Report as to the practice of medicine and surgery by unqualified persons in the United Kingdom.

  • Great Britain. Local Government Board.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report as to the practice of medicine and surgery by unqualified persons in the United Kingdom. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    14/92 (page 12)
    Connected with the use of proprietary medicines is the very common practice of obtaining througli the ])0.st instructions as to courses of medical treatment, which are largely advertised. Hygienic and health companies are alleged to do a large amount of this kind of Avork, without ever seeing the ])atients that are being treated. They supply literature and cheap drugs at an extortionate cost, and cancer and consumptive patients are fre- quently defrauded of large sums of money. Courses of treatment are furnished in this way for almost every disease. Reference may also perhaps be made here to proprietary infant foods, allusions to which are made by several Medical Officers of Health. They are stated to be much more used than formerly. Chemists are said to recommend them extensively. It is staled that some of these foods tend to produce inanition and scurvy. One Medical Officer of Health reports a case of an inquest upon a child who had been fed with some proprietary food recommended by a chemist. Examination of this so-called patent food revealed that it consisted of the dirtiest and most common kind of flour. The chemist was cautioned, and promised to desist from selling the food. (b) Effects upon Public Health. Many proprietary medicines are advertised as advised and sold in respect of minor ailments only, but a number of them profess to deal with such diseases as consumption, cancer, and other grave diseases. In some cases their effect is only indirect, resulting in loss of time during which the disease, not being beneficially affected by the medicine, develops, complications often being set up, so that w^hen finally the patient is driven to seek skilled medical advice, the disease is in so advanced a stage as to have become in some cases incurable. This is the case wdth incipient phthisis and malignant diseases. The former is often treated with a cough composition which does not touch the basis of the disease. Another efl:ect of the use of proprietary medicines is shown in the enormous amount of self-drugging practised, which is rendered so easy by the ready access which everyone may have to all kinds of drugs, in tabloid, liquid or pillule form. This is a habit which is stated to have enormously increased during the past few years. Proprietary medicines are stated by one Medical Officer of Health to be responsible for many minor ailments, and perhaps serious illnesses. Many are no doubt useful in their proper times, but the average lay mind is not sufficiently trained to know what is the proper time and where is the right remedy to use when the human body is out of health. These remedies are often resorted to without a doctor being first consulted. The persons using them do not know what is the matter with them, what drugs they are taking, or what is the habit of these drugs. . . The drugs arc placed on the market by the makers with very general directions : the dosage is more or less the same for jill ages, takes no account whether the person is of active or sedentary habits, whether the}' are alcoholic subjects or not, and many of the drugs arc given as cures for a