Something New at the Apothecary Shop:
Snake Oil

A typical patent medicine   advertisement.

In the 1800s, medicines were mass produced and mass marketed for the first time. This was well and good, but as the drug industry had never been regulated, many bogus medicines were being mass marketed, too. What's more, it was very hard for any patient to tell which medicines were good and which were useless or even dangerous. Many medicines didn't even list their ingredients, because they were based on "secret formulas." This made it hard to be a savvy consumer.

Phony weight-loss drugs are nothing   new.

Unregulated, the drug industry in the United States went wild. This was the age of the so-called patent medicines. They were sold in traveling circus-like shows, and often claimed to cure everything from cancer to toe fungus. The bottles often had pictures of Native Americans on the labels, because many other Americans thought the native people were experts on the medicinal plants of North America. Cynics called these medicines "snake oil."

To be fair, some of these medicines were just herbal folk remedies that were mass produced, and sometimes had real medicinal value. Others were just hard liquor labeled as medicine, so that puritanical Americans could drink it in good conscience. But still others were downright nasty cocktails laced with toxic mercury or arsenic.

Cartoon against bogus   pharmacy.

To help consumers avoid killing themselves while trying to heal themselves, the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was established in the early 1900s. The FDA first issued a rule requiring all drugs to list their ingredients. Dangerous arsenic or mercury couldn't hide in a "secret formula" any more. Later, in the 1930s, the FDA required drugs to be tested for safety. Dangerous drugs could now be banned. Finally, in the 1960s, newer laws required drugs to be effective as well as safe.