Patent Medicine

Patent medicines first appeared in England in the 1600s. When a medication was patented, its formula was owned by the patent holder, and no one else could duplicate and sell it. In order to qualify for a patent, a medicine only had to be original; no proof of effectiveness or safety was required. Because the ingredients of patented remedies had to be listed, many sellers of proprietary medications never applied for patents. Instead, they registered distinctive trade names in order to market their nostrum--ingredients unspecified--under a unique brand name. In time, all of these medicines being promoted for public sale became known as "patent" medicines, whether they were in fact patented or not. Most were promoted as astonishingly effective cures for an equally astonishing range of maladies. For example, this 1800s advertisement for Dr. Jayne's Alternative claims the following cures:

For the cure of Scrofula, King's Evil, White Swellings, Ulcers, Tumours, Mercurial and Syphilitic Affections, Rheumatism, Gout, Scurvy, Neuralgia, Cancer, Goitre, Enlargements of the Bones, Joints, Glands, or Ligaments or of the Ovaries, Liver, Spleen, Kidneys, etc. All the various Diseases of the Skin, Dyspepsia and Liver Complaint, Jaundice and Nervous Diseases, Dropsical Swelling, Constitutional Disorders, and diseases originating from a depraved or impure state of the Blood or other fluids of the body.

Its popularity was unshaken by analysis revealing it to be 99 percent water. While patent medicine makers always advertised and promoted their products heavily, the most colorful promotions were the traveling medicine shows and entertainments. These shows existed in colonial times, continued to grow in size and scope during the 1800s, and reached a climax in the 1880s and 1890s. The shows offered a variety of entertainment--drama, vaudeville, circus, minstrels, and magic--to pitch the product, but perhaps the biggest and best-known were the Kickapoo Indian or Wild West shows staged by John E. Healy of New Haven, Connecticut, and "Texas Charley" Bigelow. As many as 75 Kickapoo shows toured the country at a time, each staffed with half-a-dozen Native Americans, plus a "scout" and several other whites. An Indian "medicine man" would impressively describe the virtues of the particular remedy in his native language, while the " scout" interpreted his speech. Remedies included the popular Kickapoo Indian Sagwa, plus Kickapoo Indian Salve, Kickapoo Indian Worm Killer, and Kickapoo Cough Cure. Another cure falsely attributed to Native Americans was Clark Stanley's Snake Oil Liniment, which Stanley claimed originated with the medicine men of the Moki Pueblo in Wolpi, Arizona. Stanley started marketing his remedy in 1886 and promoted it most colorfully by killing hundreds of rattlesnakes before audiences at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. Analysis, however, showed that Stanley's liniment contained no rattlesnake oil. Although patent medicines were very popular, concerns began to grow about their ingredients. Many had high levels of alcohol--Lydia Pinkham's, for example, was 19 percent alcohol; the widely sold Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root was 12 percent; Hostetter's Bitters was a dizzying 32 percent. Other products, including medicines for children, were laced with such addictive drugs as heroin, opium, and cocaine. These concerns led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Patent medicines now had to list their ingredients on packaging labels. A supplementary law passed in 1938 required manufacturers to test their products for safety before marketing them; tests for effectiveness were required as of 1962. Not all patent medicines were of the "snake oil " variety. Some of the most familiar legitimate patent medicines originated in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Nineteenth-century chemists knew that salicylic acid had pain-relieving qualities, but the acid burned throats and upset stomachs. In 1853 French chemist Charles F. Gerhardt synthesized a primitive form of acetylsalicylic acid, or aspirin. In 1897 Felix Hoffmann of the Bayer Company found a better method to synthesize acetylsalicylic acid and discovered that the drug overcame the unpleasant side effects while maintaining the therapeutic effects of the acid. In 1899 Bayer began marketing the new product as Aspirin, a trade name. Bayer lost the use of the trade name in 1919 as part of Germany's concessions to the Allies at the end of World War I, and the name aspirin passed into generic usage in the United States and United Kingdom. Today, however, aspirin is still a registered trademark of Bayer in many countries. One aspirin-based product, Anacin, originated in the United States in 1918, the invention of a Wisconsin dentist. Listerine, an antiseptic and disinfectant, was developed in 1879 by Jordan W. Lambert, cofounder of the Warner (later Warner-Lambert) pharmaceutical firm, and marketed to physicians. The product was named after Joseph Lister (1827-1912), the English physician who pioneered antiseptic surgery. Lister was said not to be pleased with the name. Lambert's son, Gerald, introduced Listerine to the mass market in 1921; advertising played heavily on the product's effectiveness in saving the user from the social scourge of halitosis. New York chemist Charles Henry Phillips coined the name Milk of Magnesia in 1880 for his antacid, a white suspension of magnesium hydroxide in water. Lunsford Richardson, a North Carolina pharmacist, developed an external cold remedy in the 1890s that he called Richardson's Croup and Pneumonia Cure Salve. When he renamed his product for his brother-in-law, Dr. Joshua Vick, sales of Vick's Salve, later Vick's VapoRub, skyrocketed. Ex-Lax, the laxative with a chocolate flavor, was the 1905 invention of a Hungarian-born New York scientist; he originally called his remedy Bo-Bo, for bon-bon, to stress its candy-like flavor. Among more modern patent medicines, Alka-Seltzer, a tablet composed of an antacid, aspirin, and an agent formulated to bubble when immersed in a glass of water, was introduced by Miles Laboratories in 1931. In 1955 the Johnson & Johnson company marketed Tylenol, which uses acetaminophen to relieve pain and reduce fever just as aspirin does but which does not cause the side effects aspirin produces in some people. At first a prescription medication, Tylenol became an over-the-counter product in 1960. The deaths of seven people in the Chicago area in 1982 from poisoned Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide purchased at local stores led to the widespread use of tamper-resistant packaging.