Truly, Satan is appearing as an angel of light. What a gratification it is to the long exploited profession to know that Antikamnia contains no alcohol, no chloroform, no cannabis indica, no chloral hydrate. How unfortunate that this spontaneous display of confidence is not carried far enough to inform the profession of the ingredients, aside from phenacetin, contained in the mixture!
The label is an admission that the nostrum does not contain what it was never supposed to contain, with the exception of acetanilid, and is directly an attempt to conceal the real contents. The proprietors know that the dear public, whose “pains, headaches, neuralgias, women’s aches and ills, grippal neuroses, nervousness, insomnia, rheumatism, lightning pains of locomotor ataxia, sciatica, etc.,” they are longing to assuage, will not know that acetphenetidin is the official designation for what is popularly known as phenacetin, and that this dangerous product is found in the new mixture in the proportion of approximately 4 grains to a 5-grain tablet. Evidently they also presume considerably on the ignorance of our profession, or why should they make the brazen statement that four grains of phenacetin is the “most reliable remedy” for the long list of diseases enumerated on their advertising calendar?
A reduced reproduction of a full-page Antikamnia advertisement appearing in the New York World Almanac, 1911.
When the formula for which such wonderful virtues were claimed was suddenly thrown overboard, was the medical profession, which by its short-sighted patronage had built up this business, notified in any way of the change? Search the new advertising matter of this nostrum from beginning to end and you will not find one word to show that “The Antikamnia tablets in this original ounce package” differ in the slightest particular from those sold to the profession and the public for years past. This being true (and the statements of the promoters themselves are our authority for it), what remains of the pratings of “honor” and the “guarantee of the manufacturers”? Has a physician no right to know when a change is made in the formula of a preparation which he has been prescribing for years?
What assurance has the profession that, at any moment, a cheaper or more dangerous drug may not be substituted for “acetphenetidin” if thereby the law can be evaded or the profits of the delectable business enhanced?
How can any conscientious physician prescribe, for those who confide their lives to his care, a preparation the stability of the formula of which must depend absolutely on its owner’s whim?
How can a physician with the slightest sense of responsibility to his patients allow his office to be used as a free advertising bureau for a preparation manifestly founded and developed on deceit and misrepresentation?
How can any medical journal, except those avowedly and unblushingly seeking to aid the nostrum maker to exploit the profession, whose interests they claim to serve, continue to carry the deceptive and misleading advertisement of a twice exposed fraud?
How can any physician with a particle of self-respect or manhood continue to support, by subscription or contribution, any medical journal which, by accepting such advertising, allies itself with the army of deceit and chicanery?—(Abstracted from The Journal A. M. A., Jan. 26, 1907.)