Peruna was a well-known

patent medicine A patent medicine (sometimes called a proprietary medicine) is a non-prescription medicine or medicinal preparation that is typically protected and advertised by a trademark and trade name, and claimed to be effective against minor disorders a ...

sold from the late-19th to mid-20th century. It was invented by Samuel Brubaker Hartman and was endorsed by hundreds of politicians. Hartman began selling the product on July 29, 1885, and advertised it as curing

catarrh Catarrh ( ) is an inflammation of mucous membranes in one of the airways or cavities of the body, usually with reference to the throat and paranasal sinuses. It can result in a thick exudate of mucus and white blood cells caused by the swelling ...

. At one point, Hartman was earning around $100,000 a day from Peruna sales. The drug was reportedly so popular that babies were named after it, as was the

mascot A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, sports team, university society, society, military unit, or brand, brand name. Mascots are als ...

Southern Methodist University Southern Methodist University (SMU) is a Private university, private research university in Dallas, Texas, United States, with a satellite campus in Taos County, New Mexico. SMU was founded on April 17, 1911, by the Methodist Episcopal Church, ...

. Peruna once released an ad with fifty United States Congressmen endorsing the product. In a series of eleven articles the journalist

Samuel Hopkins Adams Samuel Hopkins Adams (January 26, 1871 – November 16, 1958) was an American writer who was an investigative journalist and muckraker. Background Adams was born in Dunkirk, New York. Adams was a muckraker, known for exposing public-health in ...

wrote for ''

Collier's } ''Collier's'' was an American general interest magazine founded in 1888 by Peter F. Collier, Peter Fenelon Collier. It was launched as ''Collier's Once a Week'', then renamed in 1895 as ''Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal'', shortened i ...

'' in 1905, titled "The Great American Fraud", he exposed many of the false claims made about patent medicines, pointing out that in some cases, these medicines were damaging the health of the people using them. On October 20, 1906, Adams published an article claiming that Peruna and other such patent medicines were frauds, for instance alleging that the active ingredient in Peruna was 28%

ethanol Ethanol (also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol) is an organic compound with the chemical formula . It is an Alcohol (chemistry), alcohol, with its formula also written as , or EtOH, where Et is the ps ...

. The series had a huge impact and led to the passage of the

Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, also known as the Wiley Act and Dr. Wiley's Law, was the first of a series of significant consumer protection laws enacted by the United States Congress, and led to the creation of the Food and Drug Admin ...

. In 1911, the Supreme Court ruled that the prohibition of falsifications referred only to the ingredients of the medicine.Kennedy, Samuel V.
Adams, Samuel Hopkins
(Kennedy); American National Biography Online Feb. 2000. This meant that companies were again free to make false claims about what their products would do. Adams returned to the attack, and in another series of articles in ''Collier's Weekly'', he exposed the misleading advertising that companies were using to sell their products. Linking his knowledge of newspapers with patent medicines, he wrote the book ''The Clarion'' (1914), which was critical of newspaper advertising practices and led to a series of

consumer protection Consumer protection is the practice of safeguarding buyers of goods and services, and the public, against unfair practices in the marketplace. Consumer protection measures are often established by law. Such laws are intended to prevent business ...

articles in the ''New York Tribune''. When

Prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic b ...

came into effect, Americans began to drink large amounts of Peruna and other similar products as a way to get intoxicated. The product had stopped being sold by the mid-1940s. Peruna was also advertised in Alexandria, Egypt in the early 1900s in a newspaper known as ''The Egyptian Gazette''. The advertisements were almost always featured on page 5 of the newspaper and would typically include an anecdote about a particular person's experience with the medication. Hanley, Will. "Digital Egyptian Gazette". Wowchemy. https://dig-eg-gaz.github.io/

See also

References

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