Bad Medicine: Quack cure advertising from the past - Science Photo ...

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Bad Medicine: Quack cure advertising from the past

BAD MEDICINE: QUACK CURES FROM THE PAST
These adverts for quack cures - often depicting children - claimed the products would heal a long list
of illnesses including cancer, liver disease and coughs. But the miracle cures were often loaded with
substances such as cocaine, morphine and alcohol. Nobody tested them to see if they lived up to
their wild claims, companies could say and claim anything they wanted to. They invested a tremendous
amount of money in advertising and the public was pretty gullible. The posters and magazine
adverts were all in circulation in the late 1800s to early 1900s before regulation was formally introduced.
It wasn’t until the Pure Food and Drug Act was introduced in 1906 in America that regulation
was slowly introduced. In the UK the practice was largely eradicated by the time WWI ended.