"Expunge the whole."--POPE.
"These are terrible alarms to persons grown fat and wealthy."--SOUTH.
PATENT MEDICINES.--HOW STARTED.--HOW MADE.--THE WAY IMMENSE FORTUNES
ARE REALIZED.--SPALDING'S GLUE.--SOURED SWILL.--SARSAPARILLA
HUMBUGS.--S. P. TOWNSEND.--"A DOWN EAST FARMER'S STORY."--"WILD
CHERRY" EXPOSITIONS.--"CAPTAIN WRAGGE'S PILL" A FAIR SAMPLE OF THE
WHOLE.--HOW PILL SALES ARE STARTED.--A SLIP OF THE PEN.--"GRIPE
PILLS."--SHAKSPEARE IMPROVED.--H. W. B. "FRUIT SYRUP."--HAIR
TONICS.--A BALD BACHELOR'S EXPERIENCE.--A LUDICROUS STORY.--A WOLF IN
SHEEP'S CLOTHING.
In the former chapters are shown some of the causes which led to the
present immense _demand_ for proprietary nostrums, or patent medicines.
The conflicting "_isms_" and "_opathies_" of the medical fraternity, their
quarrels and depreciations of one and another, their expositions of each
other's weaknesses, frauds, and duplicities, disgusted the common people,
who finally resorted to the irregulars, to astrologers, and humbugs of
various pretensions, and to the few advertised nostrums of those earlier
periods.
"While there is life there is hope," and invalids would, and still
continue to seize upon almost any promised relief from present pain and
anticipated death. Speculative and unprincipled men have seldom been
wanting, at any period, to profit by this misfortune of their
fellow-creatures, and to play upon the credulity of the afflicted, by
offering various compounds warranted to restore them to perfect health. At
first such medicines were introduced by the owner going about personally
and introducing them; subsequently, by employing equally unprincipled
parties, of either sex, to go in advance, and tell of the wonderful cures
that this particular nostrum had wrought upon them. And to listen to these
lauders, one would be led to suppose that they had been afflicted with all
the ills nameable, adapting themselves to the parties
addressed,--yesterday, the gout; to-day, consumption, etc.,--regardless of
truth or circumstance. The physician created the apothecary. The two
opened the way for the less principled patent medicine vender.
"Are not physicians and apothecaries sometimes owners of patent
medicines?" is the inquiry raised. Yes, certainly; but the true physician,
or honorable apothecary, is then sunk in the nostrum manufacturer. Next we
have the mountebanks. These were attendant upon fairs and in the
marketplaces, who, mounted upon a bench,--hence the name,--cried the
marvellous virtues of the medicine, and, by the assistance of a _decoy_ in
the crowd, often drove a lucrative business.
Finally, upon the general introduction of printing, physician, apothecary,
mountebank, speculator, all seized upon the "power of the press," to more
extensively introduce their "wonderful discoveries."
When you notice the name--and, O, ye gods, such names as are patched up to
attract your attention!--to a new medicine, systematically and extensively
advertised in every paper you chance to pick up, you wonder how any profit
can accrue to the manufacturer of the compound after paying such enormous
prices as column upon column in a thousand newspapers must necessarily
cost. "If the articles cost anything at the outset," you go on to
philosophize, "how can the manufacturers or proprietors make enough profit
to pay for this colossal advertising?" The solution of the problem is
embodied in your inquiry. They cost nothing, or as near to nothing as
possible for worthless trash to cost. This is the secret of the fortunes
made in advertised medicines.
When we _know_ the complete worthlessness of the majority of the articles
that are placed before the public,--yea, their more than worthlessness,
for they are, many of them, highly injurious to the user,--the fact of
their enormous consumption is truly astonishing. The drug-swallowing
public has grown lean and poor in proportion as the manufacturers and
venders of these villanous compounds have grown fat and wealthy.
Said the proprietor of "Coe's Cough Balsam" and "Dyspepsia Cure" to the
author, "If you have got a _good_ medicine, one of value, don't put it
before the public. I can advertise _dish water_, and sell it, just as well
as an article of merit. It is all in the advertising." As the above
preparations were advertised on every board fence, and in every newspaper
in New England at least, did his assertion imply that those articles were
mere "_dish water_"?
"SPALDING'S GLUE."
I was informed by a Mr. Johnston, who engineered the advertising of the
preparation, that it cost but one eighth of a cent per bottle. If you want
to make a liquid glue, dissolve a quantity of common glue in water at
nearly boiling point, say one pound of glue to a gallon of water; add an
ounce or less of nitric acid to hold it in solution, and bottle. The more
glue, the stronger the preparation.
The pain-killers and liniments are the most costly, on account of the
alcohol necessary to their manufacture; and, in fact, the principal item
of expense in all liquid medical articles put up for public sale, is in
the alcohol essential to their preservation against the extremes of heat
and cold to which they may be subjected.