The term of Andrew Jackson has been called the Age of the Common Man. Basic trends included anti-intellectualism, rejection of experts and belief that the common man was the best person to decide his own destiny, even in matters of life and death. One consequence was the rapid growth of medical quackery.
As an American enterprise, the sale of nostrums had its substantial beginning in the decade following the American Revolution. Aided by medical ignorance and shrewd entrepreneurs, promotional techniques were expanded and elaborated as the common man sought common relief from his common ailments.
Before the Revolution, colonists patronized local and itinerant quacks whose remedies resembled those of regular doctors, like the scurvy cure of Nicholas Knapp of Boston In 1630, and in 1764 John Soufee’s “Cordial Elixir to Rid the Body of the Loathing Sickness and Nauseusness, Especially After a Surfeit of Hard Drinking.” But these were small potatoes.
The lords of the pseudo-revolution were British exporters who brought remedies like “Turlington’s Balsam of Life” and “Hooper’s Female Pills,” sold by postmasters, printers and apothecaries. Americans grew accustomed to their distinctive names and the shapes of their packages.
The Revolution led to American imitations with novel names and distinct packages like “Church’s Genuine Vegetable Lotion – Cream Drawn from Violets and Milk from Roses.” Lee’s Pills, made in Connecticut were sold throughout the colonies and expanded into the Louisiana Territory after it joined the nation.
DOCTORS – IMMORAL BRUTES?
The favored treatments of physicians were bleeding and purging, and the nostrum makers pictured them as heartless brutes armed with scalpels and mercurial purges.
Besides the appeal to the common sense of the common man as opposed to his dependence upon trained physicians, popular religion also aided the avoidance of doctors. Ministers opposed dissection of cadavers for anatomical study, and the use of male doctors in obstetrical cases was decried as highly immoral.
Attempts by medical societies to rein in quackery were unsuccessful. Licensing laws were enacted between 1760 and 1830 as a result of pressures from medical societies, but most were repealed or fell into disuse.
By mid-century only three states made even a pretence of trying to regulate who should and should not be allowed to practice medicine. One state senator in New York arrived at a legislative session with a 30-yard-long petition declaring “the people of this state have been bled long enough in their bodies and pockets.”
ANYBODY CAN BE A DOCTOR
Samuel Thomson, a self-taught botanical dispenser, made use of anti-intellectual attitudes by obtaining patents in 1813 for his discoveries. While he had ambitions of a monopoly, he also preached that every man could treat himself. His attempts to control the market for his botanicals failed but whole sections of New England, the South and West adopted his medicines and precepts.
A Mississippi governor estimated that half the people of the state used botanical principles, and in Ohio, even physicians estimated that a third of the population relied on botanicals.
No medical knowledge was needed to launch a botanical career. One editor noted: “Any idle mechanic by chance gets a dispensary or some old receipt book and poring over it or having someone read it to him, he finds that mercury is good for the itch and old ulcers; that opium will give ease. Down goes the hammer or saw, razor, awl or shuttle, and away to make electuaries, tinctures, elixirs, pills, plasters and poultices.”
THE MARKET EXPANDS
The number of nostrums on the market increased. A New York catalog of 1804 lists 80 or 90 names. An 1857 Boston catalog lists 500 to 600. One may add to that the local and regional brands.
One purveyor put all his eggs in one basket: William Swain of Philadelphia sold “Swain’s Panacea” to cure about everything. Another offered “Doctor Robertson’s Celebrated Stomachic Elixir of Health for Coughs, Consumption, Asthma and Whooping Cough,” as well as his “Vegetable Nervous Cordial (Or Nature’s Grand Restorative) for Nervous Complaints, Depression and Intemperance.” and for special ailments there were Robertson’s “Celebrated Gout and Rheumatic Drops,” “Stomacic Bitters, and “Worm-Destroying Lozenges.”
Another marketed “Anti-Bilious Pills,” “Infallible Tooth-Ache Drops,” and “Patent Itch Ointment.” And there was Dr. Vickers’s “Ointment for Tetter and Ringworm” and his “Embrocation for Rheumatism.” A Dr. Goldbold offered his “Vegetable Balsam of Life,” “The Balm of Iberia for Improving the Complexion,” “the Circassian Eye-Water,” the “Restorative Dentifrice,” and Mahy’s “Approved Plaster Cloth.” All of these products were known throughout the nation.
HELP FROM NEWSPAPERS
The expanding market for patient medicines owed much to the spread of American newspapers, a good medium for promoting the sale of pop remedies. At the beginning of the century there were 200 newspapers. By 1860 there were 4,000 of which 400 were dailies, including the “penny press,” introduced in the 1830s. Their greatest revenue came from advertising, and patent medicine purveyors were the most extensive national advertisers. One “pill man” spent $100,000 a year advertising his purgative according to an 1839 Congressional report.
OTHER INFLUENCES
The expansion of literacy also helped the “pill men.” The common man could read the gory symptoms and glowing testimonials in the national ads.
One impediment to change was the patent law of 1836. Shrewd purveyors could get patents without revealing the nature of the ingredients. They patented not the formula but the bottle design and got copyrights on their labels, literature wrapped around the bottle and promotional posters.
Another influence was the expanding population and the inadequacy of orthodox medical practices to cope with diseases. In 1815 the mortality rate was rising because of the increase in tuberculosis, typhoid, typhus, yellow fever, and in 1831, cholera. Syrups and lozenges abounded in the market and their promoters promised cures for the worst scourges.
FUTILE ATTEMPTS AT CONTROL
A number of medical societies in mid-century were adopting codes of ethics that included attacks on quackery and patent medicines. Even though the medical profession at the time contributed little to the science of medicine, some leaders were more perceptive than others. Science was moving, however slowly, toward creation of a type of medicine that would eventually exert a profound influence on the health of the American people. The anti-quackery crusade was part of a broader public health movement that stressed personal hygiene, nutrition and urban sanitation, and paralleled humanitarian crusades against slavery, liquor and “other evils of society.”
Attempts to control quackery through legislation and codes failed. The critiques of enlightened doctors and reports of congressional committees were read by fewer Americans than read the gaudy ads for magic potions.
Patent medicines remained “a great and growing evil,” according to an 1849 Congressional report.
Reference: Young, James Harvey, “American Quackery in the Age of the Common Man,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, March 1961.