The Great American Fraud / The Patent Medicine Evil

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

A PECULIAR "ETC."

A great show of frankness was recently made by a certain "patent medicine." The makers advertised that they had concluded to take the public into their confidence, and that thereafter they would print a formula of the medicine on each bottle manufactured.

"There is nothing secretive about our medicine," was the cry. "We have nothing to hide. Here is the formula. Show it to your physician."

Then comes the formula: This herb and that herb, this ingredient and that ingredient, and the formula winds up, "etc." All good, old-fashioned, well recognized drugs were those which were mentioned—all except the "etc."

A certain Board of Pharmacy had never heard of a drug called "etc.," and so made up Its mind to find out.

And the "etc." was found to be 3.76 per cent of cocain!—just the simple, death-dealing cocain!—From The Ladies' Home Journal, February, 1906.