Nostrums and quackery : articles on the nostrum evil and quackery reprinted from the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Date:
[1911]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Nostrums and quackery : articles on the nostrum evil and quackery reprinted from the Journal of the American Medical Association. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    184/522 (page 180)
    to say, the author does not neglect to extol the use of JMitchella Compound. “Dr.” Dye’s Mitchella Compound “speedily cures all derange- ments and irregularities of the menstrual function, congestion, inflammation, ulceration and displacement of the womb . . .” and other things too numerous to mention. This “heartease for weary women,” we are told, “is composed of the purest and most carefully selected herbs which can be obtained.” Possibly! But if after a period of drought one went to the woods and raked up a double handful of dried leaves, pieces of bark and any other debris that happened to be handy, the average man wmuld find it difficult to distinguish between such rakings and “Dix” Dye’s Mitchella Compound at $1 a package. A sample of Mitchella Compound Avas examined botanically for us by Prof. William Baker Day of the University of Illi- nois. Professor Day reports as follows: DISEASES OF WOMEN. Alleviation of tlie Annoyances of Gestation and the Pains of Child-bearing. riioto.araphic reproduction (reduced) of a typical advertisement of .1. II. Dye and of the package in which he simt out his nostrum. BOTAiyiC EXAMINATION “T have examined botanically a sample of Alitchella Com- pound.’ The sample consists apparently of a mixture of vegetable material, chiefly fragments of leaves, roots and liark, among which I have been able to identify the following: '‘Mitchella repens—herb—commonly known as Partridge- berry or S(|uaw-vine. “Cltamfrliriiim hite'iim—rhizome and roots—{Helonias (lioica), commonly kmnvn as Starwort or False Unicorn Boot. “Cornus Florida—bark of the root—commonly known as Flowering; Dogwood. “Ci/pripedium puhescens or Cypripedium parriflornni, com- monly known as Ladies’ Slipper.” None of these drugs is newy; all have been used at one time or another as medicinal agents, but, wdfh the exce]dion of ladies’ slip])er, have long been practically discarded as use- less. Ladies’ sli])per, wddle oflicially recognized, is , so little esteemed as a remedy that few text-books even mention it. JMitchella Compound is, in short, but one more of the innumer-