This advertisement from 1927 for Formamint lozenges nicely captures some present dilemmas. The Berlin bacteriologist Max Piorkowski developed these anti-bacterial pills before World War I, when they were already widely marketed. During the 1918 influenza pandemic, when very little was known about the properties of viruses, the overwhelming cause of death was secondary infection stemming from bacterial pneumonia. Formamint was then sold for its antiseptic properties as an aid to avoiding contagion risks. The active ingredient was formaldehyde (now thought to be a carcinogen at higher exposures), bound with sugar and citric acid for convenient oral administration. Notice how the advertisement conflates the site of risk—a crowded movie theater—with the site of the didactic commercial insight. “The risk of contagion grows if many people gather, such as in theaters, cinemas, concert halls, on trains and trams, in schools, public assemblies and associations.” The screen depicts three different slide cross-sections of “influenza bacteria” (sic). The first slide, full of bacteria, did not have the benefit of Formamint. The second slide shows the reduction in bacteria by ingesting three lozenges, while the third slide, free of bacteria, comes courtesy of five lozenges. The obvious implication: take a lozenge to assuage your public health anxiety. If someone asks, “What have you got to lose?“, exercise caution before taking magic pills. (Austrian National Library)
(Compare also this earlier advertisement in English. It would seem that it had a strong market among war veterans.) On the more complex reasons for imputing the disease to Bacillus influenzae during the war, see Michael Bresalier, “Fighting flu: Military pathology, vaccines, and the conflicted identity of the 1918-19 pandemic in Britain,” J. Hist. Med. 68 (2013).