Orange powders were recommended for the cure of asthma, biliousness, headache, colds, catarrh, grip, diarrhea, hay fever, insomnia, neuralgia, seasickness, and sciatica. There is no known cure for a number of these diseases, and apart from the malicious assumption of the claim, orange powders will not cure any of them.
Another dangerous headache nostrum, widely advertised all over the country, is responsible for many deaths as a result of its use. It is absolutely unsafe, as previously stated, to use any of these remedies. Death by heart failure is on the increase in this country and it may safely be attributed to the indiscriminate use of these powerful and toxic nostrums.
The "soothing syrups" depend upon opium to effect their result. The drugging of helpless infants has been a source of profit to the vender of patent medicines for many years. A certain Baby Friend,—a touching name, and in which one would not expect to find an enemy in the guise of a deadly poison,—is a combination of sweetened water and morphine. This disgraceful mixture, considering the use for which it was designed, would be bad enough if it was the evil concoction of a man rendered irresponsible by a strenuous craving for blood-money, but to know that its proprietor is a woman seems beyond belief. I wonder if she would feel sufficiently respectable and decently clean enough to stand on the platform and face an audience of American mothers? I think not.
Catarrh powders contain, as a rule, cocaine, one of the most insidious and dangerous of drugs. None of them cure catarrh, they simply relieve for the time being at the expense of injuring more vital parts. Their use also very frequently disposes the victim to postpone treatment that would be beneficial until too late. M——'s Kidney Pills were said to cure Bright's disease, gravel, all urinary troubles and pain in the back or groins from kidney disease. Analysis showed them to consist of ordinary white sugar. They contained absolutely no medication, and yet they were freely sold to cure the above serious conditions. A famous expectorant and an equally famous cough syrup contain opium and when taken for the cure of cough are distinctly dangerous.
It is foolish and unnecessary to name any other patent medicine in the list of those that are distinctly harmful and dangerous to use. There are hundreds of them. It would take a book of a thousand pages to give their names and write the data that have been obtained against them. Every advertised medicine should be absolutely avoided. I could fill this book with the death certificates of those who have died as a result of the indiscriminate use of advertised nostrums. It is an appalling record; the unfortunate part being that it is impossible to acquaint every citizen with the facts.
Duplicity and misrepresentation are not confined to patent medicines. Even the mineral waters are misrepresented and lied about. A much-advertised lithia water, before the passage of the pure food and drugs act, was highly vaunted as a uric acid eliminant because of the lithia it was said to contain. Thousands, probably millions of gallons of it have been sold during the past twenty years, to people who could not very well afford to pay for it, because of this claim, despite the fact that it is well known that lithia is not a uric acid eliminant, and despite the additional important fact that the government analysis of this lithia water proved that it practically contained no lithia whatsoever. It is now being sold as an "alkaline diuretic." This claim is no better supported by facts than the former claim that it was a lithia water. Of course it is a diuretic, because water is the best diuretic we possess, but any ordinary pure water, which costs nothing, will just as effectually accomplish all that this lithia water could as a diuretic.
It is a fact that the judgment of a sick person is not reliable. For this reason a physician never tries to treat himself when sick, nor will a physician treat any member of his family for much the same reason. His sentiment overrules his judgment and he cannot depend upon his decisions. An individual who is not well may be influenced by an irresponsible person, or by a clever, subtly worded advertisement, to use remedies that are not only dangerous in themselves, but which are wholly unsuited to the condition for which they are taken.
Quite a common characteristic of sick people is unreasonableness. They become irritable and discouraged, and not being able to rely upon their own judgment they fail to render to themselves the degree of justice that is essential to peace of mind and a favorable convalescence. They may place themselves in the care of a reputable and thoroughly qualified physician, but if they do not observe distinct evidences of improvement within a very brief period they lose faith in him and change their doctor. They may do this a number of times, until finally they reach the conclusion that the entire medical profession is a fraud. They are then the legitimate victims of the patent medicine shark or the fake-curist. Probably ninety-nine per cent. of the victims of these parasites are obtained in this way. The statement often seen in testimonials to the effect, that "the best doctors failed to cure me," is not true in any instance. The truth is, that the individual failed to give the doctors the opportunity to cure him, and the reason he did not give them the chance was because they treated him as a man and as a human being, which he proved not to be. Had the first doctor he consulted adopted the tactics of the quack he would have cured him in a much shorter time. Instead of doing that, he told him the exact truth and charged him an ordinary office fee, while the quack told him lies and charged him a large sum of money to cure him. The latter gentleman, knowing the tendency to vacillate which these individuals have, ensured himself the time necessary to a cure by compelling him to pay the entire sum in advance, which is their universal custom. The patient, therefore, could not afford to change his doctor this time, and as time was all that was necessary to his cure, the wily and oily quack gets all the credit for effecting a cure, which "the best doctors could not accomplish." It is a simple game, and the explanation is just as simple, but there are those who will not see, and there are those who cannot be told.
It is not simple justice, however, to blame these individuals altogether. We must keep in mind the irresolute judgment which is to a certain extent a product of the ill-health with which the patient suffers and the consequent easy tendency to be persuaded one way or another. The way in which these people are influenced is always the wrong way for the following reason. No person with any judgment or common sense or justice or sympathy would be fool enough or inhuman enough to give advice to a suffering sick man or woman as to what he or she should do or take. These individuals do not lack advice, however. There is always the pestering idiot around who knows exactly what should be done, and who does not hesitate to enter where an angel would fear to tread.
In the columns of almost every newspaper one may find promises of health, wealth and happiness for a dollar a bottle. Even consumption has been vaunted as an easily curable disease by a hundred different nostrums, though the truth is that it is incurable by any known drug. Men who advertise these remedies are deliberately trafficking in human life, and they are thoroughly well aware of it. It is difficult to conceive of the type of manhood who would advertise a remedy as "The only sure cure for consumption in the world;" this was extensively done by the concern that put a certain "New Discovery for Consumption" on the market. Further announcement was made that "it strikes terror to the doctors," and that it was "the greatest discovery of the century." Every such assertion is a lie. It was found to be a mixture of morphine and chloroform. It is a wicked concoction to give to any human being in good health. To a consumptive it is admirably designed to shorten the life of anyone who will take it steadily in the hope of a cure. It certainly struck terror in the hearts of the doctors after its composition was known and when it was remembered to whom it was to be given.