2007 NM Archives Month : UNM HSC

Patent Medicine in the U.S.A.

Origins of Patent Medicine

3 Early English Pat. Med. Bottles [Photo]

The history of self-medication in the United States began in England and flourished in the New World as the colonies were established. Friction and eventual war with England halted shipments of colonists' favorite patent medicines. American entrepeneurship took hold, and a great surge of home-grown brands of cure-alls flooded the market. reaching its peak in the United States in the Patent Medicine Era of the 19th century. Lack of federal or local control, distrust of existing medical treatments, the industrial revolution, and growing ubanization were among the factors that permitted quacks, entrepreneurs, and a few well-meaning practitioners to flood the markets with supposed cures for every ailment from itch, baldness, and corns to diphtheria, cholera, and cancer.

Cures Man or Beast!

Trade Card with portrait of Mrs. Lydia E. Pinkham [photo]

Bottles were filled with anything and everything, including alcohol, opium and cocaine in various forms, because there were no laws requiring that the manufacturers prove the effectiveness or safety of their product. Problems of addiction were recognized gradually during and after the American Civil War.

To nobody's surprise, the most popular nostrums were those containing alcohol and narcotics. Opium-based laudanum and the 70% to nearly 85% alcohol-based Jamacian ginger, or "Jake," were two of the most dangerous potions

In 1875, Lydia E Pinkham's Vegetable Compound sold for "all those painful Complaints and Weaknesses so common to our best female population." The compound contained almost 20% alcohol, which she said acted "as solvent and preservative." During Prohibition times, the Pinkham Medicine enjoyed its greatest success.

The Great American Fraud

Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup for fretful children during teething and colic contained generous levels of alcohol and morphine sulfate. [Image]

On October 7, 1905, Colliers National Weekly Magazine began running an eleven part series of articles, titled, "The Great American Fraud." Written by reporter Samuel Hopkins Adams, the series exposed the manufacturers of patent medicines as crooks. Citing deaths of children and adults and reporting that $75 million a year was spent on drug- and alcohol-laced nostrums, he fervently pressed for legislation forcing disclosure of ingredients on labels. This enlightening series, along with Upton Sinclair's book, The Jungle, which exposed the unsanitary conditions of Chicago's meat-packing industry, created a public uproar that upset the legislative scales. The result was the signing of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt.

This statute did not ban the alcohol, narcotics and stimulants in the medicines; it required them to be labelled as such, and curbed some of the more misleading, overstated or fraudulent claims appearing on labels.

Water Therapy

Bathing in or drinking special waters and taking mud baths became popular fads in the 1800s, and thousands flocked to elaborate spas or to the neighborhood water hole for therapy. New Mexico's fair climate and multitude of mineral springs remain popular to this day. Radium Springs and Ojo Caliente are two popular water sources in New Mexico still considered to provide healing benefits to bathers.

Any health benefits or harmful consequences to such low doses of radon water or radium spring water are disputed to this day. However, continuously stronger doses of radioactive products, such as Radithor were offered to the public, resulting in cancer and heart disease