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 Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    1 CHAPTER T. CATARRH AND COLD CURES. The analyses here given of some of the proprietary articles which the pubhc are induced to buy for the cure of ordinary colds and catarrh furnish a good example of the absurdity of the barefaced pretensions in which nostrum-mongers indulge, for minor ailments are by no means neglected by the makers of nostrums; if the price to be obtained is somewhat lower than in the case of more serious disorders the cost price can be reduced in an equal or greater proportion. Alarming accounts,' too, of tbe evils to be expected if resort be not had to tW^ advertised articles are not wanting. Thus, in the advertisement of one of the articles described below, it is stated that catarrh invariably creates biUousness, constipation, pleurisy, asthma, bronchitis, catarrhal fever, and consumption ; also that it is estimated that over 20,000 people died m the United Kingdom last year of consumption caused by catarrh. The remedy put forward for this malignant disease is shown by analysis to consist of a solution of a pinch of common salt with a trace of carbohc acid, the actual cost of the quantity sold for a shilling being one-thirtieth part of a farthing. The probability that many people would regard a sHght cold in the head as not requiring a resort to a speciaUst in chronic disease in every form such as the proprietor of this preparation, is turned to account by a disparaging reference to the medical profession. Catarrh, we are told, in its chronic form (and the complaints arising from it) is a malady which has not, up to the present time, received that attention and research from the medical faculty