NOTE ON DIABETIC FOODS.
In the treatment of diabetes it is the rule, in order to diminish the amount of sugar passed, to decrease or altogether exclude starchy foods from the dietary, and to replace them by various substitutes, of which the most important are gluten bread and biscuits. Some of the so-called gluten flour and special foods sold as suitable for diabetic patients are impositions, inasmuch as they are found to contain either as much or nearly as much starch as ordinary flour. In one instance brought to notice at the end of 1905, a so-called gluten flour and special diabetic foods obtained from Messrs. H. H. Warner and Co., Ltd., who are also the vendors of Warner’s Safe Cure, but who in this instance acted as agents, it was found that the flour was practically ordinary wheaten flour. This is indicated in the following table, in which the result of the analysis of the special articles is placed side by side with the figures of the official analysis of wheaten flour published by the United States Department of Agriculture:
| Department of Agriculture, U.S.A. | The Special Materials. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spring Wheat. | Winter Wheat. | Gluten Flour. | Special Diabetic Food. | |
| Water | 10·4 | 10·5 | 12·65 | 11·06 |
| Proteid | 12·5 | 11·8 | 10·60 | 12·40 |
| Fat | 2·2 | 2·1 | — | 3·00 |
| Convertible carbohydrates | 71·2 | 72·0 | 70·30 | 71·06 |
| Mineral matter | 1·9 | 1·8 | 0·44 | 1·52 |
| Fibre | 1·8 | 1·8 | — | — |
It will be seen that the amount of starch and other convertible carbohydrates in spring wheat is 71·2, and in the so-called gluten flour 70·30.
CHAPTER IX.
OBESITY CURES.
The claims made for nostrums advertised for the reduction of corpulence are, as a rule, rather less extravagant than usual. A reason for this is not far to seek; it is important that the consumer of the medicine shall be encouraged to persist in its use for a considerable time, and statements as to rapid cure might very soon be found to be at variance with the facts and would probably only lead to discontinuance of the medicine, and therefore defeat the maker’s object. Nevertheless, the emphatic and confident statements, backed by testimonials, so important a weapon of the nostrum vendor, are by no means abandoned, as some of the quotations below will show. The prices named for the various articles described refer, as a rule, to the smallest size of package; in most cases larger packages, containing sufficient for several weeks’ or months’ consumption, are supplied at proportionally lower rates, and purchasers are urged to obtain these larger packages.
While certain of these preparations present no particular difficulty to the analyst, the majority not only contain vegetable preparations devoid of well-marked characters, but since the most important of these, extract and fluid extract of Fucus vesiculosus, are not prepared according to any official formula, and are naturally therefore liable to great variation, it is not possible to arrive with perfect certainty at the precise composition of such articles by analysis; and when, as in the case of any nostrum, the maker can draw on all unofficial and even non-medicinal substances for his ingredients, it is inevitable that some shall remain not certainly identified. It may fairly be assumed, however, that such unknown substances, possessing no well-defined chemical characters, will not be likely to have much, if any, therapeutic importance.
The belief that sucking lemons will make one thin is widespread, and gave origin a few years ago to a passing fashion, so that it was impossible to go anywhere, in private house or club, without meeting some gouty man or too stout lady who asserted that a sure cure and preventive for either condition was some drink made with a fresh lemon. It was not surprising, therefore, to find that the chief ingredient in two of the secret remedies first analysed was citric acid.
Bladderwrack (Fucus vesiculosus) is a common seaweed which has earned, it is not quite easy to understand on what grounds, a reputation for reducing corpulency. It contains sodium salts in rather large quantities, and a small proportion of iodine, much less than many other sea-weeds. In Ireland it was once thought to be good for pigs, making them fat, and if it has an opposite effect on human beings, that effect must be very slight and uncertain.
Still, if people like to pay an absurdly high price for citric acid or extract of bladderwrack under other names, it would, perhaps, be churlish to object, but the case is rather different with the extract or other preparation of the thyroid gland found to be present in two of the nostrums most recently analysed. Medical men are not infrequently asked by patients for information or for their opinion with regard to some substance that has been praised in a family newspaper or other easily inspired or corrupted medium to which some authority is ascribed, and the detection of thyroid gland in two of the preparations analysed justifies a note of warning. The administration of thyroid requires to be carefully regulated, and its employment in self-medication cannot be regarded as a safe proceeding. Under these circumstances it can hardly be necessary to say that postal communication with the vendors of the medicines in question, even when accompanied by the patient’s answers to printed questions and description of his symptoms, is not only of no value, but may be a source of danger by giving a false sense of security.
It is curious indeed to note that one of these secret preparations, Marmola, does not appear to be advertised to the public as a proprietary article at all, but is named as one ingredient among others in a prescription which is recommended in a paragraph apparently dictated solely by pity for suffering fat people; the chemist to whom the prescription will be taken to be compounded, however, is the recipient of advertising matter urging him to lay in a stock of the article to be in readiness for the demand. It is to be hoped that no chemist would dispense such a “prescription” without making it clear to his customer that what is supplied is a proprietary article, about the usefulness or innocuousness of which he knows nothing; otherwise the customer, who finds it named along with preparations bearing the letters “B.P.,” is likely to suppose that it is a known substance, and that the dispensing of the prescription by a chemist indicates that the mixture is a proper and safe one to take. Two of the other preparations described are evidently usually or always supplied to the public without the agency of any retailer, the vendor thus securing the whole profit, which, it will be seen, is considerable. In both these cases the attempt is clearly made to get the customer to pay at once for as large a quantity as possible, presumably because he will be less likely to do so after giving the medicines a trial. The most alluring prospects are, of course, held out in the advertisements, but when the customer has been drawn into correspondence, and especially after he has begun to send his money, a process of “hedging” begins, as will be seen from the extracts quoted from letters sent by the vendors.
Phenolphthalein—a chemical body sold sometimes under the trade names purgen, laxoin, laxatol, laxen, etc.—appears as an ingredient in two of the nostrums, and formamine (hexamethylene-tetramine)—which goes also by many names, urotropine, cystamin, cystogen, metramine, and vesalvine among others—in one, the preparation containing the latter is said to have been devised as the result of an accident in the laboratory, in which a piece of fat became changed into oil without the rupture of the fat cells, a statement which suggests that the advertiser thinks that fat in the human body is solid like tallow or lard.