Patent medicines

Domain XVI · Historical, discredited & harmful · 1850 · United States and Britain

What it is

What it was. Patent or proprietary medicines were remedies sold directly to the public under a brand name, with a secret formula, through drugstores, grocers, mail order, travelling peddlers and medicine shows, and promoted heavily in newspapers and almanacs. Sellers claimed their products cured…

Format

• This is a framework for the therapist's work, not a treatment protocol. Session numbers follow clinical need.

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Regulation (1906–1938): labelling and adulteration rules (1906); the Johnson ruling (1911) and the Sherley Amendment (1912); pre-market safety testing and transfer of drug advertising to the Federal Trade Commission (1938).
• Afterlife (to the present): health-fraud products, hidden-drug supplements and unlicensed online medicines policed by the FDA, MHRA and others.
• Advocacy and follow-up. Support reporting to regulators, help the client keep contact with medical care, and, where relevant, explore family history of dependence linked to such remedies.

Evidence status, as the guide reports it

• Understanding and repair. Explore the needs the product promised to meet (relief from pain, distress, stigma, poor access to care), work on marketing literacy, shame and financial loss, and support engagement with care that has evidence behind it.

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Does it involve intense or unusual breathing? Have you been told about the medical conditions for which that is not advised?
• Does it involve fasting, a special diet or 'detox'? Have you discussed this with your doctor?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• buying moving to a new channel. Working when impulsive purchases fall.
• romanticising "old-fashioned" cures as safer. Working when interest coexists with clear judgement.
• the client swapping one unproven product for another. Working when the client is engaged with care.
• grief when the hope is let go. Working when the client can talk about the need without defending the product.
• retaliation; minimising by the institution. Working when the practice stops and affected clients are informed.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.