Advertising patent medicines

Many of these nostrums were advertised to cure a myriad of diseases, but probably failed to cure any. However, they certainly created countless alcoholics and morphine addicts. By the early 1900s, concern regarding patent medicines was on the rise and the medical profession soon formally discredited their production. These measures unfortunately came too late to curb the infiltration of opium into American society. 

Despite little evidence that the patent medicines worked, the advertising increased sales. 

Hagley Museum and Library, Advertising and Branding, Patent Medicine. Available online. URL http //www.hagley.org/library/exhibits/patentmed/ history/advertisingbranding.html. Downloaded March 30, 2009. 

Walker, Bingham, A. The Snake-Oil Syndrome Patent Medicine Advertising. Hanover, Mass. Christopher Publishing House, 1994. With reprints of the words and images from patent medicine ads, this book illustrates the excessive claims made by merchants, marketers, and manufacturers during the 1800s and early 1900s. 

While a tradition of using minor remedies for things like colds or warts existed, reasonable people left the control of drugs in the hands of the experts. Even patent medicines derived their fundamental cultural status from the implied approval of these groups, or had to go back to their precursors, the medicine men and shamans of primitive days. To this day, television advertisements for patent medicines that will cure headaches, sinus congestion, or "tired blood" are... 

Some labels and advertisements made ridiculous claims, like those made by Warner s Safe Liver and Kidney Cure, which claimed that Warner s medicine could treat all diseases of the lower half of the body. Another patent medicine, Wintersmith s Chill Tonic, claimed to... 

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, with the increased urbanisation and industrialisation of the UK, the majority of medicines were the so-called patent medicines which contained few active ingredients but had extensive claims for their curative actions. Thus, the controls that had to be applied were on the advertising and claims for the product. It was only after 1935 that the therapeutic revolution brought products which actually had some proven and consistent efficacy. Unfortunately, along with the efficacy came side-effects and problems, since for every pharmacological activity which is beneficial there will inevitably also be side-effects. If we look back at the introduction of controls on medicines, it is generally a problem or disaster which leads to introduction of the specific control. 

T 19-20m century — patent medicine - wild claims - advertising... 

The patent-medicine era was fascinating indeed. What folly, we think in retrospect, to swallow untested, unregulated products purely on the basis of imaginative advertising. But do you know what In a sense, the patent-medicine era lives on. The Internet is filled with pitches for untested nostrums that recall the glory days of patent medicines. 

That the administration of the law governing the advertisement and sale of patent, secret and proprietary medicines and appliances be coordinated and combined under the authority of one Department of State. 

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