Old Familiar Memories - Photo 159

Patent Medicines

Patent medicines promising "miracle cures" were widely popular during the 19th and early 20th centuries. According to a 1905 article in Colliers, "The Great American Fraud," American consumers were spending more than seventy-five million dollars a year on patent medicines by the turn of the century. Since there were no restrictions on advertising or labeling, and manufacturers kept their ingredients a secret, these "quack" medicines and nostrums often proved to be deadly mixtures. Cocaine, opium and alcohol were active ingredients in many of the most popular patent medicines. Other products being marketed to an eager public were essentially useless mixtures of herbal ingredients based on cultural superstitions and beliefs.

In 1906, the Federal Pure Food and Drug Act was enacted, prohibiting interstate commerce of adulterated and misbranded food and drugs. This led most manufacturers to remove narcotics from their products and curtail some of their fraudulent business practices.