What are the motives which impel persons to buy and use patent medicines? The history of medicine offers a partial explanation. In somewhat remote times we find that the medicines in use by regular physicians were of the most vile, nauseating, and powerful nature. We read of "purging gently" with a teaspoonful of calomel. Then during the wonderful progress of scientific medicine, beginning a little more than a half century ago, the most illustrious and useful workers were so busily engaged in finding the causes of disease and the changes wrought in the various organs, in observing the noticeable symptoms and in classifying and diagnosticating them, that treatment was given but scant attention. This was nowhere more noticeable than in Germany, the birthplace, home, and world-center of scientific medicine, to which all the medical profession flocked. Patients became simply material which could be watched and studied. This was an exemplary spirit, but did not suit the patients who wanted to be treated and cured. This fact, together with the peculiar wording of the laws regulating the practice of medicine, which allow anyone with the exception of graduates to treat patients, but not to prescribe or operate upon them, accounts for the number of quacks in Germany.
Dr. Jacobi states that "there is one quack doctor to every two regular physicians in Saxony and Bavaria."[12]
Another cause for the use of patent medicines is mysticism. Ignorance is the mother of credulity. It is reported[13] that Cato, the elder, recommended cabbages as a panacea for all sorts of ills, that he treated dislocations of the limbs by incantations, and ordered the Greek physicians out of Rome. The ignorant are greatly influenced by things that they cannot understand. Therefore, as the mass of people are utterly ignorant of the changes in structure and function of the body caused by disease, and also the limitations of medicines in their power of healing such alterations, their belief in the mysterious power said to attach to patent medicines is not surprising. When testimonials of the efficacy of patent medicines purporting to come from respectable divines, merchants, and statesmen are offered, the proof of their power seems incontestable.
Economy and convenience are added incentives to the employment of patent medicines. This method of saving the doctor's fee is engendered by those physicians who themselves write prescriptions for nostrums. "Why not, indeed, eliminate this middleman (the doctor) and buy the nostrums direct?" So say the unthinking. But what doctor worthy of the name would prescribe a medicine the composition of which he was ignorant? Yet it is frequently done. As Dr. Cabot has so aptly put it, what would be thought of a banker or financial adviser who recommended his client to buy a security simply on the recommendation of the exploiter of the security? Yet that is exactly the position of a doctor who recommends a nostrum.
In view of the fact, therefore, that persons of undoubted intelligence are in the habit of purchasing and using remedies of this character and since many of the most widely advertised preparations are extremely harmful, even poisonous, we have taken the liberty of pointing out a few "danger signals," in the guise of extravagant assertions and impossible claims, which are characteristic signs of the patent medicines to be avoided.
DANGER SIGNALS.—There are many picturesque and easily grasped features in the literature, labels, and advertising of patent medicines that spell danger. When these features are seen, the medicine should be abandoned immediately, no matter what your friends tell you about it, or how highly recommended it may have been by others than your physician.
Claiming a Great Variety of Cures.—Perhaps of all features of patent medicine advertising, this is the most alluring. No one drug or combination of drugs, with possibly one or two exceptions, can or does "cure" any disease. Patients recover only when the resistance of the body is greater than the strength of the disease. This body resistance varies in different persons, and is never just alike in any two individuals or illnesses. The patient must be treated and not the disease, so it is the aim of every conscientious physician to conserve and strengthen the vital forces and, at the same time, guard against further encroachment of the disease. There is no cure-all, and even if a drug or combination of drugs were helpful in any single case, they might easily be totally unsuited, or even harmful, in another case, with apparently similar symptoms. When a maker claims that his particular concoction will cure a long list of diseases, the assertion bears on its face evidence of its falsity.
One of the most widely advertised and largely sold catarrh remedies claims to cure pneumonia, consumption, dyspepsia, enteritis, appendicitis, Bright's disease, heart disease, canker sores, and measles. This is absolute fraud. No matter what virtues this medicine might have in the treatment of one or two ailments, no one remedy could possibly be of service in such a varied list of diseases, and it could not "cure" one of them.
Another remedy bases its assertion of "cures" on the fact that it claims to be a germ killer, and assumes that all disease is caused by germs. To quote from its advertising literature, it claims to cure thirty-seven diseases which are mentioned by name, and then follows the assertion that it cures "all diseases that begin with fever, all inflammations, all catarrhal contagious diseases, all the results of impure or poisoned blood. In nervous diseases—acts as a vitalizer, accomplishing what no drugs can do." It would seem that an intellect of any pretensions would recognize the fraudulent nature of this claim, yet thousands of bottles of this stuff are annually sold to a gullible public. These wide and unjustifiable claims are real danger signals, and any medicine making them should be avoided. There are many other remedies for which just as great claims are made; the two instances cited are merely representative of a large class. It is a waste of time, money, and health to buy them with any idea that they can fulfill their pretensions.
Claiming to Cure Headaches.—The use of any "headache powders" or "tablets" should be avoided, except on the advice of a physician. The presence of pain in the head, or in any other part of the body, may be a symptom of a serious and deep-seated disorder, and it may often be a serious matter to temporize with it. At the best, these "pain relievers" can give only temporary relief, and their use may prove to be dangerous in the extreme. Their action is dependent upon one of the modern coal-tar products, usually acetanilid, because it is the cheapest. But, unfortunately, acetanilid is also the one with the most depressant action on the heart. The danger of headache powders lies in the habit which they induce, because of their quick pain-relieving qualities and their easy procurability, and from overdosage. If a person is otherwise in good health, the use of one headache powder will in all probability do no harm, but the dose should not be repeated without a doctor's authority. Many deaths have occurred from their continued use, or because of an idiosyncrasy on the part of the taker, but it is their abuse more than their use which has brought upon them such almost universal condemnation. Therefore, while the physician may advocate their use, do not take them without his advice and specific directions as to kind and dosage.