Posts tagged cocaine
New York Quinine and Chemical Works advertisements.
These ads were targeted towards pharmacists and smaller third-party patent medicine manufacturers. While quinine inclusion was generally indicated on the end product, substances such as cocaine and morphine almost never were, until the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. In addition to what one would think of as “vegetable” ingredients, such as, say, the willow tree bark that was the precursor to aspirin, both cocaine and morphine were also considered “vegetable” products - neither of them were truly synthetically produced, since their starting point came from plants.
Examples of Surgery on the Eye
These are just a couple examples of ocular surgery. Unlike many surgeries, it is often not beneficial for the patient to be put under general anesthesia. Historically, the topical anesthetic cocaine was used during surgery, and the patient was lightly sedated.
Currently, topical anesthetic in nasal and ocular/lachrymal surgery is one of the only legal uses of cocaine, even though most surgeons opt for synthetic narcotic anesthetics these days. It has an extreme vasoconstrictive effect, which leads to minimal bleeding. In delicate surgery of highly vascularized areas like the nasal passages and eyeball, removing the complicating factor of loose blood at the surgical site can mean the difference between sight and blindness.
Diseases of the Eye. George E. DeSchweinitz, 1917.
Anyone who hasn’t seen this video from the movie theater in Red Dead Redemption should definitely watch this ;D It’s a great parody (though actually fairly accurate) of the Temperance League’s propaganda against the (legitimately dangerous) patent drug salesmen.
For reference, Red Dead Redemption takes place in 1911.
Notable: In the movie, the ingredients on the bottles are shown, and the bottles don’t make any “miraculous” claims to cure on the label. The Pure Food and Drug act of 1906 required that all ingredients be shown, and though the salesmen could make whatever claim they wanted, the labels of the bottles couldn’t make any false claims (though the definition of “false” was very loose).
The Harrison Act of 1914 (I’ll go into it more sometime) effectively outlawed opiates and cocaine, and the Narcotic Drug Import and Export act of 1922 prohibited importation or exportation of narcotics, intended to wipe out the remaining non-medicinal use of the drugs.
The Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938 restricted drugs from using substances that “may be injurious to health”, which included almost everything non-narcotic that the remaining patent drugs typically used. This basically eliminated the last of the patent drug companies.
A blog for all biological and medical ephemera, from the age of Abraham through the era of medical quackery and cure-all nostrums. Featuring illustrations, history, and totally useless trivia from the diverse realms of nature and medicine.
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