Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why

Another physician tells of seeing a distinguished ecclesiastical dignitary, a sworn foe of alcohol and its congeners, giving his young child a generous daily allowance of one of these wines.

The user of coca wines runs a double risk – an alcohol craving may be revived, or created; and, at the same time, cocainism may be set up, and nothing but physical, mental and moral ruin follow.

The British Medical Journal of January 23rd, 1897, says: —

“There can be no doubt that in many parts of the world cocaine inebriety is largely on the increase. The greatest number of victims is to be found among society women, and among women who have adopted literature as a profession; and there is no doubt that a considerable proportion of chronic cocainists have fallen under the dominion of the drug from a desire to stimulate their powers of imagination. Others have acquired that habit quite innocently from taking coca wines. The symptoms experienced by the victims of the cocaine habit are illusions of sight and hearing, neuromuscular irritability, and localized anæsthesia. After a time insomnia supervenes, and the patient displays a curious hesitancy, and an inability to arrive at a decision on even the most trivial subjects.”

Dr. F. Coley says later on in the article before referred to: —

“There is another combination which, though utterly absurd from a therapeutical point of view, is not in itself quite so dangerous as coca wine. It will probably do a larger amount of mischief, however, because more people take it. I refer to the various preparations, so largely advertised, which profess to be compounded of port wine, extract of malt, and extract of meat. To the medically uneducated public this doubtless seems a most promising combination: extract of meat for food, extract of malt to aid digestion, port wine to make blood. Surely the very thing to strengthen all who are weak, and to hasten the restoration of convalescents. Unfortunately what the advertisements say – that this stuff is largely prescribed by medical men – is not wholly untrue.

“I do not suppose that any physician of anything like front rank would make such a mistake. But busy general practitioners may be excused if they prove to be a bit oblivious of physiology, and so become attracted by a formula which is more plausible than sound. In the first place, we all know that extract of meat is not food at all. From the manner of its production, it cannot contain an appreciable quantity of proteid material. It consists mainly of creatin, and creatinin, and salts. These are, it is needless to say, incapable of acting as food. Extract of meat, and similar preparations, have their uses however; made into ‘beef-tea,’ their meaty flavor often enables patients to take a quantity of bread, which would otherwise be refused; or lentil flour, or some other matter may be added. In this way, though not food itself, it becomes a most useful aid to feeding. It is besides, a harmless stimulant, especially when taken, as it always should be, hot. It should be needless to add that to combine extract of meat with port wine is simply to ignore its real use. The only intelligible basis for such an invention must be the wholly erroneous notion that extract of meat is a food.”

The prices asked for “secret nostrums” are said by chemists to be ofttimes far beyond the value of the materials. Of one article the New Idea, a druggists’ paper, says: —

“It retails at $1.50 per bottle. Such an article could be put up for less than fifteen cents, including bottle, leaving by no means a small margin for the profit of its manufacturers.”

The same paper says of a cure for catarrh, neuralgia, etc. sold in the form of a small ball: —

“This cure costs $2.50 per ball. A handsome profit could be made upon it at 5 cents a ball.”

Some proprietary preparations are not harmful, but are positively inert. The Mass. State Board of Health in report of 1896 gives Kaskine as an example of these. Although sold at a dollar an ounce it was found to consist of nothing but granulated sugar of the fine grade used in homeopathic pharmacy, without any medication or flavoring whatever.

Dr. Edward Von Adelung in an article in Life and Health, Dec., 1897, tells of a well advertised cure for consumption, the analysis of which showed it to be composed of water, slightly colored by the addition of a very small quantity of red wine, and two mineral acids, muriatic and impure sulphuric, in quantities just sufficient to lend it a taste! He says: —

“Fortuitously I had the opportunity of observing the influence of this remedy on a consumptive who took it regularly, and who was so enamored of its favorable action that he gave up his business to conduct an agency for its sale. It was not long after he had entered upon his new vocation that I received word of his death, due to pulmonary hemorrhage.”

The “returned missionary” fraud has been exposed by different druggists’ papers, among them the New Idea. The “missionary” would advertise a “free cure,” if people would send to him. The “cure” would be in the form of a prescription. There being no drugs in any drugstore bearing the names given in the prescription, the dupe was expected to pay an exorbitant price for them to the philanthropic “missionary.” In one case of this kind the “medicinal plants brought from South America, the only place where they grew,” were upon examination by chemists of the New Idea found to be ordinary drugs, not one of which comes from South America.

The same paper tells of another “South American” fraud, 60,000 bottles of which were said to be sold in Detroit in a few weeks, by an itinerating vendor.

A certain liver, and kidney, and constipation cure, sold in the form of herbs, is said by New Idea to be chiefly couch grass, and senna leaves. Yet it sells for 25 cents for a small package.

To this paper the public is also indebted for the information that a kind of wafer advertised to “cure in a few days all coughs, colds, irritation of the uvula and tonsils, influenza, bronchitis, asthma, sore throat, consumption, and all diseases of the lungs and chest” was found to consist wholly of sugar and corn starch!

Medical World recently told of the investigation of “H – ” by Prof. John Uri Lloyd of Cincinnati. It was advertised as a plant discovered by a doctor traveling in Florida. Its juices were said to be antidotal to snake poisoning, and would also cure the opium habit. Prof. Lloyd found it to be a liquid consisting of a solution of sulphate of morphine and salicylic acid, in alcohol and glycerine, with suitable coloring matter.

Another fraud exposed by New Idea was a “cure” for the peculiar ills of women. The cure is put up in the form of little oblong blocks about a half inch in length.

“A circular accompanies them, and is well calculated to produce alarm in the young. It is another sample of the demoralizing documents which unscrupulous quacks are continually circulating among the laity, in order to create alarm, and profit by this alarm.”

After giving a description of the diseases peculiar to the sex it is stated that all of these are curable by using eight dollars worth of this wonderful medicine.

New Idea continues: —

“The cure consists, according to our examination, of nothing but flour, made into a paste and allowed to harden in the form of small oblong blocks. Evidently the quack relied upon the faith-cure principle, and his auxiliary treatment, as set forth in the rules of living given in the circular.”

While these inert preparations are of the nature of frauds, they will not injure the health, nor make drunkards, or opium fiends, as the disguised preparations of whisky and morphine are likely to do.

That the use of patent medicines has made many drunkards is a fact well attested. The American Association for the Study of Inebriety appointed a committee several years ago to investigate the various nostrums advertised especially for the benefit of alcohol and opium inebriates. The report of this committee, prepared by Dr. N. Roe Bradner, late of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, in speaking of the marvelous cures advertised in connection with the use of these mixtures, calls them “volumes of gilded falsehood, designed for an innocent, unsuspecting public,” and adds: —

“The use of such nostrums would do more toward confirming than eradicating the habit, if it existed, and would invite and create addiction to an almost hopeless fatality, where the habit had not previously existed. Insanity, palsy, idiocy, and many forms of physical, moral and mental ruin have followed the sale of these nostrums throughout our land.”

Dr. E. A. Craighill, President of the Virginia State Pharmaceutical Association, is quoted in the July (1897) Journal of Inebriety, as saying: —

“In my experience I have known of men filling drunkards’ graves who learned to drink taking some advertised bitters as legitimate medicine. It would be hard to estimate the number of young brains ruined, and the maturer opium wrecks from nostrums of this nature. I could write a volume on the mischief that is being done every day to body, mind and soul, all over the land, by the thousands of miserable frauds that are being poured down the throats of not only ignorant people, but, alas, intelligent ones, too.”

A lady informed the writer recently that her brother had taken forty bottles of one of these preparations, and had become a drunkard through it.

Many seem unaware that the ethics of the medical profession restrain reputable physicians from advertising themselves or their remedies, so that these much-lauded patent medicines are put upon the market by quacks, never by physicians of good standing. It is purely a money-making enterprise, without consideration of the health or destruction of the people. It is popularly supposed that physicians decry these things from fear that their sale will injure regular practice. This is another error as they increase work for the doctor by aggravating existing trouble, as well as causing disease where there was only slight disturbance.

Dr. F. E. Stewart, Ph. G., of Detroit, Mich., says in the October, 1897, Life and Health: —

“Taking all these facts into consideration, it is apparent that the patent, trade-mark and copyright laws should be so interpreted and administered by the court that they will secure the greatest good to the greatest number, and aid in attaining the end of government, viz., ‘moral, intellectual and physical perfection.’ It is not the object of these laws to create odious monopolies, to throw a mantle of protection over fraud, to enable quacks and charlatans to encroach on the domain of legitimate medical and pharmacal practice, or to support an advertising business designed to mislead the public in regard to the nature and value of medicines as curative agents. The morals of the community are injured by some of this advertising, intellectual vigor is impaired by the use of many things advertised, and physical, as well as moral, degradation frequently results. Crime is often inculcated – even the crime of murder, that the nostrum manufacturer may profit thereby. Cures for incurable diseases are promised, and guaranteed. Every scheme that human and devilish ingenuity can devise to wring money from its victim is resorted to, which can be employed without actually bringing the advertisers into court. All this wicked quackery parades under the guise of ‘patent’ medicines, and asks the protection of our courts. It is time for the medical and pharmaceutic professions to unite, and unmask this monster, and show the public its true nature. And this can be accomplished in no better way than through a study of the object of the laws which the secret nostrum manufacturers are now endeavoring to prostitute for their own advantage, and the teaching of the public what these laws were enacted for.

“The secret nostrum business in some of its phases has assiduously found its way into the medical arts, and physicians, pharmacists, and manufacturing houses, seem to have forgotten, to a certain extent, the obligations which they owe to the public. Medicine, in all its departments, must be practiced in accord with scientific, and professional requirement, or it will sink to the level of a commercial business. The end of medical practice is service to suffering humanity, not the acquisition of money. Money making is a necessary part of the practice of medical arts, not, however, its chief object. This fact must be kept in view always. Once lost sight of, and trade competition substituted for competition in serving the interests of the sick, medical and pharmacal practice will become an ignoble scrabble for wealth, in which the sick become victims of avarice and greed. Better set free a pack of ravening wolves in a community than to change the end of medical practice to a commercial one, for physicians and pharmacists would soon degenerate into quacks and charlatans, and take shameful advantage of the community for gain.”

Where Dr. Stewart speaks of murder he probably refers to the sale of abortofacients.

Dr. Roe Bradner, of Philadelphia, in his report upon alleged cures for drunkenness before the Society for the Study of Inebriety several years ago, said: —

“There is a certain other class of so-called remedies, prepared sometimes by physicians and pharmacists, that do a great deal of harm. I allude to the ‘non-secret proprietaries’ that claim to publish their formulas, but do not. One in particular has made thousands, and likely tens of thousands, of chloral drunkards, dethroned the reason of as many more, besides having killed outright very many. It is impossible for any one to estimate the mischief that is being done by such remedies, and the physicians who recommend them.”

Advertising is still the great hindrance in protecting the people from medical imposters. Professor E. W. Ladd, Pure Food Commissioner of North Dakota, says on this point: —

“These patent medicines, some of which are of merit, and others are only ‘dopes,’ or preparations intended to defraud the public, have been altogether too generally advertised and sold to the public. In many ways it seems a deplorable fact that by an unfair method of advertising the American people have come to be consumers to such an extent of a class of medicines, which, at times, are positively detrimental to health. In other instances the continued use of the product is liable to result in the formation of a drug habit which may lead to serious consequences.

“It should not be understood that this department condemns the use of legitimate proprietary or patent medicines, but it insists that there is a need for wiping out of existence about half of the products now generally sold, and with regard to the others the public have a right to know what is contained in them, and not be misled by false statements, or by statements so cunningly worded as to positively mislead the unwary reader. * * * In view of the fact that about 90 per cent. of the nostrums on the market are sold by newspaper and magazine advertising and not by the customer seeing the package, it would seem advisable to amend the law so as to cover this point.”

There is no doubt that it is the advertising which makes the patent medicine business so tremendously profitable. One firm boasted, prior to the exposure of the fraud nature of their preparation, that they spent $5,000 a day in advertising. What must have been made on the nostrum to allow such expenditure? It is said on good authority that the cost of these nostrums does not exceed fifteen to sixteen cents a bottle, and they sell for a dollar a bottle. Such profits make it easy to buy up newspapers that are conscienceless as to the robbery of the unfortunate sick.

The only effectual way of putting an end to the sale of nostrums is to make illegal the advertising of such preparations in the public press. Norway has safeguarded her people thus. The difficulty in gaining such a law in America will be the opposition of the newspapers, the large majority of which still cling to this selfish method of adding to their gains. Even the so-called religious press is not all clean yet in this respect. Once they could be excused because of lack of knowledge. Now there is no excuse.

During the debate in Congress upon the patent-medicine clause of the Pure Food Bill, Senator Heyburn said: —

“I have always been aggressively against the advertisements of nostrums. Some time ago a friend of mine, a very old fellow, that I had taken a special interest in securing a pension for, had reached the age and condition of dependency. I succeeded in getting him a comfortable pension that would pay his bills for household provisions. Once, when I found he was very poor, I said to his wife, ‘What are you doing with your pension?’ She said, ‘Don’t you know, Mr. Heyburn, that it takes at least one-half of that pension for patent medicine?’ Then she enumerated the patent medicines they were taking. It was being suggested to them through advertisements that they were the victims of ills that they were not troubled with, and that they could find relief through these different medicines.

“I am in favor of stopping the advertisements of these nostrums in every paper in the country.”

It may well be asked, Would any one of these well-to-do newspaper owners entrust himself, or any of his family, in time of sickness to the cure-all imposters whose nostrums they advertise? If one of their children had anæmia would they rely on Pink Pills for a cure? If they had a genuine catarrh would they expect it to be cured by Peruna? Never! They would seek the very best medical advice obtainable. Yet, for the ignorant, credulous, sick and suffering poor they allow traps to be laid to rob of both money and such chances of recovery as might come from proper medical attendance.