Secret remedies : what they cost and what they contain / based on analyses made for the British Medical Association.

  • British Medical Association.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Secret remedies : what they cost and what they contain / based on analyses made for the British Medical Association. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    159/212 (page 147)
    CHAPTER XVI1. REMEDIES FOR PILES. The series of analyses of secret remedies for haemorrhoids, and the extracts from the advertisements by which these nos- trums are commended to the public, make it evident that the prevalence of this complaint, which is always disagreeable and painful, and sometimes incapacitating, provides a happy hunting ground for the nostrum-monger. An additional attrac- tion is, perhaps, to be found in the fact that considerable variety is possible in the method of treatment. Local applications, represented by suppositories and ointments, appear to be most in favour, but there is an obvious opportunity for the man who wishes to' sell a medicine to be taken internally to declare that local applications only afford temporary ease, and do not tend to remove the cause. Only internal treatment can cure. The further possibility of extracting double or threefold pay- ments from sufferers by insisting on the necessity of both local and internal remedies has by no means been neglected ; in some cases one preparation only is advertised, and after obtain- ing this the sufferer learns that something further must be bought if the promised cure is to be effected. In another case, where the remedy is a threefold treatment, because there are three avenues of approach to the seat of the ailment, it is advertised to be sent without payment, the money to be paid after a week's trial if benefit has been received; any one availing himself of this ofier necessarily supplies the vendors with his name and address, and will then, it seems, become the recipient of numerous letters, empliasizing the dangers K 2