SECRET REMEDIES,
READERS of these columns will be familiar with some of the abuses involved in the trade in patent medicines, the ventila- tion of which has been largely due to the publication by the British Medical Association of its two books upon Secret Remedies. A Select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to investigate the subject, and after a laborious inquiry lasting over three Sessions it has just issued its deeply interesting Report. Some notion of the importance of the patent medicine trade may be gained from the fact that the number of medicine stamps issued for the year 1907-8 was nearly forty-two millions, while one very well-known pro- prietary drug shows an annual turnover of about £300,000 a year. It must not be supposed that every sort of patent medicine deserves reprobation, and the Report classifies them in groups ranging from genuine drugs, such as aspirin and adrenaline, which are merely prepared by a patent process, to actively dangerous preparations and fraudulent remedies for incurable diseases. The law relating to the sub- ject is, as it stands, clearly insufficient and anomalous. Among the various legal curiosities quoted in the Report we may mention that "in all cases where the name of an ailment is mentioned in connection with a medicine, the Commissioners have since 1902 required duty to be paid; where no ailment, but only the organ of the body which is the seat of the ailment, is mentioned, the medicine is not dutiable. Thus cough mixture' is dutiable, chest mixture' is not . . . headache powder' is dutiable, head powder' is not." But, apart from such administrative details, the whole position of patent medicines clearly needs drastic revision. Various suggestions with this end in view have been con- sidered by the Committee, but the most important was that which urged that every remedy sold should be compelled to bear a label stating its exact composition. For several reasons the Committee has not adopted this proposal. On the one • Report from the Select Committee on Patent Medicines. London: Wyman and Sons. [341.3 hand, many harmless and old-established remedies would instantly lose their whole proprietary value owing to this "exhibition of formula," and grave hardship would be caused to many shareholders in companies owning them ; while, on the other hand, the lay public would not be much the wiser for learning that a particular remedy contained " hexamethylene- tetramine " or " takadiastase." The actual recommenda- tions made by the Committee include the formation of a Government Department for dealing with the whole sub- ject. This Department would, among other duties, keep a register of all the remedies, with a confidential statement of their composition. It would have power to take proceed- ings before a judicial body against the sale of injurious remedies, and might in certain cases require the name of a poisonous drug to appear upon the label of any medicine containing it. The Committee also recommends that legisla- tive steps should be taken to restrain the advertisement of patent medicines in many directions. Though we have only been able to summarize the Report very briefly, we must con- gratulate its authors upon its exceedingly practical character. It is one of the difficulties of the situation that public criticism of the trade in secret remedies is hampered owing to the fact that almost all newspapers derive a large proportion of their income from advertisements of patent medicines. Further steps are at the present moment impossible, but we most sincerely trust that Sir Henry Norman, to whose energy we believe the present Report is chiefly due, will not allow the matter to rest.
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