A physician whose name the Intravenous Chemical Company had given as a user of Intravenous Compound (Loffler) was written to by another physician who was interested in the matter and he was asked frankly for his opinion. He replied in part:
“The treatment makes a profound impression on the recipient and is usually followed by a marked improvement mentally, and I have not been keen enough to draw the line of just how far the physical or material improvement went and when the psychical began.
“For the office ‘specialist’ of the advertising type this would be a boon, but I am not entirely satisfied that its use completely justifies its claims.”
SUMMARY
Intravenous Compound (Loffler) stands revealed as a nostrum of secret composition which physicians are asked to inject into the veins of their patients. It must be purchased in connection with some supplementary material, “a complete set of apparatus,” sold by the same concern. Its successful administration is said to depend on following a technic detailed either in a booklet sent out by Loffler or given by Loffler in a “Post-graduate Course” which costs physicians $50 unless they have purchased six dollars’ worth of another nostrum, “Thymozene.”
The intravenous administration of drugs is impressive. To the patient the technic is mysterious and its psychic effect striking. Its dangers—infection, air embolism, intravascular clotting, sudden death—are matters of record. Every conservative physician will admit that there is no excuse for the intravenous administration of even those drugs that are well known and whose effects have been carefully studied, except when distinct advantages are to be secured. As The Journal has stated before, “Little is known of the results to be expected from intravenous therapy even with simple substances.”
What, then, can be said of the physician who subjects his patients to the intravenous injection—“at from $3 to $5 each, according to the ability of the patient to pay”—of a preparation of whose composition he is as ignorant as he must be of its effects? Intravenous Compound (Loffler) has been on the market ten years; it is unmentioned in the literature of scientific medicine. The name of its exploiter, while not unknown in the twilight zone of professionalism as the exploiter of a nostrum, as a “Specialist” in “Chronic Troubles” and “Intravenous Therapy,” as well as in other capacities even less savory, is equally unknown to scientific medicine.—(From The Journal A. M. A., Nov. 12, 1921.)
INTRAVENOUS SPECIALTIES
To the Editor:—There is a salesman here in Salt Lake City making extravagant claims about the medicines advertised in the enclosed pamphlet. Would you kindly advise me as to your opinion of it?