Medicine: Cut Out the Liver

One of the most familiar of all trade names was booked for a major operation last week. The Federal Trade Commission told the manufacturers of Carter’s Little Liver Pills to cut the word “liver” out of the product name. The tiny, white-coated globules, FTC found, are an irritative laxative (with one of their ingredients described as “drastic”), and have no medicinal effect on the liver.

The FTC had spent several years, and undertaken a great deal of medical research in reaching its decision. Even now, his liver is a somewhat mysterious organ, e.g., nobody knows exactly why a man dies within 24 hours after the liver is removed. Far less was known in 1868, when Dr. Samuel Carter of Erie, Pa. compounded a formula which he thought was good for sick headache and torpid liver (both “positively cured”), also indigestion, constipation or what-ails-you.

Mandrake & Aloes. Dr. Carter sought his raw materials in nature. Podophyllum resin, or podophyllin, is the resin of the dried root of the mandrake or May apple; Carter combined this with the dried juice of aloes. He chose as his trademark an overstuffed black crow, which gave a nice zoological balance to Bull Durham’s bull on the nation’s barns. By 1880 the growing business was incorporated. Millions of pills were shipped all over the U.S. and abroad.

Half a century later, a new advertising technique gave the sexagenarian business an added boost. The ominous crow was retired; the slogan became “Wake up your liver bile!” Jingles urged readers and radio listeners: “When you feel sour and sunk, and the world looks punk . . . Take a Carter’s Little Liver Pill.” Carter’s went on to claim that the increased liver bile would enable the pill-taker to overeat and overindulge in “good times” without morning-after regrets, to wake up “clear-eyed and steady-nerved,” “feeling just wonderful,” and “alert and ready for work.” Copywriters combed the thesaurus and found no less than 30 synonyms for the sluggishness which the pills were said to cure.

Grumpy & Gloomy. The Federal Trade Commission took a bilious view of these promotional high jinks. Carter Products Inc. produced its own medical experts to prove that the pills actually did stimulate the liver. But the FTC got evidence to the contrary. After eight years, during which it collected 10,000 pages of research and a medical monograph on the liver, the FTC struck. Its ruling last week not only forbade Carter Products to use the word “liver” in the name of its pills, but told Carter’s to stop claiming that its pills are specific remedies for conditions in which an individual feels “down-and-out, blue, down-in-the-dumps, worn out, sunk, logy, depressed, sluggish, allin, listless, mean, low, cross, tired, stuffy, heavy, miserable, sour, grouchy, irritable, cranky, peevish, fagged out, dull, sullen, what’s-the-use, bogged down, grumpy, run down or gloomy.”

The FTC left one door open. Carter’s can still recommend its pills for such miseries to the extent that any of them can be temporarily relieved by an evacuation of the bowels.