The Midwest pioneer, his ills, cures, & doctors - University Library ...

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Others contained laudanum, opium, morphine, calomel or
other forms of mercury, digitalis, and other drugs, useful
when given in proper doses for definite ills, but certainly
harmful as administered by the store keeper or the selfdosing
medicine addict.
The dangers of nostrums were recognized by some
people at the time. Thinking editors whose consciences outweighed
their financial considerations copied articles of
warning from eastern papers and added their own. In the
mid-1820's even, a western editor wrote:
"However lenient we are at present with respect to the
notorious, illiterate empirics, that infest this country, more
care was taken formerly, of the peoples constitutions, and
their health was not suffered to be infected by these poisoners
of whole countries.
"Any idle mechanic, not caring longer to drudge at
day labor, by chance gets a dispensatory, or some old receipt
book, and poring over it, or having it read to him (for
many of these present doctors cannot read), he finds that
mercury is good for the itch, and old ulsers; that opium
will give ease; and that a glass of antimony will vomit.
"Down goes the hammer, or saw, razor, awl, or shuttle
and away to work to make electuaries, tinctures, elixirs,
pills, plasters, and poultices ....
". . . hundreds of little infants are yearly destroyed by
the remedies the unhappy parents were prevailed on to
administer in order to destroy those supposed worms, which
never existed but in their brain.
"Cobblers now set up for regular-bred physicians; hackney
coachmen and barbers for anatomists and natural philosophers;
washerwomen for chymists; tumblers and scavengers,
for bone setters and occulists, et cetera. Nothing can
equal the ignorance of such empirics but the stupidity of
those people who buy their unwholesome preparations."^*'
Perhaps a better form of attack was that adopted by the
editor of the Portsmouth (Ohio) Journal in 1824:
"Dr. Balthasar Beckar respectfully informs the public,
that he is
possessed of the genuine ABRACADABRA