Proprietary Medicine Stamps during the Civil War Period †

In recent years physicians have tended to sit back in a complacent manner somewhat falsely confident that the pure food and drug act had taken care of or will take care of any fake or hoax perpetrated on the people. One has only to acquire a television set, however, to have an intensive course in pharmacology-to become aware of BC and AC recommended by doctors everywhere, of K2 which destroys harmful bacteria, and many other of the newer medications. One evening of television is an indoctrination in medicine so graphic that it is small wonder that our patients are confused. We have made progress and of that there can be no doubt. We still have the proprietary product and the inferences that it is a panacea for all our ailments. But although it may seem that people reach out more frequently for panaceas in these times, I must remind you of some of the patent medicines in use a long time ago. I became interested in them through the tax revenue stamps affixed to them. Stamp collecting is one of those sedentary avocational interests that people employ to "occupy one's mind." It can also be employed to make a person feel he has achieved some individual difference from others, yet not so much as to mark him as peculiar. Philatelist is the scientific term used to designate a stamp collector and literally translated this means "lover of labels." It can readily be seen why a psychiatrist would become a stamp collector for there is no branch of medicine that can compare with psychiatry in the use of neologisms and polysyllabic words. One of the troubles with stamp collecting is that so many people collect and one has therefore to specialize in some unusual area in order to maintain an individual difference. This is one of the reasons why twenty-five years ago I became interested in collecting tax revenue stamps on medicine, for very few collectors give them much attention. Since the stamps had medical interest, it seemed easy for me to rationalize the idea of collecting them, although a psychiatrist should have no need of rationalizing anything in himself since he is presumably so well adjusted! * Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry.