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- Title
Regulating quack medicine.
- Authors
Leeson, Peter T.; King, M. Scott; Fegley, Tate J.
- Abstract
Quack medicines were prepackaged, commercially marketed medicinal concoctions brewed from "secret recipes" that often contained powerful drugs. Governmental regulation of them in late nineteenth-century England is heralded as a landmark of public health policy. We argue that it's instead a landmark of medicinal rent-seeking. We develop a theory of quack medicine regulation in Victorian England according to which health professionals faced growing competition from close substitutes: quack medicine vendors. To protect their rents, health professionals organized, lobbied, and won laws granting them a monopoly over the sale of "poisonous" medicaments, most notably, quack medicines.
- Subjects
QUACKS &; quackery; PATENT medicines; RENT seeking; DRUG laws; VICTORIAN Period, Great Britain, 1837-1901; PHARMACISTS
- Publication
Public Choice, 2020, Vol 182, Issue 3/4, p273
- ISSN
0048-5829
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11127-019-00656-w