The letter head of the Expurgo Manufacturing Co. Note the claim that Expurgo Anti-Diabetes is “the only positive cure for diabetes.” And this stuff is foisted on the profession through the medical press!
“The specimen of Expurgo Anti-Diabetes (Sanol Anti-Diabetes) examined, was a light-brown, opaque liquid, having a faintly aromatic odor and bitter taste. The specimen contained considerable amounts of brown, insoluble residue resembling the deposits often found in fluid extracts. The absence of ammonium salts, iodids, glycerin, hexamethylenamin, of antipyrin, pyramidon and similar substances and of such purgatives as aloes, frangula, rhubarb, etc., was indicated. Potent alkaloids such as aconitin, cocain, morphin and strychnin were not found. Qualitative tests indicated the presence of traces of phosphates, sulphates, reducing sugars, caffein and cinchona alkaloids. Alcohol was present only in traces. Small quantities of chlorids, sodium and a salicylate were found. The residue on drying amounted to 2.9 gm. in each 100 c.c. A determination of the salicylic acid indicated approximately 0.17 gm. in each 100 c.c., which is equivalent to less than 0.2 gm. of sodium salicylate per 100 c.c. (about 1 grain to the ounce). Evidently the preparation contains plant extractives in aqueous solution and small amounts of sodium salicylate and sodium chlorid.”
Summed up, the chemist’s report shows that Expurgo Anti-Diabetes is essentially a watery solution of plant extractives with small quantities of sodium salicylate and salt. The exploiters claim their stuff contains the fruit and bark of jambul, rosemary, star anise and fluid extract of calamus, cinchona, cola, condurango, and gentian. Since fluidextracts in general are strongly alcoholic and since the laboratory’s analysis shows that the preparation contains only traces of alcohol, the fluidextracts of the various drugs, if present at all, must be in an infinitesimal amount.
Jambul was in vogue as a remedy for diabetes about twenty years ago. It was tried and found wanting, and has long since been relegated to the therapeutic scrap heap. Sanol, therefore, is but one more proprietary humbug, foisted on the profession under fraudulent claims, and having for its essential constituent a drug that has long been discarded by scientific men and resurrected for the purposes of quackery. Expurgo will probably be used by uncritical and unthinking physicians and its existence will be artificially prolonged through the venality of pseudo-medical journals. That the medical profession should tolerate such an evident fraud is not to its credit. There is no excuse, either moral or otherwise, for a physician giving his patients nostrums of whose composition he is ignorant, and that is what is done whenever Expurgo Anti-Diabetes is prescribed.—(From The Journal A. M. A., Jan. 24, 1914.)
FORMAMINT
The Profession to Be Worked Again
Formamint Tablets are widely advertised and extravagantly exploited to the laity in Great Britain. Large and expensive advertisements appear in the English magazines and newspapers and the tablets are pushed under the most preposterous claims. The preparation is put out, we understand, by the same concern that exploits Sanatogen. The medical profession of this country is now being circularized and advertisements are appearing in medical journals. They already appear in the Medical Record, New York Medical Journal and American Journal of Clinical Medicine.