This is an extended version of an article I wrote which first appeared with Iredell Free News. That first article can be viewed here.
Sometimes, I find one little, tiny piece of information and it sends me down a rabbit hole bigger than the one Alice fell into. Recently, I came across a newspaper story, the content of which sent me down yet another rabbit hole of research. On December 19, 1902, the Landmark printed a brief story from the Charlotte Observer. In the Sharon Township of Mecklenburg County, just south of Charlotte, a white man claiming to be a doctor came to the community selling patent medicine. He came across a sick Black man and promised that for $10 he could provide the cure to his ailment. The man was only able to scrounge $9, but the “doctor” accepted it and provided the medicine. He left, claiming he was going to treat another patient, and less than 24 hours after taking the medicine, the black man died. The traveling “doctor” was never seen again.
I reread the article to make sure I read it correctly. A man, someone claiming to be a doctor, gave medicine to someone, medicine he presumably pulled out of his travel bag, and less than 24 hours later the patient was dead. In today’s world full of malpractice suits, it seemed far-fetched, but there was the story in black and white.
I decided to research the world of patent medicine.
Disturbingly, I found that stories like the one from 1902 were not entirely uncommon. The concept of patented medicine went back to before the Revolutionary War, but the practice of selling medicine for profit gained popularity in America in the mid-nineteenth century. Ailments for which these remedies would be sought ranged from hair loss and beauty tricks to arthritis and heart disease. Many, if not most, of these patent drugs contained opiates such as cocaine, opium, and morphine. Newspapers were filled with advertisements of miracle cures and people singing the praises of the magic medicine. Of course people would say the medicine made them feel better. They were high!
Society was in search of quick solutions to these ailments without the need to consult a physician. In rural areas, doctors often weren’t readily available and if they were, a lack of knowledge would sometimes hinder proper treatment. Some doctors would not treat patients if they didn’t think the family was able to pay for services rendered. For many, especially marginalized communities such as impoverished or African American groups, hospitals were considered a death sentence and mistrust for doctors ran high. In Iredell County, North Carolina, the Davis Hospital was known for treating Black patients in the basement with minimal care. Horror stories were told of patients being left downstairs to “heal and rest” where they were subsequently ignored and suffered lonely deaths. Many African Americans living in Statesville avoided going to hospitals, especially Davis. Those conditions are what made the appeal of a traveling medicine man so alluring. They promised the miracle cure, but for a price. Medical ethics had not yet been fully developed.
Many of these drugs were also easily replicated, which made them even more dangerous. Someone could easily design a knock-off of a well-known remedy and people would buy it thinking it would be as good as the original. As new copyright laws were being enacted, newly designed drugs were taking on different brands, but claiming better effects. Advertising for these medicines saw a peak in the United States following the Civil War. By the 1870s, patent drug ads accounted for 25% of newspaper advertising (Petty, 2019). Thanks to the heavy marketing, Americans spent an estimated $75 million on these medications by 1905 (Petty, 2019). That number does not reflect the sales of individual traveling salesman whose transactions were off-the-books, so the dollar amount was much higher than reported.
(LEFT) Buffalo Courier. Buffalo, NY, May 26, 1900 (CENTER) The Aegis. Harford County, MD, April 22, 1870 (RIGHT) The Statesville American. Statesville, NC, December 30, 1872
Patent medicines also extended to treating children. Drugs promising to calm crying babies or to soothe teething infants often contained the same harmful opiates. Newspaper ads, paid for by profit-seeking druggists, would advertise in large letters and fancy lithographs about the calming effects of products such as Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. Originally created in 1849, Mrs. Winslow’s syrup became one of the most popular patent medicines on the market for young children. Meanwhile, smaller and less costly warnings would be printed in tiny script on the bottom of pages claiming the deadly effects of these drugs. In 1888, a bulletin from the North Carolina Board of Health announced that soothing syrup accounted for the deaths of nearly 150,000 children every year (The Landmark, April 19, 1888). The Children’s Bureau published warnings in their widely distributed pamphlet, Infant Care, informing parents that patent teething medicines contained narcotics (Golden, 2017). Unfortunately, this warning did not come until 1914. By that time, generations of parents had been using these products.
The reputation of the traveling medicine man was also widespread. People knew to expect entertainment from these so-called doctors, much of which included Black actors who were paid (minimally) to ridicule themselves at the humor of white folks who would then pay the medicine man for whatever they promised would cure them. These men were often called scoundrels and fakirs, but somehow, they still managed to con people into buying their supplies. The Charlotte Observer reported in 1903 that a medicine man named J.C. Hunter had been faking people in the lower part of Mecklenburg County and had raised suspicions. It was discovered that the company he claimed to represent did not exist. It crossed my mind that this J.C. Hunter may have been the same man who killed the unfortunate African American man the year before, but I have no proof of that. It was becoming common knowledge that these “doctors” were nothing but swindlers. Several newspapers printed satirical scripts such as this one from The Franklin Times out of Louisburg, North Carolina (May 29, 1896):
Patent Medicine Man- Madam, did your husband use the bottle of Fagen’s Balm of life I left him?
Wife- Yes. It took immediate effect.
Patent Medicine Man- Good. Then you can conscientiously say that he will use no other?
Wife- I’m quite sure of it. He’s dead.
Or this one from The Hickory Press in Catawba County, North Carolina (June 1, 1893):
Farmer Peastraw- I wonder who that is going up to my house?
Farmer Oatcake- A patent medicine man.
Farmer Peastraw- Gee whiz! I must rush away and head him off. If he gets ten minutes’ talk with my wife she’ll be down sick with every disease in the almanac.
Although these tidbits were comical, they represented a very real and dangerous threat.
In January 1903, a particularly tragic death came upon a young man in Ohio. Dr. Emmett J. Pope, originally of Kentucky, had a promising future as a physician with his prestigious degree from a medical college in Cincinnati. He went back home to establish a private practice which became quite successful. At some point he became ill and was given morphine to help alleviate his pain. Not unlike many people today who become addicted to drugs after being prescribed legitimate medication, Pope got hooked on morphine. The newspaper said, “the drug became fixed” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 1, 1903). Unfortunately, Pope’s addiction caused him to lose his practice and somehow he ended up in Hamilton, Ohio where he was employed at a mill as a day laborer. Pope tried using patent medicine to “cure himself of the habit.” Most likely, the drug he was using to try and beat his addiction contained the same ingredient to which he was dependent. The newspaper reported the patent medicine as his cause of death. In all likelihood, his death was probably the result of an overdose.
Not all drug related deaths were due to faulty medicine. Sometimes, the medicine was used improperly which led to disaster. In 1899, a Philadelphia man named William H. Weir had purchased a type of acid which promised to be beneficial against barber’s itch, a skin condition usually caused by a staph or fungal infection in the hair follicle. The product might have been useful for that ailment, but when digested, it proved deadly. Mr. Weir accidentally drank a fatal dose when he thought he was reaching for water. Apparently, his death was agonizing (The Philadelphia Times, August 17, 1899).
These situations were commonly known, and local newspapers did not hide their existence. Before long, people started to wonder if any action could be taken to properly regulate these potentially dangerous products. As early as 1890, officials in the Georgia courts ruled that proprietors of patent medicines were liable for injuries or death to anyone who took the drugs while following the listed instructions (The Landmark, January 23, 1890). By the early twentieth century, the attempt of some local commissioners and government officials to crack down on these practitioners was in full swing.
In 1904, a Bridgeton, New Jersey newspaper reported that two children, aged four and two, had almost died after ingesting toothache drops which had been thrown all over the streets haphazardly. As the mother of a three-year-old, I must admit that the thought of him getting a hold of something so dangerous, so easily is terrifying. The community begged for laws that would restrict the careless distribution of these drugs (The News of Cumberland County, April 30, 1904). Dr. Ferdinand Jones is credited with saving the children’s lives by recognizing the need for a stomach pump. He worked on the children for nearly two hours, but his labors saved them. According to Jones’ obituary in 1924, at the time of his death he had been practicing medicine for 25 years. His heroic actions in 1904 were relatively early in his career, but no doubt it would have motivated him to continue in his work.
In 1905, a committee in Portland, Maine tried to pass a bill that would require patent medications which contained alcohol to list the percentage of alcohol present in the formula directly on the label (Evening Express, March 9, 1905). It wasn’t until the federal government passed the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906 that changes started to take place. Transparency of drug ingredients was pushed for, including listing ingredients on labels and more honest marketing campaigns. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was founded this same year.
Although it seems bizarre to a modern audience that these types of medicines would be believed to be beneficial, keep in mind that this era is not far removed from the generation who believed in bloodletting. Bloodletting being the practice of cutting skin to allow blood “impurities” to escape the body. Sometimes this resulted in the death of the patient from…well, bleeding out. Sound judgment in the early medical field was quite lacking. Thankfully, the practice and knowledge of medicine has expanded and although our society is far from curing every disease known to man, we can confidently say we have come a long way from the days of the traveling medicine men.
That’s not to say that our society has not migrated from the practice of aggressive drug advertising. Every other commercial on TV today, and even the ads on streaming services, is a two-minute long musical about how effective our current medicinal options are. Twenty years ago, it was estimated that Americans spent over $215 billion on prescription drugs, and that number has exploded in the intervening decades (Tomes, 2005). The world of patent medicine also paved the way for the proprietary drug industry that we see today: brand name pharmaceuticals in the hands of private businesses.
Maybe our current drug industry is not that different from the medicine man era after all.
To learn more about this subject, visit the digital exhibition “Quack Cures and Self-Remedies: Patent Medicine” by the Digital Public Library of America.
Sources:
Golden, J. (2017) “Doctor’s don’t do so much good”: traditional practices, biomedicine, and infant care in the 20th century United States. Nursing History Review 25. 86-102.
Kang, L. and Pedersen, N. (2017) Quackery: a brief history of the worst ways to cure everything. Workman Publishing. New York.
Petty, R.D. (2019) “Natural born” killer trademarks of 19th century medicine. Intellectual Property Journal 31(3). 327-359.
Tomes, N. (2005). The great American medicine show revisited. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 79(4). 627-663.
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