Article: Bad Medicine

John Swann, custodian of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's historic collection, begins plucking colorfully labeled bottles off a shelf at the agency's Rockville headquarters.

"It was believed that Native Americans had a special knowledge of medicinal substances," he says, hefting a bottle of Kickapoo Sagwa laxative, "so Indians often were shown on quack medicine labels at the turn of the century."

Swann proceeds to display an assortment of lotions, potions and gadgets with one thing in common: None of them works. In addition to the Kickapoo elixir (9 1/2 percent alcohol), there's the bell-shaped glass Turbo-Bust developer; the Radiant Cosmic Disk, a hunk of gray material the size ...

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