“It is an unexcelled restorative in that very common class of cases in which there is no positive organic disease, but the patient complains that he ‘does not feel well’ or ‘is out of sorts.’ ”
Here are some of the claims made in other advertising matter:
“All stages of bronchitis ... are rapidly improved by the use of Gray’s Glycerine Tonic Comp. This remedy has a direct tonic influence upon the circulation of the respiratory mucous membrane; it relieves congestion and restores tone to weakened blood vessels.”
“... improves the appetite, gives valuable aid to the digestive and absorptive processes, and reinforces cellular nutrition in ways that insure a notable gain in vitality and strength.”
This appeared in a journal owned and controlled by the second largest state medical association of the country.
Even granting that gentian may improve the appetite, how absurd it is to claim that this mixture “relieves congestion,” “restores tone to weakened blood vessels,” “gives aid to the absorptive processes,” “reinforces cellular nutrition,” or increases vitality!
Neither the composition of Gray’s Glycerine Tonic nor the clinical evidence warrants the belief that it has any therapeutic value other than that due to the psychic effect of the bitter drug gentian. Physicians who have prescribed it have done so because of the advertising. This nostrum has been kept so constantly before the eyes of medical men that they think of Gray’s Glycerine Tonic when they cannot remember the official drugs that may be indicated in the case. The moral is that liberal advertising will sell anything.
It is recommended that Gray’s Glycerine Tonic Comp. be declared not eligible for inclusion in New and Nonofficial Remedies on account of conflict with Rules 1, 6, 8 and 10.
[Editorial Note.—An old practice in hospitals—happily now practically obsolete—was to have certain stock mixtures prepared in bulk. Among these there was usually a so-called tonic mixture, used in a more or less haphazard manner when nothing in particular seemed indicated. Such a stock mixture was used in the State Hospital for the Insane at Utica, N. Y., during the many years that Dr. John P. Gray was superintendent (from the early fifties to the early eighties), although it is very doubtful whether he originated the mixture. After the death of Dr. Gray—so the story runs—one of his sons, with a partner, formed the firm of Purdue Frederick Company, and began the exploitation of the elder Dr. Gray’s name, in connection, presumably, with this stock preparation. As indicated in the Council’s report, Gray’s Glycerine Tonic Comp.—and what an absurd name!—is simply a mixture of ordinary drugs, requiring no skill whatever in compounding. If there is a physician living who cannot write a prescription offhand as good as this formula, that physician should either go back to a medical school or change his vocation. There is, and can be, no excuse for prescribing such a ready-made mixture, for every cross-roads drugstore has the ingredients and any pharmacist worthy of the name could compound it. Among the scores of nostrums that disgrace the medical profession of this country, none is more typical of all that is inimical to scientific medicine, to the medical profession and above all to the public—for, after all is said, it is the public that ultimately is humbugged.]—(From The Journal A. M. A., July 10, 1915.)