FACTS ABOUT NOSTRUMS 531 



FACTS ABOUT NOSTRUMS 



BY HORATIO C. WOOD, Jr., M.D. 

 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 



nnHE quantity of secret and semi-secret drug mixtures consumed by 

 -*- the American people is enormous. While it is impossible to 

 determine accurately the extent of the custom of self-medication a re- 

 cent writer has estimated that over $100,000,000 is expended annually 

 for so-called ' patent medicines.' The investigation of the causes 

 which have led to the growth of this business affords an interesting 

 study of human nature and also throws a light upon the subject of the 

 effect on the health of the community. Since time was mankind has 

 desired when sick the advice of some one who has devoted especial 

 attention to the subject of relieving human suffering, and while here 

 and there are scattered over the land adherents to various faddists, 

 who, on account of religious beliefs or credence in some peculiar theory 

 of health, have ceased to consult doctors, yet the overwhelming ma- 

 jority of the people still believe in the usefulness of the medical pro- 

 fession as well as of drugs. 



The two motives which most commonly lead to experimentation 

 with advertised nostrums are the desire to avoid calling in a physi- 

 cian and to save thereby the doctor's fee, and the hope that better 

 results may be achieved than are offered by the regular medical pro- 

 fession. Occasionally, as in unsettled districts, the impossibility of 

 obtaining medical advice forces ' home treatment,' but this condition 

 is so infrequent that it may be practically disregarded. 



In the majority of instances it is the indisposition to send for the 

 doctor which explains the self-dosing, not always from the desire to 

 save money, but at times from a sense of shame in annoying a busy 

 man with some trivial complaint which the patient believes he can 

 treat himself with equal benefit. This feeling covers the use of a large 

 number of the less objectionable proprietary remedies such as the 

 laxatives, but is also the predominant factor in the employment of the 

 most diabolical of them all, the ' soothing syrups,' with which hundreds 

 of non-thinking mothers are poisoning their children. One of the 

 dangers, which attend all self-medication but apply with especial 

 force to the habit of relieving seemingly trivial complaints, is that some 

 serious trouble, still in its formative stage when proper treatment is 

 most efficacious, is neglected until the damage wrought becomes irrepar- 

 able. For example, a man is taken with what he believes to be an 



