“It should be remarked here that Worthy was, during the late civil war, a true patriot. He was attached to the twenty-ninth regiment Connecticut Volunteers, under Colonel Wooster (a ‘colored’ regiment), and was ‘gone to the war’ over two years. His powers as a ‘clairvoyant,’ or ‘fore-seer,’ served him in the war, and he ‘always knew what was coming,’ he says. As a part of the curious history of the war, serving to show how little the people of the North understood, in the first years of the contest, that theywere fighting for a great humanitary end,—the abolition of chattel slavery,—it may be noted here, that Worthy wrote to Governor Buckingham, in August, 1862, proposing to raise a black regiment, and the governor, by his secretary, replied to Worthy’s proposition, that he then did ‘not deem it expedient,’—which fact institutes a comparison between the judgments of the governor and Worthy, not uncomplimentary to the latter.”
APOTHECARIES.
FIRST MENTION OF.—A POOR SPECIMEN.—ELIZABETHAN.—KING JAMES I. [VI.].—ALLSPICE AND ALOES, SUGAR AND TARTAR EMETIC.—WAR.—PHYSICIAN VS. APOTHECARY.—IGNORANCE.—STEALING A TRADE.—A LAUGHABLE PRESCRIPTION.—“CASTER ILE.”—MODERN DRUG SWALLOWING.—MISTAKES.—“STEALS THE TOOLS ALSO.”—SUBSTITUTES.—“A QUID.”—A “SMELL” OF PATENT MEDICINES.—“A SAMPLE CLERK.”
FIRST MENTION OF.—A POOR SPECIMEN.—ELIZABETHAN.—KING JAMES I. [VI.].—ALLSPICE AND ALOES, SUGAR AND TARTAR EMETIC.—WAR.—PHYSICIAN VS. APOTHECARY.—IGNORANCE.—STEALING A TRADE.—A LAUGHABLE PRESCRIPTION.—“CASTER ILE.”—MODERN DRUG SWALLOWING.—MISTAKES.—“STEALS THE TOOLS ALSO.”—SUBSTITUTES.—“A QUID.”—A “SMELL” OF PATENT MEDICINES.—“A SAMPLE CLERK.”
There are few occupations wherein Old Time has wrought so few changes as in that of the apothecary’s. What it was four hundred years ago it is to-day! Who first invented its weights, measures, and symbols, I am unable to say; but it is a fact that they remain the same as when first made mention of by the earliest writers on the subject.
Drop into the “corner drug store,”—and what corner has none!—examine the balances, the tables of weights and measures, the graduating glass, the signs for grains, scruples, ounces, and pounds, and you will find them the same as those used by the earliest knownmedicalapothecaries, by those of the Elizabethan period, or when King Lear (Lyr) said, “Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination; there’s money for thee.”
The money has changed;namesof drugs are somewhat altered; some new ones have taken the place of old ones; prescriptions changed in quality; but quantities, and modes of expressing them, are unchanged.
“In the middle ages an apothecary was the keeper of any shop or warehouse, and an officer appointed to take charge of a magazine.”—Webster.
We have good grounds for supposing this to have been the case in the time of the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem, more that two thousand years ago. Nehemiah informs us that the son of an apothecary assisted in “fortifying Jerusalem unto the broad wall.” Was not this the office of an overseer, or “keeper of a magazine”? Various artisans were employed to perform certain portions of the work, and who more appropriate or better qualified to oversee the rebuilding of the fortifications than “an officer appointed to take charge of the magazines”?
One more reference we draw from Scripture,[2]viz., in Exodus xxxvii. 29, where “the holy anointing oil” (not for medicine, but for the tabernacle), “and the pure incense of sweet spices” (not medical), “were made according to the work [book?] of the apothecary.” This, however, no more implies that the said “apothecary” was a medical man, a dispenser of physic, or versed in medical lore, than that the maker of shewbread (Lev. xxiv. 5) was necessarily a pharmacist.
In fact, there seems to have been no need of an apothecary, as medicine dispenser, until about the latter part of the thirteenth century.
The oldest known work on compounding medicines was written by Nicolaus Mynepsus, who died in the commencement of the fourteenth century.
The first apothecaries were merely growers and dispensers of herbs, and were but a poor and beggarly set.
Shakspeare’s delineation of the “poor apothecary of Mantua,” in Romeo and Juliet, so completely answers the description of the whole “kit” of druggists of the times, that we may be pardoned in quoting him.
Romeo says,—
“I do remember an apothecary,—And hereabouts he dwells,—whom late I notedIn tattered weeds, with overwhelming brows,Culling of simples (herbs). Meagre were his looks;Sharp misery had worn him to the bones;And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,An alligator stuffed, and other skinsOf ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelvesA beggarly account of empty boxes,Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds;Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses,Were thinly scattered to make up a show.Noting this penury, to myself I said,—‘An’ if a man did need a poison now,Whose sale is present death in Mantua,Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.’·······What, ho! apothecary!Apothecary.Who calls so loud?Romeo.Come hither, man! I see that thou art poor.Hold! There is forty ducats! [$80.] Let me haveA dram of poison.Apoth.Such mortal drugs I have, but Mantua’s lawIs death to any he that utters them.Rom.Art thou so bare, and full of wretchedness,And fear’st to die? Famine is on thy cheeks;Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes;Upon thy back hangs ragged misery;The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law;The world affords no law to make thee rich;Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.Apoth.My poverty, but not my will, consents.”
When we behold the opulent druggists of the present day, we can hardly credit the fact that for nearly two hundred years the apothecary of Mantua was a fair specimen of the wretches who represented that now important branch of business.
The physician was the master, the apothecary the slave!
The following were among the rules prescribed by Dr.Bullyn for the “apothecary’s life and conduct” during the Elizabethan era:—
“1. He must serve God, be clenly, pity the poore.2. Must not be suborned for money to hurt mankind.4. His garden must be at hand, with plenty of herbes, seedes, and rootes.5. To sow, set, plant, gather, preserve, and keepe them in due time.6. To read Dioscorides, to learn ye nature of plants and herbes. (Dioscorides published a work on vegetable remedies about 1499, in Greek. Thetranslationwas referred to.)8. To have his morters, stilles, pottes, filters, glasses, and boxes cleane and sweete.12. That he neither increase nor diminish the physician’s bill (prescription), nor keepe it for his own use.14. That he peruse often his wares, that they corrupt not.15. That he put not inquid pro quo(i. e., substitute one drug for another.) (Would not this be excellent advice to some of the apothecaries of the present day?)16. That he meddle only in his vocation.18. That he delight to reade Nicolaus Mynepsus, and a few other ancient authors.19. That he remember his office is only ye physician’scooke.20. That he use true waights and measures.21. That he be not covetous or crafty, seeking his own lucre before other men’s help and comfort.”
“1. He must serve God, be clenly, pity the poore.
2. Must not be suborned for money to hurt mankind.
4. His garden must be at hand, with plenty of herbes, seedes, and rootes.
5. To sow, set, plant, gather, preserve, and keepe them in due time.
6. To read Dioscorides, to learn ye nature of plants and herbes. (Dioscorides published a work on vegetable remedies about 1499, in Greek. Thetranslationwas referred to.)
8. To have his morters, stilles, pottes, filters, glasses, and boxes cleane and sweete.
12. That he neither increase nor diminish the physician’s bill (prescription), nor keepe it for his own use.
14. That he peruse often his wares, that they corrupt not.
15. That he put not inquid pro quo(i. e., substitute one drug for another.) (Would not this be excellent advice to some of the apothecaries of the present day?)
16. That he meddle only in his vocation.
18. That he delight to reade Nicolaus Mynepsus, and a few other ancient authors.
19. That he remember his office is only ye physician’scooke.
20. That he use true waights and measures.
21. That he be not covetous or crafty, seeking his own lucre before other men’s help and comfort.”
We may see the wisdom evinced by the author of the above advice, especially in articles Nos. 2, 12, and 21, when we know of a druggist’s clerk of modern times, who, having stolen the physician’s prescriptions intrusted to his care, started out on borrowed capital, and, putting them up as his own wonderful discoveries, advertised them extensively, until his remedies, for all diseases which flesh is heir to, are now sold throughout the entire universe!
As the doctors were accustomed to retain their most valuable recipes, and put up the medicines themselves, selling them as nostrums, and because of the heavy percentage demanded by them for those intrusted to the apothecaries, and the small profit accruing from the sale of medicines at the time, the poor wretched “cookes” were necessarily kept in extreme poverty. So, in order to eke out a living, the apothecaries were also grocers and small tradesmen. As at the present day, they were not required to possess any knowledge of medical science beyond the reading of a few books “relating to the nature of plants,” hence very little honor or profit could accrue from the business alone.
Grocers kept a small stock of drugs, sometimes in a corner by themselves, but not unusually thrown about and jumbled amongst the articles kept for culinary and other purposes. As mineral medicines became more generally used, these were also added to the little stock, and not unfrequently was some poisonous substance dealt out by a green clerk (as is often the case nowadays) to the little errand girl, sent in haste for some culinary article.
Allspice and aloes, sugar and tartar emetic, lemon essence and laudanum, were thrown promiscuously together into drawers, or upon the most convenient shelves, and you need not go far into the country to witness the same lamentable spectacle in the enlightened nineteenth century. The apothecary gave the most attention, as now, to the exposition and sale of those articles which sold the most readily, and returned the greatest profit. All druggists at present sell cigars and tobacco, at the same time not unusually posting up a conspicuous sign—
NO SMOKING ALLOWED HERE.
The following is a case in point:—
Druggist.Smoking not allowed here, sir.
Customer.Why! I just bought this cigar from you.
Druggist.Well, we also sell emetics and cathartics. That does not license customers to sit down and enjoy them on the premises.
In the thirteenth year of the reign of James I. of England (and James VI. of Scotland) the apothecaries and grocers were disunited. The charter, however, placed the former under the control of the College of Physicians, who were endowed with the arbitrary powers of inspecting their shops and wares, and inflicting punishments for alleged neglects, deficiencies, and malpractices.
The physicians knew so little, that the apothecaries soon were enabled to cope with them; “and before a generation had passed away the apothecaries had gained so much, socially and pecuniarily, that the more prosperous of them could afford to laugh in the face of the faculty, and by the commencement of the next century they were fawned upon by the younger physicians, and were in a position to quarrel with the old, which they soon improved.”
As it was a common occurrence for patients to apply at the apothecary’s for a physician, the former either recommended the applicant to one who favored him,or else prescribed for the patient himself. The promulgation of this fact was the declaration of war with the old physicians, who heretofore had done their best to keep down the apothecaries. The former threatened punishment, as provided by law; the latter retaliated, by refusing to call them in to consult on difficult cases. “Starving graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, with the certificate of the college in their pockets, were imbittered by having to trudge along on foot and see the mean ‘medicine mixers,’ who had scarce scholarship enough to construe a prescription, dashing by in their carriages.”
The war progressed,—Physicianvs.Apothecary,—and the rabble joined. Education sided with the physicians, interest sided with the apothecaries.
“So modern ’pothecaries taught the art,By doctors’ bills, to play the doctors’ part;Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.”
To circumvent the apothecaries, a dispensary was established in the College of Physicians, where prescriptions were dispensed at cost. While this proceeding served to lessen the apothecary’s income for a time, it could not greatly benefit the prescribing physician. The former might parallel his case with Iago, and say of the physician, he
“Robs me of that which not enriches him,And makes me poor indeed.”
Physicians were divided into two classes,—Dispensarians and Anti-dispensarians. Charges of ignorance, extortion, and of double-dealing were preferred on both sides. The dispensary doctors charged their opponents with playing into the hands of the apothecaries by prescribing enormous doses, often changing their prescriptions uselessly to increase the druggists’ revenues andtheir own percentage! On the other hand, the dispensarians were accused of charging a double profit on prescriptions whenever the ignorance of the patient, respecting the value of drugs, would admit of the extortion.
Had the physicians been united, the apothecaries would have had to succumb; but a divided house must fall, and the apothecaries won the day.
A London apothecary, having been prosecuted by the college for prescribing for a patient without a regular physician’s advice, carried the case up to the House of Lords, where he obtained a verdict in his favor; and another apothecary, Mr. Goodwin, whose goods had been seized by some dispensary doctors, having obtained a large sum for damages, which being considered test cases, the doctors from this time (about 1725) discontinued the exercise of their authority over the apothecaries.
Thus emancipated from the supervision of the physicians, the apothecaries began to feel their own importance, and most of them prescribed boldly for patients, without consulting a doctor. The ignorance of many of them was only equalled by their impudence. It is not unusual, at the present day, for not only apothecaries, but their most ignorant clerks, to prescribe for persons, strangers perhaps, who call to inquire for a physician; and cases, too, where the utmost skill and experience are required.
The following amusing anecdote is sufficiently in accordance with facts within our own knowledge to be true, notwithstanding itsseemingimprobability:—
Anecdote of Macready, the Actor.
The handwriting of Macready, the actor, was curiously illegible, and especially when writing a pass to the theatre. One day, at New Orleans, Mr. Brougham obtained one of these orders for a friend. On handing it to the latter gentleman, he asked,—
“What is this, Brougham?”
“A pass to see Macready.”
“Why, I thought it was a physician’s prescription, which it most resembles.”
“So it does,” acquiesced Mr. Brougham, again looking over the queer hieroglyphics. “Let us go to an apothecary’s and have it made up.”
Turning to the nearest druggist’s, the paper was given to the clerk, who gave it a careless glance, and proceeded to get a vial ready.
With a second look at the paper, down came a tincture bottle, and the vial was half filled. Then there was a pause.
Brougham and his friend pretended not to notice the proceedings. The clerk was evidently puzzled, and finally broke down, and rang for the proprietor, an elderly and pompous looking individual, who issued from the inner sanctum. Theclerk presented the paper, the old dispenser adjusted his eye-glasses, examined the document for a few seconds, and then, with a depreciating expression,—a compound of pity and contempt for the ignorance of the subordinate,—he proceeded to fill the vial with some apocryphal fluid, and, giving it a professional “shake up,” duly corked and labelled it.
THE “FREE PASS” PRESCRIPTION.
“A cough mixture, gentlemen,” he said, with a bland smile, as he handed it to the gentleman in waiting, “and a very excellent one, too. Fifty cents, if you please.”
In a copy of the London Lancet, 1844, is reported Dr. Graham’s bill. In the same number of which is a reply by an apothecary, who asks if “the old and respectable class ofapothecaries are to be forever abolished;” and he quotes the assertion from one of the articles in the bill: “Is it not a notorious fact that the masses of chemists and druggists know nothing of the business in which they are engaged?” Dr. Graham certainly ought to have known.
Druggists are liable to make mistakes,—as are all men; but carelesness and ignorance, one or both, are usually to be found at the bottom of the fatalities so common in the dispensing of prescriptions. I know an old and experienced druggist who sold a pot of extract belladonna for extract dandelion. In the same city, on the same street, I know another who was prosecuted for dispensing opium for taraxicum, which carelesness caused the death of two children. The following mistake was less fatal, but only think of the poor lady’s feelings!
A servant girl was sent to a certain drug store we know of, who, in a “rich brogue,” which might have caused General Scott’s eyes to water with satisfaction, and his ears to lop like Bottom’s after his transformation by the mischievous fairy, she asked for some “caster ile,” which she wished effectually disguised.
“Do you like soda water?” asked the druggist.
“O, yis, thank ye, sir,” was the prompt reply; “an’ limmun, sir, if ye plaze; long life to yeze.”
The man then proceeded to draw a glass, strongly flavored with lemon, with a dose of oil cast upon its troubled waters.
“Drink it at one swallow,” said he, presenting it to the smiling Bridget. This she did, again thanking the gentlemanly clerk.
“What are you waiting for?” he inquired, seeing that she still lingered.
“I’m waitin’ for the caster ile, sir,” said the girl.
“O! Why you have just taken it,” replied the soda-drug man.
“Och! Murther! It was for a sick man I wanted it, an’ not meself at all.”
THE WRONG PATIENT.
While there have been great changes in the drug trade during the last fifty years, necessary to the increasing demand for drugs, the establishment of wholesale houses and some specialties, and in cities, the substitution of cigars, soda water, patent medicines, etc., for groceries and provisions, the dispensing apothecary is nearer to what he was hundreds of years ago, as we asserted at the commencement of this chapter, than any other professional we know of. The paraphernalia of the shop is nearly the same. There is no improvement in pot, in jar, in tables, in spatula; the old, ungainly mortar is notsubstitutedby a mill; the signs of ounces and drachms remain the same, though so near alike that they are easily and often mistaken one for the other, and the prescription before the dispenser is prefixed by a relic of the astrological symbol of Jupiter,—“the god of medicine to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians,”—as a species of superstitious invocation. In our largest cities even, in the shop windows, the mammoth flashing blue bottles, “a relic of empiric charlatanry,” still brighten our street corners, and frighten our horses at night, as in the days of our forefathers.
We intimated that “patent medicines” had added greatly to the trade. This we shall treat of under its proper head. Many have arisen from penury to affluence, from obscurity to renown, in the drug trade of later years; but take away the tobacco trade, the soda fountain, and the outside patent nostrums, and wherein would the apothecary now differ from his predecessors?
“The Yankees bate the divil for swallowing drugs,” said an Irishman.
“A paddy will take nothing but castor oil,” replied the Yankee.
Yankee or Irish, English or Scotch, French or German, they all rush to the drug store for pills, for powder, for whiskey (?), for tobacco, for patent medicines, and the druggists flourish.
From the window near which I write this, I overlook a wholesale drug store on a “retail street.” The front windows contain onlypatent medicines, and the flashy signs that announce their virtues. Few prescriptions are dispensed within. Before the door, piled nearly a story high, I have just counted ninety-eight boxes, and some barrels. There are hundreds of these drug houses scattered over this city; and every other city of America has its quota.
Yes, the Irishman had the right of it; “the Yankeesdobate the divil for swallowing drugs.” Further, it is my positive opinion that his infernal majesty beats a good many of them by the encouragement of their purchase; and, kind reader, if you have the ghost of a doubt of the truth of our intimation, don’t, I pray, promulgate it, but, like a wise judge, withhold your decision until the evidence is in; until you hear our exposition of “patent medicines.”
A patient comes to the city for the purpose of consulting some experienced physician for a certain complaint. Probably he gets a prescription, with instructions to go to a certain respectable druggist or apothecary in town to have thenecessary medicines put up. Of course a respectable physician knows of a reliable apothecary. The patient, in nine cases out of ten, desires to retain the prescription, and often does so. He goes to another drug store, more convenient, for a second quantity of the same; and now let me ask the patient,—no matter who or where he is,—did you ever get the same kind of medicine, inlook, color, quantity, and taste,—all,—the second time, from the same prescription? I have often heard the patient complain that he could not get the same put up at the very store where he got the original prescription compounded.
I once was called to visit a lady who was laboring under great prostration; “sickness at the stomach,” with constipation.
“What is the disease?” inquired the anxious husband, who had previously employed two regular physicians for the case, and discharged them both.
“Nux vomica,” was the reply.
I gathered up three of the vials on the table, and, taking them to the designated apothecary’s, I demanded the prescriptions corresponding with the numbers on the vials. These were duplicates.
He had made a mistake! that’s all. He had compounded an ounce of tincture of nux instead of a drachm! Not that a drachm could be taken at a dose with impunity; but whatever the dose was, the patient was continually taking eight times as much as the physician intended to prescribe.
Another reason of the failure of the prescribing physician meeting the expectation anticipated, is the use of old and inert medicines.
Where a man’s treasure is, his heart is also. An apothecary’s interest is more in nostrums, tobacco,soda, etc., than in medicines; how, then, can he follow the excellent advice of Dr. Bullyn, in article “14, that he peruse often his wares, that they corrupt not.”
But the greatest cheat is in the “substituting” business; the “quid pro quo.” Horse aloes may be bought for ten cents a pound. Podophyllin costs seventy-five cents an ounce. They each act as cathartic, and I have detected the former put in place of the latter. How is the physician to know the cheat? How is the patient to detect it? Perhaps the formerstuff—aloes—may have given the victim the hemorrhoids. One dose may be quite sufficient to produce that distressing disease. This only calls for another prescription! So it looks a deal like a “you tickle me, and I’ll tickle you” profession, at best. Thus the patient becomes disgusted, and resorts to our next—“Patent Medicines.”
In closing this chapter on Apothecaries, I must relate a little scene to which I was an eye-witness. Meantime, let me say to the “respectable druggist,” Don’t be offended if I have slighted you by leaving you out, in my description of the various kinds of apothecaries enumerated above. There is a respectable class of druggists whom I have not mentioned, and doubtless you belong to that order.
On going home one evening, not long since, I observed several boys, loud and boisterous, surrounding a lamp post. As I approached, I heard, among the cries and vociferations,—
“Howld to it, Jimmy; it’ll be the makin’ of ye.”
I drew nearer, and discovered a sickly-looking lad leaning up against the lamp post, with the stump of a cigar in his mouth, and a taller boy endeavoring to hold him up by his jacket collar, while a short-set urchin was stooping behind to assist in the task. They were evidently endeavoring to teach “Jimmy” to smoke. The poor fellow was deathly sick, and faintly begged to be let off.
“O, no, no. Stick to it, Jimmy; it’ll be the makin’ of yese,” was repeated.
“Sure, ye’ll niver do for asample clark in a potecary shop,” said another, as he blew a cloud of smoke from his own cigar stump into the pale face of the victim to modern accomplishments.
A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY.
“General Grant smokes, Jimmy, and you’ll never be a man if you don’t learn,” added a voice minus the brogue.
A policeman here interfered, and rescued the wretched “Jimmy.”
“What is a sample clerk, my lad?” I asked of the boy who had used the above expression.
“O, sir, he’s the divil o’ the ’potecary shop; the lean, pimply-faced urchin what tastes all the pizen drugs for the boss. If his constitution is tough enough to stand it the first year, then they makes a clark of him the nixt.”
PATENT MEDICINES
“Expunge the whole.”—Pope.“These are terrible alarms to persons grown fat and wealthy.”—South.
PATENT MEDICINES.—HOW STARTED.—HOW MADE.—THE WAY IMMENSE FORTUNES ARE REALIZED.—SPALDING’S GLUE.—SOURED SWILL.—SARSAPARILLA HUMBUGS.—S. P. TOWNSEND.—“A DOWN EAST FARMER’S STORY.”—“WILD CHERRY” EXPOSITIONS.—“CAPTAIN WRAGGE’S PILL” A FAIR SAMPLE OF THE WHOLE.—HOW PILL SALES ARE STARTED.—A SLIP OF THE PEN.—“GRIPE PILLS.”—SHAKSPEARE IMPROVED.—H. W. B. “FRUIT SYRUP.”—HAIR TONICS.—A BALD BACHELOR’S EXPERIENCE.—A LUDICROUS STORY.—A WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING.
PATENT MEDICINES.—HOW STARTED.—HOW MADE.—THE WAY IMMENSE FORTUNES ARE REALIZED.—SPALDING’S GLUE.—SOURED SWILL.—SARSAPARILLA HUMBUGS.—S. P. TOWNSEND.—“A DOWN EAST FARMER’S STORY.”—“WILD CHERRY” EXPOSITIONS.—“CAPTAIN WRAGGE’S PILL” A FAIR SAMPLE OF THE WHOLE.—HOW PILL SALES ARE STARTED.—A SLIP OF THE PEN.—“GRIPE PILLS.”—SHAKSPEARE IMPROVED.—H. W. B. “FRUIT SYRUP.”—HAIR TONICS.—A BALD BACHELOR’S EXPERIENCE.—A LUDICROUS STORY.—A WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING.
In the former chapters are shown some of the causes which led to the present immensedemandfor proprietary nostrums, or patent medicines. The conflicting “isms” and “opathies” of the medical fraternity, their quarrels and depreciations of one and another, their expositions of each other’s weaknesses, frauds, and duplicities, disgusted the common people, who finally resorted to the irregulars, to astrologers, and humbugs of various pretensions, and to the few advertised nostrums of those earlier periods.
“While there is life there is hope,v and invalids would, and still continue to seize upon almost any promised relief from present pain and anticipated death. Speculative and unprincipled men have seldom been wanting, at any period, to profit by this misfortune of their fellow-creatures, and to play upon the credulity of the afflicted, by offering various compounds warranted to restore them to perfect health. At first such medicines were introduced by the owner goingabout personally and introducing them; subsequently, by employing equally unprincipled parties, of either sex, to go in advance, and tell of the wonderful cures that this particular nostrum had wrought upon them. And to listen to these lauders, one would be led to suppose that they had been afflicted with all the ills nameable, adapting themselves to the parties addressed,—yesterday, the gout; to-day, consumption, etc.,—regardless of truth or circumstance. The physician created the apothecary. The two opened the way for the less principled patent medicine vender.
“Are not physicians and apothecaries sometimes owners of patent medicines?” is the inquiry raised. Yes, certainly; but the true physician, or honorable apothecary, is then sunk in the nostrum manufacturer. Next we have the mountebanks. These were attendant upon fairs and in the marketplaces, who, mounted upon a bench,—hence the name,—cried the marvellous virtues of the medicine, and, by the assistance of adecoyin the crowd, often drove a lucrative business.
Finally, upon the general introduction of printing, physician, apothecary, mountebank, speculator, all seized upon the “power of the press,” to more extensively introduce their “wonderful discoveries.”
When you notice the name—and, O, ye gods, such names as are patched up to attract your attention!—to a new medicine, systematically and extensively advertised in every paper you chance to pick up, you wonder how any profit can accrue to the manufacturer of the compound after paying such enormous prices as column upon column in a thousand newspapers must necessarily cost. “If the articles cost anything at the outset,” you go on to philosophize, “how can the manufacturers or proprietors make enough profit to pay for this colossal advertising?” The solution of the problem is embodied in your inquiry. They cost nothing, or as near to nothing as possible for worthless trash to cost.This is the secret of the fortunes made in advertised medicines.
When weknowthe complete worthlessness of the majority of the articles that are placed before the public,—yea, their more than worthlessness, for they are, many of them, highly injurious to the user,—the fact of their enormous consumption is truly astonishing. The drug-swallowing public has grown lean and poor in proportion as the manufacturers and venders of these villanous compounds have grown fat and wealthy.
Said the proprietor of “Coe’s Cough Balsam” and “Dyspepsia Cure” to the author, “If you have got agoodmedicine, one of value, don’t put it before the public. I can advertisedish water, and sell it, just as well as an article of merit. It is all in the advertising.” As the above preparations were advertised on every board fence, and in every newspaper in New England at least, did his assertion imply that those articles were mere “dish water”?
“Spalding’s Glue.”
I was informed by a Mr. Johnston, who engineered the advertising of the preparation, that it cost but one eighth of a cent per bottle. If you want to make a liquid glue, dissolve a quantity of common glue in water at nearly boiling point, say one pound of glue to a gallon of water; add an ounce or less of nitric acid to hold it in solution, and bottle. The more glue, the stronger the preparation.
The pain-killers and liniments are the most costly, on account of the alcohol necessary to their manufacture; and, in fact, the principal item of expense in all liquid medical articles put up for public sale, is in the alcohol essential to their preservation against the extremes of heat and cold to which they may be subjected.
Soured Swill.
There is an article which “smells to heaven,” the acidiferous title of which glares in mammoth letters from every road-side, wherein the audacious proprietor obviates the necessity of alcohol for its preparation or preservation. It is merely fermented slops—“dish water,” minus the alcohol. Take a few handfuls of any bitter herbs, saturate them in any dirty pond water,—say a barrel full,—add some nitric acid, and bottle, without straining! Here you haveVinegared Bitters! The cheeky proprietor informs the “ignorant public” that, “if themedicinebecomes sour (ferments), as it sometimes will, being its ‘nature so to do,’ it does not detract from its medical virtues.” True, true! for it never possessed “medical virtues.”
The cost of this villanous decoction isscarcely 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 tostimulants.
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 illustrate 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; notallsarsaparilla; you must admit—”
“No difference. I tell you it’s a pesky humbug, all of it.”
“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 analyzed, and they say it’s nothin’ but sugar-house molasses, 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 molasses 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, somespeculators 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 circumscribed 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 cocked 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 hadfomented, they made a great noise about the bogus saxferilla, ‘busting the bottles,’ and all that, and again asserting 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, amassed 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 molasses, extract of rootsorbarks (sassafras bark is better than essence, because of body and color), andprobablysenna and sarsaparilla.A. A. Hayes, State Assayer.”
The medical properties are all asupposition, even thoughDr. Hayes washiredto give the analysis of it to the public, in the interest of the proprietor, and consequently he would not detract from itssupposedmerits.
Pectorals, wild cherry preparations, etc., are cheaply made. Oil of almonds produces thecherryflavor,hydrocyanic acid(prussic acid, a virulent poison) and morphine, or opium, constitute 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 coarsest 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 adrugin market.
Wilkie Collins, Esq., in “No Name,” has the best written description of themodus operandiof 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 shifted from moral agriculture to medical agriculture. Formerly I preyed on the public sympathy; now I prey onthe 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 advertisement 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 titles of my advertisements are quite irresistible. Let me quote a few from last week’s issue. Proverbial title: ‘A pill in time saves nine.’ Familiar title: ‘Excuse me, how is your stomach?’ Patriotic title: ‘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 advertisement in itself. I have one of the largest shops in London. Behind the counter, visible to the public through the lucid medium of plate glass, are four and twenty young men, in white aprons, making the pill. Behind another, four andtwenty 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. Herportraitis 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 advertisements. 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 advertisements, 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 quassia, 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 ahell-deservingarticle.” 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 space 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 Hampshire 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:—