“COLLOSOLS”: AN UNCRITICAL ENGLISH ENDORSEMENT

Under the auspices of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, there has just appeared a report on the present status of colloid chemistry.[247] The work has been recognized as sufficiently important to receive the endorsement of the government Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Of particular interest to physicians is the chapter on “Administration of Colloids in Disease” written by Alfred B. Searle, “consulting chemist, Sheffield.” After a somewhat academic generalization of colloidal drugs, the “thesis” is devoted largely to the “Collosols”—proprietary preparations made by the Crookes Laboratories. The “scientific” evidence presented by Searle for colloids in medicine reads as if the advertising literature of the Crookes concern had been considered ample source of information. Thus: “Colloidal Manganese,” besides having been “used with remarkable and surprising results in the treatment of coccogenic skin diseases,... gives excellent results [in impetigo, chronic seborrheic eczema and acute folliculitis] when employed in conjunction with intramine”! The grave danger of the intramine therapy has been known for more than two years, both here and abroad,[248] in fact, one author stated that in cases of intramine injections, “the pain is undiluted torture.” In a style as bombastic and verbose as the usual house-organ write-up, the report recklessly details all sorts of conditions in which so-called colloids—and particularly the “Collosol” brand—have been recommended, but derogatory findings are conspicuous by their omission. Even Sir Malcolm Morris is quoted as lending his name (and title) to the endorsement of “Collosols.”

In the United States the medical profession has created a means whereby physicians need not be misled by such “high” authorities as evidently has been the case with our English confrères. Once more the value of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry is strikingly manifested. What are the facts about “Collosols”? The Council has reported that a number of the “Collosol” preparations were not colloids at all, and “if ... injected intravenously as directed, death might result, making the physician morally if not legally liable”;[249] that in the cases in which the therapeutic claims were examined, the claims were found to be either exceedingly improbable or exaggerated; furthermore, that the A. M. A. Chemical Laboratory found “Collosol Cocaine,” on analysis, to contain only 40 per cent. of the claimed amount of cocain.[250]

Such are the findings which have been presented to the American physician. But the British physician is now being made the object of an intensive advertising campaign for “Collosols,” based in part on an uncritical, pseudo­governmental endorsement. Just so long as the English profession will not protect itself by creating a competent board to examine and judge proprietary medicines and to control methods of exploitation, just so long will such extravagant and even cruelly misleading claims continue to impede scientific progress in therapeutics.—(Editorial from The Journal A. M. A., Oct. 18, 1919.)

Collosol Manganese

To the Editor:—Has anything been published on the efficacy of “Collosol Manganese” in malaria? I recently read the Council’s report which indicated the fakishness of the “Crooke’s Collosols,” but I also was told that the War Office of England had requested a study to be made of colloidal manganese in malaria.

J. B., Columbus, Ohio.

Answer.—Stephens, Yorke, Blacklock, Macfie, Cooper and Carter report in the Annals of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology (Feb. 28, 1919, p. 345) the results of their investigation for the English government and conclude: “Collosol Manganese in the doses used is of no value in the treatment of simple tertian malaria.”—(Query in The Journal A. M. A., May 3, 1919.)