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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    OTHER CurEs. The cures for deafness cover a large field of enter- prise. They are usually obtained direct from the nostrum vendor, and consist of glycerine and other Ingredients that could not exercise any beneficial in- fluence upon nerve deafness. As a rule they are sold in connection with some mechanical appliance. Another class of injurious remedies are those sold for eye diseases. Thus, Singleton’s Eye Ointment (a) is advertised as “an absolute specific for all eye troubles and diseases.”?> The same authority gives its chief ingredient to be red mercuric oxide, a drug recognised and used by ophthalmic surgeons, but abso- lutely unfitted for a vast number of the many maladies to’ which the human eye is subject. In some affections of the kind instant skilled treatment is necessary in order to prevent irreparable injury to the sight, and it is painful to reflect how much injury is inflicted upon the community who resort to the indiseriminate use of advertised remedies. Remedies for blindness form another class of heart- less and injurious secret remedies. Needless to say, blindness is the result of conditions that, in the vast majority of cases, cannot be benefited by drugs, whither internally or externally administered. When an unskilled person advertises his power to cure blind- ness, he should surely be held legally responsible for advancing that claim. The ignorance of the facts of the case involved in so preposterous a claim furnishes in itself damning proof of his incompetence KIDNEY CURES. THE heartlessness of the nostrum vendor is nowhere more apparent than when he promises to cure chronic kidney disease. Needless to say, chronic Bright’s disease is accompanied with changes in the delicate structure of the kidney that are past cure. It 1s here that, under skilled medical supervision, the life of a patient thus affected may be prolonged for many years in comfort. In the case of the secret remedy, however, there is no skilled supervision ; the whole transaction affords an apt illustration of the blind leading the blind. The medically unskilled invalid diagnoses his own kidney disease, and buys the secret remedies of the medically unskilled nostrum vendor. As often as not he gets jalap or some other remedy which, although it will not materially shorten his days, yet cannot possibly better his kidney disease, assuming the latter to exist. The only ray of comfort to be gleaned comes from the reflection that many of the persons who buy these remedies are not really suffering from any kidney disease.