Editing Quackery (section)

== History in Europe and the United States ==
[[File:Hemessen-cirujano-prado.jpg|thumb|289px|''The Surgeon'' by [[Jan Sanders van Hemessen]] (1555)]]
With little understanding of the causes and mechanisms of illnesses, widely marketed "cures" (as opposed to locally produced and locally used remedies), often referred to as [[patent medicine]]s, first came to prominence during the 17th and 18th centuries in Britain and the British colonies, including those in North America. [[Daffy's Elixir]] and [[Turlington's Balsam]] were among the first products that used branding (e.g. using highly distinctive containers) and mass marketing to create and maintain markets.<ref name="Styles2000">{{cite journal|last=Styles|first=John|year=2000|title=Product innovation in early modern London|journal=Past & Present|issue=168|pages=124–169|doi=10.1093/past/168.1.124}}</ref> A similar process occurred in other countries of Europe around the same time, for example with the marketing of [[Eau de Cologne]] as a cure-all medicine by [[Johann Maria Farina]] and his imitators. Patent medicines often contained [[alcohol (drug)|alcohol]] or [[opium]], which, while presumably not curing the diseases for which they were sold as a remedy, did make the imbibers feel better and confusedly appreciative of the product.

The number of internationally marketed quack medicines increased in the later 18th century; the majority of them originated in Britain<ref name="GriffenhagenYoung1959">{{cite journal|last1=Griffenhagen|first1=George B.|last2=Young|first2=James Harvey|year=1959|orig-year=first published in 1929|title=Old English patent medicines in America|journal=Pharmacy in History|series=Contributions from the museum of history and technology|volume=10|issue=4|location=[Washington, DC]|publisher=[Smithsonian Institution]|id=Project Gutenberg, 30162|oclc=746980411|pages=155–183|publication-date=2009|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30162|via=Project Gutenberg|pmid=11612887}}</ref> and were exported throughout the British Empire. By 1830, British parliamentary records list over 1,300 different "proprietary medicines",<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=16220 |title=House of Commons Journal, 8 April 1830 |publisher=British-history.ac.uk |date=22 June 2003 |access-date=9 August 2013}}</ref> the majority of which were "quack" cures by modern standards.

A [[Netherlands|Dutch]] organisation that opposes quackery, ''{{lang|nl|[[Vereniging tegen de Kwakzalverij]]}}'' (VtdK), was founded in 1881, making it the oldest organisation of this kind in the world.<ref name="Lewis2009">{{cite web|date=3 August 2009 |title=Dutch sceptics have 'bogus' libel decision overturned on human rights grounds|website=quackometer.net|type=blog|publisher=Andy Lewis|url=http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2009/08/dutch-sceptics-have-bogus-libel.html|access-date=16 May 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140213174338/http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2009/08/dutch-sceptics-have-bogus-libel.html|archive-date=13 February 2014|url-status=live}} {{Self-published source|date=November 2015}}</ref> It has published its magazine ''{{lang|nl|Nederlands Tijdschrift tegen de Kwakzalverij}}'' (''Dutch Magazine against Quackery'') ever since.<ref>{{Cite book|last=De Kort|first=Marcel|year=1995|title=Tussen patient en delinquent: geschiedenis van het Nederlandse drugsbeleid|language=nl|trans-title=Between patient and delinquent: the history of drug policy in the Netherlands|series=Publikaties van de Faculteit der Historische en Kunstwetenschappen|volume=19|location=Hilversum|publisher=Verloren|isbn=978-9065504203|pages=25–26}}</ref> In these early years the {{abbr|VtdK|Vereniging tegen de Kwakzalverij}} played a part in the professionalisation of medicine.<ref>{{cite conference|last=De Kort|first=Marcel|year=1993|chapter=Drug policy: medical or crime control? Medicalization and criminalization of drug use, and shifting drug policies|editor-last=Binneveld|editor-first=Hans|title=Curing and insuring: essays on illness in past times: the Netherlands, Belgium, England and Italy, 16th–20th centuries|conference=Illness and History, Rotterdam, 16 November 1990|series=Publikaties van de Faculteit der Historische en Kunstwetenschappen|volume=9|location=Hilversum|publisher=Verloren|pages=207–208|isbn=978-9065504081}}</ref> Its efforts in the public debate helped to make the Netherlands one of the first countries with governmental drug regulation.<ref name=Oudshoorn1993>{{cite journal|last=Oudshoorn|first=Nelly|year=1993|title=United we stand: the pharmaceutical industry, laboratory, and clinic in the development of sex hormones into scientific drugs, 1920–1940|journal=Science, Technology, & Human Values|volume=18|issue=1|pages=5–24|doi=10.1177/016224399301800102|jstor=689698|s2cid=73330109}}</ref>

[[File:Three early medicine bottles.jpg|thumb|250px|left|[[Dalby's Carminative]], Daffy's Elixir and [[Turlington's Balsam]] of Life bottles dating to the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These "typical" patent or quack medicines were marketed in very different, and highly distinctive, bottles. Each brand retained the same basic appearance for more than 100 years.]]
In 1909, in an attempt to stop the sale of quack medicines, the [[British Medical Association]] published ''Secret Remedies, What They Cost And What They Contain''.<ref name="BMA1909">{{cite book|author=British Medical Journal|year=1909|title=Secret remedies, what they cost and what they contain|location=London|publisher=British medical association|oclc=807108391|hdl=2027/uc1.b5254294}}</ref>{{efn|The British Medical Association estimated that, based on [[Ad valorem tax|''ad valorem'' tax]] revenues from patent medicines for the fiscal year ending 31 March 1908, the British public spent about £{{Format price|2422800}} on patent medicines.<ref name="BMA1909" />{{rp|182–184}} This is equivalent to about £{{Format price|{{Inflation|UK|2422800|1908|2014}}}} (${{Format price|{{To USD|{{Inflation|UK|2422800|1908|2014}}|GBR}}}}) in 2014.{{Inflation-fn|UK}}}} This publication was originally a series of articles published in the ''British Medical Journal'' between 1904 and 1909.<ref>{{cite journal|title=The Composition of Certain Secret Remedies: I.-Some Remedies for Epilepsy.|journal= BMJ|date=10 Dec 1904|volume=2|issue=2293|pages=1585–1586|doi=10.1136/bmj.2.2293.1585|pmid=20761810|pmc=2356119}}</ref> The publication was composed of 20 chapters, organising the work by sections according to the ailments the medicines claimed to treat. Each remedy was tested thoroughly, the preface stated: "Of the accuracy of the analytical data there can be no question; the investigation has been carried out with great care by a skilled analytical chemist."<ref name="BMA1909" />{{rp|at=vi}} The book did lead to the end of some of the quack cures, but some survived the book by several decades. For example, [[Beecham's Pills]], which according to the British Medical Association contained in 1909 only aloes, ginger and soap, but claimed to cure 31 medical conditions,<ref name="BMA1909" />{{rp|page=175}} were sold until 1998. The failure of the medical establishment to stop quackery was rooted in the difficulty of defining what precisely distinguished real medicine, and in the appeals that quackery held out to consumers.

British patent medicines lost their dominance in the United States when they were denied access to the [[Thirteen Colonies]] markets during the [[American Revolution]], and lost further ground for the same reason during the [[War of 1812]]. From the early 19th century "home-grown" American brands started to fill the gap, reaching their peak in the years after the [[American Civil War]].<ref name="GriffenhagenYoung1959" /><ref name="Young1961">{{cite book|last=Young|first=James H.|year=1961|title=The toadstool millionaires: a social history of patent medicines in America before federal regulation|location=Princeton, New Jersey |publisher=Princeton University Press|oclc=599159278|url=http://www.quackwatch.org/13Hx/MM/00.html|via=quackwatch.org|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021010055456/http://www.quackwatch.org/13Hx/MM/00.html|archive-date=10 October 2002|url-status=live}}</ref> British medicines never regained their previous dominance in North America, and the subsequent era of mass marketing of American [[patent medicine]]s is usually considered to have been a "golden age" of quackery in the United States. This was mirrored by similar growth in marketing of quack medicines elsewhere in the world.

[[File:Clark Stanley's Snake Oil Liniment.png|thumb|Clark Stanley's Snake Oil]]
In the United States, false medicines in this era were often denoted by the slang term [[snake oil]], a reference to sales pitches for the false medicines that claimed exotic ingredients provided the supposed benefits. Those who sold them were called "snake oil salesmen", and usually sold their medicines with a fervent pitch similar to a [[fire and brimstone]] religious sermon. They often accompanied [[Medicine show|other theatrical and entertainment productions that traveled as a road show from town to town]], leaving quickly before the falseness of their medicine was discovered. Not all quacks were restricted to such small-time businesses however, and a number, especially in the United States, became enormously wealthy through national and international sales of their products.

In 1875, the ''Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal'' complained: {{blockquote|If Satan has ever succeeded in compressing a greater amount of concentrated mendacity into one set of human bodies above every other description, it is in the advertising quacks. The coolness and deliberation with which they announce the most glaring falsehoods are really appalling. A recent arrival in San Francisco, whose name might indicate that he had his origin in the Pontine marshes of Europe, announces himself as the "Late examining physician of the Massachusetts Infirmary, Boston." This fellow has the impudence to publish that his charge to physicians in their own cases is $5.00! Another genius in Philadelphia, of the bogus diploma breed, who claims to have founded a new system of practice and who calls himself a "Professor," advertises two elixers of his own make, one of which is for "all male diseases" and the other for "all female diseases"! In the list of preparations which this wretch advertises for sale as the result of his own labors and discoveries, is ''ozone''! |source=''Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal'' Reprinted in the ''[[Boston Medical And Surgical Journal]]'', vol. 91, [https://books.google.com/books?id=tT0BAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA373 p. 373]}}

One among many examples is William Radam, a German immigrant to the US, who, in the 1880s, started to sell his "Microbe Killer" throughout the United States and, soon afterwards, in Britain and throughout the British colonies. His concoction was widely advertised as being able to "cure all diseases",<ref name="Radam1895">{{cite book|last=Radam|first=William|year=1895|orig-year=1890|title=Microbes and the microbe killer|url=https://archive.org/details/microbesmicrobek00radauoft|edition=Rev.|location=New York|publisher=The author|oclc=768310771|pages=[https://archive.org/details/microbesmicrobek00radauoft/page/137 137], 180, 205|quote=I offer to cure all diseases with but one remedy, and to stop children dying of disease, for of course I cannot prevent accidents in all cases that are taken in time, and where my instructions are faithfully followed.|hdl=2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t9862f811}}</ref> and this phrase was even embossed on the glass bottles the medicine was sold in. In fact, Radam's medicine was a therapeutically useless (and in large quantities actively poisonous) dilute solution of [[sulfuric acid]], coloured with a little red wine.<ref name="Young1961" /> Radam's publicity material, particularly his books,<ref name="Radam1895" /> provide an insight into the role that [[pseudoscience]] played in the development and marketing of "quack" medicines towards the end of the 19th century.

[[File:Magnetiseur.JPG|thumbnail|left|Cartoon depicting a quack doctor using hypnotism (1780, France)]]Advertising claims similar<ref name=Cure_for_All_Diseases>{{cite book|last=Clark|first=Hulda Regehr|author-link=Hulda Regehr Clark|year=1995|title=The cure for all diseases: with many case histories of diabetes, high blood pressure, seizures, chronic fatigue syndrome, migraines, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, and others showing that all of these can be simply investigated and cured|location=San Diego, CA|publisher=ProMotion|isbn=978-1-890035-01-3|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781890035013|url-access=registration}}</ref> to those of Radam can be found throughout the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. "Dr." Sibley, an English patent medicine seller of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, even went so far as to claim that his Reanimating Solar Tincture would, as the name implies, "restore life in the event of sudden death". Another English quack, "Dr. Solomon" claimed that his Cordial Balm of Gilead cured almost anything, but was particularly effective against all venereal complaints, from [[gonorrhea]] to [[onanism]]. Although it was basically just brandy flavoured with herbs, the price of a bottle was a [[half guinea]] ([[£sd]] system) in 1800,<ref name="Helfand1989">{{cite journal|last=Helfand|first=William H.|author-link=William H. Helfand|year=1989|title=President's address: Samuel Solomon and the Cordial Balm of Gilead|journal=Pharmacy in History|volume=31|issue=4|pages=151–159|jstor=41111251|issn=0031-7047}}</ref>{{rp|page=155}}{{efn|The price of a bottle of Cordial Balm of Gilead was {{citation needed span|text=33 shillings in the period of the [[Napoleonic wars]],|date=November 2015}} equivalent to over £{{Format price|{{Inflation|UK|1.65|1815|2014}}|0}} (${{Format price|{{To USD|{{Inflation|UK|1.65|1815|2014}}|GBR}}|0}}) in 2014.{{Inflation-fn|UK}}}} equivalent to over £{{Format price|{{Inflation|UK|0.525|1800|2014}}|0}} (${{Format price|{{To USD|{{Inflation|UK|0.525|1800|2014}}|GBR}}|0}}) in 2014.{{Inflation-fn|UK}}

Not all patent medicines were without merit. Turlingtons Balsam of Life, first marketed in the mid-18th century, did have genuinely beneficial properties. This medicine continued to be sold under the original name into the early 20th century, and can still be found in the British and American [[pharmacopoeia]]s as "Compound [[tincture of benzoin]]". In these cases, the treatments likely lacked empirical support when they were introduced to the market, and their benefits were simply a convenient coincidence discovered after the fact.

The end of the road for the quack medicines now considered grossly fraudulent in the nations of North America and Europe came in the early 20th century. 21 February 1906 saw the passage into law of the [[Pure Food and Drug Act]] in the United States. This was the result of decades of campaigning by both government departments and the medical establishment, supported by a number of publishers and journalists (one of the most effective was [[Samuel Hopkins Adams]], who wrote "The Great American Fraud" series in ''[[Collier's]]'' in 1905).<ref name="Adams1912">{{cite book|last=Adams|first=Samuel Hopkins|year=1912|orig-year=1905|title=The great American fraud: articles on the nostrum evil and quackery reprinted from ''Collier's''|edition=5th|location=Chicago|publisher=American Medical Association|oclc=894099555|url=https://archive.org/details/greatamericanfra00adamuoft/}}</ref> This American Act was followed three years later by similar legislation in Britain and in other European nations. Between them, these laws began to remove the more outrageously dangerous contents from patent and proprietary medicines, and to force quack medicine proprietors to stop making some of their more blatantly dishonest claims. The Act, however, left advertising and claims of effectiveness unregulated as the Supreme Court interpreted it to mean only that ingredients on labels had to be accurate. Language in the 1912 Sherley Amendment, meant to close this loophole, was limited to regulating claims that were false and fraudulent, creating the need to show intent. Throughout the early 20th century, the [[American Medical Association]] collected material on medical quackery, and one of their members and medical editors in particular, Arthur J. Cramp, devoted his career to criticizing such products. The AMA's Department of Investigation closed in 1975, but their only archive open to non-members remains, the American Medical Association Health Fraud and Alternative Medicine Collection.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Blaskiewicz |first1=Robert |last2=Jarsulic |first2=Mike |title=Arthur J. Cramp: The Quackbuster Who Professionalized American Medicine |journal=[[Skeptical Inquirer]] |date=2018 |volume=42 |issue=6 |pages=45–50 |url=https://www.csicop.org/si/show/arthur_j._cramp_the_quackbuster_who_professionalized_american_medicine |access-date=24 December 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181224153813/https://www.csicop.org/si/show/arthur_j._cramp_the_quackbuster_who_professionalized_american_medicine |archive-date=24 December 2018 }}</ref>

"Medical quackery and promotion of nostrums and worthless drugs were among the most prominent abuses that led to formal self-regulation in business and, in turn, to the creation of the [[Better Business Bureau]]."<ref name="Ladimer1965">{{cite journal|last=Ladimer|first=Irving|date=August 1965|title=The Health Advertising Program of the National Better Business Bureau|journal=American Journal of Public Health|volume=55|issue=8|pmc=1256406|pmid=14326419|url=http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1256406&blobtype=pdf|pages=1217–1227|doi=10.2105/ajph.55.8.1217}}</ref>{{rp|page=1217}}