From the analysis it is concluded that “hydrocyanate of iron (Tilden)” is essentially a mixture of approximately equal parts of talc and Prussian blue, containing traces of organic matter having the general properties of alkaloids.
Comment: When a firm exploits an abandoned remedy for so hopeless a disease as epilepsy under a name not known to chemistry and with a false representation of its pharmacologic qualities, such action may rightly be assumed to show ignorance or worse. “Hydrocyanate of iron,” if it means anything, means the cyanid of iron, but the preparation put out under that name is, according to our chemists, not cyanid of iron, but the ferrocyanid of iron commonly known as Prussian blue. This substance has been tried for epilepsy and abandoned. Yet the firm recommends it as a “peerless remedy” for this disease:
“The Tilden Company holds the key to the situation in the treatment of epilepsy. We have the remedy that does the work.”
Not that epilepsy is the only disease for which this hypothetical chemical compound may be prescribed. Torticollis has been “successfully treated with hydrocyanate of iron.” In chorea, we are told “a richer and better blood supply” should be furnished the nervous and vascular system and “the irritation of the motor centers” must be allayed.
“Hydrocyanate of iron serves admirably to accomplish both of these purposes. It carries the hemoglobin to the blood in its most easily assimilable form and its hydrocyanic acid possesses remarkable sedative powers....”
It is not possible for it to have any value in anemia because of its insolubility, yet we are told:
“In conditions marked by poverty of the blood producing anemia or chlorosis, reacting on the nervous system and calling for a chalybeate, hydrocyanate of iron (Tilden’s) takes a front rank among the remedies of this class, combining as it does the blood enriching qualities of ferrum with the sedative action of hydrocyanic acid.”
As Prussian blue yields no appreciable quantity of hydrocyanic acid under the conditions existing in the animal organism, “the sedative action of hydrocyanic acid” must be as hypothetical as the chalybeate properties attributed to it.
It is strange that a manufacturer, in introducing a new chemical compound, should have to assure his customers that it “contains no opium or alkaloid of that drug, cocain, chloral hydrate, conium or any of the bromids.” Imagine a firm putting, let us say, potassium iodid—a definite chemical compound—on the market and solemnly guaranteeing that it contained no cocain or chloral hydrate!
Would the Tilden Company of twenty-five years ago have served such mental pabulum in its advertising matter?