The past is dark and full of terrors

[mme_hardy]

 I was noodling around, as one does, and I stumbled over the Google Book of the  1911 book, The Composition of Certain Patent and Proprietary Medicines.   It does what it says on the tin, and boy, howdy.  Some highlights:

• Black Cloud Healing Mixture: Mercuric chloride 1 oz, oil of tar 1 gal, turpentine 1.5 oz, phenol 5 oz, wood alcohol 1 gal.  [Given the poisonousness of wood alcohol, this can't have been for internal consumption.  I'm guessing this might have been sold to treat syphilis chancres?  oursin  will know.]
• Blue Bell Bright Sunshine Tablets: corn starch, zinc phosphid, nux vomica [the plant from which you get strychnine], cantharides [Spanish fly], glycerin, damiana, and arsenic more than 1 part per hundred thousand.
• Boy's Friend: An antiseptic solution of zinc sulphate, boric acid, hydraxatin and lysol to be used as an injection.
• (This one's for legionseagle ) Carbolic Smoke Balls,  small round balls wrapped in red cloth.  The balls contain 310 grams of a gray powder consisting of glycorrhiza (licorice), and flour, one of the veratrums (probably white hellebore),  and an unidentified tar product.

Over and over you see "medicines" containing morphine, cocaine, or opium; mercury, lead, or zinc compounds; prussic acid; colloidal silver; strychnine; all invariably (if liquid) borne on a sea of alcohol.   Then there are things I find just plain odd: beef and steel tonics, three different celery tonics that don't actually contain celery; and, of course, laxatives in everything, even products not marketed as laxatives.

Wouldn't it be nice if the FDA were allowed to regulate supplements again?

Comments

[mme_hardy]

You should see the ones touted for morphine addiction cures, which contain ... wait for it ... morphine.

[recessional]

*opens mouth*

*closes mouth*

Okay then.

[adrian_turtle]

Some modern experts consider methadone a plausible treatment for opiate addiction, but the dose and timing have to be controlled carefully. (Just as nicotine patches treat tobacco addiction.) The problem is that none of these "make you less high, and let you taper off slowly without withdrawal" things won't help somebody who wants to continue using the addictive substance. Too many of the addiction cures were marketed as "Sneak this miracle elixir into your parent's coffee and they'll stop using Demon Whatever!" That trick never works.

[kore]

Yeah, I've known people who went off heroin only to claim they were then addicted by doctors to methadone, altho at least methadone can be administered in a semi-medical setting and isn't cut with God knows what and the required routine to show up and get it can provide some kind of structure, as opposed to the compulsiveness of copping. But I think it's useful more as a maintenance harm reduction thing than anything else. If methadone helps keep people off the streets and away from dirty needles and is part of a treatment program, that's good, but it doesn't really solve the underlying addiction problem.

[ironed_orchid]

Your icon is a thing of beauty.

[kore]

Thank you! It's this guy's artwork: http://bjornlie.tumblr.com/post/132796404950/did-this-botanical-drawing-for-todays-ny-times https://instagram.com/p/903ftwkWYr/

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

It's a bit like the nicotine patch -- if you can get rid of the day-to-day habits that you build up around smoking (which many people have done their whole adult lives), it can make a big difference even if you haven't yet kicked the physical addiction. That's of course even more important in the case of doing illegal drugs, where you need to re-learn how to have a life that's not about getting a fix. But I know from a relative's experience (thankfully now several decades in the past) that getting off methadone is not easy. I don't know what the modern experience is like. I hope there is better support now.

[kore]

Oh, yeah. IIRC, heroin was marketed as a safe synthetic non-addictive alternative to morphine. Sort of the same way methadone was then marketed as a safe non-addictive (ho ho) alternative to heroin later on. I think it was used til the nineteen-teens as an alternative to morphine as a cough suppressant.

[legionseagle]

You could get packages of morphine and heroin during WWI from the Army and Navy Stores, advertised as "a very acceptable gift for a loved one at the Front." Which is probably one of the most honest advertisements in recorded history.