Some Healing Ingredients Found in Old Snake-Oil Remedies

Researchers dissect 19th century concoctions to find some medicinal secrets actually worked.

By Barbara Bronson Gray
HealthDay Reporter

SUNDAY, April 7 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers applying 21st-century science to investigate a collection of 19th-century medicines discovered that the antique jars held both noxious and promising potions once sold as quick cures for everything from commonplace to dreaded diseases.

The colorful collection of old and ornate medicine jars was stored in the back halls of the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, Mich., as part of the facility's "Health Aids" collection.

Mark Benvenuto, a professor of chemistry at the University of Detroit, Mercy, worked with undergraduate students to analyze the contents of 25 of the containers. Using X-ray fluorescence for the solid materials and nuclear magnetic resonance for the liquids, they spent only about five minutes per container to identify each container's chemical content, he said.

The results of their findings are slated to be presented April 7 at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans.

The medication labels revealed little about what was inside: Hollister's Golden Nugget Tablets, Dr. F.G. Johnson's French Female Pills, Reynolds and Parmley's Female Health Restorative, and DeBell's Kidney Pills.

But Benvenuto discovered a wide range of ingredients in the containers, including heavy metals such as mercury, lead and silver; calcium and zinc; manganese and potassium, and arsenic. Five samples contained radioactive thorium.

While the presence of some of the heavy metals may be due to contamination from their storage containers, arsenic and mercury were known to be common treatments for syphilis, Benvenuto said. Lead tastes sweet, so it may have been added to medicine to make it more palatable, he added.

The medications were typically sold by physicians in stores, by mail or in traveling medicine shows, long before clinical trials and U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval were required to ensure the safety and effectiveness of treatments, Benvenuto explained. They were called "patent medications," but the term referred to the fact they were created by individuals and considered to be trade secrets, not officially registered with the U.S. patent office, he noted.

"These medications represent a first step toward the medical establishment we have today," said Benvenuto. "The doctors who made these medicines were systematically going at trial and error based on what seemed to make people better. Maybe some were just complete shysters and quacks who wanted to make money, but some [of the medicines] were apparently worthwhile."

Why were such powerful ingredients used in these medications?