If you mean to ask at what price we sell it, that is an entirely
different proposition.
When sick, consult a good physician. It is the only proper course. And
you will find it cheaper in the end than self-medication with worthless
"patent" nostrums.
This was followed up by the salesmen informing all applicants for the
prominent nostrums that they were wasting money. Yet with all this that
store was unable to get rid of its patent-medicine trade, and to-day
nostrums comprise one-third of its entire business. They comprise about
two-thirds of that of the average small store.
Legislation is the most obvious remedy, pending the enlightenment of
the general public or the awakening of the journalistic conscience. But
legislation proceeds slowly and always against opposition, which may be
measured in practical terms as $250,000,000 at stake on the other
side. I note in the last report of the Proprietary Association's annual
meeting the significant statement that "the heaviest expenses were
incurred in legislative work." Most of the legislation must be done by
states, and we have seen in the case of the Hall Catarrh cure contract
how readily this may be controlled.
Two government agencies, at least, lend themselves to the purposes of
the patent-medicine makers. The Patent Office issues to them trade-mark
registration (generally speaking, the convenient term "patent medicine"
is a misnomer, as very few are patented) without inquiry into the nature
of the article thus safeguarded against imitation. The Post Office
Department permits them the use of the mails. Except one particular
line, the disgraceful "Weak Manhood" remedies, where excellent work has
been done in throwing them out of the mails for fraud, the department
has done nothing in the matter of patent remedies, and has no present
intention of doing anything; yet I believe that such action, powerful as
would be {010}the opposition developed, would be upheld by the courts on
the same grounds that sustained the Post Office's position in the recent
case of "Robusto."
A Post-Office Report.
That the advertising and circular statements circulated through the
mails were materially and substantially false, with the result of
cheating and defrauding those into whose hands the statements came;
That, while the remedies did possess medicinal properties, these were
not such as to carry out the cures promised;
That the advertiser knew he was deceiving;
That in the sale and distribution of his medicines the complainant made
no inquiry into the specific character of the disease in any individual
case, but supplied the same remedies and prescribed the same mode of
treatment to all alike.
Should the department apply these principles to the patent-medicine
field generally, a number of conspicuous nostrums would cease to be
pat-, rons of Uncle Sam's mail service.
Some states have made a good start in the matter of legislation, among
them Michigan, which does not, however, enforce its recent strong law.
Massachusetts, which has done more, through the admirable work of its
State Board of Health, than any other agency to educate the public on
the patent-medicine question, is unable to get a law restricting this
trade. In New Hampshire, too, the proprietary interests have proven
too strong, and the Mallonee bill was destroyed by the almost
united opposition of a "red-clause" press. North Dakota proved more
independent. After Jan. 1, 1906, all medicines sold in that state,
except on physicians' prescriptions, which contain chloral, ergot,
morphin, opium, cocain, bromin, iodin or any of their compounds or
derivatives, or more than 5 per cent, of alcohol, must so state on
the label. When this bill became a law, the Proprietary Association
of America proceeded to blight the state by resolving that its members
should offer no goods for sale there.
Boards of health in various parts of the country are doing valuable
educational work, the North Dakota board having led in the legislation.
The Massachusetts, Connecticut and North Carolina boards have been
active. The New York State board has kept its hands off patent
medicines, but the Board of Pharmacy has made a cautious but promising
beginning by compelling all makers of powders containing cocain to put
a poison label on their goods; and it proposes to extend this ruling
gradually to other dangerous compositions.
Health Boards and Analyses.
It is somewhat surprising to find the Health Department of New York
City, in many respects the foremost in the country, making no use of
carefully and rather expensively acquired knowledge which would serve
to protect the public. More than two years ago analyses were made by the
chemists of the department which showed dangerous quantities of cocain
in a number of catarrh powders. These analyses have never been printed.
Even the general nature of the information has been withheld. Should
any citizen of New York, going to the Health Department, have asked:
"My wife is taking Birney's Catarrh Powder; is it true that it's a
bad thing?" the officials, with the knowledge at hand that the drug in
question is a mater of cocain fiends, would have blandly emulated the
Sphinx. Outside criticism of an overworked, undermanned and generally
efficient department is liable to error through ignorance of the
problems involved in its administration; yet one can not but believe
that some form of warning against what is wisely admittedly a public
menace would have been a wiser form {011}of procedure than that
which has heretofore been discovered by the formula, "policy of the
department."
Policies change and broaden under pressure of conditions. The Health
Commissioner is now formulating a plan which, with the work of the
chemists as a basis, shall check the trade in public poisons more or
less concealed behind proprietary names.
It is impossible, even in a series of articles, to attempt more than an
exemplary treatment of the patent-medicine frauds. The most degraded
and degrading, the "lost vitality" and "blood disease" cures, reeking of
terrorization and blackmail, can not from their very nature be treated
of in a lay journal. Many dangerous and health-destroying compounds will
escape through sheer inconspicuousness. I can touch on only a few of
those which may be regarded as typical: the alcohol stimulators, as
represented by Peruna, Paine's Celery Compound and Duffy's Pure Malt
Whiskey (advertised as an exclusively medical preparation); the catarrh
powders, which breed cocain slaves, and the opium-containing soothing
syrups, which stunt or kill helpless infants; the consumption cures,
perhaps the most devilish of all, in that they destroy hope where hope
is struggling against bitter odds for existence; the headache powders,
which enslave so insidiously that the victim is ignorant of his own
fate; the comparatively harmless fake as typified by that marvelous
product of advertising and effrontery, Liquozone; and, finally, the
system of exploitation and testimonials on which the whole vast system
of bunco rests, as on a flimsy but cunningly constructed foundation.