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.

    17/68 (page 13)
    mark. The price is far above the actual value. We warn you against buying this useless medicine.” When will British officialism denounce these and kindred remedies in similar fearless fashion? From the variability of composition of secret medi- cines it follows that any given analysis, although true of the particular sample upon which it was conducted, may not apply with exactitude to a further sample. After an exposure in public it is easy enough for a proprietor to alter his formula, so that he is enabled when confronted with a published analysis in court, to deny on oath its accuracy as applied to the par- ticular remedy he is selling at the time. AN AMERICAN BOOK ON QUACKS AND QUACKERY. (a) In the United States the question of secret remedies has been taken up with vigour. The American Medical Association recognises the good faith of some proprietary medicines. In February, 1905, a Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry was formed to investi- gate the subject. Numerous analyses of many secret remedies were made, and reports published dealing with claims to cure, therapeutic value, cost, composi- tion, and other pertinent matters. These reports have been reprinted in a small octavo volume, of rather under three hundred pages. They form a valuable mass of evidence. The American book deals with a number of nostrums not included in “Secret Remedies.” It treats every- thing with unsparing frankness. Those who require any information as to the Viavi remedies for female troubles will find a fairly full notice in its pages. That particular method, with its various medicaments, appears to have originated in California, and thence, ‘after the fashion of such things, to have spread to Viavi is lectured upon to women, and advertised in some of the larger towns. Among other works that should be consulted are Dr. S. Squire Sprigge’s “Medicine and the Public,” which has an excellent chapter (VI.) on “The Evils of Quackery,” from which the following passage is quoted (3) :— “The licence enjoyed by irregular practitioners of medicine—by persons, that is, who possess in the legal sense of the word no licence whatever to practice—is (a) The Propaganda fer Reform in Proprietary Medicines,” Re- printed from The Journal of the American Medical Association New York. Fifth Edition. September, 1908, ('). “ Medicine and the Public.” Dr. S. Squire Sprigge. (London : Heinemann, 1905). P. 68.