1. Upon their discoveries, both cocaine and heroin were sold, marketed, and prescribed with alarming regularity as solutions to mundane medical concerns such as dandruff and sore throats.
After the isolation of cocaine in the mid-1850s, physicians were quick to take up the powerful stimulant for medicinal purposes. From use as an anesthetic, especially by ophthalmologists during eye surgeries, to serving as a painkiller, and even as a teeth whitener. Most incredulously, in the 1890s, cocaine was marketed as a cure for dandruff and was included, as depicted above, in shampoos available on the high-street. Unsurprisingly, the endemic use of cocaine did little to aide the general health of the public and instead resulted in widespread addiction before use was restricted in the early 20th century.
Equally, heroin was quickly adopted after its discovery in 1874 and prescribed for a host of medical ailments. In the 1890s, German pharmaceutical company Bayer began marketing heroin alongside aspirin as a remedy for coughs and colds, notably promoting the use of these products in the treatment of children. Adverts surviving from this period depict Bayer’s heroin ointments in the treatment of minors with bronchitis, with the claim that after use “the cough disappears”. One cannot dispute this claim, as after the child died from a heroin overdose, as often occurred, the cough did also disappear.
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“Esthetic Dentistry in Clinical Practice”, Marc Geissberger, John Wiley & Sons (April 19, 2010)
“Urine is not sterile, and neither is the rest of you”, Erika Engelhaupt, Science News (May 22, 2014)
“The Encyclopaedia of Medical Astrology”, H.L. Cornell, Echo Point Books & Media (2017)
“Crazy Medical Practices You’ll Be Glad Are Well and Truly in the Past”, Emily Blatchford, Huffington Post (November 28, 2015)
“The Ugly History of Cosmetic Surgery”, Michelle Smith, The Independent (June 9, 2016)
“A History of the Use of Arsenicals in Man”, D.M. Jolliffe, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (1993)
“Arsenic-based drugs: From Fowler’s Solution to Modern Anticancer Chemotherapy”, Stephane Gibaud and Gerard Jaouen, Topics in Organometallic Chemistry (2010)
“Dwale: An anesthetic from old England”, Anthony Carter, British Medical Journal (December 1998)
“A real knockout: Medieval medicine’s version of anesthesia was often worse than surgery itself”, Jackie Rosenhek, Doctor’s Review (August 2012)
“Introducing fever therapy in the treatment of neurosyphilis”, Julius Wagner-Jauregg, Psychiatriki (2013)
“Haemorrhoidal disease: A comprehensive review”, O. Kaidar-Person, B. Person, and S.D. Wexner, Journal of the American College of Surgeons (January 2007)
“Surgical management of hemorrhoids”, S.P. Agbo, Journal of Surgical Technique (January 1, 2011)
“Medicine & Philosophy: A Twenty-First-Century Introduction”, Ingvar Johansson, Niels Lynoe, Walter de Gruyter Publishing (2008)
“Fever associated with teething”, L Jaber, I.J. Cohen, and A. Mor, Archives of Disease in Childhood (1992)
“The lancet and the gum-lancet: 400 years of teething babies”, Ann Daily, The Lancet (1996)
“The Decline of Therapeutic Bloodletting and the Collapse of Traditional Medicine”, Carter Codell, Transaction Publishers (2012)
“The Western Medical Tradition: 800 B.C. – 1800 A.D.”, Lawrence Conrad, Cambridge University Press (1995)
“The Use of Poop in Medical Treatments Throughout History”, Elana Glowatz, Medical Daily (October 7, 2016)
“History of Medicine”, Fielding H. Garrison, W.B. Saunders (1921)
“On the Virgin Cleansing Myth: Gendered Bodies, AIDS, and Ethnomedicine”, Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala, African Journal of AIDS Research (2002)
“Virgin: The Untouched History”, Hanne Blank, Bloomsbury (2007)
“The historical background of the modern speech clinic”, G.M. Klingbeil, Journal of Speech Disorders (1939)
“Mercury – Element of the ancients”, Center for Environmental Health Sciences, Dartmouth College (2012)
“Yes, Bayer promoted heroin for children: here are the ads that prove it”, Jim Edwards, Buisness Insider, (November 17, 2011)