Panacea: Liquid grace or toxic snake oil?

Venomous medicine

Proton NMR spectroscopy and energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) spectroscopy have been used to analyse snake oil, elixirs, panaceas and other quackery found in medicines prescribed from the 18th century onwards. It turns out that many a nostrum remedium contained highly dangerous levels of toxic elements including arsenic, mercury and lead, as well as cocaine, heroin and high levels of alcohol.

Scientists at the national Spring meeting of the American Chemical Society have opened up the chemical history books to provide us with a glimpse at the poisonous potions being prescribed even well into the 20th Century today based on an analysis of a large museum collection of so-called "patent medicines" used in the USA. The products were referred to as patent not because they had been granted any kind of legal protection against reproduction but from a vaguely related term from 17th century England referring to a "letters patent" from a member of the Royal household offering endorsement.

Patent but not patented

Mark Benvenuto who headed the study of snake oil and other patent medicines explained to the meeting in April that hundreds of untested products were sold in stores, by mail order or from booths set up by travelling salesmen, medicine shows.

"This was an era long before the controlled clinical trials and federal regulations that ensure the safety and effectiveness of the medicines we take today," Benvenuto explained. The samples he tested come from the collection of the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, Michigan a museum that houses countless artefacts celebrating American inventors from planes, trains and automobiles to furniture, machinery and medicines. Benvenuto analysed 50 patent medicines from the museum's collection of hundreds of items in its Health Aids collection.

Undergraduate students working under Benvenuto’s supervision performed the bench work and Andrew Diefenbach presented the group's findings at the ACS meeting. "I'm interested to see what other comments people have, and what kind of things they may have thought of that we haven’t thought of so far that we can use to further the research," Diefenbach says.

To your health!

There were some healthy ingredients in among the snake oil samples, including calcium and zinc. These are, of course, present in various modern preparations and supplements, although purity then and even now is a significant problem for "medicines" that are not regulated as strictly as pharmaceutical products. Analysis of "Dr. F. G. Johnson’s French Female Pills", however revealed the presence of iron, calcium and zinc as well as toxic lead. Whether or not these pills had any benefits for whatever ailments and illness in French, or other females, they were prescribed for is perhaps beyond reach, but certainly long-term use would not be beneficial to wellbeing if lead were a major component.

Of course, while lead may have been present through accidental contamination or a failure to purify source materials. Mercury and arsenic were specifically used to treat syphilis, for instance, perhaps a hangover from chemistry's alchemical roots. But, even today, there is some evidence that so-called traditional medicines are inadvertently or deliberately contaminated with toxins and toxic heavy metals. Moreover, a nicely marketed "Western" packaging does not necessarily ensure safety given that cadmium is commonly present in zinc sources and not necessarily removed completely in the production of supplements of that particular trace metal.