POEHL’S SPERMIN IN ARTERIOSCLEROSIS

A physician addressed the following inquiry to The Journal:

“In a recent number of the Gazette méd. belge, I read a detailed report of five cases of arterio­scler­osis in which the patients were all markedly improved and some of them apparently cured by a course of ‘Sperminum Poehl,’ an advertised remedy which I have always distrusted and never prescribed. I am now suffering myself from a somewhat advanced case of arterio­scler­osis and would like to try this remedy if the Council has learned anything in favor of it and if there is no reason to fear bad effects from it.”

X. Y. Z.

The Journal replied:

Apparently the exploitation of Poehl’s spermin passed several years ago from the domain of experimental medicine to that of nostrums advertised to the laity. So far as we know, it has received no recent discussion from reliable clinicians or experimenters. In some medical journals, as also in lay journals, it is true, one still reads that Poehl’s spermin is successfully applied in “neurasthenia, senile marasmus, anemia, rachitis, gout, chronic rheumatism, syphilis, hysteria, tuberculosis, typhus, diseases of the heart, nephritis, tabes dorsalis, paralysis, neurasthenic impotence, overwork, acute diseases, and for convalescents.” Few quack advertisements would differ much from this puff of Poehl’s spermin. So far as we know, there is no reason to fear injurious results from the use of the remedy; neither might any good be expected from its use in arterio­scler­osis.​—(From The Journal A. M. A., April 15, 1911.)