Swaim's Panacea is so mild and harmless that it may safely be given even to a nursing infant.
James Harvey Young’s academic history records that the Philadelphia Medical Society’s investigating committee specifically rejected Swaim’s claim that the Panacea could safely be given even to a nursing infant, and documented cases in which the medicine may have caused a patient’s death (Young 1961). Swaim’s own signed 1828 public notice pledged the medicine free of mercury and other harmful drugs, the basis for the safety claim (Wellcome Collection, work bst63dyx); the chemical analysis proving that pledge false directly undercuts the infant-safety claim built on it, since the undisclosed ingredient was itself a harsh mercury compound rather than the harmless vegetable preparation advertised.
Appears in
Sources
- A Treatise on Swaim's Panacea (bound-in notice: To the Public, signed Wm. Swaim, September 1828) — Swaim, William. To the Public. Notice bound into A Treatise on Swaim's Panacea... Philadelphia: [Maxwell], 1828. Signed Wm. Swaim, dated Philadelphia, September 1828. Wellcome Collection (catalogue work bst63dyx; IIIF presentation b21157546, image b21157546_0006). Public Domain Mark.
- The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America before Federal Regulation, chapter 5 (Hercules and Hydra, the first significant critique of patent medicines) — Young, James Harvey. The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America before Federal Regulation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961, chapter 5 (titled, per the publisher's own chapter list, Hercules and Hydra: The First Significant Critique of Patent Medicines). Reproduced with permission of the author and publisher at Quackwatch, https://quackwatch.org/hx/tm/5-2/ (posted 29 April 2002 per the page's own publication note).