A MOST DANGEROUS FORM OF RASCALITY.
Drugs Worth $30,000 Seized.
War on Makers of Imitations of Medicines Begun by the Chicago Police in Charge of Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge.
In all the history of fraud, imposture and graft, there is no story to parallel that of the "fake drug clique." There is no means of finding out how many thousands of lives are annually sacrificed in consequence of its nefarious practices, and the strong arm of the law while it can reach out and prevent further crime, can not call back to life those who have been offered up on the altar of greed.
Sensational raids made in the effort to clear Chicago of its numerous "Fake" patent medicine concerns, occurred on the morning of Nov. 29, 1904.
The raids followed a long conference between Chief of Police Francis O'Neill and Col. James E. Stuart, Chief Inspector of Chicago Postal Department, and for the first time in the history of the city, the Federal and City forces worked in unison. They decided that Chicago should be cleared of "Fake" Patent Medicine Concerns which for years had been using the mails to defraud hundreds of thousands of sick and weak persons.
George G. Kimball, U. S. Inspector of Mails, and Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge were assigned to gather the evidence and prepare the cases for prosecution. The work was no easy task. Both officers went about the work of gathering the evidence in a thoroughly systematic manner.
Inspector Kimball discovered the mails were employed extensively by the agents in disposing of their spurious drugs. Investigation proved that large orders were sent to small suburban towns and cities weekly. The correspondence, circulars and goods were secured.
The breaking up of the drug ring, however, was a delicate task. It was strongly backed financially, and it was aided and abetted, throughout the United States, by political rings galore. Chicago was the headquarters, and it was natural that to the police department of this city, ever-famed for its hatred of "grafts" big and little, should fall the lot of exterminating the traffic.
Detective Wooldridge gathered the information in Chicago, the names of the firms, location and the men who owned them.
The men are charged with making and selling a spurious preparation of aristol, a product made in Germany, and valued as a substitute for iodoform. Their products were represented as genuine, were said to differ from those handled by the wholesale drug trade, only in the fact that they were imported from Canada and England instead of from Germany.
Here are a few of the things discovered in the course of the investigation by Detective C. R. Wooldridge. The statements are printed from an interview with the great detective.
"As we have progressed the work has broadened and grown to proportions never anticipated at the start. Among the goods seized were found boxes, the labels of which bore the chemical name and formula of trional, and which gave an exact description of the chemical and physical properties of trional and the medicinal indications of this drug.
"On examination it was found that these boxes contained pure acetanilid. The dosage of drugs recommended upon the label was fifteen to twenty grains, and it was stated 'that night sweats of phthisis are promptly arrested by eight grains."
"I am informed that it is within the professional knowledge of every druggist as well as every physician that the substitution, grain for grain, of acetanilid, for trional, is a most reprehensible fraud, which might cause the death of the patient to whom the drug was administered.
"As indicating the commercial fraud connected with this substitution, it should be stated that the price charged for this drug by the defendants in this case, as shown by the price list, was 95 cents per ounce, commercial value of acetanilid is one and one half cents per ounce.
"But by far the largest fraud found was in the counterfeit label business. There were 2,400 metal caps for bottles stamped with the name of a Swiss manufacturer. There were also labels purporting to be German or Swiss labels. A number of half filled bottles, waiting for the adulterants, showed conclusively the use to which these labels were to be put.
"We were fortunate enough to find certain cards and bills in this place indicating that the makers of these metal caps and labels had never been nearer Switzerland or Germany than Clark and Harrison streets. Acting upon this information we secured evidence that these articles were made in Chicago and never imported.
"These entire preparations including the mixing, boxing, labeling and placing upon the market was done by these parties here in Chicago, and the goods, much of it undoubtedly, placed in the hands of innocent purchasers, who were deceived by the external appearance of genuineness, into purchasing the adulterated and fraudulent goods, without analysis or investigation of any kind.
"The great public, the individuals who use these drugs when prescribed by their physician, are themselves in total ignorance of the fact, not only that they have defrauded and cheated, but perhaps placed in jeopardy of their lives.
"There were found among these boxes seized, certain receptacles which bore labels stating that aristol was contained therein. On examination by reputable chemists at the Columbus Laboratories, the powder in these boxes was found to be fullers earth, colored with oxide of iron, not containing a single trace of aristol. The aristol, which was quoted on the price lists as 'equal to Bayer's' was sold at 80 cents per ounce, at which almost a ton of fullers earth and oxide of iron could be purchased.
"The evidence was procured and chemical tests made which proved the presence of alien matter in the prescriptions which called for pure drugs. In nearly 20 per cent of the samples obtained there was not even a trace of the drug called for in the prescription; Acetanilid as a substitute for trional-aristol, which is an antiseptic wash much used by surgeons.
"Prescriptions were sent to 139 druggists signed by Dr. J. Scott Brown, calling for pure aristol. Dr. J. A. Wesener of the Columbus Laboratories conducted the tests.