![]() They included: Fatoff Obesity Cream, Make-Man Tablets, and Antimorbific Liver and Kidney Medicine. Plenty of other patent medicines flooded the American landscape, according to a history posted on the web site of the FDA. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, one of the most popular women's remedies of the time. Many nostrums targeted vague "female complaints." The delicate dames of yore didn't mention menstrual cramps and hot flashes in polite company. "You couldn't get away from them," Whorton says. ![]() People bought nostrums from traveling medicine shows, and the cures beckoned boldly from billboards and newspaper and magazine ads. While doctors of the late 1800s considered these drugs legitimate, a whole range of shady patent medicines, sometimes called "nostrums," also flourished during that period. One Belgian company even promoted cocaine throat lozenges as "indispensable for singers, teachers and orators." Dentists and surgeons also used cocaine as an anesthetic. Old medicines and antique urinals? Check out one collector's story.Ĭocaine drops for toothache came on the market after doctors discovered its pain-relieving qualities. One company sold heroin tablets to relieve asthmasymptoms. 'Legitimate' Medicine of an Earlier Eraĭoctors used arsenic and mercury to treat syphilis before the introduction of penicillin in the 1940s. Whorton, PhD, a medical historian and professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine. One physician called it 'God's own medicine,'" says James C. But doctors have favored it throughout history, especially to control coughing and diarrhea. Some were fanciful potions that quacks concocted to make a buck, while others were legitimate - even revered - treatments that eventually yielded to more enlightened science.įor example, opium suffers a tainted reputation these days. ![]() Today, no one would dream of calming an infant with morphine, but the museum of medicine is littered with such discarded remedies. ![]() It was touted as an indispensable aid to quiet bawling babies and teething tots, and it packed a wallop of an ingredient: morphine. Pity the poor Victorian-era family whose bottle of Mrs. ![]()
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