By Kelsey L. Koym, Archivist and Special Collections Librarian.
The medicines used for the Toxic Medicines and Toxic Books exhibit were selected based on their historical use to treat various ailments and diseases; however, these treatments are now known today to be quite harmful to human health. It is important to remember that the ideology around how the body works and how to treat disease has greatly changed over the last several centuries.
One of the predominant theories of medicine in the Western tradition is classified as the “humoral theory.” The theory originated with Hippocrates and remained popular until the 19th century. The main idea was that the body contained a balance of four humors: black bile; yellow bile; red bile; and phlegm. These 4 humors were affiliated with what was believed were the four corresponding psychological temperaments: melancholic, sanguine, choleric, and phlegmatic. Therefore, medical treatments were used to restore balance to an individual’s humor levels and involved purge-like practices such as bloodletting, induced vomiting, enemas, and other treatments that rid the body of excessive humor levels to restore an individual’s balance (Humoral Theory, 2020).
One of the items in the toxic medicine exhibit comes from the MS 050 Mavis P. Kelsey Collection. The box of medicine that was produced around the 1860s includes several glass vials that still contain their aged contents. In the back row from left to right there are Purified Epsom Salts; Laudanum; and Mindererus’ Spirit. The bottle of Laudanum is specifically labeled as a poison as it contains opium and alkaloids like morphine and codeine. There are several accounts in medical journals at this time about treating laudanum poisoning via other humoral-theory medicinal techniques such as with belladonna and bloodletting (Laudanum Poisoning Successfully Treated by Belladonna, 1872; Ross, 1823).
Mindererus’ Spirit is Ammonium acetate and was used to make people sweat as induced-perspiration was one of the purge-like treatments for restoring balance to the humors. Ammonium acetate is used today as a food additive (Royal Museums Greenwich, n.d.).
One of the few treatments that were actually labeled as a poison is the strychnine that is in the Toxic Medicine Exhibit, which comes from the MS 135 Normann E. Mann Realia Collection. The vial belongs to a leather case with “Dr. Boss Brown” embossed on the outside of the leather box, and is dated circa 1900s. The other vials in the case include some other interesting treatments that have various levels of strychnine, belladonna, morphine, and mercury. Strychnine was commonly used as a stimulant for the treatment of paralytic diseases, amaurosis, neuralgia, and many other ailments involved with the nervous system (Practical Observations on the Nature and Treatment of Nervous Diseases: With Remarks on the Efficacy of Strychnine in the More Obstinate Cases, 1836). According to Otter et al. (2023) during the 1930s strychnine was one of the most common lethal poisonous ingestions of children, and the toxin could be purchased over the counter in various consumer products until the 1980s (para. 4). Notably, these products included things such as digestive aids and cold remedies, which still mirrors the humoral theory of medicine.
The sugar-coated pills contain atropine sulfate, strychnine sulfate, ergotin, tincture of Rhus aromatica, and thyriodin. The pills were marketed by the S.E. Massengill Company to treat childhood enuresis. The Report of the United States Secretary of Agriculture (1937) detailed that S.E. Massengill Company’s product known as “Elixir Sulfanilamide” was directly responsible for 73 deaths with approximately 20 other suspected deaths (pg. 68). The Report (1937) also stated,
“Before the ‘elixir’ was put on the market, it was tested for flavor but not for its effect on human life. The existing Federal Food and Drugs Act does not require that new drugs be tested before they are placed on sale (pg.68).”
The Federal Food and Drugs Act, enacted in 1906, essentially had no power to charge the company for illegal activity. At the time there was no provision against dangerous drugs, and a seizure of the product was only legally possible because the company had called it an “Elixir,” implying that it contained alcohol, which gave jurisdiction to charge the company and seize the 228 gallons and 2 pints of the product (Elixir Sulfanilamide-MassenGill: Report of the United States Secretary of Agriculture, 1937, pg. 68). There are far more restrictions now on the drug and vaccine market, where a new product must first undergo Preclinical testing, Phase 1 clinical trials, Phase 2 clinical trials, Phase 3 clinical trials, and Regulatory Review before it can be released into the public (Kalinke et al., 2022).
The three vials in the case with the toxic books: Chininum Arsen. 3x; Lachesis; and Merc. Subl. Cor. The vial with Chininum Arsen. 3x, or Chininum Arsenicosium, is used today as a homeopathic remedy for diarrhea. PubChem from the National Library of Medicine formally classifies this as quinine arsenite, and it is considered an arsenical. The designation ‘3x’ on the label after the name along with other like-vials from MS 160 D.H. Rank Medical Artifacts Collection Leather Box with Medicine Vials and Instruments: indicate that these medicines are most likely a part of a late 19th or early 20th century homeopathic medicine kit.
Homeopathic medicine was initially a response to the growing concern of Western medicine at the time, which included crude measures such as dangerous polypharmacy, purging, and profuse blood-letting (Loudon, 2006, pg. 608). Homeopathic Medicine’s founder, Samuel Hahnemann, first announced his theories regarding the alternative approach in approximately 1814. The basic tenets were ‘like cures like,’ and Loudon (2006) states that Hahnemann believed “…drugs should be given in a dose which only just produced the slightest symptoms of the disease which was being treated (pg. 608).” The ratio of medicine to solution, however, was so off balance (e.g. 1:1000 000 000) that homeopathic physicians had to ‘potenize’ the solutions by violently shaking the treatments before administering them to the patient according to Hahnemann (Loudon, 2006, pg. 608).
The vial labeled “Lachesis” is derived from the poison of the pit viper with the same name. By the end of the 19th century snake poisons were commonly used in treatments. Professor W. E. Leonard (1896) details the account he heard from Dr. Constantine Hering, who wrote the book “Effects of Snake Poisons” in 1837. Leonard (1896) relays how Dr. Hering and his wife extracted and tested the venom alone in the Amazon because the locals abandoned them due to fear of what the snake or venom would do to the couple. There are other articles from the same issue of The Homeopathic Physician from the same year that detail the various ways Lachesis had been used, like for the treatment of a ‘bilius temperament’ patient with grippe (Fitz-Mathew, 1896). Grippe was the term commonly used for what is now called influenza.
The last vial in the case with the toxic books labeled Merc. Subl. Cor. is mercurius sublimate corrosivus, and it is derived from mercury, which is severely toxic. In homeopathic medicine it is used to treat conditions of the skin and mucous membranes. Information with the ingredient with this type of naming convention (i.e. Merc. Subl. Cor.) seems to be primarily found on modern-day homeopathic medicine seller’s websites. This naming convention is what has helped narrow down how this homeopathic kit is most likely an early 20th century kit as opposed to a late 19th century one. Yet, more clues to narrow down the date of the kit are needed, and someone with extensive knowledge of naming conventions of homeopathic medicines will eventually be consulted.
The toxic medicine and toxic books exhibit is currently on display at the TMC Library. We encourage you to stop by and check out the various objects and further readings through the QR codes that are accessible through the display. You can check out a virtual view of the exhibit with the video above!
Check out the References available through RefWorks.