CHAPTER XVI.. Some Miscellaneous Medicines.

SOME MISCELLANEOUS MEDICINES.

TWO PREPARATIONS FOR SEA-SICKNESS.

Many proprietary and other medicines for sea-sickness have been put forward from time to time, both as preventives and cures, but usually without attaining to any very wide adoption. The first of the two preparations here described has been very widely advertised in the last few years; the second one, which is shown by analysis to be very similar in composition, appears to be of Canadian origin.

ZOTOS.

This is supplied by Zotos, Limited, London; the price is 2s. 9d. per box containing twelve capsules.

It is described on the outside of the package as “the infallible remedy against sea sickness”; on the inner package it is stated that

Zotos is an infallible remedy against sea sickness, train sickness, etc.

Zotos not only prevents sickness but stimulates the appetite.

Zotos contains no injurious drug and produces no bad after-effects.

A circular contained in the package gives a so-called “analytical report” on the preparation, in which it is stated that the capsules are “free from any noxious ingredient,” and that the contents “consist of compounds of high therapeutic activity.”

Somewhat lengthy directions are given, the principal part being as follows:

The capsules to be swallowed whole and to be taken before, not after, a meal.

Take a capsule half an hour before the steamer sails, another just as the steamer leaves, and a third (though this is rarely required) half an hour later. Afterwards, if any uneasiness be caused by the movement of the vessel, capsules may be taken from time to time up to 6 per day. If travelling by night, take a capsule on going to bed and another half an hour before getting up.

The capsules were found to contain a pink powder, the average weight of the contents of one being 6.3 grains. Analysis showed the powder to consist of a mixture of sugar of milk and chlorbutol, with traces of colouring and flavouring matters. Chlorbutol, or trichlor-tertiary butyl alcohol, is better known under the trade name, Chloretone. It is described in the British Pharmaceutical Codex as “a local anæsthetic, analgesic, and antiseptic.” “Its anæsthetic properties are specially exerted upon the stomach, small repeated doses being used to allay post-operative vomiting and sea sickness.”

The proportions of the ingredients were found to be:

Chlorbutol 76.9 per cent. Lactose 23.0 „

No other substance was found, except the traces of colouring and flavouring matters already mentioned.

The estimated cost of the ingredients for twelve capsules is 5d.

MOTHERSILL’S SEASICK REMEDY.

This preparation is supplied by a limited company giving addresses in London and Montreal. The package bears the words “Made in Canada.”

It is stated on the label that it--

Stops and Prevents any case of Seasickness, Trainsickness, and all nausea caused by motion, climbing, etc. Guaranteed not to contain cocaine, opium, morphine, or chloral. It does not affect the heart or liver, or cause unpleasant symptoms.

A 2s. 3d. package contained six capsules, three containing pink powder and three brown. The dose is given as one of each kind, taken together, so that the package contained three doses.

The average weight of the contents of the three capsules was 11¹⁄₄ grains. Analysis showed the powders to have the following composition:

Pink Powder.

Sugar of milk 33.3 per cent. Caffeine 8.2 „ Stearic acid 18.0 „ Chlorbutol 40.1 „ Colouring matter a trace.

Brown Powder.

Powdered cinnamon 29.4 per cent. Caffeine 8.4 „ Stearic acid 17.4 „ Chlorbutol 44.5 „

The stearic acid is probably added as a lubricant, to facilitate the filling of the powder into the capsules, although the amount is large for the purpose.

The estimated cost of the ingredients for the six capsules is 2¹⁄₂d.

A CURE-ALL.--KORPUSDOON.

In addition to the many proprietary medicines which are widely and generally advertised, a very large number are advertised only or principally in some particular locality, and such preparations sometimes attain a very considerable local sale. The claims made for these medicines do not show any more modest pretensions than those more widely advertised, while the ignorance of the makers is sometimes even more evident.

A medicine of this class, made in a Lancashire town, is called “Korpusdoon.” It is stated on the label to be “Prepared only by Mrs. Ann Briggs, Health Specialist (for the Korpusdoon Medicine and Health Food Co.).” The price is 2s. 3d. per bottle, and the bottle bought for examination contained 25¹⁄₂ fl. oz. The dose is given as, for an adult one teacupful every other morning; for children, half dose every other morning.

The nature of the claims made for it is shown by the following extracts, the first of which is from a newspaper advertisement, and the second from the label on the bottle:

Why suffer from Influenza when Korpusdoon puts a check on all poisonous acid from which all diseases originate, and cleanses from the system all bad germs.

The Virtues of this Famous Medicine “Korpusdoon.”

It kills and clears away from the Stomach and Nasal Passages all the accumulation of poisonous acids--which, after 20 years of keen and careful observation, I find to be the cause of all the ailments the body is liable to, such as Catarrh of the Stomach, Nasal Catarrh, Fermentation of the Stomach, Influenza, Hay Fever, Eczema, Gall Stones, Gout, Goitre, Rheumatism, Lumbago, Neuralgia, Appendicitis, Consumption, Irregularities of the Heart, Loss of Memory and Nerve trouble, Paralysis, Bright’s Disease, Whooping Cough, Measles, Scarlet Fever, Typhoid, Diphtheria, and Small-pox. A sure preventative of Tumour and Cancer.

It is a great beautifier of the Skin and Hair.

In the newspaper advertisement the maker’s name and address are followed by the words “At Home Mondays and Saturdays,” which is presumably an intimation that she can be consulted professionally at those times.

Analysis showed the mixture to contain magnesium sulphate and an extract of liquorice, flavoured with aniseed and sassafras, and further sweetened with a little chloroform. Careful search did not afford any indication of any other constituent. The colour was much darker than the colour which results if the ordinary liquid extract of liquorice is employed, and the latter contains alcohol, which was absent from the mixture; but it was found that by taking ordinary “stick liquorice,” and boiling it with the Epsom salts, a dark liquor was obtained agreeing closely with the original. Possibly the flavour of aniseed and sassafras is got by boiling these drugs with the Epsom salts and liquorice, but a mixture in which they were added respectively as the water and the essential oil was practically indistinguishable from “Korpusdoon.” The quantities of the different ingredients found were as follows:

Magnesium sulphate 624 grains. Extract of liquorice (from “stick liquorice”) 550 „ Chloroform (= chloroform water 4 fl. oz.) 5 minims. Oil of sassafras 3 „ Aniseed water 5 fl. oz. Water to 25 „

Estimated cost of ingredients, 2¹⁄₄d.

A RADIUM SALVE.

Long advertisements have appeared recently in the daily papers of a radium salve stated to have been discovered by Dr. S. Saubermann, who gives an address in Berlin. The salve is sold in this country by a company which describes itself as “manufacturing chemists to the medical profession.” We are told in a pamphlet issued by this company that Dr. Saubermann’s formula has been embodied and improved upon in the radium salve they sell. It is stated further that the salve is impregnated with the “radium salt in the proportion of 1 in 500,000,” a quantity which “must not be exceeded, as otherwise the absorption by the skin and the well-known action of the strong and penetrating rays will do more harm than good.” It is described as a remedy for lupus, cancer, and all diseases of the skin, with a bountiful “etc.”

The company also sells various other preparations: A medical soap, a blood purifier, and an elixir of life. A certificate purporting to have been given by Dr. Saubermann in December, 1907, states that the ore which the company has acquired was “uranium refuse concentrated from the mines at Joachimsthal.” In the advertisement a list is given of “leading scientists on radium,” but the advertisers do not go so far as to say that any of them have anything to do with the radium salve. There is also a quotation from The British Medical Journal, which we need hardly say had no reference whatever to the salve or its manufacturers.

The salve is “sold at 2s. 9d., 5s., 10s., 20s., and 30s., according to radioactivity.” Mr. Frederick Soddy, M.A., Lecturer on Physical Chemistry and Radioactivity in the University of Glasgow, has been good enough to examine the salve for us, and the following is his report:--

“I received the two pots of radium salve you sent me, and have examined the radioactivity of the stronger preparation--namely, that marked ‘Strong, 5s.’ The alpha radioactivity of the preparation is just detectable, and is about one-hundredth part of that of uranium. The beta radiation is too feeble to be detected by a sensitive electroscope. For comparison I might mention that the residues from the uranium ore of Joachimsthal, which forms the initial raw material from which radium is extracted, have an alpha radioactivity about four times that of uranium.”

A RINGWORM CURE.--“DETHBLO.”

“Dethblo,” or Wilson’s Patent Ringworm Cure, is supplied by an individual in a small town in the home counties, a 1s. 1¹⁄₂d. package contained a bottle holding rather less than 2 fluid drachms of the preparation, and a brush for applying it.

It is advertised in the following terms:--

THIS PREPARATION has been used by the Proprietor for many years in the treatment of Hundreds of Cases, and has never once failed to Cure....

An improvement is visible after one application. Two or three dressings in any but exceptionally severe cases are sufficient to effect a Cure.

No necessity for Cutting the Hair or Shaving the Head.

It Cures when all other remedies have been tried and failed. Obstinate cases, after eighteen months of other treatment, have yielded to a few applications of “Dethblo.”

It is Harmless to Hair or Scalp of even the youngest children; infants in arms have been successfully treated on many occasions.

The directions on the label are:--

Apply with brush enclosed, well penetrating the infected parts with “DETHBLO.” Treatment should be given every other day, for a few days, and the infected part should not be washed until satisfactory improvement is noticed.

Analysis showed the liquid to contain ferrous sulphate and acetic acid; a trace of coloured organic matter was also present, such as would be due to a small portion of the acetic acid having been added in the form of vinegar, and the odour of the liquid resembled that of vinegar rather than that of acetic acid only. The quantities found were, in 100 parts by measure:--

Ferrous sulphate 33.7 parts Acetic acid (calculated as glacial) 11.9 „ by measure

Careful search did not reveal the presence of any other ingredient.

Estimated cost of ingredients of 2 fluid drachms, ¹⁄₅₀d.

MISCELLANEOUS GERMAN NOSTRUMS.

Reports published by Dr. F. Zernik on various proprietary medicines sold in Germany include the following:--

Sprengel’s herbal juice, is a preparation which Bernhard Sprengel of Hanover claims to be harmless, and as it consists of blood purifying herbs and roots, and not a secret remedy, he recommends it for all sorts of diseases, especially for diphtheria, trichinosis, whooping-cough, etc. The bottle (which costs M.1.25, about 1s. 3d.) contains about 30 c.cm. of a turbid brown fluid of acid reaction. It contains powdered jalap bulbs, suspended in a watery extract of frangula (or some similar drug), to which alcohol and liquorice have been added. Its jalap content renders the free sale of this preparation unlawful in Germany.

Dealin Powder, a Berlin preparation, is described as an antiseptic medicament for wounds containing “a highly active oxygen combined with a dry fatty substance.” On examination no dry fatty substance was found, and the “highly active oxygen” was represented by sodium perborate. The chief constituents of this preparation were: 20 parts of sodium perborate, 10 parts of boric acid, 10 parts of zinc oxide, and 60 parts of a mixture of talc with traces of starch and magnesium carbonate.

Hochfelder Pitch Plaster is advertised by the manufacturers as a porous plaster prepared with gum elastic, and as the best external medicament for the treatment of painful affections which follow cold, blows, over-exertion or other disturbances of the nervous or muscular activity. The examination showed that the preparation did not contain any pitch at all, and that its composition was similar to that of “Collemplastrum capsicum,” a plaster, which according to an Imperial Order dated November 22nd, 1901, must not be offered for sale in drug shops. As pitch plaster is not included in this Order, the manufacturers considered that they would be safe in applying this description to the plaster.

Franz Lammersdorf’s universal chilblain cream, a Hanover preparation, to be applied thinly on the chilblain and covered with wool and a bandage, and renewed every twenty-four hours, was found to consist of about 25 grams of extract of malt. Dr. Zernik points out that this is a curiously original medicament for chilblains.

Jehnol is advertised as differing from all other preparations in its power of allaying all forms of toothache, including the most severe. It is a fluid, and three or four drops are to be applied on a piece of cotton-wool to the cavity of the tooth. A small bottle containing about 3 c.cm. of an alcoholic solution of oil of cloves and other ethereal oils, and possibly also cajeput and camphor, and coloured green with chlorophyll, costs 30 pfennigs, that is, about 3³⁄₄d.

Epocol is advertised by a Vienna firm, as a “new, absolutely non-poisonous cresote preparation, possessing extraordinary disinfecting properties.” The dose mentioned is from 1 to 10 grams a day, according to the age of the patient. No details are given with regard to the composition of the preparation, and Zernik concludes from the results of his analysis that this “new” preparation is a mixture of 45 per cent. sodium benzoate, 30 per cent. ammonium sulpho-guaiacolate, and 25 per cent. potassium sulpho-guaiacolate. The ammonium salt of sulpho-guaiacolic acid is not used in medicine, the potassium salt is used under the name of thiocol, while the calcium salt and the sodium salt are also used. The action of the sulpho-guaiacolates is sufficiently well known, and the claim of novelty cannot, therefore, be sustained. Zernik does not consider the preparation worth further criticism.

Bauch’s Busennährcreme (bosom nutrient cream) is sold at 4s. 6d. for two boxes, which are said to be necessary for the production of full breasts. The actual value of the boxes and their contents is between 4d. and 5d., the cream consisting of mineral fat perfumed with oil of rose. The Karlsruhe authority has issued a warning on the ground that the substance cannot possibly produce the effect claimed in view of its composition.

Ninetta is a similar preparation. It is described as an Oriental strengthening and nutrient powder. It consists of a powdered leguminous flour with sugar and lecithin.

Büsteria (made by D. F. Steiner, of Berlin) is another “Oriental strength-giving powder,” which is sold at an absurdly high price. The Berlin police have issued a public warning against it. It consists of bean and pea flour.

Oxygar is supposed to be a vegetable preparation saturated with hydrogen peroxide. The vegetable substance is agar-agar. It is supposed to contain about 10 per cent. H₂O₂, but the manufacturers call attention to the fact that the preparation loses in strength after a time. Frerichs found that fresh oxygar contained hydrogen peroxide varying in amount from 0.6 to 14.4 per cent., that the amount decreased within a short time, and after a few weeks even sank to nil. In cold water all the hydrogen peroxide was liberated within a few minutes. It thus appears very doubtful whether the peroxide would not be liberated in the stomach, in spite of the fact that the manufacturers claim as an advantage of the preparation that the H₂O₂ is not liberated until the intestine is reached, and then only slowly.

Spiritol is supposed to be an ideal substitute for spirit and to have nearly all the physical qualities of spirit, to be free from acid and alkali, to be miscible in all proportions with water or spirit, and to volatilize without residue. It is introduced for the preparation of cosmetic and pharmaceutic preparations, etc. The analysis revealed that it consisted chiefly of methyl alcohol, which was not even pure.

Verophen mouth water is advertised as a protective against all infectious diseases. It consists of a 0.2 per cent. solution of chinosol in water. A bottle containing 100 c.cm. of the fluid costs 1s. 6d. “Verophen” for mouth washes is also sold at 1s. 6d., while Verophen for the telephone costs 3s.

According to the law in Germany, chemical combinations of antipyrin may be sold to the public, but simple mixtures of antipyrin and other known substances may not be sold, save on a medical practitioner’s prescription. Sulfopyrin is one of these mixtures which was offered for sale as a sulphanilate of antipyrin. Another is Meligrin, which is described as a condensation of dimethyloxychinicin and methylacetamide. These terms are technical but rarely used names for antipyrin and exalgin. The analysis revealed that the preparation was a mixture of 86 parts of the former and 14 parts of the latter. Exalgin has been practically withdrawn from the market in favour of the more active and better acetanilide.

A chemist named Taubert produces a “pleasant tasting headache powder (ammon. spiric. puriss.),” which is supposed to act rapidly in migraine, influenza, neuralgia, rheumatism, colds, etc. It appears that ammonium salicylate has an obscure synonym, “ammonium spiricum.” Since the ammonium salt is scarcely ever used in medicine, the law does not mention it as well as the sodium salt among those medicaments which may not be sold without medical prescription. The chemist therefore sells it without fear. The weight of the single powders varied between 0.39 and 0.6 gram.

In dealing with false description, Zernik mentions Mergandol, which is recommended by its producers as an antisyphilitic remedy for intramuscular injection and for external application. It is described as a solution of sodium mercury glycerate in glycerine; 1 c.cm. of the solution is said to contain 0.0035 gram of mercury. Sodium glycerate is recognised as an unstable compound, but neither a mercury glycerate nor a sodium mercury glycerate is known. The analysis showed that mergandol is a mixture of perchloride of mercury and sodium chloride (0.5 of the former and 0.1 of the latter) dissolved in 100 parts of diluted glycerine. Each cubic centimetre would therefore contain 0.0044 gram of Hg. The bottle, containing 50 c.cm., costs 2s. 2¹⁄₂d., which is at least twice as much as any chemist is allowed to charge for making up a similar prescription.

Eulatin is a white, almost odourless, mildly acid-tasting powder. It is supposed to be an amido-bromine-benzoate of dimethyl-phenyl-pyrazolon. Dr. Friedmann has described this preparation as a useful remedy for whooping-cough when given in doses of 0.1 to 0.5 gram every three or four hours. Dimethyl-phenyl-pyrazolon or antipyrin was found to be present, but the analysis failed to reveal a trace of amido-bromine benzoic acid, a compound which has definite chemical characteristics. The rest of the substance was found to consist of parabromine benzoic acid and orthoamido-benzoic acid; two parts of the former with antipyrin in molecular proportions were present to each one part of the latter, also with antipyrin in molecular proportions. The mixture thus differs very materially from the supposititious chemical compound described by the manufacturers. Dr. Zernik considers that Dr. Friedmann should have been more careful in expressing himself with regard to the composition. The value of antipyrin in pertussis is well recognised.

Barkowski’s Irrigal tablets are advertised as containing all the active components of wood vinegar in dry form, delicately perfumed and being easily soluble in water. One or two tablets are supposed to be dissolved in a glass or cup of hot water, and added to warm water in an irrigator. A glass containing 40 1-gram tablets costs 3s. The solid form of wood vinegar possesses an alkaline reaction! On analysis it was found to consist mainly of dehydrated sodium acetate with traces of tar and creosote. This is very different from wood vinegar, which contains tarry substances, free acetic acid, and some empyreumatic substances.

Vilja cream is now described correctly. Its constituents are diluted aqueous extracts of indifferent vegetable substances, wool fat, ceresin, and vaselin, and some ethereal oils, which smell like the oil of rosemary.

Automors is a widely advertised disinfectant, prepared by Heyl Brothers and Co., Charlottenburg. The advertisements claim that it is a new, strong, and harmless disinfectant, acting five times as strongly as carbolic acid. The analysis showed it to consist of about 3 per cent. phenols and carbohydrates, about 16 per cent. phenol sulphate, with 15 per cent. of free sulphuric acid. It would appear that this is an old preparation under a new name; formerly it was known as sanatol. The free sulphuric acid content renders it not harmless but actually highly poisonous. Its disinfecting power is far weaker than that of carbolic acid, save in a very exceptional circumstance, while its claims to act against flies are also false.

JOHN P. HAIG’S “CURE” FOR GOITRE.

Some information with regard to Haig’s goître cure is given in a paper by J. Kochs in the Apotheker-Zeitung, abstracted in the Pharmaceutical Journal for April 14th, 1906, p. 447. According to this the “cure” comprises: Powders, consisting of sodium bicarbonate, coloured pale red; ointment, consisting of a sodium soap with yellow soft paraffin; pastilles, consisting of sodium bicarbonate, aloes, and a little oil of caraway; pastilles, consisting of extract of hydrastis.