Analysis showed that the powders were an acetanilid mixture. The sample man didn't wait for the result. He hasn't been back to Rochester since, although Dr. Goler is hopefully awaiting him.
Bromo-Seltzer is commonly sold in drug stores, both by the bottle and at soda fountains. The full dose is "a heaping teaspoonful." A heaping teaspoonful of Bromo-Seltzer means about ten grains of acetanilid. The United States Pharmacopeia dose is four grains; five grains have been known to produce fatal results. The prescribed dose of Bromo-Seltzer is dangerous and has been known to produce sudden collapse.
Megrimine is a warranted headache cure that is advertised in several of the magazines. A newly arrived guest at a Long Island house party brought along several lots and distributed them as a remedy for headache and that tired feeling. It was perfectly harmless, she declared; didn't the advertisement say "leaves no unpleasant effects"? As a late dance the night before had left its impress on the feminine members of the house party, there was a general acceptance of the "bracer." That night the local physician visited the house party (on special "rush" invitation), and was well satisfied to pull all his patients through. He had never before seen acetanilid poisoning by wholesale. A Chicago druggist writes me that the wife of a prominent physician buys Megrimine of him by the half-dozen lots secretly. She has the habit.
On October 9, W. H. Hawkins, superintendent of the American Detective Association, a mar of powerful physique and apparently in good health, went to a drug store in Anderson, Ind., and took a dose of Dr. Davis' Headache Powders. He then boarded a car for Marion and shortly after fell to the floor, dead. The coroner's verdict is reproduced on page 35. Whether these powders are made by a Dr. W. C. Davis, of Indianapolis, who makes Anti-Headache, I am unable to state. Anti-Headache describes itself as "a compound of mild ingredients and positively contains no dangerous drugs." It is almost pure acetanilid.
In the "ethical" field the harm done by this class of proprietaries is perhaps as great as in the open field, for many of those which are supposed to be sold only in prescriptions are as freely distributed to the laity as Peruna. And their advertising is hardly different.
Antikamnia, claiming to be an "ethical" remedy, and advertising through the medical press by methods that would, with little alteration, fit any patent painkiller on the market, is no less dangerous or fraudulent than the Orangeine class which it almost exactly parallels in composition. It was at first exploited as a "new synthetical coal-tar derivative," which it isn't and never was. It is simply half or more acetanilid (some analyses show as high as 68 per cent.) with other unimportant ingredients in varying proportions. In a booklet entitled "Light on Pain," and distributed on doorsteps, I find under an alphabetical list of diseases this invitation to form the Antikamnia habit:
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"Nervousness (overwork and excesses)—Dose: One Antikamnia tablet every two or three hours.
"Shoppers' or Sightseers' Headache—Dose: Two Antikamnia tablets every three hours.
"Worry (nervousness, 'the blues')—Dose: One or two Antikamnia and Codein tablets every three hours."