Reports of the Medical Society of the City of New-York on nostrums, or secret medicines.
- Date:
- 1827
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Reports of the Medical Society of the City of New-York on nostrums, or secret medicines. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
16/52
![[ 10 ] long btToro those diseases terminate, vvheilicr llie results be ftivourable or fatal. It may be asked then, and with a becoming solicitude, whether if the facts and the reason- ings of this report arc correct, there are any known medi- cines which wall permanently arrest the destructive habit of intemperance? the answer may be embarrassing, for it is as disingenuous to affect a perfect knowledge of this subject, as it would be humiliating to confess our utter ig- norance ; thus much however may be very safely asserted on this point; that when we can discover an article of the materia medica, which will furnish to the circulation a stimulus analogous to that presented by ardent spirits, which shall not produce inebriation, we may congratulate ourselves on having found an antidote. A remedy of this kind is still a desideratum, and it is very certain that im- less our enquiries are conducted on principles derived from the pathology of the innnediate effects of drunkenness, it will so continue. As it respects the medicine of Cham- bers, there can be no doubt, that with the exception of its extravagant pretensions, and the confidence with which they are urged, there is in it nothing new. Not more than two years ago, a nostrum of a similar character, promising similar success, was offered on sale at New-Orleans, by a French gentleman called L'Oiseau; the benefits for a short time, which attended its use, were such as to induce the proprietors of several plantations to purchase the re- cipe that they might improve the intemperate habits of their negroes: the effects however were soon found to be ha- zardous, and its remedial virtues temporary. J f it be not abandoned, it has already lost the confidence of the pub- lic* The basis of this nostrum w^as also tartar emetic. * On the authority of information from New-Orleans, it is stated that this remedy, in the hands of some of the planters was so disastrous in its effects, that many persons to whom it was given, sunk under its operation, and that prudential calculations induced Mons. L'Oiseau to change his residence.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21150084_0016.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
