“A woman has a headache and she uses one of these remedies. It relieves the pain. When she has another attack she uses it again and again with the same result. After a while she finds the usual amount of the remedy does not cure the pain. She uses two portions, and so the habit is formed until absolute danger is confronted. For one thing must not be forgotten: these remedies are powerful, for if they were not they would be of no effect. They are in certain doses deadly; they depress the nervous system; they disturb the digestion; they interfere with natural sleep; they require to be used in increasingly larger quantities as the system becomes accustomed to their use; they are almost without exception excreted by the kidneys, thus adding an additional burden to organs already badly overworked. They produce a habit of gaining relief which becomes an obsession and incapable of being [resisted.”]
It may be asked, “How is it if these mixtures are harmful only, that so many people profess to have received benefit from [them?”] There are different reasons for this.
1. The nature of such drugs as alcohol, opium and cocaine is to benumb sensation, so that pain is stilled, and the pain, or functional disturbance forgotten for the time, because the nerves are drugged into insensibility. The person feels better while under the influence of the drug, so thinks it is benefiting him.
2. There are people who imagine they have diseases which they do not have; since trained physicians occasionally err in diagnosis, it is not strange if the laity should do likewise. Such persons are always ready to aver that a certain medicine “cured” them.
A ludicrous example of this is a woman out West, whose picture graces the advertisements of a certain nostrum, accompanied by a testimonial that said nostrum cured her of a “polypus”! Upon being written to as to how such a preparation could effect such a cure, she answered that, after giving the testimonial, she found that she had not had a polypus!
3. Some of the cures attributed to drugs, are doubtless due to Nature. It is estimated that from 30 to 90 per cent. of ailments are cured by Nature, unassisted, and often in spite of, the drugs swallowed. Many of the books advertising these remedies (?) give excellent rules of health, which, if followed, would restore persons to vigor more speedily without the accompanying medicine, than they can be restored while the system has the poisonous drugs to throw off. It may be reasonably assumed that a goodly number of recoveries ascribed to drug treatments are due, in reality, to the resisting force of a good constitution, or to obedience to the laws of health given in the circular.
4. It is not uncommon for people suffering from certain diseases to have temporary remissions in the course of the disease. No doubt, some of the cases reported as cures are such spontaneous remissions, which are followed, after the testimonials have been written, by relapse. The majority of people are ignorant of the natural course of diseases—of what happens when no treatment is taken. They do not know that a great many affections are characterized by periods of apparent recovery. For instance in some varieties of paralysis, as well as in consumption, the sufferer may to appearance recover completely for a few months or longer; if a remedy was being used at the time, it would naturally get the credit of causing the favorable change.
However, all of the glowing testimonials of wonderful benefits accruing from patent medicines are not what they seem to be. Dr. J. H. Kellogg says in his Monitor of Health:—
“The average manufacturer of patent medicines regularly employs a person of some literary attainment whose duty it is to invent vigorous testimonials of sufferings relieved by Dr. Charlatan’s universal panacea. In many instances persons are hired to give testimonials, and answer letters of inquiry in such a way as to encourage business. The shameless dishonesty and ingenious villainy exhibited are beyond description.”