Arthur J. Cramp

Arthur Joseph Cramp (September 10, 1872 – November 25, 1951) was a medical doctor, researcher, and writer. He served as director of the American Medical Association's (AMA) Propaganda for Reform Department (later, the Bureau of Investigation and, then the Department of Investigation) Cramp was "a bitter opponent of proprietary and medicinal abuses." helped bring awareness to the problem of patent medicines or nostrums, by subjecting the claims (made by predominantly non-medical people) to scientific analysis. He was critical of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, and advocated stronger regulation of product labeling and advertising. His father was a commercial traveller. He received his "preliminary education" in England

By 1910, Cramp's "Fake File," listing "products, firms, and names of promoters", contained over 12,000 entries. He kept a "Testimonial File" for doctors who endorsed proprietary drugs through testimonials; over 13,000 American doctors and 3,000 foreign doctors.

Cramp advocated truth in advertising, particularly for general consumption (patent) medicines containing "secret formulas," He and his office called for the standardization of medicines (ingredients and dosages) and educating the public on appropriate use. He wrote, "When the public is properly informed, so that it knows what preparations to call for in order to treat its simpler ailments, advertising of secret remedies will be entirely unnecessary." The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, followed by the 1912 Sherley Amendment, was an attempt to address these issues.

"No man has any moral right to so advertise as to make well persons think they are sick and sick persons thing they are very sick. Such advertising is an offense against the public health."|Arthur J. Cramp

Nostrums and quackery In 1911, Cramp published the first of three volumes called Nostrums and Quackery, which would become "a veritable encyclopedia on the nostrum evil and quackery."

Cramp's Nostrums and Quackery and Pseudo-Medicine, Volume III, foreword by George H. Simmons, Editor Emeritus of the Journal of the American Medical Association, This volume, more condensed than the first two volumes, indexed 1,500 "remedies."

A sampling of "quack cures" which Cramp included in his books and lectures: deafness "cures" (subjecting individuals with hearing loss to airplane nose-dives), beauty "cures" (hair dyes, freckle removers, and reducing lotions containing harmful ingredients or promoted with false claims about their efficacy), cancer "quackery" (alternate cancer therapies), "consumption cure quackery" (elixirs from a bottle whose "alleged cures for consumption are born weekly"), and the Wilshire I-ON-A-CO (a magnetic belt purported to cure cancer, Bright's disease and paralysis, pernicious anemia to health, deafness, muteness, and St. Vitus' dance).

"The remedy for the menace of the fake consumption cure is education – and more education. People are gullible not because they lack brains, but because they lack knowledge. Iteration and reiteration of the fundamental facts regarding the prevention and cure of tuberculosis is the only way of overcoming the present toll of human life taken by the consumption quack cure."|Arthur J. Cramp daughter of L.N. Torrey. They had a daughter, Torrey, who died on January 2, 1900. The infant's death was caused by seizures related to meningitis. The Nostrum and the Public Health (1919) Self-Doctoring (1920) Patent Medicines: What is a 'Patent Medicine' and Why? (1923) Patent Medicines: What Protection Does the National Food and Drugs Act Give? (1923) Therapeutic Thaumaturgy (1924) I-ON-A-CO – The Magic Horse Collar? (1927) The Nostrum and the Public Health (1929) The Bureau of Investigation of the American Medical Association (1931) The Work of the Bureau of Investigation (1933) Salts and Crystals Quackery (1935)

Books Nostrums and Quackery: Articles on the Nostrum Evil, Quackery and Allied Matters Affecting the Public Health, Volume 1 (1912) Nostrums and Quackery: Articles on the Nostrum Evil, Quackery and Allied Matters Affecting the Public Health, Volume 2 (1921) Nostrums and Quackery and Pseudo-Medicine, Volume 3 (1936)