The Medical Messiahs

An historical analysis of the development of patent medicines in the USA, from the enactment of the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906 to the mid-1960s. Charlatans and dangerous drugs, such as the weight-reducing pill Marmola, are described in detail.

---

James Harvey Young describes the development of patent medicines in the USA, from the enactment in 1906 of the Pure Food and Drugs Act through the mid-1960s. Many predicted that the Pure Food and Drugs Act would be the end of harmful nostrums, but Young describes post-Act cases involving manufacturers and promoters of such products as Cuforhedake Brane-Fude, a "tuberculosis-curing" liniment and the dangerous weight-reducing pill Marmola. The book describes the brothers Charles Frederick and Peter Kaadt, who treated diabetic patients with a mixture of vinegar and saltpeter; Louisiana state senator Dudley J. LeBlanc, who put on fabulous medicine shows as late as the 1950s promoting Hadacol and his own political career, and Adlophus Hohensee, whose lectures on nutrition provide a classic example of the continuing appeal of food faddism.