“The stock of Bayer & Co. (Inc.) and of Synthetic Patents Co. was sold by me at public auction, the successful bidder being the Sterling Products Co., a West Virginia corporation dealing in proprietary medicines. This company had previously agreed to dispose of the dye plant and patents, in case it secured the property, to Grasselli Chemical Co., one of the largest makers of heavy chemicals in the country. The price paid was $5,310,000, plus back taxes and other obligations of many hundred thousands more.”
After the Sterling Products Company had acquired the pharmaceutical end of the business, the Winthrop Chemical Co. was incorporated in the state of New York. This concern seemingly secured control of all the Bayer pharmaceutical specialties except “Aspirin.” The Bayer Co., it was announced, had been merged with the Sterling Products Co., and “Aspirin-Bayer” added to the latter firm’s list of “patent medicines”: Cascarets, Danderine, Pape’s Diapepsin, California Syrup of Figs, Neuralgine and Dodson’s Livertone. The business is apparently a paying one financially as witness the following excerpt from a recent announcement in a drug journal:
“Stockholders of the Sterling Products Co., Inc., of Wheeling, manufacturers of Neuralgine, Cascarets, Bayer’s Aspirin, and other well known products, and the largest proprietary medicine organization in the world, at their annual meeting received a report of Manager W. E. Weiss, which showed that the company did a $10,000,000 business in 1920. The total profits were $2,100,000, while a total of $1,080,000 was paid out in dividends.
Just what relationship exists between the Winthrop Chemical Co., and the Sterling Products Co., we do not know. As our correspondent points out, the “Bayer Cross” is used on the label of the Winthrop products.
The advertising campaign of “Aspirin, Bayer” since it entered the “patent medicine” field has been typical of that field. By half truths and inferential falsehoods the public has been led to believe that the only genuine aspirin on the market is that put out under the Bayer name. The facts are, of course, that the aspirin of any reputable firm is just as good as the aspirin put out by the makers of Livertone, Danderine and Cascarets.
There is one point, however, that is of vital importance to the medical profession; The decision recently rendered in the United States District Court of Southern New York makes it obligatory for druggists, when filling a physician’s prescription calling for “aspirin,” to dispense the Bayer product. When the public buys aspirin on its own responsibility—without specifying any particular brand—the druggist may give the purchaser any make of acetylsalicylic acid he sees fit. To repeat what was said in The Journal’s comment on this decision: “Unless a physician wishes to cater to the concern owning the Bayer rights and to aid in perpetuating what was a monopoly for seventeen years, he should be careful to prescribe the drug under the term ‘acetylsalicylic acid,’ The court now places the responsibility directly on the medical profession. Avoid ‘aspirin’—write ‘acetylsalicylic acid.’—(From The Journal A. M. A., June 11, 1921.)
THE ALLIED MEDICAL ASSOCIATIONS OF AMERICA
Another Rocket in the Pyrotechnics of Quasimedical Organizations
It was once said, in the days when diploma mills flourished, that it seemed easier to start a “university” than it was to open a grog shop. A study of quasimedical organizations convinces one that it is easier to found a “medical society” than it is to establish a peanut stand. Most reputable practitioners of medicine who care to affiliate themselves with medical organizations are members of the American Medical Association, its component societies, or similar scientific bodies. It is not surprising then, that those who live and move in the twilight zone of professionalism, from visionaries riding bizarre medical hobbies to those who have special interests to exploit, should create and make use of hybrid medical organizations. Such organizations multiply as rapidly as rabbits. They flourish for a while, obtain more or less newspaper and other publicity—usually more, because of the sensational methods of those controlling them—then, having served the purpose of those who brought them into being, they lapse into innocuous desuetude.