Unwarranted Therapeutic Claims (Rule 6).—Libradol is recommended in a great variety of conditions and is especially claimed not only to relieve pain, but to remove the cause of pain. This is explained as follows: “In the study of the physiological action of many drugs, it was found that the constituent remedies in this combination exercised a most salutary influence, not only upon the sensibility of the nerves involved, but upon the capillary circulation within the diseased area, the muscular structures therein included, and, subsequently, upon the course of the advancement of the congestive and inflammatory processes, and upon secretion, exudation, adhesion, induration, hypertrophy, suppuration and excretion.”
Granting, for the sake of argument, that carefully controlled experimental clinical evidence were available to substantiate this statement with reference to a single case of pain, the statement would be misleading when considered as a general explanation of the preparation’s relieving pain by removing the cause of pain when taken in connection with the conditions for which it is recommended and in which pain is even a minor symptom. Still, if pain were relieved in these cases by removing the cause, the patient would be cured of the conditions which give rise to the pain, and these include: “Acute pain in the chest;... acute inflammation in the chest;... persistent local pain;...” (This might be interpreted as including tuberculosis; pneumonia; cancer, and appendicitis.) “lumbago; sciatica; articular rheumatism” (gonorrheal infections?).
Name (Rule 8).—The name, derived from Dolar and Liber, suggests the claimed action of the preparation (the relief of pain) rather than the drugs said to be presented by it.
Irrational Composition (Rule 10).—It is quite possible that Libradol will relieve pain in certain instances and that the drug constituents present in Libradol “Regular” make this more effective than “Libradol Mild” which is “destitute of drug energy”; this, however, is no justification for the use by physicians of a cataplasm containing or made from skunk cabbage, bloodroot, ipecac, melaleuca (oil of cajeput?), lobelia, laurus comphora (camphor?), capsicum and tobacco. The combination is thoroughly irrational and a reminder of a past century. Further, the Council knows of no evidence to support the following claims:
“As a stimulant Capsicum has the power of neutralizing depressant remedies like Lobelia and Tobacco.”
“Our association of its desirable constituents with those of Lobelia, in connection with the modifying influence of Capsicum, Melaleuca, and Laurus Camphora, permits a more free use in Libradol than would be possible were it to be employed alone.”
“Capsicum, Melaleuca, and Laurus Camphora in Libradol tend to counteract the excessive relaxative and depressant effects of Lobelia.”
“The great value of Melaleuca in Libradol is its quality of modifying and controlling the action of the associated energetic constituents of the drugs Tobacco and Lobelia, which reduce congestion and inflammation, but which would, unsupported, be too depressant.”
Libradol is inadmissible to New and Nonofficial Remedies because its composition is complex, irrational and semi-secret, and because its name and the unwarranted therapeutic recommendations made for it will lead to its ill-advised use.—(From Reports of Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry, 1920, p. 65.)