Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  ) 
Sept.,  1877.  J 
Editorial. 
475 
EDITORIAL  DEPARTMENT. 
Fraudulent,  Proprietary  and  Semi-proprietary  Medicines.— The  traffic  in  the 
classes  of  medicines  mentioned  in  the  heading  is  among  the  greatest  evils  from 
which  both  the  medical  and  pharmaceutical  professions  suffer.  It  is  true  that  frauds, 
be  they  practised  in  the  form  of  adulterations  or  actual  substitutions,  are  usually 
short  lived;  yet  even  after  they  have  been  exposed,  it  is  necessary  to  be  constantly 
on  the  alert,  because  they  are  occasionally  repeated  by  unprincipled  dealers,  and 
such  repetition  is  again  likely  to  succeed  for  a  while,  and  the  better  the  nearer  the 
physical  properties  of  the  imitation  approach  those  of  the  genuine  article.  In  prin- 
ciple such  frauds  have  no  hold  upon  the  community  at  large,  nor  upon  the  medical 
and  pharmaceutical  professions  in  particular  5  but  in  practice  it  is  often  different, 
and  they  are  aided  and  abetted  by  those,  who,  in  their  morbid  desire  of  purchasing 
cheap,  overlook  the  quality  as  being  of  primary  considerations  ;  it  is  not  want  of 
honesty,  but  want  of  vigilance  or  of  information,  and  in  most  cases,  we  think,  the 
latter,  which  is  to  blame  for  the  success  of  the  fraudulent  adulterator.  There  are 
many  ill-informed  apothecaries  in  large  and  small  towns,  and  many  medical  prac- 
titioners, who,  though  being  their  own  dispensers,  cannot  be  expected  to  be  the  best 
judges  of  the  quality  of  drugs,  through  whom  the  fraudulent  medicines  find  their 
way  to  the  consumer.  An  illustration  of  this  state  of  things  was  furnished  us  by 
the  frank  confession  of  a  man,  who,  some  20  or  25  years  ago  was  a  pedler,  and  who 
operated  as  follows:  he  purchased  from  one  of  our  manufacturing  chemists  a  quan- 
tity of  sulphate  of  quinia  in  1  oz.  bottles  and  from  another  a  corresponding  quan- 
tity of  salicin  in  bulk;  the  bottles  were  carefully  opened,  emptied  and  again  filled 
with  salicin,  the  quinia  in  bulk  was  sold  in  the  city  without  difficulty,  at  a  small  loss, 
and  the  salicin  in  bottles  was  disposed  of  at  the  price  of  quinia  to  country  physi- 
cians and  storekeepers.  The  great  fraud  set  on  foot  by  a  former  drug  firm  of  New 
York,  a  few  years  ago,  will  be  fresh  in  the  memory  of  our  readers  ;  we  have  it  from 
persons  who  had  the  opportunity  of  obtaining  the  information,  that  the  muriate  of 
cinchonia,  then  sold  as  Pelletiefs  quinia,  found  its  way  almost  altogether  into  the 
hands  of  country  physicians  and  storekeepers,  until  the  last  of  it  was  finally  manu- 
factured into  sugar-coated  quinine  pills,  which  have  undoubtedly  been  consumed  as 
such  by  this  time. 
Proprietary  Medicines,  or  secret  preparations,  properly  so  called,  it  is  assumed 
are  not  prescribed  by  physicians;  yet  few  pharmacists  of  experience  will  be  found 
who  cannot  recall  instances  where  such  have  been  ordered  in  prescriptions.  Inefficacy 
cannot  be  argued  against  many  of  these  nostrums;  the  intelligent  opposition  against 
them  is  based  upon  the  secrecy  of  their  composition  anr1  the  impossibility  of  devi- 
sing general  remedies  for  special  cases,  01  for  a  number  of  diseases.  The  former 
stamps  them  with  suspicion  and  as  extortionate,  the  latter  as  hurtful,  and  conse- 
quently worse  than  worthless.  In  modern  times  they  occupy  the  same  position  as 
did  the  arcana  of  former  centuries,  some  of  which,  deprived  of  their  cloak  of  se- 
