The propaganda for reform in proprietary medicines / [Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the American Medical Assoication].

Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The propaganda for reform in proprietary medicines / [Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the American Medical Assoication]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    So much for the fake itself. It seems incredible that rational human beings would exchange good money for such a self-evident piece of quackery, but its wily “inventor,” remembering Barnum’s aphorism, knows better. The United States courts have decided that the “instrument” is not of sufficient value to entitle “Dr.” Sanche standing in a court of equity.2, But the crop of “suckers” is perennial and the sale of this nickel-plated fake goes merrily on. Very recently an attempt was made in New York to invoke the medical practice act of that state against this transparent humbug. The case fell to the ground because (1) Sanche himself does not apply his cure-all to the patient, and (2) his methods “smack more of the retail vendor or of business methods than of the medical practitoner”, and (3) because, in the opinion of the court, the framers of the medical practice law did not “intend to inhibit every one but recognized physi- cians from publicly recommending manufactures or products as beneficial physically or as curatives or correctives of human disease, pain, injury, deformity or physical condition.” WHAT THE JUDGE THOUGHT OF IT Whatever satisfaction the Sanche Company may get out of the final decision, it will find small cause for rejoicing in reading the judge’s summing up. Said the judge in referring to this fake: “There has been a studied attempt to stimulate sales by fulsome praise, vague explanations of the force and virtue of ‘diaduction, and exuberant representations of the benefits derivable by using the invention . . . all to attract atten- tion of the curious and credulous.” After quoting some of the claims made by the exploiters of this humbug, the judge goes on to say: “From the record evidence we have tried to get some intelligent idea of ‘dia- duction.’ We have failed utterly. Mr. Justice Shiras, now of the U. S. Supreme Court, with the letters patent before him did not succeed any better for . . . he said: ‘I am entirely certain that I do not understand the working of this so-called force, if any such exists, and I greatly doubt whether Dr. Sanche has any clear conception of the force or principle which he seeks to describe under the name of “diaduction.”’” All of which seems to mean, when summed up in non-legal phraseology, that while the learned judges have no doubt that 1. A full description of this article was given by Dr. N. C. Morse, Eldora, Ia., in THm JOURNAL, Dec. 1, 1900. 2. See also THR JOURNAL, PANS al bs A OD2: