SUCCUS ALTERANS
Report of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry
The following report was adopted by the Council:
It is, believed that unwarranted and exaggerated therapeutic claims are made for Succus Alterans by its manufacturers, Eli Lilly & Co., Indianapolis. In view of the disastrous results which may follow, if, from the statements made, physicians should be led to rely on the product as a treatment for syphilis, it is recommended that Succus Alterans be refused recognition and that this fact be published with comments.
W. A. Puckner, Secretary.
Comment: Succus Alterans is a preparation which has been put on the market for some years by Eli Lilly & Co., as a remedy for syphilis. The serious character of this disease and especially the deplorable results that ensue from its improper or insufficient treatment, should make a firm hesitate to advise any treatment for it which experience has not demonstrated to be at least as efficacious as that which is generally accepted and well proved. Succus Alterans is the result of a combination of circumstances; no one person is responsible for it. It was probably the natural desire for a remedy free from the occasional injurious results of mercury that led Dr. J. Marion Sims to advocate the use of a collection of indigenous American plant drugs, sarsaparilla, stillingia, xanthoxylum, etc., which had a local reputation for the cure of syphilis. These drugs are supposed to be inert when the dried plants were used, and this gave an opportunity for the development of a nostrum. The ingredients are well known, but as their virtues are supposed to be lost in drying, the physician can not have his druggist compound them, but must, perforce, prescribe the proprietary combination.
Those who consented to experiment with the new remedy soon found that the claims to curative properties were unfounded, but the strong commercial interests backing it have prolonged its life to the present time. Authorities on syphilis either say nothing about the preparation or mention it merely to condemn; but the proprietors of the nostrum continue to assert that it is not only practically a specific in syphilis, but now recommend it for various derangements of the blood and all sorts of skin diseases.
This being the case, what shall the wise physician do? Shall he blindly follow an authority of a past generation or shall he recognize that the claims of an interested manufacturer ought not to weigh against the consensus of his present-day confrères who have given the treatment of syphilis their special attention? The exploitation of such a preparation is deserving of strong censure. By such methods the firm places itself on the same plane as those nostrum venders, who advertise certain antiseptic sprays and gargles as cures for epidemic meningitis and diphtheria and thereby deprive credulous victims of the curative antitoxin treatment. Succus Alterans is not a new remedy on trial for its possibilities of improvement in therapeutics; it is an old mixture which has been tried and found wanting.—(From the Journal A. M. A., June 26, 1909.)