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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    of that kind discoveredy by the police. Although the more respectable newspapers have been purged of this particularly obnoxious class of advertisement, they are inserted to a disgraceful extent in smaller journals, perhaps more especially in a certain type of Sunday newspaper, and, sad to say, in the religious journals, which, for some reason or other, have always been a favourite medium for gross quackery of every description. Whatever views the Home Office and the police may take with regard to the desirability of interference with ordinary trade in secret remedies, there can surely be little difficulty with regard to the veiled solicitation of the class of advertisement under notice. No man of the world with a fair general experience of affairs would be in a moment’s doubt as to the inner meaning of an advertisement of the kind. As newspaper editors, police inspectors, and leading political administrators are necessarily men of the world, with large experience of social affairs, it follows they know the nature of such documents. What defence, then, ca: there be for editors who admit such matter to their columns, or for police or Home Office authorities that permit the public morality to be outraged by such publication? REMEDIES FOR EPILEPSY, FITS, AND NeERvovus DiIs- ORDERS, A flourishing trade is done in the sale of bromide of potassium for the cure of epilepsy. As a matter of fact, the drug in question does not cure that malady, nor, indeed, is any specific cure known to scientific medicine. Bromide of potassium, however, is used by medical men generally to control the malady. There is no special virtue in the solutions sold by the pro- prietary medicine vendors, while they charge extra- vagant prices—say, as much as twenty or thirty times the cost of the ingredients. In the few cases in which bromides are not used, the substituted drugs revealed by analysis are not such as would exercise any bene- ficial effect upon epilepsy. CuRES FOR INEBRIETY. This class of cure furnishes a lucrative field to the adventurer. A favourite plan is to supply strong sedatives or narcotics, whereby one craving is substi- tuted for another—such as acetanilide, bromide of potassium, atropine, and various alkaloids. Many persons addicted to drink can abstain for a time at will, and all improve under the abstinence which is made a condition in most drink cures. It is impos- sible, therefore, to accept the assertion that persons have been cured thereby. Moreover, a prolonged