First report of the Committee of the Philadelphia Medical Society on Quack Medicines : read on the 15th December, 1827, and ordered to be published by the Society.

  • Philadelphia Medical Society.
Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First report of the Committee of the Philadelphia Medical Society on Quack Medicines : read on the 15th December, 1827, and ordered to be published by the Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    under the immediate care of Swaim; who continued his visits and his syrup till the patient was brought under a profuse salivation, when the prescriber ran away with his bottle, that she might not be tempted to take more. In vain did the mistress send message after message to the Panacea proprietor; his promises of coming directly, were never fulfilled; and the patient sank rapidly, and died, immediately after arriving at Charleston, in the autumn. The third case given by Dr. Emlen, was of a boy in the Or- phan Asylum, in Cherry Street, who had been for years afflicted with scrofulous tumours all over the body. The disease had been treated, without success, by the different physicians of the Institution; when the committee of management bought some of Swaim’s Panacea, and placed the boy under the use of it, although Dr. Emlen protested against the measure, as a needless expense. The patient died before he had finished one bottle. The fourth case furnished by Dr. Emlen, was of a poor woman, just above Seventh, in Cherry Street, who earned a livelihood by selling pennyworths of yest and gingerbread, &c. This per- son took the Panacea during two years, for some ulceration of the throat; and expended, as she declared to Dr. E., more than sixty dollars, without relief. She afterwards moved to Decatur Street, where she died some months back. Of the conduct of the proprietor and maker of the Panacea, in continually holding out hopes of amendment of her health, which were never real- ized, and of his language and conduct to her, when she ceased visiting him, and had told her friends that she was worse than before she began using the medicine, the committee will, for the present, forbear to speak. The fifth case coming under the notice of Dr. Emlen, was of a lady from Charleston, South Carolina, under Swaim’s care, for ulceration of the lower lip and chin. She acknowledged to Dr. E. that she had taken twelve bottles of the Panacea, with- out deriving any benefit; and expressed her wish that she had thrown the money she paid for it, into the street, that some one might have been benefited by it. When this lady last visited at Dr. E.’s house, about the 20th September, she stated the ex- cruciating pain which she had suffered all the summer, from the caustic applications of Swaim, to her chin and lip—-u her under lip is entirely destroyed, by his applications, the whole length, and Q