i 



Throughout the 19th century, occa- 

 sional criticism of the old English 

 patent medicines had been made in the 

 lay press. One novel '^' describes a 

 physician who comments on the use of 

 Dalby's Carminative for babies: "Don't, 

 for pity's sake, vitiate and torment your 

 poor little angel's stomach, so new to 

 the atrocities of this world, with drugs. 

 These mixers of baby medicines ought 

 to be fed nothing but their own nos- 

 trums. That would put a stop to their 

 inventions of the adversary." 



Opium had been lauded in tht- 17tli 

 and 18th centuries, when the old Eng- 

 lish proprietaries Ijegan, as a superior 

 cordial which could moderate most 

 illnesses and even cure some. "Medi- 

 cine would be a one-armed man if it 

 did not possess this remcch." So had 

 stated the noted English physician, 

 Thomas Sydenham.'-" But the 20th 

 century had grown to fear this powerful 

 narcotic, especially in remedies lor 

 children. This point of view, illus- 

 trated in the governmental action con- 

 cerning Dalby's Carminative, was also 

 reflected in medical comment about 

 Godfrey's Cordial. During 1912, a Missouri ph\sician 

 described the death of a baby who had been given this 

 medicine for a week.'-^ The symptoms were those of 

 opium poisoning. Deploring the naming of this "dan- 

 gerous mixture" a "cordial," since the average person 

 thought of a cordial as beneficial, the doctor hoped 

 that the formula might be omitted from the next edi- 

 tion of the National Jormuhirv- This did not happen, 

 for the recipe hung on until 1926. The Harrison Nar- 

 cotic Act, enacted in 1914 as a Federal measure to re- 

 strict the distribution of narcotics,'-' failed to restrict 



BY 



The 



ROYAIili 



Patent 



GKANTEa) 



TO 



I 



RobT 



TURIil 



NGTOJSr 



FouHrs 



INVENTED 



Balsam 



'i "T i|| i i|*' r, l!!!1 T" l 



'^' John William De Forest, Miss Haveners cotwasion from 

 secession to loyally. New York, 1867. 



'" Charles H. LaVVall, Tlie curious lore of drugs and medicines 

 (Four thousand yeais of phaimacy). Garden City, New York, 

 1927, p. 281. 



'22 W. B. Sissons, "Poisoning from Godfrey's Cordial," 

 Journal of the American Medical Association, March 2, 1912, 

 vol. 58, p. 650. 



'2* Edward Kremers and George Urdang, History oj phmmacy, 

 Philadelphia, 1951, pp. 1"0, 278. 



Figure 15. — Turli.ngto.n's B.MJi.v.M oi- Lu l Ijuules 

 as pictured in a brochure dated 1 755-1 757, preserved 

 in the Pennsylvania Historical Society. Philadelphia. 

 Pa. According to Turlington, the bottle was adopted 

 in 1754 "to prevent the villainy of some persons who, 

 buying up my empty bottles, have basely and wickedly 

 put therein a vile spurious counterfeit sort." 



the sale of many opium-bearing compounds like God- 

 frey's Cordial. In 1931, a Tennessee resident com- 

 plained to the medical journal Hygeia that this medica- 

 tion was "sold in general stores and drug stores here 

 without prescription and is 2;iven to babies." To 

 this, the journal replied that the situation was "little 

 short of criminal." '^' The charge leveled against his 

 competitors by one of the first producers of Godfrey's 

 Cordial two centuries earlier (see page 1 58) may well 

 have proved a prophecy broad enough to cover the 

 whole history of this potent nostrum. ". . . Many 

 Men, Women, and especially Infants," he said, 

 "mav fall as Victims, whose Slain may exceed Herod's 

 Cruelty . . . ." 



For those who persist in using the formulas of the 

 early English patent medicines, recipes are still 

 available. Turlington's Balsam remains as an 



'25 "Godfrey's Cordial," Hygria, October 1931. vol. 9, p. 1050. 



P.APER 10: OLD ENGLISH P.ATENT MEDICINES IN .\MERIC.\ 



181 



