A distinguished public health official and medical writer once made this
jocular suggestion to me:
"Let us buy in large quantities the cheapest Italian vermouth, poor gin
and bitters. We will mix them in the proportion of three of vermouth to
two of gin, with a dash of bitters, dilute and bottle them by the
short quart, label them '_Smith's Reviver ana Blood Purifier; dose,
one wineglassful before each meal_'; advertise them to cure erysipelas,
bunions, dyspepsia, heat rash, fever and ague, and consumption; and to
prevent loss of hair, smallpox, old age, sunstroke and near-sightedness,
and make our everlasting fortunes selling them to the temperance trade."
"That sounds to me very much like a cocktail," said I.
"So it is," he replied. "But it's just as much a medicine as Peruna and
not as bad a drink."
Peruna, or, as its owner, Dr. S. B. Hartman, of Columbus, Ohio (once
a physician in good standing), prefers to write it, Pe-ru-na, is at
present the most prominent proprietary nostrum in the country. It has
taken the place once held by Greene's Nervura and by Paine's Celery
Compound, and for the same reason which made them popular. The name of
that reason is alcohol.* Peruna is a stimulant pure and simple, and
it is the more dangerous in that it sails under the false colors of a
benign purpose.
* Dr. Ashbel P. Grinnell of New York City, who has made a
statistical study of patent medicines, asserts as a provable
fact that more alcohol is consumed in this country in patent
medicines than is dispensed in a legal way by licensed
liquor venders, barring the sale of ales and beer.
According to an authoritative statement given out in private circulation
a few years ago by its proprietors, Peruna is a compound of seven
drugs with cologne spirits. This formula, they assure me, has not been
materially changed. None of the seven drugs is of any great potency.
Their total is less than one-half of 1 per cent, of the product.
Medicinally they are too inconsiderable, in this proportion, to produce
any effect. There remains to Peruna only water and cologne spirits,
roughly in the proportion of three to one. Cologne spirits is the
commercial term for alcohol.
What Peruna Is Made Of.
Any one wishing to make Peruna for home consumption may do so by mixing
half a pint of cologne spirits, 190 proof, with a pint and a half of
water, adding thereto a little cubebs for flavor and a little burned
sugar for color. Manufactured in bulk, so a former Peruna agent
estimates, its cost, including bottle and wrapper, is between fifteen
and eighteen cents a bottle. Its price is $1.00. Because of this
handsome margin of profit, and by way of making hay in the stolen
sunshine of Peruna advertising, many imitations have sprung up to harass
the proprietors of the alcohol-and-water product. Pe-ru-vi-na, P-ru-na,
Purina, Anurep (an obvious inversion); these, bottled and labeled to
resemble Peruna, are self-confessed imitations. From what the Peruna
people tell me, I gather that they are dangerous and damnable frauds,
and that they cure nothing.
What does Peruna cure? Catarrh. That is the modest claim for it; nothing
but catarrh. To be sure, a careful study of its literature will suggest
its value as a tonic and a preventive of lassitude. But its reputation
{013}rests on catarrh. What is catarrh? Whatever ails you. No matter
what you've got, you will be not only enabled, but compelled, after
reading Dr. Hartman's Peruna book, "The Ills of Life," to diagnose
your illness as catarrh and to realize that Peruna alone will save
you. Pneumonia is catarrh of the lungs; so is consumption. Dyspepsia
is catarrh of the stomach. Enteritis is catarrh of the intestines.
Appendicitis--surgeons, please note before operating--is catarrh of the
appendix. Bright's disease is catarrh of the kidneys. Heart disease is
catarrh of the heart. Canker sores are catarrh of the mouth. Measles
is, perhaps, catarrh of the skin, since "a teaspoonful of Peruna thrice
daily or oftener is an effectual cure" ("The Ills of Life"). Similarly,
malaria, one may guess, is catarrh of the mosquito that bit you. Other
diseases not specifically placed in the catarrhal class, but yielding to
Peruna (in the book), are colic, mumps, convulsions, neuralgia, women's
complaints and rheumatism. Yet "Peruna is not a cure-all," virtuously
disclaims Dr. Hartman, and grasps at a golden opportunity by advertising
his nostrum as a preventive against yellow fever! That alcohol and
water, with a little coloring matter and one-half of 1 per cent, of mild
drugs, will cure all or any of the ills listed above is too ridiculous
to need refutation. Nor does Dr. Hartman himself personally make that
claim for his product. He stated to me specifically and repeatedly that
no drug or combination of drugs, with the possible exception of quinin
for malaria, will cure disease. His claim is that the belief of the
patient in Peruna, fostered as it is by the printed testimony, and
aided by the "gentle stimulation," produces good results. It is well
established that in certain classes of disease the opposite is true.
A considerable proportion of tuberculosis cases show a history of the
Peruna type of medicines taken in the early stages, with the result of
diminishing the patient's resistant power, and much of the typhoid in
the middle west is complicated by the victim's "keeping up" on this
stimulus long after he should have been under a doctor's care. But it
is not as a fraud on the sick alone that Peruna is baneful, but as the
maker of drunkards also.
"It can be used any length of time without acquiring a drug habit,"
declares the Peruna book, and therein, I regret to say, lies
specifically and directly. The lie is ingeniously backed up by Dr.
Hartman's argument that "nobody could get drunk on the prescribed doses
of Peruna."
Perhaps this is true, though I note three wineglassfuls in
forty-five minutes as a prescription which might temporarily alter a
prohibitionist's outlook on life. But what makes Peruna profitable to
the maker and a curse to the community at large is the fact that the
minimum dose first ceases to satisfy, then the moderate dose, and
finally the maximum dose; and the unsuspecting patron, who began with
it as a medicine, goes on to use it as a beverage and finally to be
enslaved by it as a habit. A well-known authority on drug addictions
writes me:
"A number of physicians have called my attention to the use of Peruna,
both preceding and following alcohol and drug addictions. Lydia
Pinkham's Compound is another dangerous drug used largely by drinkers;
Paine's Celery Compound also. I have in the last two years met four
cases of persons who drank Peruna in large quantities to intoxication.
This was given to them originally as a tonic. They were treated under my
care as simple alcoholics."
The Government Forbids the Sale of Peruna to Indians.
Expert opinion on the non-medical side is represented in the government
order to the Indian Department, reproduced on the following page, the
kernel of which is this: {014}