DIABETES.
Diabetes, being a disease which runs on the whole a steady course
unaffected by anything but diet, does not afford a promising field for
the use of drugs; but as drowning men catch at straws, patients who
have been told that they are incurable are naturally disposed to try
any remedy that holds out a prospect of cure or relief. Although there
are a good many proprietary remedies for diabetes, few seem to have a
large sale, but such as exist are pushed by the usual pretensions set
forth in advertisements and circulars. Every one must admit that few
things can be more cruel than to trade upon the hopes and fears of sick
people or to sell them worthless remedies with the positive assurance
of cure. Yet this is what is done by the sellers of quack remedies, and
the Inland Revenue pockets the patent medicine duty without a blush.
Some account is here given of two much advertised preparations—Vin
Urané Pesqui and Dill’s Diabetic Mixture. It may be objected that
Pesqui’s Uranium Wine is not a secret remedy because it is said to
contain uranium nitrate, pepsin, and “other appropriate elements”
added to “old Bordeaux wine”; but uranium nitrate is a drug well-known
to the medical profession, and whatever may be its properties it is
not a cure for diabetes. There is no trustworthy evidence that it has
ever cured a single case, and the most that can be honestly said of
it is that patients have improved in general health while taking it,
although it has not influenced the amount of sugar. Yet we are told
in this advertisement that Pesqui’s Uranium Wine “positively cures
sugared diabetes provided it is resorted to at an early stage and used
during a sufficient length of time.” Dill’s Diabetic Mixture appears
to consist mainly of extract of hydrastis, a well-known drug, which
amongst the many virtues claimed for it has never been shown to possess
any influence over diabetes; yet the advertisement says that Dill’s
Diabetic Mixture is the “only known remedy for this deadly disease”!
There is another triple nostrum for diabetes which, on examination,
was found to consist of tablets of aspirin, unsweetened lime-juice,
and a pink powder composed of sodium sulphate flavoured with oil of
peppermint and tinted with phenolphthalein. These simple remedies were
solemnly vouched for by the vendors in the following words: “We have
satisfied ourselves that the treatment is an absolute and permanent
cure”! Apparently the law cannot reach those who publish deliberately
untruthful statements with the object of selling their goods. The words
of the judgment of the Lord Justice Clerk in a case with reference
to Bile Beans, heard on appeal in the Court of Session at Edinburgh,
should have aroused the Government to a sense of its duty to provide
protection to the public. The Lord Justice Clerk exposed in plain
language the procedure by which the vendors of this nostrum had worked
up their business and palmed off their medicine on the public, yet the
number of their advertisements does not appear to have diminished.
VIN URANÉ PESQUI.
This medicated wine is made in Bordeaux but is sold in this country
from a depôt in London. The price charged for a bottle holding 24 fluid
ounces is 8s.
A small booklet, entitled _Diabetes and its Cure by the Vin Urané
Pesqui_, was enclosed with the bottle; a few extracts from this are
here given:
It has been shown by medical statistics that there are
in France every year 10,000 deaths or more, due to
diabetes through a deficient treatment, whilst they
could have been cured by taking the Vin Urané Pesqui....
Organic sugar enters the blood together with the
alimentary sugar, the former being destroyed by the
molecular changes that it undergoes for the nutrition
of the different organs. If not sufficiently destroyed,
it is productive of glycohemia, and as it passes into
the urine it brings forth glycosuria; this pathological
state determines, in course of time, particularly among
persons suffering from obesity, some of the following
diseases: polydipsy (excessive thirst), oedema in the
legs, the enfeeblement of the physical and intellectual
faculties, visionary troubles, amblyopia, cataract or
gutta-opaca, headaches and anaemia, followed by dryness
of the skin, successive furuncles, gatherings or boils,
eczemas, itching on the skin provoking an irresistible
desire to scratch one self, anthrax, urinary gravel,
lumbago, sciatica, albuminuria, polyuria (insipid
diabetes, without sugar, excessive emission of urine),
rheumatism, dropsy, bulimia (insatiable appetite)
or polyphagia, azoturia (large quantity of urine
with a heavy percentage of uric acid), then fearful
complications; pneumonia, prurience, either vulvar or
prepucial; diabetic phimosis, gangrene in different
parts of the body, particularly in the toes, the nails
of which become black; consumption, etc. Great mental
worries are also productive of glycosuria....
Pesqui’s Urané Wine positively cures sugared diabetes,
provided it is resorted to at an early stage and used
during a sufficient length of time.
As soon as the patient has made use of this wine, his
thirst is allayed almost instantaneously; his strength
reappears; all his functions are gradually restored;
his breathing, which the absence of feculents had
rendered difficult, becomes easier; he is no longer
put out of breath, nor does he feel any lassitude; he
can now walk about without undergoing any fatigue; his
look improves and his temper assumes a more pleasant
character....
The Vin Urané (Uranated Wine) prepared by Mr. Pesqui,
of Bordeaux, has been qualitatively analysed at the
Barral chemistry laboratory. The result of this
analysis points to this medicine being a compound of
old Bordeaux wine, in accordance with Bouchardat’s
prescriptions, to which the following elements have
been added: azotate of uranium, pepsine, and other
appropriate elements.
The dose was given on the label as:
Three small sherry-glassfuls per day, with or without
water, 5 minutes before, or immediately after meals,
and at night before bedtime.
Analysis of the wine showed it to contain, in 100 parts by measure
Alcohol 8·75 parts.
Glycerine 3·55 ”
Total solids 2·92 ”
Fixed acid, reckoned as tartaric 0·43 part.
Volatile acid, reckoned as acetic 0·21 ”
Reducing sugar 0·28 ”
Cane sugar doubtful trace.
Ash 0·30 part.
Uranium, equivalent to crystalline uranium nitrate 0·02 ”
No digestive power whatever on egg-albumen could be detected,
indicating the absence of unchanged pepsin. The amount of uranium found
corresponds to one-twelfth of a grain of the nitrate in 1 fluid ounce,
or half a grain in the daily dose, a sherry glass usually holding about
2 ounces.
The cost of the preparation depends, of course, on the cost of the
original wine, and is scarcely affected by the added ingredients.
DILL’S DIABETIC MIXTURE.
This mixture is sold by a firm in Manchester at the price of 8s. 3d.
for three bottles (not supplied singly), holding 2 fluid ounces each.
It was advertised in the following terms:
DIABETES.
Dill’s Diabetic Mixture is the only known remedy for
this deadly disease. No dieting necessary. It also
cures Yellow Jaundice, Gall Stones, Hepatic Asthma, and
all Liver Complaints. It is also the very best remedy
we know for Kidney Diseases.
In a leaflet enclosed in the package it is stated:
In Diabetes the Government returns of health show
that 100 per cent. die of the disease—that is, all
of them—66 out of every 100 die of Coma, and 34 of
Pneumonia, so that in ordinary medicine there is no
cure. But after 15 years’ experiment I discovered this
remedy, by means of which hundreds have been restored
to health and strength, the world and their families.
It is the only known remedy for this deadly disease....
... all Liver complaints and Kidney complaints are
cured by this remedy. And it is natural that it should
be so, for when we know that the Liver is the workshop
of the body; that it makes the Blood, and the Bile,
and the Urine, and the Sugar which the kidneys only
filter out, I say, when we know this, we may be quite
sure that any remedy that cures the liver benefits the
whole body. The nerves, the flesh, the skin, the blood,
and tissues; even the special senses such as sight,
hearing, and smell, with the sense of touch are all
improved and benefited by it.
The Remedy, it is needless to say, will have to be
persevered with. These are deadly diseases and must
have time.
The dose was given on the label as:
One teaspoonful every four hours in a tablespoonful of
water.
The mixture contained a considerable amount of sediment, partly of
a heavy nature and partly very light; this caused some difficulty
in dividing the contents of a bottle without altering the relative
proportions of the ingredients, and increased the possible error in
the quantitative results. Alcohol was present to the extent of 35 per
cent.; the heavier sediment consisted of sodium bicarbonate, which is
very little soluble in such a liquid; this constituent formed 7·4 per
cent. of the mixture. Two alkaloids were present in approximately equal
proportions, the total amounting to 0·25 per cent.; these proved to be
hydrastine and berberine, and the general nature of the extractive,
etc., present showed that they had been added in the form of extract,
fluid extract, or tincture of hydrastis; there is no official standard
for the alkaloidal strength of these, but, taking the usual proportion,
the alkaloid found would represent 1·5 per cent. of extract of
hydrastis. This left a portion of the total solids to be accounted
for; a small amount of a resin was found which resembled scammony
resin in its properties, and a larger proportion of a resinoid having
general resemblance to caulophyllin (obtained from the blue cohosh or
squaw-root), but the identity of the resin and resinoid could not be
established owing to the absence of characteristic properties. The
formula was thus found to be:
Sodium bicarbonate 7·4 parts.
Extract of hydrastis 1·5 ”
Resin, resinoid, and other extractive 2·2 ”
Alcohol 35 ”
Water to 100 ”
On the rather liberal assumption that the whole of the unidentified
portion costs as much as caulophyllin, the estimated cost of the
ingredients for 6 fluid ounces is 11d.
LANCASHIRE NOSTRUM
A treatment for diabetes was, and perhaps is still advertised by a firm
of manufacturing chemists in Manchester. In a letter addressed to an
enquirer the manufacturers wrote:
The treatment was recently discovered by a Lancashire
doctor who had himself suffered from diabetes for a
great number of years, and used all the recognized
medical treatments without effect. His own discovery
cured him entirely. The formulas have been entrusted
to us, and we are manufacturing and offering the
preparation to the suffering public. We have satisfied
ourselves that the treatment is an absolute and
permanent cure.... We have, therefore, every confidence
in recommending it to you.
These statements are supported by a batch of testimonials which are
not so strong as is usual in such cases. For example, one is headed in
black type, “Completely cured a gentleman and his two friends,” and
runs as follows:
Dear Sir,—I received the treatment yesterday. A friend
of mine, a London gentleman, has told me your treatment
and the Gluten Bread has (_sic_) completely cured
him and two friends of his of sugar diabetes.
The medicines supplied consisted of (1) tablets, of which four were
to be taken each morning, and (2) a mixture. A month’s supply was
forwarded for 10s. 6d., from two to four months’ treatment being
said to be sufficient. A booklet was also sent giving the usual
directions for a diet free from carbohydrates, and enjoining the use
of warm clothing, with occasional hot or Turkish baths. The tablets
(1) contained 5 grains of aspirin; the mixture (2) was composed
of unsweetened lime-juice containing 6 per cent. of free citric
acid. A pink powder, described as an aperient, consisted of dried
sodium sulphate, flavoured with oil of peppermint, and tinted with
phenolphthalein. These remedies are not new, nor has their use been
attended with any particular success in the treatment of diabetes. It
is difficult to see why they should give better results when supplied
as a nostrum than when ordered in the usual way by medical men, unless
we attribute something to the suggestive power of bold assertions and
public advertisement.
NOTE ON DIABETIC FOODS.
In the treatment of diabetes it is the rule, in order to diminish the
amount of sugar passed, to decrease or altogether exclude starchy foods
from the dietary, and to replace them by various substitutes, of which
the most important are gluten bread and biscuits. Some of the so-called
gluten flour and special foods sold as suitable for diabetic patients
are impositions, inasmuch as they are found to contain either as much
or nearly as much starch as ordinary flour. In one instance brought
to notice at the end of 1905, a so-called gluten flour and special
diabetic foods obtained from Messrs. H. H. Warner and Co., Ltd., who
are also the vendors of Warner’s Safe Cure, but who in this instance
acted as agents, it was found that the flour was practically ordinary
wheaten flour. This is indicated in the following table, in which the
result of the analysis of the special articles is placed side by side
with the figures of the official analysis of wheaten flour published by
the United States Department of Agriculture:
--------------------------+-------------------+--------------------
| Department of | The Special
|Agriculture, U.S.A.| Materials.
+---------+---------+---------+----------
| Spring | Winter | Gluten | Special
| Wheat. | Wheat. | Flour. | Diabetic
| | | | Food.
+---------+---------+---------+----------
Water | 10·4 | 10·5 | 12·65 | 11·06
Proteid | 12·5 | 11·8 | 10·60 | 12·40
Fat | 2·2 | 2·1 | — | 3·00
Convertible carbohydrates | 71·2 | 72·0 | 70·30 | 71·06
Mineral matter | 1·9 | 1·8 | 0·44 | 1·52
Fibre | 1·8 | 1·8 | — | —
--------------------------+---------+---------+---------+----------
It will be seen that the amount of starch and other convertible
carbohydrates in spring wheat is 71·2, and in the so-called gluten
flour 70·30.