In the first decade of this, century, two sustained attempts were made to expose medical quackery. At the time hucksters traveled across America selling medicines that often mixed large amounts of alcohol and/or opium with other ingredients. These patent medicines promised to cure everything from headaches to asthma and tuberculosis. One such elixir was Mary's Wonderful Stomach Remedy, which was sold for relief of appendicitis, liver complaints, gallstones, and just about any other stomach ailment. The "medicine" consisted of a bottle of olive oil and a package of salt. When taken together, these two ingredients would produce bowel movements that naive patients might think were the gallstones causing their pain.

Into this morass waded Samuel Hopkins Adams, a crusading magazine writer. In the early years of the decade Adams wrote many articles for such popular publications as McClure's in which he attacked health...