Polk County news. [volume] (Benton, Tenn.) 191?-1983, 1920-10-14
QUAcKS; ANCIENT AND
MODERN


Do you regard cold cream as an al.
tra-mOdern palliative?
Or pure food and drug laws as com
paratively receRt tyre 81 legislation? :
or the familiar "cure air as an up
to-late quack device for the twentieth
century credulOust
You are wrong. according to the
statements contained in Il cOmmunica-
ton to the National Geographic Socie-
~ from DIR. John A. FOote. A part II
the communication states:
Most people ~ some time or an
other use cold cream. II seems quite
modern luxury. Indispensable alike
10 peer and peri, and adapted To many
and varied uses. In fact. one traveller
tells recently of having some of his
cold cream eaten 10y TAT hungry valet
In Germany. So we are inclined to re-
gard il as a fairly modern product.
And yet 'uuguantUm refIigerans,' cold
cream, has come down to us from Ro-
man days. The first formula is at
tributed to Galen. who lived and wrote
in the second century. What we use
today is practically the same, though
Or Galen's original formula was i'm
itated and improved hundreds Of
times.
Emperor Frederick II. of Sicily, in
1910 or 1241, published the first pure
food and drugs act. He was about 100
years ahead of DIR. Wiley, for he speci-
fed strict regulations of the standard
of drug purity, and provided for drug
inspectors, and fined all offenders.
THE practice of medicine was also
regulated. A physician was required
to have diploma from university
before he could study medicine; then
he took a three-year course in the
school of medicine and one year prac-
tice under practicing physician. Spe-
cial post graduate work in anatomy
was required if he was to do surgery.
"All this was in the so-called dark
ages Even the fees of physicians
and pharmacists We're strictly regulat-
ed by law and were in purchasing val
Tie about the same as the charges of
the present day. Physicians were not
allowed to own drug stores and drug
adulteratOrs We're severely dealt with.
''Mithradatium was the name of the
great antidOte of Roman pharmacy.
1t had from 40 to 80 vegetable ingredi-
ents, few of which had any real me-
dicinal value except opium, and these
drugs were blended with honey.
'It remained for Neros physician,
Andromachus, to put the finishing
touches to this wonderful compound |
Andromachus added viper's flesh to the
formula and called his new compound |
Theriaca. He wrote some verses dedi-
Gated to Nero, describing this medicine
and claiming virtues for it which in
our day would subject him to prosecu-
ton. Evidently he believed he had
created in this one compound a veri-
table pharmaceutical monopoly.
: "Galen, one of the fathers of medi-
cine, went even further. He recon-
lnended it as a cure for all poisons,
bites, headaches, vertigo, deafness,
epilepsy, apopleXy, dimness of sight,
loss of voice, asthma, coughs, splitting
of blood, tightness of breath, collie, the
lilac passion apprenticeship jaundice,
hardening of the spleen, stone, fevers,
idropsy, leprosy, melancholy, all pesti-
lences, etc Nowadays he would prob
ably have included coupon thumb, golf
shoulder and movie eyer
"As Galens writings dominated med
ical thought for over 1,50O years, 1t Is
not surprising that this advertisement
made Mithradatium, or Theriaca, a
valued remedy. Every physician OF
note for centuries afterward claimed
some Improvement on the original for
mula."