It is to be regretted that the progress of research should be hindered and the value of genuine products of internal secretion be depreciated by confusion with such shotgun mixtures and asserted remedies, whose claims have received no scientific confirmation.—(From The Journal A. M. A., Nov. 1, 1913.)
TYREE’S ANTISEPTIC POWDER[AQ]
Now Advertised Direct to the Public as the “Best Preventative Known”
When the history of the “patent medicine” business comes to be written impartially and fairly, it will be realized that we, the medical profession, have been in no small degree responsible for its growth. Not a few widely advertised nostrums owe their commercial success solely to the ill considered use accorded them by physicians, to whom they were first exploited. As a well-known and brilliant advertising man once said:
“The patent medicine of the future is one that will be advertised only to doctors. Some of the most profitable remedies of the present time are of this class. They are called proprietary remedies. The general public never hears of them through the daily press. All their publicity is secured through the medical press, by means of the manufacturer’s literature, sometimes gotten out in the shape of a medical journal, and through samples to doctors.... The medical papers will reap the harvest and the physician himself, always so loud in the denunciation of ‘patent medicines,’ will be the most important medium of advertising at the command of the proprietary manufacturer. In fact, he is that to-day.”
Advertisement from a newspaper—Tyree’s Powder as a “Patent Medicine” of the “Preventive” Type.
Of the conditions here described probably no better example can be found than Tyree’s Antiseptic Powder. For years this preparation was advertised to the medical profession under claims that were fraudulent as to both composition and therapeutic effect. Analysis published in The Journal[125] proved that the formula given out by Tyree was absolutely false and that the preparation was, essentially, nothing but a simple mixture of sulphate of zinc and boric acid.