JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Women, weak women, women with iron-poor blood, were sought by the manufacturers of Nuxated Iron, a small-bottled mottled mess that promised to increase vigor and iron levels, mostly through miracle. It turns out that, according to various early studies, there was a very small amount of iron in the concoction, as well as small amounts of strychnine. An E.O. Barker, M.D., reported to JAMA in 1923 that a small boy he attended who had taken 32 of these Nuxated Iron tablets died from strychnine poisoning. There was no benefit from the iron, evidently; I wonder what the long term effects of small dosage ingestion of strychnine led to? ["Weak Women" ad for Nuxated Iron from Illustrated World, November 1920/]
"NUXATED IRON" NOT ALWAYS "NUX"-LESS , E. O. Barker, M.D.
To the Editor: —In looking over The Journal of July 14, I find a little item about "Nuxated Iron" in which the statement is made that the nostrum contains very little iron and a negligible quantity of "nux." A few days ago I was called to see a boy about 2½ years old who had eaten thirty-two "Nuxated Iron" tablets. He died of strychnin poisoning about two hours after he had taken the tablets and before I reached him (the child lived 20 miles from my office and it was some time after he got the stuff that I was called). I hardly believe that the parents of this child could be convinced that the quantity of nux in those particular tablets was negligible.
I'd never heard of Nuxated Iron, but it's little known how mainstream the use of strychnine was in this era. A while back we had in the bookshop a 1934 Faber & Faber guide for nurses called Principal Drugs and Their Uses, which described strychnine as "General tonic. Prescribed in various nervous disorders. It is among the most valuable and widely prescribed drugs". Undoubtedly the deal with Nuxated Iron was the stimulant effect of the strychine, which was highly misusable. See Strychnine - a lesser-known past: http://jsbookreader.blogspot.co.uk/2008/03/strychnine-lesser-known-past.html
Posted by: Ray Girvan | 06 February 2013 at 08:23 PM