TRYPSOGEN
Besides exploiting a clay poultice—“Antithermoline”—the G. W. Carnrick Company appears to be chiefly concerned in the promotion of “internal secretion” specialties; a class of preparations the therapeutic value of which is problematical. Thus it markets the diabetes remedy, “Trypsogen” tablets, said to contain “the enzyme of the islands of Langerhans with the tryptic and amylolytic ferments of the pancreas” along with gold bromid and arsenic bromid; Secretogen Elixir, said to be “prepared from gastric secretin obtained from the pyloric antrum and pancreatic secretin from the duodenum, combined with the enzymes of the peptic glands, and one-twentieth of one per cent. HCl”; Secretogen Tablets, said to be “prepared from prosecretin and succus entericus obtained from the epithelial cells of the duodenum, combined with pancreatic extract”; Kinazyme, “a preparation of extract of spleen, reinforced with trypsin, amylopsin and calcium lactate.”
While great claims have been made for Trypsogen and while it has been most widely advertised, it is the consensus of opinion of the most eminent students of the question that pancreas is not really efficacious in diabetes. Were it of any value in this disease, it would have won world-wide recognition for itself ere now, in view of the great enthusiasm with which the discovery of the relation of the pancreas to diabetes was received and of the enormous amount of clinical, as well as animal, experimentation that followed. As the conditions of experiment in this question are extremely complex, it is not surprising that occasionally apparently positive results should have been obtained. Were it really useful, it should have yielded positive results much more uniformly.
Furthermore, if pancreas were really efficacious in the treatment of diabetes mellitus, the addition of arsenic, of gold, of bromid would be entirely unnecessary.
Even were it granted that pancreas extracts are valuable in the treatment of diabetes, and that gold and arsenic also have beneficial effects, it is our opinion that Trypsogen should be considered an unscientific shotgun mixture, because fixed combinations of remedies of different potencies, such as arsenic, gold, bromid and pancreas, are therapeutically erroneous, as they do not permit of that accurate adjustment of dosage of each ingredient that is indispensable to obtain maximum benefit with minimum danger of poisoning.
Antithermoline and Trypsogen were at one time described in New and Nonofficial Remedies. These preparations were omitted when the Council’s rules were revised some years ago.
When the Council was first organized it undertook only the correction of the most serious abuses that had become a part of the proprietary medicine business, and paid less attention to the therapeutic worth of a remedy; thus at that time it admitted both Antithermoline and Trypsogen to New and Nonofficial Remedies. Since then the Council has modified its rules to exclude unscientific mixtures marketed under names that are misleading or therapeutically suggestive. Accordingly it rescinded the acceptance of Antithermoline, which was essentially the official clay poultice, Cataplasma Kaolini, U. S. P. For similar reasons and because the therapeutic claims were held unwarranted Trypsogen has been omitted from New and Nonofficial Remedies.
It is to be regretted that the progress of research should be hindered and the value of genuine products of internal secretion be depreciated by confusion with such shotgun mixtures and asserted remedies, whose claims have received no scientific confirmation.—(From The Journal A. M. A., Nov. 1, 1913.)
TYREE’S ANTISEPTIC POWDER[AQ]
Now Advertised Direct to the Public as the “Best Preventative Known”
When the history of the “patent medicine” business comes to be written impartially and fairly, it will be realized that we, the medical profession, have been in no small degree responsible for its growth. Not a few widely advertised nostrums owe their commercial success solely to the ill considered use accorded them by physicians, to whom they were first exploited. As a well-known and brilliant advertising man once said:
“The patent medicine of the future is one that will be advertised only to doctors. Some of the most profitable remedies of the present time are of this class. They are called proprietary remedies. The general public never hears of them through the daily press. All their publicity is secured through the medical press, by means of the manufacturer’s literature, sometimes gotten out in the shape of a medical journal, and through samples to doctors.... The medical papers will reap the harvest and the physician himself, always so loud in the denunciation of ‘patent medicines,’ will be the most important medium of advertising at the command of the proprietary manufacturer. In fact, he is that to-day.”
Advertisement from a newspaper—Tyree’s Powder as a “Patent Medicine” of the “Preventive” Type.
Of the conditions here described probably no better example can be found than Tyree’s Antiseptic Powder. For years this preparation was advertised to the medical profession under claims that were fraudulent as to both composition and therapeutic effect. Analysis published in The Journal[125] proved that the formula given out by Tyree was absolutely false and that the preparation was, essentially, nothing but a simple mixture of sulphate of zinc and boric acid.
From the first it would seem that the manufacturers of this mixture had for their objective point that period when, thanks to the use of the nostrum by physicians, it would be widely purchased by the public. Lavish advertising was done in medical journals and Tyree’s Antiseptic Powder gained admission to the pages of even those journals which required the publication of a “formula”—for a formula was forthcoming. The Journal itself, until seven years ago, carried the advertisements with a “formula” until chemical examination proved the falsity of the formula, and of the therapeutic claims made for the product. The medical profession in its turn prescribed the nostrum and the “original package” scheme did the rest.
Advertisement from Medical Journal—Tyree’s Powder as a Highly Respectable “Ethical Proprietary.”
Now, it seems, Tyree considers his preparation so well known that he can be independent either of the assistance of the physician or of his good-will. For Tyree’s powder now goes to the public direct and newspaper readers find it advertised as:
“Ideal for douche.”
“Unequalled as a douche.”
“Best preventative known.”
“Unequalled as a preventative.”
“Has no equal as a preventative.”
And the following, whose very truth must bring the blush of shame to all physicians who have the interest of scientific medicine at heart:
“Prescribed by physicians all over the world for twenty-one years.”
“Ask your doctor or send for booklet.”
“Used by doctors for the last twenty-one years.”
“One of the highest tributes paid Tyree’s Antiseptic Powder is the fact that the most successful physicians have been using it for the last twenty-one years.”
Not that Tyree has entirely forsaken the medical journals, although he seems to be dropping them one by one. At the beginning of this year at least fifteen medical journals were carrying the Tyree advertisement; by March the number had fallen to seven, while in June the only journals carrying it were:
| Medical Record | Chicago Medical Recorder |
| American Journal of Obstetrics | Pacific Medical Journal |
Those who answer the newspaper advertisements receive a free sample of the powder and several leaflets and circulars giving the various uses (?) of the nostrum. Incidentally these leaflets advertise, in addition, Tyree’s “Elixir Buchu and Hyoscyamus Comp.,” which is recommended, in various combinations, for such conditions as acute nephritis, epilepsy, neurasthenia, gonorrhea and delirium tremens.
Bearing in mind the claim that is made in the newspaper advertisements that Tyree’s Antiseptic Powder is the “best preventative” known, it is interesting to see what Tyree has to say to those druggists whom he offers to supply with circulars for free distribution:
“As these circulars deal with the care of rubber goods, for both medicinal and toilet purposes, they are of great value to the customer and will be retained for further reference. They are boosters for your rubber goods sales, too.”
That a nostrum of this sort should go to the public is not surprising, but that it should have reached the public through the instrumentality of the medical profession is a serious reflection on the judgment of physicians. But the incident has a bright side. That the exploiters of this nostrum no longer find it profitable to use medical journals as a means of getting their stuff to the public but must needs use the more expensive newspaper advertising, is cause for optimism. It means that physicians are no longer prescribing, indiscriminately, proprietary products and that they are refusing to be, what they have been in the past, the unpaid distributing agents for nostrum venders.—(From The Journal A. M. A., Aug. 24, 1912.)