--- description: As an old horse trader, Louisiana's Dudley J. LeBlanc likes to say that the man who buys a horse has only himself to blame if the horse keels over and dies. Only six weeks ago, a group of... title: HIGH FINANCE: Hadacol Hangover image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [U.S.](/section/us/) # HIGH FINANCE: Hadacol Hangover by [TIME](/author/time/) Oct 15, 1951 5:00 AM CUT by [TIME](/author/time/) Oct 15, 1951 5:00 AM CUT As an old horse trader, Louisiana’s Dudley J. LeBlanc likes to say that the man who buys a horse has only himself to blame if the horse keels over and dies. Only six weeks ago, a group of Manhattan traders bought the odd-looking business animal that LeBlanc had raised on Hadacol, a patent medicine comparable to a vitamin-enriched Manhattan cocktail (TIME, Sept. 10). This week it looked as if the horse they bought was about dead. In Manhattan’s federal court, Hadacol’s purchasers filed a voluntary petition for financial reorganization. After paying LeBlanc $250,000 down (previously announced as $1,100,000) for the company, they made some shocking discoveries. Hadacol’s $3,600,000, 15-month profit had somehow mysteriously turned into a $1.8 million second-quarter loss. Worse, they charged that LeBlanc had 1) concealed $2,000,000 of unpaid bills and a tax debt of $656,151 to the Government, 2) falsified Hadacol’s records to show $2,272,000 of “accounts receivable” which, in large part, did not exist. As the court named a trustee to try to get the prostrate horse to its feet again, a new whiplash struck it. The Federal Trade Commission complained that Hadacol’s leeringly prurient ballyhoo (“The Hadacol boogie makes you boogie-woogie all the time”) is “false, misleading and deceptive” in representing the nostrum as “an effective treatment and cure for scores of ailments and diseases.” HIGH FINANCE: Hadacol Hangover ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6617879/high-finance-hadacol-hangover/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6617879/high-finance-hadacol-hangover/"},"headline":"HIGH FINANCE: Hadacol Hangover","datePublished":"1951-10-15T05:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-26T06:08:50.390Z","description":"As an old horse trader, Louisiana's Dudley J. LeBlanc likes to say that the man who buys a horse has only himself to blame if the horse keels over and dies. Only six weeks ago, a group of...","url":"https://time.com/archive/6617879/high-finance-hadacol-hangover/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME","url":"https://time.com/author/time/"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6617879/high-finance-hadacol-hangover/","name":"HIGH FINANCE: Hadacol Hangover"}}]}] ```