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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    once becomes unsupportable, and they are selling their wares under misrepresentations that are damaging to the public. Some of the “cures’’ for which high prices were charged have been shown to depend on ipecacu- anha, opium, glycerine, krameria, bromide of potas- sium, and other substances that could not by any pos- sibility bring about any such effect. Several of them contain 20 to 25 per cent. of alcohol—that is to say, the medicine consists of a stiff dose of spirits and water, which doubtless helps the unfortunate con- sumptive to feel better for the time being while under its stimulating influence. In discussing this class of remedies, the “ Australian Report” (p. 157, 3 586) quotes the following pithy comments from the Sydney Bulletin, February 28th, 1907, upon a Contemporary trial, in which the defendant was acquitted upon the ground that “he probably believed—at least, there was no possibility of proving that he did not believe—the statements that he issued about” the secret remedy concerned. The Bulletin, brushing aside all legal cob- webs, says of this :—“ Only an utterly heartless wretch would délude miserable and often impoverished con- sumptives into spending pounds on alleged remedies unless he knew, as a matter of expert personal know- ledge, that the article he sold was specific. A plea that he had never received any medical training, and so was only taking the money of the consumptives at random, should be good in itself for a long term of gaol.” It has been known that the names and addresses of persons who apply to advertisers of unqualified treat- ment and of secret remedies are hawked about as a valuable stock-in-trade. That fact was alluded to several times in the “Australian Report,’ and in one case a chemist reported his indignant rejection of the suggestion by an advertising firm that he should dis- close to them the names of any of his clients whom he knew to be suffering from diabetes. FEMALE COMPLAINTS, Under pretence of providing remedies for female irregularities, all kinds of dangerous drugs are ad- ministered. There can be no doubt that an aborte- racient action is suggested in many of these advertise- ments. Such a result is not obtainable by drugs except by chance action, and then only by the injury of the health of the unfortunate woman who takes them to such an extent that she runs a risk of death. When death follows, its cause is probably, as a rule, unsus- pected. Women who apply to advertisers ot this kind tun the risk of subsequent blackmailing. In one case not many years ago in London, extensive blackmailing