TONGALINE AND PONCA COMPOUND
Report of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry
The Council, having considered “Tongaline,” “Tongaline Tablets,” “Tongaline and Lithia Tablets,” “Tongaline and Quinine Tablets” and “Ponca Compound Tablets,” found these preparations ineligible for New and Nonofficial Remedies and authorized publication of the following report.
W. A. Puckner, Secretary.
TONGALINE
Tongaline (Mellier Drug Co., St. Louis) is a fancy name given to what is essentially a sodium salicylate mixture. The air of mystery created by the name permits the manufacturers to make claims for the product which would be ludicrous if the medical profession was fully conversant with the very ordinary character of the preparation.
Tongaline receives its name from tonga, an inert, long-discarded mixture of various barks and herbs said to be gathered and prepared by Fiji Islanders. Its constituents evidently tend to vary with the collector. The history of the introduction of this indefinite combination of simples is thus given in The Journal, May 10, 1913.
“A supply of the crude drug was carried to England by a man who had lived for a short time in the Fiji Islands and it was placed in the hands of a retail house in London. This occurred about 1879. In 1880, two English physicians of repute published laudatory articles on the therapeutic value of tonga in neuralgia and rheumatism. This created a demand for the drug which extended to the United States.”
Time showed that tonga was inert therapeutically, and authorities on pharmacology now no longer notice it. As the Council previously reported,[12] the indefinite character of the mixture should, alone, be sufficient to exclude it from practical therapeutics. During the temporary popularity of tonga, the proprietary mixture Tongaline was put on the market for physicians’ use by the Mellier Drug Company, St. Louis. In this, tonga was named as the active ingredient. The commercial interests thus involved have faithfully nourished and kept alive the “tonga” myth.