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.

    19/68 (page 15)
    CHILDREN’S ‘* SOOTHING’? MEDICINES. The practice of dosing children with teething, sooth- ing, and cooling powders or syrups, baby’s friend, and so on, is extremely common. The main drugs contained in preparations of this kind are opium and its derivatives, and calomel, both of them deadly drugs when given to infants. Thus death has been known to follow the administration of one drop of laudanum to a child 7 days old (Taylor). Some of the soothing medicines sold for children contain morphia, which is obviously more dangerous than laudanum. Other dan- gerous drugs, such as acetanilide, sometimes enter into these patent medicines for infants. No medical man would dream of giving acetanilide to children, nor would he give opium or its preparations except upon the rarest occasions, when he would administer it cautiously, with a full knowledge of its effects and with a full sense of responsibility. Much the same is true of calomel, which medical men nowadays rarely give to children. In many instances the teething powder sets up convulsions in babies, and leads to internal pains and gastro-enteritis. Amongst the poor it may be doubted if there is any more common cause of infantile convulsions than the mercurial teething powder. Owing to careless mixing it has been stated on good authority that some packets contain double doses of the mercurous chloride (calomel), while others have none at all. There are comparatively few teething powders on the market, but they command an enormous sale, besides which some chemists put up their own powders. According to the British Medical Association analysis, the main ingredient in Stedman’s teething and in Steedman’s (two e’s) sooth- ing powders is calomel. The same drug occurs in Pritchard’s teething and fever powders, but in the latter is combined with another potent drug—namely, antimony oxide. “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup,” it is stated in the “Australian Report’’ (p. 79), on the authority of Potter (p. 358), “contains morphine, with essence of anise and syrup of tolu. After years of persistent denial, its proprietors have admitted that it contains 3 gr. morphine in each fluid ounce.” The same authority says :—“§291. Mrs. Winslow’s ‘Soothing Syrup.’—This remedy, called also “ Quiet- ness,” (a) appears to be a compound resembling syrup of poppies. Its effects are those of a narcotic. Two doses of this caused the death of a child, aged 15 months, with the usual symptoms of narcotic poison- t