On a cocain-laden medicine.
Where I have found a renegade physician making his millions out of
Peruna, or a professional promoter trading on the charlatanry of
Liquozone, it has seemed superfluous to comment on the personality of
the men. They are what their business connotes. With Orangeine the case
is somewhat different. Its proprietors are men of standing in other and
reputable spheres of activity. Charles L. Bartlett, its president, is a
graduate of Yale University and a man of some prominence in its alumni
affairs. Orangeine is a side issue with him. Professionally he is the
western representative of Ivory Soap, one of the heaviest of legitimate
advertisers, and he doubtless learned from this the value of skillful
exploitation. Next to Mr. Bartlett, the largest owner of stock (unless
he has recently sold out) is William Gillette, the actor, whose
enthusiastic indorsement of the powders is known in a personal sense to
the profession which he follows, and in print to hundreds of thousands
of theater-goers who have read it in their programs. Whatever these
gentlemen may think of their product (and I understand that, incredible
as it may seem, both of them are constant users of it and genuine
believers in it), the methods by which it is sold and the essential and
mendacious concealment of its real nature illustrate the {037}level to
which otherwise upright and decent men are brought by a business which
can not profitably include either uprightness or decency in its methods.
Orangeine is less dangerous, except in extent of use, than many other
acetanilid mixtures which are much the same thing under a different
name. A friend of mine with a weak heart took the printed dose of
Laxative Bromo Quinin and lay at the point of death for a week. There
is no word of warning on the label. In many places samples of headache
powders are distributed on the doorsteps. The St. Louis Chronicle
records a result:
"Huntington, W. Va., Aug. 15, 1905.--While Mrs. Thomas Patterson was
preparing supper last evening she was stricken with a violent headache
and took a headache powder that had been thrown in at her door the day
before. Immediately she was seized with spasms and in an hour she was
dead."
That even the lower order of animals is not safe is shown by a canine
tragedy in Altoona, Pa., where a prize collie dog incautiously devoured
three sample tablets and died in an hour. Yet the distributing agents of
these mixtures do not hesitate to lie about them. Rochester, N. Y., has
an excellent ordinance forbidding the distribution of sample medicines,
except by permission of the health officer. An agent for Miniature
Headache Powders called on Dr. Goler with a request for leave to
distribute 25,000 samples.
"What's your formula?" asked the official.
"Salicylate of soda and sugar of milk," replied the traveling man.
"And you pretend to cure headaches with that?" said the doctor. "I'll
look into it."
Analysis showed that the powders were an acetanilid mixture. The sample
man didn't wait for the result. He hasn't been back to Rochester since,
although Dr. Goler is hopefully awaiting him.
Bromo-Seltzer is commonly sold in drug stores, both by the bottle and
at soda fountains. The full dose is "a heaping teaspoonful." A heaping
teaspoonful of Bromo-Seltzer means about ten grains of acetanilid. The
United States Pharmacopeia dose is four grains; five grains have been
known to produce fatal results. The prescribed dose of Bromo-Seltzer is
dangerous and has been known to produce sudden collapse.
Megrimine is a warranted headache cure that is advertised in several
of the magazines. A newly arrived guest at a Long Island house party
brought along several lots and distributed them as a remedy for headache
and that tired feeling. It was perfectly harmless, she declared; didn't
the advertisement say "leaves no unpleasant effects"? As a late dance
the night before had left its impress on the feminine members of the
house party, there was a general acceptance of the "bracer." That
night the local physician visited the house party (on special "rush"
invitation), and was well satisfied to pull all his patients through.
He had never before seen acetanilid poisoning by wholesale. A Chicago
druggist writes me that the wife of a prominent physician buys Megrimine
of him by the half-dozen lots secretly. She has the habit.
On October 9, W. H. Hawkins, superintendent of the American Detective
Association, a mar of powerful physique and apparently in good health,
went to a drug store in Anderson, Ind., and took a dose of Dr. Davis'
Headache Powders. He then boarded a car for Marion and shortly after
fell to the floor, dead. The coroner's verdict is reproduced on page 35.
{035} Whether these powders are made by a Dr. W. C. Davis, of
Indianapolis, who makes Anti-Headache, I am unable to state.
Anti-Headache describes itself as "a compound of mild ingredients and
positively contains no dangerous drugs." It is almost pure acetanilid.
In the "ethical" field the harm done by this class of proprietaries is
perhaps {038}as great as in the open field, for many of those which are
supposed to be sold only in prescriptions are as freely distributed to
the laity as Peruna. And their advertising is hardly different.
Antikamnia, claiming to be an "ethical" remedy, and advertising through
the medical press by methods that would, with little alteration, fit any
patent painkiller on the market, is no less dangerous or fraudulent than
the Orangeine class which it almost exactly parallels in composition. It
was at first exploited as a "new synthetical coal-tar derivative,"
which it isn't and never was. It is simply half or more acetanilid
(some analyses show as high as 68 per cent.) with other unimportant
ingredients in varying proportions. In a booklet entitled "Light on
Pain," and distributed on doorsteps, I find under an alphabetical list
of diseases this invitation to form the Antikamnia habit:
[IMAGE ==>] {038}
"Nervousness (overwork and excesses)--Dose: One Antikamnia tablet every
two or three hours.
"Shoppers' or Sightseers' Headache--Dose: Two Antikamnia tablets every
three hours.
"Worry (nervousness, 'the blues')--Dose: One or two Antikamnia and
Codein tablets every three hours."
Codein is obtained from opium. The codein habit is well known to all
institutions which treat drug addictions, and is recognized as being no
less difficult to cure than the morphin habit.
The following well-known "remedies" both "ethical" and "patent," depend
for their results upon the heart-depressing action of Acetanilid:
Orangeine
Bromo-Seltzer
Megrimine
Anti-Headache
Ammonol
Salacetin
Royal Pain Powders Dr. Davis's Headache Phenalgin
Cephalgin
Miniature Headache Powders
Powders
A typical instance of what Antikamnia will do for its users is that of a
Pennsylvania merchant, 50 years old, who had declined, without apparent
Antikamnia {039}cause, from 140 to 116 pounds, and was finally brought
to Philadelphia in a state of stupor. His pulse was barely perceptible,
his skin dusky and his blood of a deep chocolate color. On reviving he
was questioned as to whether he had been taking headache powders. He
had, for several years. What kind? Antikamnia; sometimes in the plain
tablets, at other times Antikamnia with codein. How many? About twelve
a day. He was greatly surprised to learn that this habit was responsible
for his condition.
"My doctor gave it to me for insomnia," he said, and it appeared that
the patient had never even been warned of the dangerous character of the
drug.
Were it obtainable, I would print here the full name and address of
that attending physician, as one unfit, either through ignorance or
carelessness, to practice his profession. And there would be other
physicians all over the country who would, under that description,
suffer the same indictment within their own minds for starting innocent
patients on a destructive and sometimes fatal course. For it is the
careless or conscienceless physician who gets the customer for the
"ethical" headache remedies, and the customer, once secured, pays
a profit, very literally, with his own blood. Once having taken
Antikamnia, the layman, unless informed as to its true nature, will
often return to the drug store and purchase it with the impression that
it is a specific drug, like quinin or potassium chlorate, instead of a
disguised poison, exploited and sold under patent rights by a private
concern. The United States Postoffice, in its broad tolerance, permits
the Antikamnia company to send through the mails little sample boxes
containing tablets enough to kill an ordinary man, and these samples are
sent not only to physicians, as is the rule with ethical remedies,
but to lawyers, business men, "brain workers" and other prospective
purchasing classes. The box bears the lying statement: "No drug
habit--no heart effect."
Just as this is going to press the following significant case comes in
from Iowa:
"Farmington, Iowa, Oct. 6.-- (Special to the
Constitution-Democrat.)--Mrs. Hattie Kick, one of the best and most
prominent ladies of Farmington, died rather suddenly Wednesday morning
at 10 o'clock from an overdose of Antikamnia, which she took for a
severe headache from which she was suffering. Mrs. Kick was subject to
severe headaches and was a frequent user of Antikamnia, her favorite
remedy for this ailment."
There is but one safeguard in the use of these remedies: to regard them
as one would regard opium and to employ them only with the consent of
a physician who understands their true nature. Acetanilid has its uses,
but not as a generic painkiller. Pain is a symptom; you can drug it away
temporarily, but it will return clamoring for more payment until the
final price is hopeless enslavement. Were the skull and bones on every
box of this class of poison the danger would be greatly minimized.
With opium and cocain the case is different. The very words are danger
signals. Legal restrictions safeguard the public, to a greater or less
degree, from their indiscriminate use. Normal people do not knowingly
take opium or its derivatives except with the sanction of a physician,
and there is even spreading abroad a belief (surely an expression of the
primal law of self-preservation) that the licensed practitioner leans
too readily toward the convenient narcotics.
But this perilous stuff is the ideal basis for a patent medicine because
its results are immediate (though never permanent), and it is its own
best advertisement in that one dose imperatively calls for another.
Therefore it behooves the manufacturer of opiates to disguise the use of
the drug. This he does in varying forms, and he has found his greatest
success in the "cough and consumption cures" and the soothing syrup
class. The former of these will be considered in another article. As
to the "soothing syrups," {040}designed for the drugging of helpless
infants, even the trade does not know how many have risen, made their
base profit and subsided. A few survive, probably less harmful than
the abandoned ones, on the average, so that by taking the conspicuous
survivors as a type I am at least doing no injustice to the class.
Some years ago I heard a prominent New York lawyer, asked by his office
scrub woman to buy a ticket for some "association" ball, say to her:
"How can you go to these affairs, Nora, when you have two young children
at home?"
"Sure, they're all right," she returned, blithely; "just wan teaspoonful
of Winslow's an' they lay like the dead till mornin'."
What eventually became of the scrub woman's children I don't know. The
typical result of this practice is described by a Detroit physician who
has been making a special study of Michigan's high mortality rate:
"Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup is extensively used among the poorer
classes as a means of pacifying their babies. These children eventually
come into the hands of physicians with a greater or less addiction to
the opium habit. The sight of a parent drugging a helpless infant into a
semi-comatose condition is not an elevating one for this civilized age,
and it is a very common practice. [IMAGE ==>] {040}I can give you one
illustration from my own hospital experience, which was told me by the
father of the girl. A middle-aged railroad man of Kansas City had a
small daughter with summer diarrhea. For this she was given a patent
diarrhea medicine. It controlled the trouble, but as soon as the remedy
was withdrawn the diarrhea returned. At every withdrawal the trouble
began anew, and the final result was that they never succeeded in curing
this daughter of the opium habit which had taken its hold on her. It
was some years afterward that the parents became aware that she had
contracted the habit, when the physician took away the patent medicine
and gave the girl morphin, with exactly the same result which she had
experienced with the patent remedy. At the time the father told me
this story his daughter was 19 years of age, an only child of wealthy
parents, and one who could have had every advantage in life, but who was
a complete wreck in every way as a result of the opium habit. The father
told me, with tears in his eyes, that he would rather she had died with
the original illness than to have lived to become the creature which she
then was." The proprietor of a drug store in San José, Cal., writes to
_Collier's_ as follows:
[IMAGE ==>] {041}
"I have a good customer, a married woman with five children, all under
10 years of age. When her last baby was born, about a year ago, the
first thing she did was to order a bottle of Winslow's Soothing Syrup,
and every {042}week another bottle was bought at first, until now a
bottle is bought every third day. Why? Because the baby has become
habituated to the drug. I am not well enough acquainted with the family
to be able to say that the weaned children show any present abnormality
of health due to the opium contained in the drug, but the after-effects
of opium have been thus described.... Another instance, quite as
startling, was that of a mother who gave large quantities of soothing
syrup to two of her children in infancy; then, becoming convinced of
its danger, abandoned its use. These children in middle life became
neurotics, spirit and drug-takers. Three children born later and not
given any drugs in early life grew up strong and healthy.
"I fear the children of the woman in question will all suffer for their
mother's ignorance, or worse, in later life, and have tried to do my
duty by sending word to the mother of the harmful nature of the stuff,
but without effect.
"P. S.--How many neurotics, fiends and criminals may not 'Mrs. Winslow'
be sponsor for?"
This query is respectfully referred to the Anglo-American Drug Company,
of New York,' which makes its handsome profit from this slave trade.
Recent legislation on the part of the New York State Board of Pharmacy
will tend to decrease the profit, as it requires that a poison label be
put on each bottle of the product, as has long been the law in England.
An Omaha physician reports a case of poisoning from a compound bearing
the touching name of "Kopp's Baby Friend," which has a considerable
sale in the middle west and in central New York. It is made of sweetened
water and morphin, about one-third grain of morphin to the ounce.
"The child (after taking four drops) went into a stupor at once, the
pupils were pin-pointed, skin cool and clammy, heart and respiration
slow. I treated the case as one of opium poisoning, but it took twelve
hours before my little patient was out of danger."
As if to put a point of satirical grimness on the matter, the
responsible proprietor of this particular business of drugging helpless
babies is a woman, Mrs. J. A. Kopp, of York, Pa.
Making cocain fiends is another profitable enterprise. Catarrh powders
are the medium. A decent druggist will not sell cocain as such,
steadily, to any customer, except on prescription, but most druggists
find salve for their consciences in the fact that the subtle and
terrible drug is in the form of somebody's sure cure. There is need to
say nothing of the effects of cocain other than that it is destructive
to mind and body alike, and appalling in its breaking down of all
moral restraint. Yet in New York City it is distributed in "samples"
at ferries and railway stations. You may see the empty boxes and the
instructive labels littering the gutters of Broadway any Saturday night,
when the drug-store trade is briskest.
Simey's Catarrhal Powder, Dr. Cole's Catarrh Cure, Dr. Gray's Catarrh
Powder and Crown Catarrh Powder are the ones most in demand. All of
them are cocain; the other ingredients are unimportant--perhaps even
superfluous.
Whether or not the bottles are labeled with the amount of cocain makes
little difference. The habitués know. In one respect, however, the
labels help them by giving information as to which nostrum is the most
heavily drugged.
"People come in here," a New York City druggist tells me, "ask what
catarrh powders we've got, read the labels and pick out the one that's
got the most cocain. When I see a customer comparing labels I know she's
a fiend." {043}
Naturally these owners and exploiters of these mixtures claim that the
small amount of cocain contained is harmless. For instance, the "Crown
Cure," admitting 2% per cent., says:
"Of course, this is a very small and harmless amount. Cocain is now
considered to be the most valuable addition to modern medicine... it is
the most perfect relief known."
Birney's Catarrh Cure runs as high as 4 per cent, and can produce
testimonials vouching for its harmlessness. Here is a Birney
"testimonial" to the opposite effect, obtained "without solicitation
or payment" (I have ventured to put it in the approved form), which no
sufferer from catarrh can afford to miss. [IMAGE ==>] {043}