Related to a year-long weekly series of excerpts from Ypsilanti teenager Allie McCullough's 1874 diary, from the last year of her life.What was Allie's sickness, and what was her medicine? You may remember she said,
May 8 Fri. Instead of going to Lyceum as usual, went to bed very early, head and ear pain me as much as ever. If I did not take powders, do not know that [what?] I should have done.
Dusty D wanted to find those powders. So today I read editions of the Ypsi Commercial from 1874, the year she wrote her diary and the last year of her life. I was looking for medicine advertisements to get an idea of the pharmacopoeia available to her in Ypsilanti.
What I found startled me and angered me.You may not believe this, but I did not see ONE advertisement, in reading several months' worth of the weekly Commercial, for ONE medicine I judged to be legitimate.
Not one.
Instead, I found endless ads for snake oil, patent medicines, and even one quack ripping off people with a phony cure.
All this, right here in Ypsi--while Allie lay in bed in need of some help to feel better. You may recall she was sick for a week! And is still not really better!
All of these ads are from the 1874 Ypsi Commercial. Let's take a look at the sort of medicines from which Allie could choose. Click on any of them for a larger view.
Do you need your liver regulated, kind reader? Then clearly Simmons' Liver Regulator is just the thing! You can see it in the ad at the top of this post. It says, "This unrivalled Southern Remedy is . . . PURELY VEGETABL, containing those Southern Roots and Herbs which an allwise Providence has placed in countries where Liver Diseases most prevail."
This is a very ancient medical idea, going back centuries--that Providence has placed in Nature what the human inhabitants of that given region need for medicinal plants. As old as the idea is, it is unfortunately false.Next are ads for fever and ague (malaria) pills--note that they boast of having no quinine...when quinine was the only semi-working remedy around for malaria! And not a great one at that. After that is an ad for Vinegar Bitters--another snake-oil concoction. Like the Liver Regulator, it promises to cure a surprisingly large swathe of several unrelated illnesses.
Following it are two especially despicable ads that prey on sick people with totally useless "cures."
The first one references consumption (tuberculosis) which you may recall was Washtenaw County's leading cause of death in the late 19th century. There was no cure or medicine for TB in
Allie's day. Yet the charlatan "Dr." S. D. Howe offers a miracle cure, for a price of course.The next ad, at left, is the one that angered me the most. A cancer-curing doctor--without knife or physical pain no less! Note where he's staying--the Follett House (the onetime hotel now in part occupied by Fantasy Attic in Depot Town). Of all the hotels in Ypsi at that time, he picked the one right next to the railroad. This strongly suggests that he's taking the train from town to town, hopping off, ripping off sick
people hoping to cure their loved one's terrible cancer, and then hopping right back on to do it again at the next town. The Follett House was also one of the fanciest hotels in town...elegance that "Dr." Hebern Claflin paid for and enjoyed at his leisure with the desperate money of ill people.
The following ad for "German Botanic Pills" offers, amid the multiplicity of deadly diseases it cures, an unusual one: "For Blind Piles they have no equal as a curative agent." This is due to the inventiveness not of the medicine, but of its copywriter.
And finally, another plug for Vinegar Bitters, the cure for the dreaded "Infernal Stomach." The only infernal quality of these medicines is the greedy, ethics-free nature of their predatory concoctors.
There may have been some genuine medicines for sale in Ypsi at the various druggists--but judging by these ads, the popular "medicines" were--for Allie--useless.
2 comments :
I've been thinking about these advertisements -- wanted to point out a few things that I've read about medical philosophy in those days. One is that, until very recently, it was considered to be unethical for doctors (and lawyers) to advertise their services. I remember what a stir it was when the first ads came out for prescription medicines -- and "ambulance chasing" lawyers. So I wonder if that anti-advertising stance was a factor as far back as the 1870s.
Also, homeopathy was a large and respected branch of medicine in those days -- the UM had a school of homeopathic medicine. Also, the Graham Cracker -- prescribed by a Dr. Graham as a health food -- was a school of thought for combatting a variety of diseases. The whole Kellogg's complex and business in Michigan was a part of this philosophy of eating to eliminate illness. Also hydrotherapy was a respected approach to illness -- not considered quackery. There were clinics around the country which practiced immersion and other water therapy, I think around this time.
Plus, women, children and people of color were believed not to suffer pain with the same acuteness as white men -- hmmmm. Often they were not treated or not treated to the same extent for all kinds of illness. These stereotypes affected care and maybe affected Allie's treatment or lack thereof. My partner reminded me of all she learned about this sad fact in a class on Gender and Medicine. I believe that just last week, new research was released showing that these stereotypes persist about pain relief and medication for women and minorities, right down to the present day...
Great comment! Lots of info here.
The U-M did indeed have a school of homeopathic medicine, just as today it has a school of alternative medicine. But my understanding from reading old American Medical Association (?) reports is that in its day it was as controversial as it now--and I mean controversial not on the basis of whether it empirically worked, but on the basis that it had opposed camps--its adherents and in opposition, medical men who viewed it as nonsense unsupported by empirical evidence. Similar to today.
My understanding is that Kellogg was seen by many in his day as an eccentric, and was sometimes poked fun at in the papers. He had his adherents, but others viewed him as a bit of a nut. However, I've read an old treatise of his which I think was called "The Principles of Health," and it's surprising how sensible and sane he sounds. He dispenses good, sound advice in the treatise. He's come down through history as a whacko, but the treatise was quite sensible.
Hmm, I would wonder if women, children, and minorities were not treated to the same extent simply because their societal value was perceived to be lower than men. I hadn't heard of the "feel less pain" theory, but I should keep that in mind and try to find some examples the next time I'm reading about medical history.
Thanks for such a thought-provoking comment L.!
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