SOME GERMAN NOSTRUMS.
The following notes upon a few German remedies are quoted from Dr. Zernik’s reports in the Deutsche Medicinische Wochenschrift.
URICEDIN.
This is a Berlin product vaunted as a remedy for the gouty diathesis, but its composition is very simple; it contains 2½ per cent. sodium chlorate, and 66·5 per cent. dry sodium sulphate, the remainder being sodium citrate and sodium tartrate.
RHEUMACID.
The prospectus asserts that this material, the result of years of careful and earnest study, revolutionizes all medical knowledge, and cures rheumatism, colds, neuralgia, sciatica, gout, bladder, kidney, and skin affections, etc. The price demanded for 50 grams (about 1½ ounces) is 17s. 6d., while a sample costs 1s. The sample is supposed to contain ten doses of 1 gram each, but was actually found to contain only half that quantity. There appeared to be three sorts of rheumacid, marked A, B, and C respectively, but the analysis revealed that the constituents were practically the same and included aspirin, salol, and at times salpyrin, with a little citric acid. This seems rather like making a revolution with rosewater.
ANTIGOUT SOAP.
Lazarus Gout and Rheumatic Soap is prepared in Dresden. It is a piece of medium-quality sodium soap, containing a very small quantity of an ethereal oil. The cake weighs 70 grams (about 2 oz.), and costs 1 mark.
PINE PREPARATIONS.
Electricum, described as “aethereal Tyrolese fir and pine wood oil,” and recommended by the vendors as an external remedy for rheumatism, gout, pains in the limbs, paralysis, sciatica, lumbago, and backache, neuralgia, tumours, etc., seems to consist merely of pine oil. Weigand’s Rheumatic and Gout Spirit which it is stated relieves the pain within a few hours and cures after a short time, consists of 55 parts of turpentine oil, 55 parts of spirits of camphor, and 5 grams of Venice soap. A bottle containing 115 grams, less than 4 ounces, costs 2s. 6d.
RHEUMA TABAKOLIN.
This is a Berlin preparation; a box containing about 100 grams (about 3½ oz.) costs 5s., but the quantity for neglected and obstinate cases cost 15s. It is asserted to be a newly discovered remedy for rheumatism and gout obtained from tobacco. The directions are to extract the material with about 24 ounces of 50 per cent. alcohol, and to use this extract as a liquid application to the painful areas. Analysis showed that the substance consisted of waste and powdered tobacco perfumed with lemon oil. In Germany waste broken tobacco can be bought at about 5d. or 6d. a pound.
CHAPTER VII.
KIDNEY MEDICINES.
This group of nostrums consists of those which are put forward for the cure of kidney troubles, or conditions of ill-health commonly, but as a rule erroneously, attributed by the public to kidney disease. Several of these are in the form of pills, while others are liquids. The two principal drugs employed are oil of juniper and potassium nitrate (nitre or saltpetre), separately or together; in some cases aperients are added. Altogether extravagant claims are made for some of the articles, as is usual, of course, with proprietary medicines; this point is dealt with more fully in the descriptions of individual preparations.
In analysing complex mixtures, such as some of these nostrums are, it is, of course, not possible to attain the same precision as when dealing with medicines which consist chiefly of inorganic salts, as in the case of nostrums for epilepsy, dealt with in another chapter. A vegetable extract containing no definite active principle, such as, for instance, extract of taraxacum (dandelion), cannot be identified by any direct test; if such an extract is mixed with another, with a powdered drug, or an essential oil, its identification with perfect certainty may become almost impossible. The large variations, again, which may occur in the proportion of solid matter in a tincture or infusion, as well as the variations in the relative proportion of the different constituents of drugs, prevent the results of analysis being translated with certainty into the formula from which the mixture was compounded. These considerations apply to several of the articles described in this chapter. While the principal ingredient or ingredients in each case can be ascertained with little or no possibility of error, the subsidiary ingredients in some cases cannot be determined with the same confidence; we have endeavoured to indicate in each case the possibility of such minor errors. Full use has been made of check methods, by compounding mixtures according to the formulæ obtained by analysis and comparing them with the originals.