The Funny Side of Physic Part 8

The cost of this villanous decoction is _scarcely half a cent a bottle_!

Soured swill! It is recommended to cure fifty different complaints! It sells to fools for "one dollar a bottle," and will go through one like so much quicksilver. "Try a bottle," if you doubt it. The "dodge" is in advertising it as a temperance bitter. Having no alcoholic properties, it in no wise endangers the user in becoming addicted to _stimulants_.

Sarsaparilla humbugs are only second to the above. But a few years since an immense fortune was realized by a New York speculator in human flesh on a "Sarsaparilla" which contained not one drop of that all but useless medicine; nor did it possess any real medical properties whatever.

THE DOWN EAST FARMER'S STORY.

To ill.u.s.trate this point, we introduce the following conversation between the author and a "down east" farmer, in 1852:--

"It's all a humbug, is saxferilla!" exclaimed the old farmer, rapping his fist "hard down on the old oaken table."

"Why, no; not _all_ sarsaparilla; you must admit--"

"No difference. I tell you it's a pesky humbug, all of it."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "IT'S ALL A HUMBUG."]

Withdrawing his tobacco pipe from his mouth, he laid it on the table, and standing his thumb end on the board, as a "point of departure," he turned to me, and said,--

"Why, in the medical books it has been a.n.a.lyzed, and they say it's nothin'

but sugar-house mola.s.ses, cheap whiskey, and a sprinkling of essence of wintergreen and saxafras. Git the book, and see 'Townsend's Saxferilla,'

and that is the article! But they are all alike. Let me tell you about the great New York saxferilla speculation. One man, S. P. Townsend, started a compound like this here--nothin' but mola.s.ses and whiskey, and essence to scent it nicely. When he had got it advertised from Texas to the Gut of Canser (Canso, Provinces), from the Atlantic to the Specific, and was about to make his fortune off on it, some speculators see he was doin' a good thing, and, by zounds! they put their heads together, and their dollars, to have a finger in the pie; and they done it. This is the way they circ.u.mscribed him. They hired an old fellow,--I believe he was a porter in a store when they found him,--named Jacob Townsend, and a right rough old customer he was, all rags and dirt, hadn't but one reliable eye, and a regular old rumsucker.

"Well, they fixed him up with a fine suit of clothes, and, by zounds! they palmed him off for the original, Simon Pure saxferilla man. So they advertised him as the real ginuine Townsend, and started a 'saxferilla,'

with his ugly old face on the bottles, and said that the other was counterfeit, you see; and there he sat, with his one eye c.o.c.ked on the crowd of customers that crowded round to see the ginuine thing, you know.

So they blowed the other saxferilla as counterfeit, and finding in a store a bottle or two that had _fomented_, they made a great noise about the bogus saxferilla, 'busting the bottles,' and all that, and again a.s.serting that the Jacob Townsend was the true blue, Simon Pure; and it took, by zounds! Yes, the public swallowed the lie, the saxferilla, old Jacob, and all. I hearn that both the parties made a fortune on it."

Stopping to take a whiff at his neglected pipe, he resumed:--

"Saxferilla is all a humbug!"

S. P. Townsend, as is well known, ama.s.sed a fortune, at one time, on the profits of the "sarsaparilla," put up, as the reader may remember, in huge, square, black bottles. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol.

XL. p. 237, says, "Townsend's Sarsaparilla, Albany, N. Y., in nearly black bottles," is "composed of mola.s.ses, extract of roots _or_ barks (sa.s.safras bark is better than essence, because of body and color), and _probably_ senna and sarsaparilla. A. A. HAYES, State a.s.sayer."

The medical properties are all a _supposition_, even though Dr. Hayes was _hired_ to give the a.n.a.lysis of it to the public, in the interest of the proprietor, and consequently he would not detract from its _supposed_ merits.

Pectorals, wild cherry preparations, etc., are cheaply made. Oil of almonds produces the _cherry_ flavor, _hydrocyanic acid_ (prussic acid, a virulent poison) and morphine, or opium, const.i.tute the medical properties. I have not examined the exception to the above.

_Pills._ The bitter and cathartic properties of nearly every pill in the market,--advertised preparation,--whether "mandrake," "liver,"

"vegetable," or what else, are made up from aloes, the coa.r.s.est and cheapest of all bitter cathartics. One is as good as another. You pay your money, however; you can take your choice.

One holds the ascendency in proportion to the money or cheek invested by the owner in its introduction. A great Philadelphia pill, now sold in all the drug stores of America, was introduced by the following "dodge": The owner began small. He took his pills to the druggists, and, as he could not sell an unknown and unadvertised patent pill, he left a few boxes on commission. He then sent round and bought them up. Their ready sale induced the druggists to purchase again, for cash. The proprietor invested the surplus cash in advertising their "rapid sale," as well as their "rare virtues," and by puffing, and a little more buying up, he got them started. He necessarily must keep them advertised, or they would become a _drug_ in market.

Wilkie Collins, Esq., in "No Name," has the best written description of the _modus operandi_ of keeping a "pill before the people," and I cannot refrain from quoting Captain Wragge to Magdalen in this connection.

"My dear girl, I have been occupied, since we last saw each other, in slightly modifying my old professional habits. I have s.h.i.+fted from moral agriculture to medical agriculture. Formerly I preyed on the public sympathy; now I prey on the public's stomach. Stomach and sympathy, sympathy and stomach. The founders of my fortune are three in number: their names are Aloes, Scammony, and Gamboge. In plainer words, I am now living--on a pill! I made a little money, if you remember, by my friendly connection with you. I made a little more by the happy decease (_Requiescat in pace_) of that female relative of Mrs. Wragge's. Very good! What do you think I did? I invested the whole of my capital, at one fell swoop, in advertising a pill, and purchased my drugs and pill boxes on credit. The result is before you. Here I am, a grand financial fact, with my clothes positively paid for, and a balance at my banker's; with my servant in livery, and my gig at the door; solvent, popular, and all on a pill!"

Magdalen smiled.

"It's no laughing matter for the public, my dear; they can't get rid of me and my pill; they must take us. There is not a single form of appeal in the whole range of human advertis.e.m.e.nt which I am not making to the unfortunate public at this moment. Hire the last novel--there I am inside the covers of the book; send for the last song--the instant you open the leaves I drop out of it; take a cab--I fly in at the windows in red; buy a box of tooth-powders at the chemists--I wrap it up in blue; show yourself at the theatre--I flutter down from the galleries in yellow. The mere t.i.tles of my advertis.e.m.e.nts are quite irresistible. Let me quote a few from last week's issue. Proverbial t.i.tle: 'A pill in time saves nine.'

Familiar t.i.tle: 'Excuse me, how is your stomach?' Patriotic t.i.tle: 'What are the three characteristics of a true-born Englishman?--his hearth, his home, and his pill;' etc.

"The place in which I make my pill is an advertis.e.m.e.nt in itself. I have one of the largest shops in London. Behind the counter, visible to the public through the lucid medium of plate gla.s.s, are four and twenty young men, in white ap.r.o.ns, making the pill. Behind another, four and twenty making the boxes. At the bottom of the shop are three elderly accountants, posting the vast financial transactions accruing from the pill, in three enormous ledgers. Over the door are my name, portrait, and autograph, expanded to colossal proportions, and surrounded, in flowing letters, the motto of the establishment: 'DOWN WITH THE DOCTORS.' Mrs. Wragge contributes her quota to this prodigious enterprise. She is the celebrated woman whom I have cured of indescribable agonies, from every complaint under the sun. Her _portrait_ is engraved on all the wrappers, with the following inscription: 'Before she took the pill,' etc."

[In this country we are familiar with the ghostly looking picture of a man, the said proprietor of a medicine, "before he took the pill" (aloes), and "after;" the "after" being represented by a ridiculous extreme of muscular and adipose tissue.]

"Captain Wragge's" is the style in which most medicines are placed before the public. We take up our morning journal: its columns are crowded by patent medicine advertis.e.m.e.nts. We turn in disgust from their glaring statements, and attempt to read a news item. We get half through, and find we are sold into reading a puff for the same trashy article. We take a horse-car for up or down town, and opposite, in bold and variegated letters, the persistent remedy (?) stares you continually in the face. We enter the post office: the lobbies are employed for the exposition, perhaps sale, of the patent medicines. We open our box: "O, we've a large mail to-day!" we exclaim; when, lo! half of the envelopes contain patent medicine advertis.e.m.e.nts, which have been run through the post office into every man's box in the department. And so it goes all day. We breakfast on aloes, dine on qua.s.sia, sup on logwood and myrrh, and sleep on morphine and prussic acid!

"The humors of the press" sometimes inadvertently tell you the truth respecting this or that remedy advertised in their columns.

A religious newspaper before me says of a proprietary medicine, "Advertised in another column of our paper: It is a _h.e.l.l-deserving_ article." Probably the copy read, "Well-deserving article."

Said a certain paper, "A correspondent, whose duty it was to 'read up' the religious weeklies, has concluded that the reason of those journals devoting so much s.p.a.ce to patent medicine announcements is, 'that the object of religion and quackery are similar--both prepare us for another and better world.'"

The proprietor of a pill,--not Captain Wragge,--threatened recently to prosecute a New Hamps.h.i.+re newspaper publisher for a puff of his "Gripe Pills."

As every fool, as well as some wise people, read the "personals" in the papers, an occasional notice of a tooth-paste, bitter, or tonic is inserted therein, thus:--

"AUGUSTUS APOLPHUS: I will deceive you no longer. My conscience upbraids me. Those pearly white teeth you so much admire are false!

false! They were made by Dr. Grinder, dentist. I use Dr. Scourer's tooth-paste, which keeps them clean and white. 'O, how sharper than a serpent's thanks it is to have a toothless child.'

SUSAN JANE."

Great and public men are sometimes induced or inveigled into recommending a patent medicine. In London, one Joshua Ward, a drysalter, of Thames Street, about the year 1780, introduced a pill, composed of the usual ingredients,--aloes and senna,--which, owing to some benefit he was supposed to have derived from their use, Lord Chief Baron Reynolds was led to praise in the highest terms. The result of this high dignitary's patronage was to give prominence to Ward and his pills, which subsequently sold for the fabulous price of 2s. 6d. a pill! General Churchill added his praise, and Ward was called as a physician to prescribe for the king.

Either in consequence, or in spite of the treatment, the royal malady disappeared, and Ward was _re_warded with a solemn vote of the House of Commons protecting him from the interdiction of the College of Physicians. In addition to the liberal fee, he asked for and obtained the privilege of driving his carriage through St. James Park! Notwithstanding the pill, Reynolds died of his disease not long afterwards.

Henry Fielding subscribed to the wonderful efficacy of "Tar Water," a nostrum of his day, but died of the disease for which it was recommended.

Some time prior to 1780 there was published in the newspapers a list of the patent nostrums, or advertised remedies, in London, which numbered upwards of two hundred.

Now there are known, in the United States alone, to be upwards of three hundred differently named hair preparations.

Dr. Head, of whom we have made mention, "realized large sums from worthless quack nostrums," while at the same time another popular physician, with a Cambridge (England) diploma in his office, was proprietor of a "gout mixture," which sold at the shops for two s.h.i.+llings a bottle.

Some of these shameless scoundrels, owners of advertised nostrums, with little or no sense of honor, have published the recommendations of great men, without the knowledge or permission of the parties whose names were so falsely affixed to their worthless stuff. A New York quack recently used the name of Henry Ward Beecher in this manner. Mr. Beecher published him as a thief and forger of his name, which only served to bring the doctor (?) into universal notice. Only to-day I read his impudent advertis.e.m.e.nt in a newspaper, with Mr. Beecher's name affixed as reference. If you prosecute one of the villains for issuing false certificates, even for forging your own name, it does him no great injury, you get no satisfaction, and in the end it only serves to call public attention to a worthless article, thereby increasing its sale.

In the London _Medical Journal_ of 1806, Dr. Lettsom attacked and exposed a "nervous cordial," stating that it was a deleterious article; "that it had killed its thousands;" and further a.s.serted that Brodum, its proprietor, was a Jewish knave, having been a bootblack in Copenhagen, and a wholesale murderer. Brodum at once brought an action against the proprietor of the _Journal_, laying the damages at twenty-five thousand dollars. Brodum held the advantage, and the _Journal_ proprietor asked for terms of settlement. Brodum's terms were not modest. He, through his attorney, agreed to withdraw the action provided the name of the author was revealed, and that he should whitewash the quack in the next number of the _Journal_, over the same signature! Dr. Lettsom consented to these terms, paid the lawyers' bills and costs, amounting to three hundred and ninety pounds, and wrote the required puff of Brodum and his nostrum.

SOOTHING SYRUPS, nervous cordials, etc., owe their soothing properties to opium, or its salt--morphine.

From "OPIUM AND THE OPIUM APPEt.i.tE," by Alonzo Calkins, M. D., we are informed that an article sold as "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup," for children teething, contains nearly _one grain of the alkaloid_ (morphine) _to each ounce of the syrup_! Taking one teaspoonful as the dose (that is, one drachm), and there being eight drachms to the ounce, consequently about one eighth of a grain of morphine is given to an infant at a dose!

Do you wonder it gives him a _quietus_? Do you wonder that the mortality among children is greatly on the increase? that so many of the darling, helpless little innocents die from dropsy, brain fever, epileptic fits, and the like?

FRUIT SYRUPS FOR SODA WATER.

Perhaps you take yours "plain." No! Then you may want to know how the pure fruit syrup, which sweetens and flavors the soda, is made. The "soda"

itself is a very harmless article.