AI
more honesty now. Here are a few examples, one of which is likely to make you cringe even more than we cringe at the Jardiance Dancing Queen. Patent medicines had to be versatile. G.
G. Treat of West Granville Mass., in 1888, endorsed Allcock’s Porous Plasters for curing rheumatism, neuralgia, pain in the side or back, coughs, colds, bruises, and any local weakness. “I have recommended them to my neighbors with the happiest results, many of whom but for Allcock’s Plasters would be in a crippled condition at home,” he supposedly wrote. A large ad headlined “T e Stomach
Rules the World” proclaimed that Eno’s Fruit Salt was good for dealing with “late hours, fagged, unnatural excitement, changes of weather, sleeplessness, feverish cold with high temperature and quick pulse, breathing impure air, too rich food, alcoholic drink, gouty, rheumatic, and other blood poisons, biliousness, sick headache, skin eruptions, pimples on the face, want of appetite, sourness of the stomach, etc.” It had a testimonial from “Truth,” who wrote, “Aſt er suff ering for two years from SEVERE HEADACHE and DISORDERED STOMACH…I was recommended by a friend ENO’S FRUIT SALT, and before I had fi nished one bottle I found it doing me a GOOD DEAL of GOOD and now I am restored to my usual health.” And today, we’re satisfi ed with something
that only lowers our A1C. G. C. Gilder wrote from Mt. Meigs,
Alabama in 1894, that he had had liver trouble for several years “and about despaired of ever fi nding any relief, when by chance I found a box of RAMON’S TONIC LIVER PILLS and took one as a trial dose. T e eff ect was almost magical. T e bad feeling was relieved, the liver began to act…I took the second pill the next night and was completely relieved.” T e pills were advertised as “a complete treatment for constipation and biliousness.’ In 1772, Philadelphia innkeeper Charles
Ashley wrote that his son, who was infected with “the King’s Evil,” a form of tuberculosis or scrofula, aſt er having had smallpox a couple of years later, wrote that a “most violent humour settled in both hands” and a tumor even more violent on his face
produced “an entire scab over the whole, and smelt intolerably; in short he was in so much misery and without hope of recovery…that I despaired of his life.” But a few applications of Meradant’s Drops cured him. Ashley was so impressed that he invited readers of T e Pennsylvania Gazette to come to his house “and see the child.”
”We must welcome the future,
remembering that soon it will be the past, remembering
that it was once all that was humanly possible.”
- George Santayna Some testimonials were short so some
advertisers could cram several into their ads. Burdock’s Blood Bitters had six in its short ad from 1885. R.A. Hall of Binghampton, NY wrote, “I suff ered with a dull pain from my leſt lung. Lost my appetite and spirits. Got sallow in my complexion. Butrdock’s Blood Bitters completely cured me.” Mrs. Morris of Newark, New Jersey complained of morning headaches for years. “I had a tawney complexion, which I was told proceeded from the liver. I tried Burdock’s Blood Bitters and not only got my complexion back but my health restored.” In the fall of 1851, some newspaper
readers read the praises of B. A. Fahenstock’s Vermifuge, a concoction of castor oil, oils of wormseed, turpentine, and tincture of myrrh. It was a letter from Worcester, Massachusetts testifying, “T is will certify that I have been affl icted with a pain in my stomach and head occasionally for the past seventeen years. Hearing B. A. Fahenstock’s Vermifuge recommended very highly for expelling worms, I was induced to try
IN Pharmacy
it. I took four vials of it and to my great astonishment, I passed about forty feet of tape worm. I feel quite relieved of the distress in my stomach and head. In fact, I feel like a new man since the reptile leſt my stomach.” Let us not ponder how this worm was
retrieved for measurement, given the facilities of 1851, or other connected events that might come to mind. It’s not something anybody would sing and dance about, or want to see somebody singing or dancing about, in today’s media no matter how much free rein artifi cial intelligence might have to create a modern testimonial for Vermifuge, a little vial with a big worm stor-ree to tell. T ese testimonials seem archaic at
the dawn of the AI era. But will today’s testimonials be any less so to our descendants? George Santayana said, “We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.” So it will be someday with us.
34 Missouri PHARMACIST | Volume 98, Issue III | Fall 2024
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