Medical Tablet Discovery! Safe, New, Easy Way!

September 9th, 2009

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

Here’s an old comic book ad for an over-the-counter pill to stop bed wetting.

The medication is not manufactured anymore — in fact, the company that makes seems to be long gone — but I’m betting it was a medication with strong anticholinergic effects. This pill would, as the ad suggests, tighten up the bladder — but that class of medication can have a lot of unpleasant side effects as well (and the side effects are common enough to inspire a well-known mnemonic: “Hot as a Hare, Dry as a Bone, Red as a Beet, Mad as a Hatter, Blind as a Bat”).

Of course, the bed wetting only stops as long as you take the pill, so it’s not going to “cure” the problem like it apparently has in everyone in the testimonials the company thoughtfully included in the ad. If you’ve been wetting the bed for 23 years, no pill taken for a few days is going to fix the problem. Anticholinergic drugs can also cause dementia in older patients, so I’d be careful before giving it to the 76 year old lady (I’d also want to know why she suddenly developed bed wetting at age 76. Sure, it could be her advanced age, or it could be a sign of something more dangerous).

And what’s with the scare quotes? How is “Bed Wetting” different from bed wetting?


For the full size ad, click on the smaller version or the testimonials.

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9 Responses to “ Medical Tablet Discovery! Safe, New, Easy Way! ”

  1. Psudo
    September 9th, 2009 at 1:35 am

    Normal bed wetting is a small accident. “Bed Wetting” is enough to extinguish the Human Torch.

  2. Metz77
    September 9th, 2009 at 1:48 am

    Both Human Torches.

    At once.

  3. Andreas
    September 9th, 2009 at 4:24 am

    The guy with the test tube is priceless. Makes me want to shout Adam Savage quotes: “Wake up! Time for Science!”

  4. Keith
    September 9th, 2009 at 6:58 am

    The downside: the pill is actually a plug.

  5. Bryan L
    September 9th, 2009 at 8:11 am

    Dang. That pill is as big as the end of the thumb holding it. It would be easier to swallow a quarter.

  6. Alberto
    September 9th, 2009 at 2:12 pm

    I guess the pill solves the bed wetting problem, as well as the … “Bed Wetting” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more) problem.

    If you get what I mean.

  7. Arkonbey
    September 9th, 2009 at 2:12 pm

    Given the side effects you listed, do you think the skin tone on the faces was intentional or was it just too much magenta on the plate?

  8. Dave
    September 9th, 2009 at 2:54 pm

    Who’s the audience here? We assume comics are meant for kids only in those days, and is it even legal to sell medications by mail to minors?

    Do the advertisers assume that adults are reading? That kids will conveniently leave the comic open where a parent will find it? That a child will have a serious heart-to-heart about his “bed-wetting” problem and that this is the solution?

    I’m so confused.

  9. Xenobiologista
    September 11th, 2009 at 4:28 am

    Given the potential side effects and the propensity of people to overmedicate themselves it’s scary that they were selling those things without a prescription!

    I occasionally urinate in my sleep (about once a month; usually I dream that I got up and went to the toilet) and I tried going to a urology CPN who prescribes Enablex (another anticholinergic). The side effect of waking up with a paper-dry mouth was NASTY and painful and the pills are really expensive. In the end I decided to go back to using a loud alarm clock set for 4 a.m. Also, waterproof mattress covers only cost a few bucks and are nothing like those horrible crunchy rubber sheets that most bedwetting adults probably remember from childhood.

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