Regulating quack medicine

Peter Leeson, M. Scott King () and Tate J. Fegley ()
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M. Scott King: George Mason University
Tate J. Fegley: George Mason University

Public Choice, 2020, vol. 182, issue 3, No 3, 273-286

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Quack medicine; Patent medicine; Proprietary medicine; Regulation; Pharmacy Act; Poison; Rent-seeking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11127-019-00656-w

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