The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America Before Federal Regulation

by James Harvey Young

This is the seminal history of patent medicines in the United States. Especially interesting are attempts at painkilling prior to the 19th century, leading one to speculate on how patent medicine usage may have changed attitudes about pain, or possibly reflected them. This book is a great resource for today's cultural historians who want a nice empirical ground on which to base their more modern analyses.

Genres: Medicine, Nonfiction, History

282 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1961

Reviews

[Mark Isaak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Young gives a detailed account of the patent medicine business in America up to about 1905, with an epilogue covering current times (as of 1961 when the book's written, but almost equally applicable today). Young's main focus is on the business aspects, especially promotion, and reactions to it, especially by doctors and government. Not much is said about the medical effects expected of the nostrums which fill the history, though with ingredients such as opium and alcohol, those are sometimes predictable. Plates of several photos appear in the middle of the book, but I was disappointed that there was no photo of the advertising to excess he described at one point, when the quacks covered every rock visible from trains with painted ads. Though the book covers mostly the 19th century, much of what it says about exploitation of human nature is just as true today.