Quacks, false remedies and the public health / [David Walsh].

  • Walsh, David
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Quacks, false remedies and the public health / [David Walsh]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    promise too palpable a trap, to be refused currency in the advertisement columns of the best-known journals, and it is noteworthy that among the worst offenders in this respect are newspapers and magazin which enjoy with certain classes of the community a high reputation for accuracy and bond fides.” Munyon’s Homceopathic Home Remedy Company, an American company with an office in London, sells a cure which claims to eradicate all impurities from the blood, and, amongst other things, “any form of un- healthy, blotchy, pimply, or scaly skin.” The British Medical Association found a bottle to contain 200 pellets or pilules, consisting of sugar. No other medica- ment was present. To sell sugar to cure impurities of the blood and scaly skin is a transaction which would, in any other branch of trade, be stigmatised by Anglo-Saxon terms of a simple and direct kind. Would the British Government, which permits America to dump this sort of rubbish on our shores, permit sugar to be sold for the cure of the ailments of sheep, cattle, or pigs? Any member who asked such a question in the House of Commons would become an object of ridicule. Yet sugar may be sold under the shield of a Government stamp for the cure of diseases in men, women, and children. A more absurd position it would puzzle the caustic wit of Swift or of Voltaire to devise. A Blood Purifier sold by “Professor”? O. Phelps Brown was found by the same authority to contain 15 per cent. of sugar, a good deal of mucilage, 25 per cent. of alcohol by volume, and of vegetable and other sub- stances difficult to identify, but of little or no thera- peutic value. Yet this secret remedy is advertised as ‘an infallible remedy for all diseases of the blood, be they constitutional, hereditary, or of recent con- traction.”? It further states that “ulcers, tumours, scrofula bunches, fistula, piles, painful eruptions— indeed, all affections manifested upon the outer sur- face of the body are the consequences of diseased blood.” From the medical point of view this is non- sense that is beneath contempt, but it becomes per- nicious and harmful when it is advertised with the object of inducing the public to purchase a worthless nostrum. That the Government stamp should be affixed to claims of this kind is a standing disgrace to our nation. CurE-ALLS. The above heading was aptly framed by the British Medical Association to include proprietary medicines claiming to cure a wide range of maladies. Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People may be taken