EXPURGO (SANOL) ANTI-DIABETES
One More Fraudulent Nostrum for Diabetes
Expurgo Anti-Diabetes is sold and advertised in the United States by the Expurgo Manufacturing Company, Chicago. The concern is the United States branch of a Canadian company, the Sanol Manufacturing Company, Ltd., Winnipeg, which sells its product in Canada under the name of “Sanol Anti-Diabetes.” The parent company is said to have been incorporated under the Manitoba laws in 1912 and to have for its officers and directors the following men:
Charles Beyer, President.
Frank Beyer, Vice-President.
Charles Bauer, Secretary-Treasurer and Manager.
The manager of the United States branch in Chicago is said to be one E. M. von Amerongen.
The stuff is such an evident fraud that one would imagine that even intelligent laymen could not be deceived by it. Nevertheless medical journals both in the United States and Canada have accepted advertisements for this preparation and physicians—of a certain type—have been found to give testimonials for it. The medical profession is circularized widely by the concern and “write-ups” have appeared in pseudomedical journals. Some of the claims made for Expurgo Anti-Diabetes are:
“The only positive cure for Diabetes.”
“It never fails to effect a Cure in every case of this disease, in whatever form it may present itself provided the patient has not reached the last stages of the malady.”
“Expurgo Anti-Diabetes is the New Cure for this deadly affliction.”
“Diabetes is certainly curable by our new discovery—Expurgo Anti-Diabetes, provided that the course of the disease has not progressed to the extent that the vital organs are irreparably damaged.”
“... thanks to the discovery of Expurgo Anti-Diabetes, the cure of this dread disease is no longer a matter of doubt.”
“With the exception of very advanced cases of Diabetes ... all diabetes can be cured by Expurgo Anti-Diabetes.”
Such claims one would imagine would be more than sufficient to make plain, even to the most uncritical of physicians, the evident fraudulence of Expurgo Anti-Diabetes. Nevertheless, the advertisements of this fraud have appeared during 1913 in the following medical journals:
| Medical Times | Medical Review |
| Medical Brief | Therapeutic Record |
| Medical Summary | Medical Fortnightly |
| Buffalo Medical Journal | Indianapolis Medical Journal |
| Louisville Monthly Journal | Southwest Journal of Medicine and Surgery |
| Iowa Medical Journal | Western Canada Medical Journal |
| Canada Lancet | Dominion Medical Monthly |
| Detroit Medical Journal | Canadian Medical Association Journal |
| Medical Herald | Canadian Practitioner and Review |
| Medical Review of Reviews | Massachusetts Medical Journal |
| Medical Standard |
Physicians will recognize that, with but few exceptions, most of these journals are utterly unrepresentative of scientific medicine.
The Army and Navy Medical Record, shown in The Journal recently as a journalistic fraud, contained an editorial puff of Expurgo Anti-Diabetes. The fact that the Expurgo Company reprints the “editorial” from the Army and Navy Medical Record as a “voluntary and unsolicited reference” and distributes it among physicians, indicates how rotten are the props on which the superstructure of this fraud rest.
Another alleged “voluntary and unsolicited reference” used by the Expurgo Company is taken from the Therapeutic Record of Louisville, Kentucky. The advertising pages of the Therapeutic Record reek with frauds and it has more than once given editorial endorsement to some of the frauds that it advertises. The following enlightening letter is alleged to have been written by the editor of the Therapeutic Record to the Expurgo Company in February, 1913:
Gentlemen:—Your favor of February 14th came duly to hand. Let me advise you to pay no earthly attention to the proceedings of the Medical Society where your product was criticized. These people exert no influence with the practical up-to-date element of the profession and are doing you as they do others. Never fear—you will succeed—your remedy is all right. No man can talk down a meritorious product. I stand ready to help you in any way at any time.
With sincere regards, I am,
Robert C. Kenner, M.D.,
Editor, the Therapeutic Record.
This, it will be noticed, was written in February. Soon thereafter the Therapeutic Record was carrying the Expurgo advertisement, and the June, 1913, issue contained a puff on Expurgo, entitled “A Contribution to the Medical Treatment of Diabetes.” The quid pro quo is fairly evident.
THE ALLEGED FORMULA
The formula for this nostrum is never published, although in some of the advertising matter it is claimed that it is “at the disposal of physicians.” A physician wrote to the Expurgo Manufacturing Company, asking for the formula. He was told that the preparation was “exclusively derived from the vegetable kingdom,” from which one may recognize a family likeness to the “dope” put out by the immortal Lydia Pinkham. Further, to copy the letter exactly:
“The ingredients of which Antidiabetes is composed are chiefly:
“fructus syzigii jambulani
“cortex syzigii jambulani
“flores Rosmarini
“fructus Anisi stellati
“Extr. fl. Colæ
“Extr. fl. Condurango
“Extr. fl. Chinæ spir. spiss.
“Extr. fl. Calami
“Extr. fl. Gentianæ.”
The recipient of this noncommittal and uninforming “formula” again wrote the Expurgo Manufacturing Company, asking for quantities. Evidently this nostrum concern considered such a request a piece of impertinent inquisitiveness, for it replied to the physician in these terms, given verbatim et literatim:
“Dear Sir:—Yours of the 16th duly to hand. We note that you state ‘... I do not like to be working in the dark, and you can readily see that this is the case unless I know how much of each ingredient I am giving....’
“In your letter of the 6th you asked for the composition, which you promptly received. We would like to state that we are dealing with about 600 Doctors. Some of them asked for the formula, which they received. They are all very conscientious gentlemen and none of them ever pretended ‘to work in the dark.’ You know furthermore that none of these ingredients is harmful in any way and yet ‘work in the dark.’ You know that if there were any harmful ingredients in our preparations, we would expose ourselves to imprisonment. If you are so anxious to know all about it, why do you not analyse our medicine? This would enlighten you in your ‘perfect darkness.’ If you want to deprive your patients and yourselves of the indisputable good of our preparations, simply do not prescribe them. Why finally do you not write to the Doctors whose names we gave, who know enough to be able to enlighten those who need it.
Truly yours
The Expurgo Mfg. Co.,
C. M. v. Amerongen, Manager.
More than a year ago, a Wisconsin physician, himself a sufferer from diabetes, wrote The Journal that for three months he had been using Expurgo Anti-Diabetes which the Expurgo people had sent him. He declared that the nostrum had greatly reduced the percentage of sugar in his urine. In its reply, The Journal asked him whether, in testing his urine he had used portions of twenty-four hour specimens or merely individual specimens. His attention was called to the fact that most of the nostrums for diabetes are diuretics which, by increasing the amount of urine passed, give an apparent decrease in the amount of sugar excreted. A few days later, the physician wrote again, stating that he had committed the very error The Journal had suspected, and reporting that an examination of a twenty-four-hour specimen showed that the glucose-excretion, instead of being diminished, actually increased. This matter was referred to editorially in The Journal, Nov. 9, 1912, under the title, “A Possible Fallacy in Testing Diabetic Urine.”
Specimens of Expurgo Anti-Diabetes were examined in the Association’s laboratory and the chemist’s report follows:
LABORATORY REPORT
The letter head of the Expurgo Manufacturing Co. Note the claim that Expurgo Anti-Diabetes is “the only positive cure for diabetes.” And this stuff is foisted on the profession through the medical press!
“The specimen of Expurgo Anti-Diabetes (Sanol Anti-Diabetes) examined, was a light-brown, opaque liquid, having a faintly aromatic odor and bitter taste. The specimen contained considerable amounts of brown, insoluble residue resembling the deposits often found in fluid extracts. The absence of ammonium salts, iodids, glycerin, hexamethylenamin, of antipyrin, pyramidon and similar substances and of such purgatives as aloes, frangula, rhubarb, etc., was indicated. Potent alkaloids such as aconitin, cocain, morphin and strychnin were not found. Qualitative tests indicated the presence of traces of phosphates, sulphates, reducing sugars, caffein and cinchona alkaloids. Alcohol was present only in traces. Small quantities of chlorids, sodium and a salicylate were found. The residue on drying amounted to 2.9 gm. in each 100 c.c. A determination of the salicylic acid indicated approximately 0.17 gm. in each 100 c.c., which is equivalent to less than 0.2 gm. of sodium salicylate per 100 c.c. (about 1 grain to the ounce). Evidently the preparation contains plant extractives in aqueous solution and small amounts of sodium salicylate and sodium chlorid.”
Summed up, the chemist’s report shows that Expurgo Anti-Diabetes is essentially a watery solution of plant extractives with small quantities of sodium salicylate and salt. The exploiters claim their stuff contains the fruit and bark of jambul, rosemary, star anise and fluid extract of calamus, cinchona, cola, condurango, and gentian. Since fluidextracts in general are strongly alcoholic and since the laboratory’s analysis shows that the preparation contains only traces of alcohol, the fluidextracts of the various drugs, if present at all, must be in an infinitesimal amount.
Jambul was in vogue as a remedy for diabetes about twenty years ago. It was tried and found wanting, and has long since been relegated to the therapeutic scrap heap. Sanol, therefore, is but one more proprietary humbug, foisted on the profession under fraudulent claims, and having for its essential constituent a drug that has long been discarded by scientific men and resurrected for the purposes of quackery. Expurgo will probably be used by uncritical and unthinking physicians and its existence will be artificially prolonged through the venality of pseudo-medical journals. That the medical profession should tolerate such an evident fraud is not to its credit. There is no excuse, either moral or otherwise, for a physician giving his patients nostrums of whose composition he is ignorant, and that is what is done whenever Expurgo Anti-Diabetes is prescribed.—(From The Journal A. M. A., Jan. 24, 1914.)