Secret Remedies

Geheimmittel, n. secret remedy, patent medicine, nostrum. 

The stimulus to drug regulation ultimately came following the publications of two BMA papers entitled Secret Remedies in 1909 and More Secret Remedies in 1912. These prompted a Parliamentary Select Committee on Patent Medicines to be set up. This Select Committee reported in 1914, but the outbreak of war resulted in the shelving of all proposed legislation. 

Anon. More Secret Remedies. What they cost and what they contain. British Medical Association, London 1912 185-209. 

Ipecac ( Brazil root ) was long employed by the native people of Brazil in the treatment of diarrhea. It was sold as a secret remedy to the French government in 1658, and its use in dysentery rapidly spread throughout Europe and India. Its employment was entirely empirical until 1912 when Vedder demonstrated the in vitro efficacy of emetine against E. histolytica and suggested that ipecac be used in amebic infections. The source of ipecac is the dried root or rhizome of C. ipecacuanha or C. acuminata, plants native to Brazil and Central America, but also cultivated in India, the Straits Settlements, and the Federated Malay States (see Grollman, 1962). 

M. Ramsey, Academic medicine and medical industrialism, the regulation of secret remedies in nineteenth-century France , Clio Med., 1994, 25, 25-78. 

Following completion of her degree in 1905, Hooper worked on the publication of the first British Pharmaceutical Codex, followed by a year with Alfred Kirby Huntington at King s College (see Chap. 3). Then, she joined the staff of E. F. Harrison and worked on the analysis of secret remedies for the British Medical Association. Subsequently, for 4Y2 years, she held a lectureship in chemistry at Portsmouth Municipal College. She was also one of the signatories of the 1909 letter to Chemical News (see Chap. 2). 

Magisteries Certain precipitates from saline solutions bore this title, but it was usually applied to secret remedies. ° ... 

This study had very little impact on generating public or political concern to set up a regulatory authority. However, the appearance of two publications by the BMA concerning certain proprietary medicines, entitled Secret Remedies (1909) and More Secret Remedies (1912), caused a Parliamentary Select Committee on Patent Medicines to be set up. This Select Committee reported in 1914, but World War I intervened and all the proposed legislation was shelved. It is worth listing several of the recommendations of this Committee, some of which had to wait until the Medicines Act (1968) controlled and kept standards under review, and many of these became internationally recognized. 

The medical establishment of the time was not oblivious to Stevens activities, the founder being a layperson and the disease in question the no. 1 national epidemic. Stevens (and others selling various suspicious treatments) did not have to wait long for the BMA s (British Mescal Association s) response In 1909 it published Secret Remedies - what they contain and what they cost , a book in which Stevens Consumption Cure was denounced as quackery and the origin of the plant used called into question (19-22). 

Secret Remedies What they Cost and What they Contain. British Medical Association, London, 1909. 

Brazil root" (Cephaelis ipecacuanha), now known as Ipecac, was used by the natives of Brazil several hundred years ago as a cure for diarrhea. It was sold as a secret remedy to the French in 1658. It was not until 1912 that Vedder demonstrated that its effectiveness was due mainly to one of its components, emetine, that killed Eschericia histolytica, which we now know as one of the major causes of amoebic dysentery. 

The purpose of alchemy is not, as it is said, to make gold and silver, but in this instance to make arcana [secret remedies] and direct them against diseases...For all these things conform to the instruction and test of nature. Hence nature and man, in health and sickness, need to be joined together, and to be brought into mutual agreement. This is the way to heal and restore to health.81... 

This study had very little impact on generating public or political concern to set up a regulatory authority. However, the appearance of two publications by the BMA concerning certain proprietary medicines, entitled Secret Remedies (1909) and... 

Aronson JK. Patent medicines and secret remedies. BMJ 2009 339 b5415. 

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