Patent Panaceas

The desire to take medicine is one feature which distinguishes man, the animal, from his fellow creatures.

--Sir William Osier, in 1895

It made no difference what ailed a man, or his wife, or his horse. The nostrum peddlers had a sure cure for it--and generally the same cure. With no legal restrictions, the patent medicine men made limitless claims. One ointment boasted that it could cure "ague in the face, swelled breasts, sore nipples, bronchitis, sore throats, quinsy, croup, felons, ringworms, burns, scalds, shingles, erysipelas, salt rheum, piles, inflammation of the eyes and bowels, bruises, fresh cut wounds, bilious cholic, scrofulous and milk-leg sores, inflammatory rheumatism and gout." Such was the gilded age of the patent medicine in America, as told by Historian Gerald Carson in One for a Man, Two for a Horse, published last week (Doubleday; $6.50).

Snake Slaughter. Though nostrums and quack cures have always been around, they got their big boost in the U.S., says Carson, from the Civil War. The men under arms learned to seek relief in an assortment of pain-killing potions, most of which contained opiates, alcohol or both. Such strong ingredients could kill pain, and that touch of veracity built credibility for a thousand other claims.

For external use against muscle aches and the "rheumatiz," there were liniments galore. Merchant's Gargling Oil, not to be gargled, was one. Like Pratt's Healing Ointment, it was "for Man and Beast." Clark Stanley's Snake Oil Liniment was promoted by the slaughter of hundreds of rattlesnakes at the Chicago World's Fair, but contained no rattlesnake oil. "Used external only," it was for "rheumatism, neuralgia, sciatica, lame back, lumbago, contracted muscles, frost bites, chill blains, bruises, and sore throat."

To promote the Seven Sutherland Sisters' Hair Grower, the farm-bred New York girls exhibited their tresses, totaling 36 ft. 10 in. in length, at a Barnum & Bailey sideshow. William F. ("Buffalo Bill") Cody "partnerized" with Dr. David Franklin Powell, alias "White Beaver," to promote Yosemite Yarrow for the cramps; Wonder Worker, to be taken internally for cholera but externally for rheumatism; and Cough Cream, which, it was claimed, "heals diseased lungs."

Alcohol for Solvency. "Nuxated Iron" made Jess Willard strong, then made Jack Dempsey strong enough to knock out Willard. A stomacher of unspecified construction and called the "Parr English Pad" was proclaimed "a certain cure for all malarial or contagious diseases." Manhattan's William Radam blandly said that his microbe killer "cures all diseases."

Federal control, beginning with the Food and Drug Act of 1906, gradually cut down the nostrum peddlers' bombast. Labeling requirements forced Lydia Pinkham's heirs to note that her vegetable compound for "falling of the womb and other female weaknesses" contained "18% of alcohol," but they piously insisted that it was there "solely as a solvent and preservative." Parker's "True Tonic" for "in ebriates" gave its victims a hair of the dog with 41.6% alcohol (83 proof).

FDA and later laws largely curbed the worst abuses of the snake-oil salesmen, but the "desire to take medicine" that Osier noted still dies hard. The biggest medicine-show extravaganza of all, says Author Carson, was staged in 1950 with Dixieland bands and Hollywood stars to promote a $1.25-a-bottle tonic that pulled in millions for a spellbinding Louisiana legislator named Dudley J. LeBlanc. The potion was called Hadacol, and it contained 12% alcohol. The Hadacol empire wound up in a tangle of bankruptcy proceedings.

Today Americans are denied the whoop-dedoo promotion of Barry's Tricopherous, or Kickapoo Indian Sagwa, or Wine of Cardui, or Madame Dean's French Female Pills, or Dr. Dye's Voltaic Belt, or even Dr. Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People. But the television viewer, morosely staring at an armpit, or watching little hammers beat a brain, or listening to the simulated gurgling of a stomach, knows that the spirit of the medicine man is still around.

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