Although the old English patent medicines had not been the target at
which disturbed physicians and "muck-raking" journalists had taken aim,
these ancient remedies were governed by provisions of the new law. In
November 1906 the Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agriculture,
in charge of administering the new federal statute, received a letter
from a wholesale druggist in Evansville, Indiana. One of his stocks in
trade, the druggist wrote, was a remedy called Godfrey's Cordial. He
realized that the Pure Food and Drugs Act had something to do with the
labeling of medicines containing opium, as Godfrey's did, and he wanted
to know from the Bureau just what was required of him.[115] Many
manufacturing druggists and producers of medicine were equally anxious
to learn how the law would affect them. The editors of a trade paper,
the _American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record_, issued warnings and
gave advice. It was still the custom, they noted, to wrap bottles of
ancient patent medicines, like Godfrey's Cordial and Turlington's
Balsam, in facsimiles of the original circulars, on which were printed
extravagant claims and fabulous certificates of cures that dated back
some two hundred years. The new law was not going to permit the
continuation of such 18th-century practices. Statements on the label
"false or misleading in any particular" were banned.[116]
[115] Letter from Charles Leich & Co. to Harvey Washington Wiley,
Bureau of Chemistry, Department of Agriculture, November 2, 1906.
Manuscript original in Record Group 97, National Archives,
Washington, D.C.
[116] _American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record_, 1906, vol.
49, pp. 343-344.
A few manufacturers, as the years went by, fell afoul of this and other
provisions of the law. In 1918 a Reading, Pennsylvania, firm entered a
plea of guilty and received a fifty dollar fine for putting on the
market an adulterated and misbranded version of Dr. Bateman's Pectoral
Drops.[117] The law required that all medicines sold under a name
recognized in the _United States pharmacopoeia_ or the _National
formulary_, and Bateman's was included in the latter, must not differ
from the standard of strength, quality, or purity as established by
these volumes. Yet the Bateman Drops produced in Reading, the
government charged, fell short. They contained only 27.8 percent of the
alcohol and less than a tenth of the morphine that they should have
had. While short on active ingredients, the Drops were long on claims.
The wrapper boasted that the medicine was "effective as a remedy for
all fluxes, spitting of blood, agues, measles, colds, coughs, and to
put off the most violent fever; as a treatment, remedy, and cure for
stone and gravel in the kidneys, bladder, and urethra, shortness of
breath, straightness of the breast; and to rekindle the most natural
heat in the bodies by which they restore the languishing to perfect
health." Okell and Dicey had scarcely promised more. By 20th-century
standards, the government asserted, these claims were false and
fraudulent.
[117] Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Chemistry, Notices of
Judgment under the Food and Drugs Act, Notice of Judgment 6222,
United States vs. Pabst Pure Extract Co., 1919.
Other manufacturers sold Bateman's Drops without running afoul of the
law. In 1925, ninety-nine years after the Philadelphia College of
Pharmacy pamphlet was printed, one North Carolina firm was persuaded
that it still was relevant to tell potential customers, in a handbill,
that its Drops were being made in strict conformity with the College
formula.[118] For Compound Tincture of Opium and Gambir Compound,
however, most manufacturers chose to follow the _National formulary_
specifications, which remained official until 1936.
[118] Original handbill, distributed by Standard Drug Co.,
Elizabeth City, North Carolina, 1925, preserved in the files of
the Bureau of Investigation, American Medical Association,
Chicago, Ill.
Another old English patent medicine against which the Department of
Agriculture was forced to take action was Hooper's Female Pills.
Between 1919 and 1923, government agents seized a great many shipments
of this ancient remedy in versions put out by three Philadelphia
concerns.[119] Some of the packages bore red seals, others green seals,
and still others black, but the labeling of all claimed them to be "a
safe and sovereign remedy in female complaints." This theme was
expanded in considerable detail and there was an 18th-century ring to
the promise that the pills would work a sure cure "in all
hypochondriac, hysterick or vapourish disorders." No pill made
essentially of aloes and ferrous sulphate, said the government experts,
could do these things. Nor did the manufacturers, in court, seek to say
otherwise. Whether the seals were green or red, whether the packages
were seized in Washington or Worcester, the result was the same. No
party appeared in court to claim the pills, and they were condemned and
destroyed.
[119] Multiple seizures were made of products shipped by the
Horace B. Taylor Co., Fore & Co., and the American Synthetic Co.
The quotations are from Notice of Judgment 8868; see also 8881,
8914, 8936, 8956, 8974, 9134, 9147, 9203, 9510, 9586, 9785,
10203, 10204, 10629, 11519, 11669.
In one of the last actions under the 1906 law, a case concluded in
1940, after the first federal statute had been superseded by a more
rigorous one enacted in 1938, two of the old English patent medicines
encountered trouble.[120] They were British Oil and Dalby's
Carminative, as prepared by the South Carolina branch of a large
pharmaceutical manufacturing concern.
[120] Federal Security Agency, Food and Drug Administration,
Notice of Judgment 31134, United States vs. McKesson and Robbins,
Inc., Murray Division, 1942.
According to the label, the British Oil was made in conformity with the
Philadelphia College of Pharmacy formula given in an outdated edition
of the _United States dispensatory_. But instead of containing a proper
amount of linseed oil, if indeed it contained any, the medicine was
made with cottonseed oil, an ingredient not mentioned in the
Dispensatory. Therefore, the government charged, the Oil was
adulterated, under that provision of the law requiring a medicine to
maintain the strength and purity of any standard it professed to
follow. More than that, the labeling contravened the law since it
represented the remedy as an effective treatment for various swellings,
inflammations, fresh wounds, earaches, shortnesses of breath, and
ulcers.
Dalby's Carminative was merely misbranded, but that was bad enough. Its
label suggested that it be used especially "For Infants Afflicted With
Wind, Watery Gripes, Fluxes and Other Disorders of the Stomach and
Bowels," although it would aid adults as well. The impression that this
remedy was capable of curing such afflictions, the government charged,
was false and fraudulent. Moreover, since the Carminative contained
opium, it was not a safe medicine when given according to the dosage
directions in a circular accompanying the bottle. For these and several
other violations of the law, the defending company, which did not
contest the case, was fined a hundred dollars.
Throughout the 19th century, occasional criticism of the old English
patent medicines had been made in the lay press. One novel[121]
describes a physician who comments on the use of Dalby's Carminative
for babies: "Don't, for pity's sake, vitiate and torment your poor
little angel's stomach, so new to the atrocities of this world, with
drugs. These mixers of baby medicines ought to be fed nothing but their
own nostrums. That would put a stop to their inventions of the
adversary."
[121] John William De Forest, _Miss Ravenel's conversion from
secession to loyalty_, New York, 1867.
Opium had been lauded in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the old
English proprietaries began, as a superior cordial which could moderate
most illnesses and even cure some. "Medicine would be a one-armed man
if it did not possess this remedy." So had stated the noted English
physician, Thomas Sydenham.[122] But the 20th century had grown to fear
this powerful narcotic, especially in remedies for children. This point
of view, illustrated in the governmental action concerning Dalby's
Carminative, was also reflected in medical comment about Godfrey's
Cordial. During 1912, a Missouri physician described the death of a
baby who had been given this medicine for a week.[123] The symptoms
were those of opium poisoning. Deploring the naming of this "dangerous
mixture" a "cordial," since the average person thought of a cordial as
beneficial, the doctor hoped that the formula might be omitted from the
next edition of the _National formulary_. This did not happen, for the
recipe hung on until 1926. The Harrison Narcotic Act, enacted in 1914
as a Federal measure to restrict the distribution of narcotics,[124]
failed to restrict the sale of many opium-bearing compounds like
Godfrey's Cordial. In 1931, a Tennessee resident complained to the
medical journal _Hygeia_ that this medication was "sold in general
stores and drug stores here without prescription and is given to
babies." To this, the journal replied that the situation was "little
short of criminal."[125] The charge leveled against his competitors by
one of the first producers of Godfrey's Cordial two centuries earlier
(see page 158) may well have proved a prophecy broad enough to cover
the whole history of this potent nostrum. "... Many Men, Women, and
especially Infants," he said, "may fall as Victims, whose Slain may
exceed Herod's Cruelty...."
[122] Charles H. LaWall, _The curious lore of drugs and medicines
(Four thousand years of pharmacy)_, Garden City, New York, 1927,
p. 281.
[123] W. B. Sissons, "Poisoning from Godfrey's Cordial," _Journal
of the American Medical Association_, March 2, 1912, vol. 58, p.
650.
[124] Edward Kremers and George Urdang, _History of pharmacy_,
Philadelphia, 1951, pp. 170, 278.
[125] "Godfrey's Cordial," _Hygeia_, October 1931, vol. 9, p.
1050.
[Illustration: Figure 15.--TURLINGTON'S BALSAM OF LIFE bottles as
pictured in a brochure dated 1755-1757, preserved in the Pennsylvania
Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pa. According to Turlington, the
bottle was adopted in 1754 "to prevent the villainy of some persons
who, buying up my empty bottles, have basely and wickedly put therein a
vile spurious counterfeit sort."]
For those who persist in using the formulas of the early English patent
medicines, recipes are still available. Turlington's Balsam remains
as an unofficial synonym of U.S.P. Compound Tincture of Benzoin.
Concerning its efficacy, the _United States dispensatory_[126] states:
"The tincture is occasionally employed internally as a stimulating
expectorant in chronic bronchitis. More frequently it is used as an
inhalent ... It has also been recommended in chronic dysentery ... but
is of doubtful utility."
[126] _The dispensatory of the United States of America_, 25th
ed., Philadelphia, 1955, p. 158.
A formula for Godfrey's Cordial, under the title of Mixture of Opium
and Sassafras, is still carried in the _Pharmaceutical recipe
book_.[127] _Remington's practice of pharmacy_[128] retains a formula
for Dalby's Carminative under the former _National formulary_ title of
Carminative Mixture.
[127] _The Pharmaceutical recipe book_, 2nd ed., American
Pharmaceutical Association, 1936, p. 121.
[128] Eric W. Martin and E. Fullerton Cook, editors, _Remington's
practice of pharmacy_, 11th ed., Easton, Pennsylvania, 1956, p.
286.
In the nation of their origin, the continuing interest in the ancient
proprietaries seems somewhat more lively than in America. The 1953
edition of _Pharmaceutical formulas_, published by the London journal
_The Chemist and Druggist_, includes formulas for eight of the ten old
patent medicines described in this study. This compendium, indeed,
lists not one, but three different recipes for British Oil, and the
formulas by which Dalby's Carminative may be compounded run on to a
total of eight. Two lineal descendents of 18th-century firms which took
the lead in exporting to America still manufacture remedies made so
long ago by their predecessors. May, Roberts & Co., Ltd., of London,
successors to the Newbery interests, continues to market Hooper's
Female Pills, whereas W. Sutton & Co. (Druggists' Sundries), London,
Ltd., of Enfield, in Middlesex, successors to Dicey & Co. at Bow
Churchyard, currently sells Bateman's Pectoral Drops.[129]
[129] Letter from Owen H. Waller, editor of _The Chemist and
Druggist_, to George Griffenhagen, January 15, 1957.
In America, however, the impact of the old English patent medicines has
been largely absorbed and forgotten. During the past twenty years a
revolution in medical therapy has taken place. Most of the drugs in use
today were unknown a quarter of a century ago. Some of the newer drugs
can really perform certain of the healing miracles claimed by their
pretentious proprietors for the old English patent medicines.
A more recent import from Britain, penicillin, may prove to have an
even longer life on these shores than did Turlington's Balsam or
Bateman's Drops. Still, two hundred years is a long time. Despite the
fact that these early English patent medicines are nearly forgotten by
the public today, their American career is none the less worth tracing.
It reflects aspects not only of medical and pharmaceutical history, but
of colonial dependence, cultural nationalism, industrial development,
and popular psychology. It reveals how desperate man has been when
faced with the terrors of disease, how he has purchased the packaged
promises offered by the sincere but deluded as well as by the
charlatan. It shows how science and law have combined to offer man some
safeguards against deception in his pursuit of health.
The time seems ripe to write the epitaph of the old English patent
medicines in America. That they are now a chapter of history is a token
of medical progress for mankind.
[Illustration: Figure 16.--TURLINGTON'S BALSAM OF LIFE BOTTLE (all four
sides) found in an Indian grave at Mobridge, South Dakota; now
preserved in the U.S. National Museum. (_Cat. No. 32462, Archeol.;
Smithsonian photo 42936-A._)]