Patent medicines were for the most part actually trademarked medicines, not patented. The word is given to various medical compounds sold under a variety of names and labels. It has become particularly associated with the sale of drug compounds in the nineteenth century under cover of colourful names and even more colourful claims.
Patent medicines were sometimes called nostrums, a Latin word meaning "ours." This refers generally to any proprietary mixture of drugs.
Table of contents |
2 Ingredients and their uses 3 The end of the patent medicine era 4 See also 5 External links |
Patent medicines and advertising
Instead, the compounders of these nostrums used a primitive version of branding to distinguish themselves from the crowd of their competitors. Many familiar names from the era live on in brands such as Luden Brothers' cough drops, Lydia E. Pinkham's vegetable compound for women, Fletcher's Castoria, and even Angostura bitters, which was once marketed as a stomach remedy.
Touting these nostrums was one of the first major projects of the advertising industry. A number of American institutions owe their existence to the patent medicine industry, most notably a number of the older almanacs, which were originally given away as promotional items by patent medicine manufacturers. Perhaps the most successful industry that grew up out of the business of patent medicine advertisements, though, was founded by William H. Gannett in Maine in 1866. There were few circulating newspapers in Maine in that era, so Gannett founded a periodical, Comfort, whose chief purpose was to propose the merits of Oxien, a nostrum made from the fruit of the baobab tree, to the rural folks of Maine. Gannett's newspaper became the first publication of the Gannett Corporation, whose flagship newspaper today is USA Today.
Unlikely ingredients such as the baobab fruit in Oxien were a recurring theme. A famous patent medicine of the period was Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root, roots found in swamps had remarkable effects on the kidneys, according to its literature. Native American themes were possible; another famous remedy from the period was Kickapoo Indian Sagwa, a product of the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company, supposedly based on a Native American recipe. This nostrum was the inspiration for Al Capp's "Kickapoo Joy Juice." Just about any scientific discovery or exotic locale could be used as a key ingredient in a patent medicine. Consumers were invited to invoke the power of electromagnetism to heal them. Towards the end of the period, a number of radioactive medicines, containing uranium or radium, were marketed. These apparently actually contained the ingredients promised, and there were a number of tragedies among their devotees; most notoriously, Eben McBurney Byers, a steel heir, died horribly after taking more than a thousand bottles of "radium water."
Ingredients and their uses
What was in them? While various herbs, touted or alluded to, were often mentioned, more often they contained opium extracts, cocaine, and grain alcohol. Until the twentieth century the alcohol was the most controversial ingredient; for it was widely recognised that the "medicines" could continue to be sold for their alleged curative properties even in prohibition states and counties. Many of the medicines were in fact liqueurs of various sorts, flavoured with herbs said to have medical properties. Peruna was a famous "Prohibition tonic," weighing in at around 18% grain alcohol. Some were made laxatives or diuretics, in order to give the compounds some obvious medical effects. The narcotics and stimulants at least had the virtue of making the people who took them feel better, and in the eyes of the advertisers this was scored as a "cure."
When journalists and physicians began focusing on the narcotic contents of the patent medicines, some of their makers began substituting the toxic analgesic NSAID known as acetanilid, discovered in 1886, for the laudanum they used to contain. This ingredient change probably killed more of the nostrum's users than the narcotics did, since the acetanalid was toxic to the liver and kidneys.
The end of the patent medicine era
The patent medicine makers moved from selling nostrums to selling deodorants and toothpastes, which continued to be advertised using the same techniques that had proven themselves selling nostrums for tuberculosis and "female complaints."
See also
External links