The Shadowy Business of Patent Medicines

A drug clerk sat in a Seattle shop, waiting for the proprietor to leave before sharing the dark secrets of the trade with a reporter. He boasted of a pineapple syrup made from rotting, maggot-ridden cheese—explaining that the maggots were so strong they could move the cheese back to its original spot. He described a sarsaparilla syrup distilled from old boot legs and discarded trunks, and a raspberry syrup concocted from red bugs and coal oil. When asked about his porous plasters, he claimed the owner made them from scraps of old sunbonnets and glue, noting that one customer had been stuck wearing the same plaster since the Mexican War, as his skin had simply grown over it. The clerk confessed that doctors often shared in the profit from these dangerous mixtures, and that a young, unskilled boy currently working for them frequently caused fatal blunders. The boy had recently swapped prescriptions, giving Mrs. Jones's meningitis medication to the Smith baby, leading to the infant's death. 'That boy never knows where anything is but the gumdrops and licorice,' the clerk said, before sending the boy off to mix red paint for 'patent liver pads' and soft soap for a 'balm for freckles.'