BY MORTON TAVEL, M.D.
THE HISTORY OF QUACKERY IN THE U.S. IS LONG AND colorful and extends all the way back to the nation’s founding.1, 2 It’s a system that preys on the unwary and unfortunate and is basically designed to separate people from their money. Despite efforts to control unfounded medical claims, quackery continues to prosper, primarily because of ineffective efforts by our government to curb it.3
Quackery began, Voltaire famously asserted, when the first knave met the first fool. Such encounters may be presumed to have continued in all times and in all places. Certainly colonial America played host to knaves who cheated gullible fools. A surge in the promotion of useless patent medicines and other types of pseudomedical deception occurred during the mid-19th century, when burgeoning quackery combined with an increase in newspapers written to appeal to a populace acquiring the rudiments of literacy, thus providing a fertile ground for villainous patent medicine promoters. Inexpensive U.S. mail service also enabled nostrum vendors to spread their circulars throughout the republic.4