A medicine for which a patent was granted, or one to which the preparer affixed his or her name to indicate sole rights of sale. Patent medicines stemmed from the 1624 Statute of Monopolies in England which granted 14 years of protected monopoly for the sale of a branded medicine. Preparers of these medicines had the right to use secret ingredients, until the Pharmacy and Medicines Act of 1941 required their disclosure for safety reasons. The sale of patent medicines expanded rapidly in the 18th-c, and English patent medicines were popular in the USA by mid-century. In the 19th-c, US-produced patent medicines took over the market. In 1796, Samuel Lee, Jnr became the first American to patent a medicine: Bilious Pills. By 1804 there were already more than 80 patent medicines, promoted aggressively by newspaper advertising, signboards, pamphlets, and tours. Today in the USA, the term refers to proprietary drugs, available without prescription; they are regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration.
Patent medicine is the term given to various medical compounds sold under a variety of names and labels, though they were for the most part actually trademarked medicines, not patented. In ancient times, such medicine was called nostrum remedium, "our remedy" in Latin, hence the name "nostrum"; it is a medicine whose efficacy is questionable and whose ingredients are usually kept secret. The name patent medicine has become particularly associated with the sale of drug compounds in the nineteenth century under cover of colourful names and even more colourful claims. The promotion of patent medicines was one of the first major products of the advertising industry, and many advertising and sales techniques were pioneered by patent medicine promoters. Patent medicine advertising often talked up exotic ingredients, even if their actual effects came from more prosaic drugs. One memorable group of patent medicines — liniments that allegedly contained snake oil, supposedly a universal panacea — made snake oil salesman a lasting synonym for a charlatan.
Patent medicines and advertising
The phrase patent medicine comes from the early days of the marketing of medical elixirs, when those who found favour with royalty were issued letters patent authorising the use of the royal endorsement in advertising. Few if any of the nostrums were actually patented; chemical patents came into use in the USA in 1925, and in any case attempting to monopolize a drug, medical device, or medical procedure was considered unethical by the standards upheld during the era of patent medicine.
Instead, the compounders of these nostrums used a primitive version of branding to distinguish themselves from the crowd of their competitors. Many of these medicines, though sold at high prices, were made from quite cheap ingredients. Their composition was well known within the pharmacy trade, and druggists would sell (for a slightly lower price) medicines of almost identical composition that they had manufactured themselves. To protect profits, the branded medicine advertisements laid great emphasis on the brand-names, and urged the public to accept no substitutes.
At least in the earliest days, the history of patent medicines is coextensive with the history of medicine itself. Empirical medicine, and the beginning of the application of the scientific method to medicine, began to yield a few effective herbal and mineral drugs for the physician's arsenal. Given the state of the pharmacopoeia, and patients' demands for something to take, physicians began making "blunderbuss" concoctions of various drugs, proven and unproven.
Touting these nostrums was one of the first major projects of the advertising industry. The marketing of nostrums under implausible claims has a long history. In Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749), allusion is made to the sale of medical compounds claimed to be universal panaceas:
Within the English-speaking world, patent medicines are as old as journalism. The use of letters patent to obtain exclusive marketing rights to certain labelled formulas and their marketing fueled the circulation of early newspapers. In 1726 a patent was also granted to the makers of "Dr. Bateman's Pectoral Drops";
A number of American institutions owe their existence to the patent medicine industry, most notably a number of the older almanacs, which were originally given away as promotional items by patent medicine manufacturers. Perhaps the most successful industry that grew up out of the business of patent medicine advertisements, though, was founded by William H. There were few circulating newspapers in Maine in that era, so Gannett founded a periodical, Comfort, whose chief purpose was to propose the merits of Oxien, a nostrum made from the fruit of the baobab tree, to the rural folks of Maine.
Another method of publicity undertaken mostly by smaller firms was the "medicine show," a travelling circus of sorts which offered vaudeville-style entertainments on a small scale, and which climaxed in a pitch for the nostrum being sold. The showmen frequently employed shills, who would step forward from the crowd and offer "unsolicited" testimonials about the benefits of the medicine for sale. The Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company became one of the largest and most successful medicine show operators; The medicine show lived on in American folklore and Western movies long after they had vanished from public meeting places.
Ingredients and their uses
What did the sellers claim as ingredients?
Some level of exoticism and mystery in the contents of the preparation was deemed desirable by their promoters. A famous patent medicine of the period was Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root;
Native American themes were also useful; One example of this approach from the period was Kickapoo Indian Sagwa, a product of the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company of Connecticut (completely unrelated to the real Kickapoo Indian tribe of Oklahoma), supposedly based on a Native American recipe.
Other promoters took an opposite tack from timeless herbal wisdom. Just about any scientific discovery or exotic locale could be used as a key ingredient in a patent medicine. In the nineteenth century, electricity and radio were gee-whiz scientific advances that found their way into patent medicine advertising, especially after Luigi Galvani showed that electricity influenced the muscles.
Towards the end of the period, a number of radioactive medicines, containing uranium or radium, were marketed.
What did they actually contain?
While various herbs, touted or alluded to, were talked up in the advertising, their actual effects often came from opium extracts, cocaine, or grain alcohol. This hazard was sufficiently well known that many were advertised as causing none of the harmful effects of opium (though many of those so advertised actually did contain opium) In the case of medicines for "female complaints", the principal "Female complaint" that the medicine was intended to treat was early pregnancy;
Until the twentieth century alcohol was the most controversial ingredient; for it was widely recognised that the "medicines" could continue to be sold for their alleged curative properties even in prohibition states and counties. Many of the medicines were in fact liqueurs of various sorts, flavoured with herbs said to have medicinal properties.
Clark Stanley the "Rattlesnake King" produced Stanley's snake oil, publicly processing rattlesnakes at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
When journalists and physicians began focusing on the narcotic contents of the patent medicines, some of their makers began substituting acetanilide, a particularly toxic non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, discovered in 1886, for the laudanum they used to contain.
What did they claim to be good for?
What were they supposed to be good for? Nostrums were openly sold that claimed to cure or prevent venereal diseases, tuberculosis, and cancer. William Radam's Microbe Killer, a product sold widely on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1890s and early 1900s, had the bold claim 'Cures All Diseases' prominently embossed on the front of the bottle.
Every manufacturer published long lists of testimonials in which all sorts of human ailments were cured by the compounds. Fortunately for both their makers and users, the illnesses that they claimed were cured were almost invariably self-diagnosed, and the claims of the writers to have been healed of cancer or tuberculosis by the nostrum should be considered in this light. In fact many, if not most, patent medicines were products of quackery, and were of little or no therapeutic benefit.
The end of the patent medicine era
Muckraker journalists and other investigators began to publicize instances of death, drug addiction, and other hazards from the compounds. This took some small courage on behalf of the publishing industry that circulated these claims, since the typical newspaper of the period relied heavily on the patent medicines, which founded the U.S. advertising industry. This statute did not ban the alcohol, narcotics, and stimulants in the medicines;
The patent medicine makers moved from selling nostrums to selling deodorants and toothpastes, which continued to be advertised using the same techniques that had proven themselves selling nostrums for tuberculosis and "female complaints." One survival of the herbal exoticism that once characterized the patent medicine industry is the marketing of shampoos, which are often promoted as containing perfumes such as vetivert or ylang-ylang, and foods such as mangoes, bananas, or honey;
In more recent years, also, various herbal concoctions have been marketed as "nutritional supplements". While their advertisements are careful not to cross the line into making explicit medical claims, and often bear a disclaimer that asserts that the products have not been tested and are not intended to diagnose or treat any disease, they are nevertheless marketed as remedies of various sorts.
Surviving consumer products from the patent medicine era
A number of brands of consumer products that date from the patent medicine era are still on the market and available today. These brands include:
666 Cold Medicine Absorbine Jr. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound Smith Brothers Throat Drops Vicks VapoRubA number of patent medicines are produced in China;
Products no longer sold under medicinal claims
Some consumer products were once marketed as patent medicines, but have been repurposed and are no longer sold for medicinal purposes.
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