The Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry examined the literature relating to cactus and certain proprietary preparations, including Cactina Pillets, alleged to be made from cactus, and has reported the results of its investigation (J. A. M. A. 54:888 [March 12] 1910) and we will quote from that report.
“The therapeutic value of this plant has been variously estimated by different observers. Experimental evidence as to its action is scanty and no complete chemical examination has ever been made.
“Reputable men have testified that some of the plants of the cactus family contain very active principles, but so far experiments seem to prove that Cactus grandiflorus has neither the action of digitalis nor that of strychnin. The principal contributions, clinical and experimental, for and against the drug are set out below.”
Typical advertisements of “Cactina Pillets” from the Medical Record and New York Medical Journal, respectively.
The report then proceeds to analyze the work of O. H. Myers, R. A. Hatcher, Boinet and Boy-Teissier, Sayre, Gordon Sharp, S. A. Matthews, P. W. Williams, Aulde and Ellingwood, and comes to conclusions that are set forth as follows, in brief:
1. It is uncertain what part of the plant contains the active principle, if any such principle exists.
2. Part of the experimental and clinical work has been published under proprietary auspices.
3. The value of clinical evidence when unsupported by animal experimentation is much diminished by the tendency of enthusiastic and untrained observers to attribute to the drug given the effect really due to general remedial measures, psychic suggestion and so forth.
In other words, the literature does not afford a report of a single piece of careful painstaking work the results of which lend support to the claims made for Cactina Pillets as stated above, for it is obvious that if Cactus grandiflorus contains no active principle, no active principle can be extracted from it. Some time after the report of the Council was published, Hatcher and Bailey secured genuine Cactus grandiflorus directly from a competent botanist, Dr. C. A. Purpus, of Vera Cruz, Mexico, and studied it experimentally. They reported (J. A. M. A. 56:26 [Jan. 7] 1911) in part as follows: