The 1966 edition of this book described the development of patent medicines in America from the enactment in 1906 of the Pure Food and Drugs Act through the mid-1960s. In 1992, an afterword was added to summarize what had happened during the previous 25 years. Dr. Young, an emeritus professor of history at Emory University, is a social historian whose special interest is the development of food and drug regulation in America. He has been a member of the FDA National Advisory Food and Drug Council. The book is reproduced with the kind permission from him and the publisher, Princeton University Press.
Contents
Preface 1.
Brane-Fude: The first court trial under the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act 2.
The Lawless Centuries: History and stage-setting for health quackery in 20th-century America 3.
A Decade of Enforcement: Valiant efforts, a Supreme Court defeat, and ambiguous help from Congress 4.
Fraud in the Mails: Enforcement of postal fraud statutes from the late 19th century through the 1920s 5.
B. & M.: A decade-long effort to prove fraud in court during the golden glow of prosperity 6.
"Truth in Advertising": Cooperative efforts by the self-regulators and the Federal Trade Commission to restrict the most flagrant abuses of nostrum advertising 7.
The New Muckrakers: The American Medical Association keeps muckraking currents flowing until the next floodtide: the "guinea pig" school of critics 8.
The New Deal and the New Laws: The hotly contested effort to make federal controls over self-medication drugs more nearly adequate to social need 9.
Pursuit of the Diminishing Promise: Food and Drug Administration use of the new law to drive false claims from labeling step by step through court interpretation 10.
Two Gentlemen from Indiana: A diabetes clinic run by two physician-brothers named Kaadt 11.
The Gadget Boom: Device quackery in America, highlighting Ruth B. Drown's Radio Therapeutic Instrument 12.
The Chemotherapeutic Revolution: The way the "wonder drugs" era of prescription medication influenced patterns of self-medication 13.
Mail-Order "Health": The Post Office Department's contest with medical fraud since the 1930s 14.
Proprietary Advertising and the Wheeler-Lea Act: The triumphs and failures of the Federal Trade Commission in aiming its 1938 law against abuses in the advertising of self-medication wares 15.
Medicine Show Impresario: A Louisiana state senator and his medicine show for Hadacol 16.
"You Are What You Eat": Nutrition nonsense by spielers and door-to-door salesmen: Adolphus Hohensee the main exhibit 17.
"The Most Heartless": Cancer quackery, especially the protracted Harry Hoxsey case 18.
Anti-Quackery, Inc.: A more cohesive effort to combat quackery, prompted by quackery's burgeoning 19.
Turmoil on the Drug Scene: New frights, a new law, and new awareness of the need for better comprehension of the phenomenon of quackery 20.
The Perennial Proneness: Reflections on the complex motivations that have made mankind so readily, susceptible to the quack's appeal. Afterword A Note on the Sources