The Quack Doctor

CLEVELAND, O., Dec. 23—.Two live lizards three and a half inches long, several smaller ones, and a number of lizard eggs, were taken from the stomach of Lovel Herman, nineteen, four days before she died. A postmortem examination showed that the wall of the stomach had been attacked by the animals, the doctors say. The heart had enlarged to three times its normal size.

For several years she had been ill, complaining that something was clawing at her stomach. Specialists were puzzled until finally Dr. McIntosh, working on the theory it was a tapeworm, found the lizards.

Miss Herman drank water from a spring in which there were lizards, when she lived at Millersburg, 12 years ago, and it is believed that she swallowed the eggs or the young animals at that time and that they grew while in her body. She craved meat and eggs during the last months of her life, and it is believed she demanded such nourishing food because the lizards, as well as her body, had to be fed. She ate ravenously, but weighed only 80 pounds.

Incidentally, the health officials refuse to accept the certificate of death based upon the lizards theory, declaring that no such case has been reported since the days of primitive medicine.

The Tacoma Times, (Washington), 23 December 1910

From The Oakland Tribune 22 February 1925

If you think a chlorine bomb sounds more like something from the battlefield than the medicine cabinet, then you’d be right about the origins of this 1920s remedy. The product, and a brief trend among physicians for treating colds with chlorine, arose from experiments made by the US Chemical Warfare Service after the First World War.

Thomas Faith, in his article ‘“As Is Proper in Republican Form of Government”: Selling Chemical Warfare to Americans in the 1920s’ (Federal History, 2010) places these experiments in the context of a public relations campaign to improve the CWS’s unsurprisingly poor image. The Service needed to contribute positively to life in peacetime, and what better way to appeal to the public than to announce a cure for the common cold?

While the influenza pandemic was claiming millions of lives, doctors at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland, noticed that flu was less common among workers in the chlorine gas manufacturing plant than elsewhere. Intrigued by this anecdotal evidence, Lieutenant Colonel Edward B Vedder and Captain Harold P. Sawyer of the Army Medical Corps spent a year experimenting with chlorine gas on patients with ordinary colds. Reporting their findings in March 1925, Vedder revealed that of 440 cases, 261 were ‘cured’ and 149 were ‘improved’ by the treatment. Such an improvement might have been vague and unquantifiable, but the researchers also sent out questionnaires to physicians using the treatment. They got an overall favourable response, and took that as proof that it worked.

Finding a cold cure might be impressive enough, but Vedder and Sawyer had gone a step further and claimed to cure the cold of the President of the United States. In May 1924, Calvin Coolidge spent 45 minutes in a sealed chamber, breathing in a low concentration of chlorine gas. By the next day, his cold had become so bad that he had to cancel his official engagements, but after two more treatments he was well again. A cold getting better after three days? Who would have thought it?

In 1925 the University of Minnesota demonstrated via a controlled experiment that patients with colds recovered in the same amount of time with or without chlorine, but by then the idea had entered the commercial world and sufferers were being exhorted to ‘Bomb the first sneeze’ with Kilacold.

Kilacold Chlorine Bomb. Photo via Worthpoint.com

The Kilacold chlorine bomb was a teardrop-shaped glass ampoule containing 0.35g of chlorine gas. The patient had to break the end off to allow the gas to permeate the air of a closed room and, according to the advertising, their cold would disappear within an hour. The treatment was also promoted for flu, whooping cough, croup, bronchitis and for diphtheria carriers, but was not recommended for people with asthma. The bombs cost 29c each at Walgreens in 1925.

A few years later, 11 cartons of the bombs were seized at Portland, Oregon, and condemned as misbranded because the packaging stated that the contents were ‘Absolutely harmless’ and ‘positively not poisonous in any way to the human system.’

Although a 1927 Kilacold advert spoke of chlorine as an agent of death and destruction in war, it continued by using a rather tasteless statement to assure punters that the medical form was different.

‘Chlorine bombs are safe and sane,’ the advertising asserted. ‘Thousands of doctors declare the late war worthwhile because it gave the world the chlorine treatment.’

Source: The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette,17 April 1907

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Following on from the last post, we remain in early 20th-century America. But while Mayr’s Wonderful Stomach Remedy was fairly harmless (albeit rather revolting), this nostrum was notorious for the damage it caused in just 6 years of existence. Between 1906 and 1912, the Delta Chemical Company made more than half a million dollars by supplying morphine addicts with its own branded version of the narcotic.

The company was run by Dr Robert Prewitt and Ryland C. Bruce. Prewitt’s medical qualification was genuine, but he never had much success as a practising physician, trying his hand at surgical instrument selling in Little Rock, AR, until this venture went down the pan. He then became a travelling salesman for various chemical companies and ended up working at a St Louis sanatorium that ran a mail-order addiction cure business on the side.

Prewitt, in partnership with former insurance salesman Bruce, took over this business in 1906 and started to think big. They traded as the Delta Chemical Company and dubbed their product Morphina-Cura, an ‘infallible remedy’ for drug habits of all kinds.

The product name changed to Habitina in 1907, probably because titling something a ‘cure’ could lead to allegations of misbranding under the Pure Food and Drug Act. Addicts – then often referred to as habitués – were advised to ‘discontinue the use of all narcotic drugs and take sufficient HABITINA to support the system without any of the old drug.’ They should then gradually decrease the dose until they stopped taking it altogether.

This was in line with reputable medical practice, but for addicted patients with no supervision, life didn’t work out according to the instructions. Habitina contained 16 grains (approx 1g) of morphine sulphate and 8 grains of heroin per fl. oz. It was simply a more expensive way of continuing to take huge hits of narcotics – and of course the money went straight into Prewitt and Bruce’s pockets. The company hooked people in with free samples, and although they claimed to make patients answer a questionnaire, in reality they would send the freebies out to anyone who asked.

In 1912, Prewitt officially changed his name to Gregg because of his wife’s father’s will. Old man Gregg stipulated that his daughter must keep her maiden name or forfeit her inheritance of $50,000. Her first husband had gone along with it without changing his own name, but romantic Prewitt decided to be at one with his spouse, and the couple became Dr and Mrs Robert Prewitt Gregg.

Just a few months later, however, Prewitt’s fortunes changed. He and Ryland Bruce were arrested and charged with sending poison through the mail and with using the mail for a scheme to defraud. The trial revealed the devastating effect of Habitina on its victims, several of whom testified in court.

Some had experienced periods of insanity – Missouri mechanic Mr. H. I. C. lost everything and became a ‘maniac’ consuming a whole $2 bottle of Habitina every day. Mrs M. P. of Pennsylvania lost her reason and went blind as a result of taking the medicine, but hospital treatment eventually cured her addiction.

Perhaps the most tragic case is 26-year-old Mrs G. M. S., who spent more than $2,300 on Habitina over the course of 5 years, even going without shoes to be able to afford it. At the time of the trial she was still addicted.

Prewitt and Bruce were found guilty on both counts, fined $2000 each and sentenced to five years’ hard labour. It would be nice to end on that note, but the pair appealed. At the appeal court, Judge Munger dismissed the count of sending poison through the mail, as registered physicians were still permitted to do this, and sent the second count – the scheme to defraud – to a new trial.

At this point, I must own up to an epic fail, because I haven’t been able to find out anything about the second trial – if anyone can point me towards any sources, I’d be grateful. I imagine Prewitt and Bruce were acquitted because being unscrupulous doesn’t necessarily amount to a crime. They were careful to remain within the law as regards labelling their product, and made it very clear that Habitina contained morphine and that a cure would only result from a gradual reduction in dose.

They surely knew that they would make a fortune from addicts who would take it willy-nilly for years, but even with my lack of legal knowledge, I suspect this couldn’t technically be defined as a scheme to defraud. As you can see from the bottle label, they weren’t exactly misleading people about what was in it: