An inquiry of the kind is, from the analytical point of view, tedious and often difficult; for though the analytical chemist can easily and quickly identify the nature of inorganic salts in a mixture or powder, and estimate their amount, most vegetable drugs which exert any appreciable effect on the body owe their power to the presence of an alkaloid or glucoside. The active principle of opium, for instance, is morphine; that of cinchona bark, quinine; that of belladonna, atropine, and so on, and the chemist can recognise any alkaloids present in a mixture or pill. It is otherwise, however, with vegetable extracts and colouring matters, for which pharmaceutical science has not yet been able in all cases to supply easily applicable and conclusive tests, because for the most part they contain no active principle and are used in pharmacy for their agreeable odour or bitter taste, as vanilla or sorrel are used in cookery. Of the accuracy of the analytical data published there can be no question; the investigation has been carried out with great care by a skilled analytical chemist, who has controlled his results in various ways, one being that in every doubtful case the formula obtained by analysis has been tested by making it up and comparing the appearance, taste, and physical properties of the imitative mixture with those of the secret preparation sold to the public.
The articles in this volume have not been confined to a mere dry statement of the results of analysis. Care has been taken to reproduce the claims and exuberant boasts of the vendors, and the contrast between them and the list of banal ingredients which follow must strike every reader. This juxtaposition of analytical facts and advertising fancies is instructive and sometimes entertaining, the fancy is so free and the fact so simple.
It must not be assumed that the concoctors of these mixtures and powders and ointments show any particular skill in the compounding of drugs. On the contrary, they appear curiously indifferent to taste and appearance, and perhaps count on the belief, common among the poorer classes at least, that the nastier a drug the more effective it is. There is, at any rate, the excuse for this belief that the effort to subdue the repugnance to the draught produces a glow of virtue which may perhaps have a certain stimulating effect on the mind; the patient having not only spent his money but suffered some discomfort, is anxious to justify his faith by assuming himself to be the better for the double sacrifice.
It is not, however, only the poorer classes of the community who have a weakness for secret remedies and the ministration of quacks; the well-to-do and the highly-placed will often, when not very ill, take a curious pleasure in experimenting with mysterious compounds. In them it is perhaps to be traced to a hankering to break safely with orthodoxy; they scrupulously obey the law and the Church and Mrs. Grundy, but will have their fling against medicine. Usually, however, people of these classes take to some system. It used to be electricity or hypnotism or some eccentricity of diet; nowadays it is more often Christian Science.
Judging from the relative number of secret remedies advertised for different complaints, it would seem that the most attractive fields for exploitation by the “patent” medicine man are afforded by those diseases which are widely prevalent, and sufficiently serious to cause considerable suffering and incapacity, inasmuch as such disorders lend themselves to sensational descriptions of the dire consequences which will follow if the one and only real and certain cure is not purchased.
The estimates of cost given throughout the volume refer only to the ingredients, the prices of the various drugs being those quoted in an ordinary wholesale drug list, and take no account of the cost of bottles, boxes, wrappings and packages, very often a much more serious source of expenditure. The stamp duty levied by the Inland Revenue under an old Act of Parliament must also be taken into consideration, but, ostensibly at least, it is paid by the purchaser, for the full price of a nostrum is usually 1s. 1½d. or 2s. 9d. and so on, the extra 1½d. or 3d. representing the value of the stamp. “Store prices” have, however, invaded this, like most other fields of enterprise.
CHAPTER I.
CATARRH AND COLD CURES.
The analyses here given of some of the proprietary articles which the public are induced to buy for the cure of ordinary colds and catarrh furnish a good example of the absurdity of the barefaced pretensions in which nostrum mongers indulge, for minor ailments are by no means neglected by the makers of nostrums; if the price to be obtained is somewhat lower than in the case of more serious disorders the cost price can be reduced in an equal or greater proportion. Alarming accounts, too, of the evils to be expected if resort be not had to the advertised articles are not wanting. Thus, in the advertisement of one of the articles described below, it is stated that catarrh “invariably creates biliousness, constipation, pleurisy, asthma, bronchitis, catarrhal fever, and consumption”; also that “it is estimated that over 20,000 people died in the United Kingdom last year of consumption caused by catarrh.” The remedy put forward for this malignant disease is shown by analysis to consist of a solution of a pinch of common salt with a trace of carbolic acid, the actual cost of the quantity sold for a shilling being one-thirtieth part of a farthing. The probability that many people would regard a slight cold in the head as not requiring a resort to a “specialist in chronic disease in every form” such as the proprietor of this preparation, is turned to account by a disparaging reference to the medical profession. “Catarrh,” we are told, “in its chronic form (and the complaints arising from it) is a malady which has not, up to the present time, received that attention and research from the medical faculty which it deserves. Most practitioners have given it merely a passing thought, or poohed at it as a mere cold which would soon pass off, and perhaps give some light tonic to tone up the stomach.” Another of the “remedies” described well illustrates the way in which the public is deluded by such “specialists”; camphor, quinine and ipecacuanha are frequently employed as domestic remedies in the early stages of a cold in the head, and persons who believe in their usefulness can no doubt be induced to buy a “cold cure” which professes to contain them in combination with other drugs, presented in a form convenient and agreeable to be taken; but in the tablets which are represented as consisting of cascara, bromide, quinine, ipecacuanha, camphor and bryonia, analysis did not reveal any appreciable traces of cascara, bromide, quinine, ipecacuanha, or camphor. The principal ingredients actually present were cinchonine, an alkaloid found in the bark from which quinine is prepared but cheaper than quinine, and acetanilide, a chemical better known under the name antifebrin, both in very small doses.
Many proprietary medicines of varied kinds are recommended for colds among a host of other complaints for which they are stated to possess curative powers. Apart, however, from such inclusive recommendations, a considerable number are put forward expressly and primarily for cold and catarrh, and it is a selection of these which is here described.