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.

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    50 their protection to not a few of the false remedies thus exposed. The British revenue benefits to the extent of a few hundred thousand pounds (a) yearly from patent medicine stamps. As a matter of fact, the money comes from the pockets of the deluded cus- tomers, so that the State 1s actually making money out of this nefarious trade. So accustomed have the Government grown to this source of revenue that we may be thankful that there has been no attempt to extend the tax during the recent deficits in the national Budget. The attitude of the average statesman towards the patent medicine stamp duty may be gauged from the answer given by Mr. Herbert Gladstone on September 16th, 1909, to Captain Craig. In his answer the Home Secretary practically promised the appoint- ment of a Select Committee in the following session to inquire into the sale of patent medicines. This im- portant announcement was made in response to Captain Craig’s question: “Whether the Home Secre- tary would consider the advisability of issuing regu- lations making it compulsory on all manufacturers of medicines liable to patent medicine duty to print on the label on the bottle or other vessel in which such article is sold the full ingredients of such bottles or vessels, as well as the diseases they purport to cure; whether he would consider the advisability of in- creasing the size of the lettering of the Government stamp as a further precaution against ignorant people believing that the contents are guaranteed by Govern- ment.” In his reply Mr. Herbert Gladstone said “he was in communication with the Privy Council with reference to the first part of the question, and he was disposed to think the matter of sufficient importance to require an inquiry by a Select Committee next session. New designs for stamps and labels had recently been adopted, and were being prepared, which would clearly indicate that the stamp did not imply a Government guarantee.” Here we have a leading statesman acknowledging in the Commons that the State is ashamed of the wares from which this mean and paltry duty is taken. From an economic point of view the paltry sum of money raised for the revenue from the patent medicine duty must represent an enormous trade in false remedies that in the long run inflict incalculable damage upon the health and the lives of the nation. The probability is that the cost to the public of stamped nostrums must be somewhere between two and a half and three and a half millions yearly. si aha from patent medicine stamps £266,000 in 1907 ; £334,000 in