Nostrums and Quackery, in Three Volumes: Articles on the Nostrum Evil, Quackery and Allied Matters Affecting the Public Health; Reprinted, with or without Modifications, from The Journal of the American Medical Association, Volumes 1 & 2 [I & II]; Nostru…

Complete in three volumes. 8vo. Illustrations of newspaper articles, medicine bottles, advertisements, etc. related to medical quackery. These volumes were released by the American Medical Association in the interest of the public health, due to the rampant abuses of snake oil salesmen. Hoolihan 86: "By 1906, the year the Pure Food and Drugs Act was passed by Congress, the Journal of the American Medical Association increasingly (if belatedly) gave attention to discussion of fraudulent practices in the manufacture and advertising of proprietary medicines. The articles gave a more professional tone to the exposure of the nostrum industry already taking place in the pages of such journals as Colliers Weekly and The Ladies Home Journal. In 1905 the AMA barred advertising for nostrums in the pages of its Journal, and in 1906 established a Propaganda Dept., headed by Arthur J. Cramp. In cooperation with the AMA's Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry (est. 1905), the Propaganda Dept. systematically investigated proprietary medicines and published the findings as articles in the Journal, and in some instances separately as pamphlets. Many of these articles/pamphlets were gathered together and published in 1911 as the first volume of Nostrum and Quackery. (A second edition of the first volume, larger than the first by 199 pages, was issued in 1912.) The second volume was published in 1921; and the third volume (Nostrums and Quackery and Pseudo-Medicine) in 1936, the year after Cramp's retirement from what was by then known as the Bureau of Investigation. Nostrums and Quackery remained in print through mid-century and admirably served the purpose of informing and protecting the public from "'patent medicine', exploitation and quackery." It remains a thorough and invaluable resource for understanding a complex phenomenon in the history of American popular medicine."