. The active principle of opium, for instance, is morphine; that of cinchona bark, quinine; that of belladonna, atropine, and so on, and the chemist can recognise any alkaloids present in a mixture or pill. It is otherwise, however, with vegetable extracts and colouring matters, for which pharmaceutical science has not yet been able in all cases to supply easily applicable and conclusive tests, because for the most part they contain no active principle and are used in pharmacy for their agreeable odour or bitter taste, as vanilla or sorrel are used in cookery. Of the accuracy of the analytical data published there can be no question; the investigation has been carried out with great care by a skilled analytical chemist, who has controlled his results in various ways, one being that in every doubtful case the formula obtained by analysis has been tested by making it up and comparing the appearance, taste, and physical properties of the imitative mixture with those of the secret preparation sold to the public.