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Efficacy test for a vitamin product , 1950s
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This wooden box served to test the efficacy of a vitamin product. The top of the rectangular box has holes punched out or sawed out, and there are matching shapes resembling children's building blocks.
The test required patients to fit the shapes into the matching openings. Each shape only fits into one of the holes at a time; the parts that all through can be removed again at the side.
The box was used in old-age homes. What should be a playfully easy task for healthy people can certainly cause difficulties for very elderly residents in old-age and nursing homes. The test requires mental abilities to be combined with motor skills – albeit not at a very high level.
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The purpose was to test the efficacy of Gerobion. It was possible to compare whether the patients' success rate improved after regular use of the product and also whether they showed better performance than patients who did not receive the product. Gerobion was a vitamin combination developed by Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, for use in geriatric medicine. Eight vitamins were combined with vasoactive and fortifying natural substances.
Precise documentation of the results does not exist, but it cannot be assumed that the results had any reliable significance. In addition to the natural factors that can influence such tests – even how a patients feels on a particular day, can significantly influence the result – the number of patients was far too small. For more meaningful results, there should have been thousands of these boxes in use, which was not the case.
But the box is representative of the way in which medicines were tested at that time: Individual patients were selected for suitability, physicians prepared reports and made recommendations where appropriate. Standardized mass tests as double-blind studies, which are mandatory today, did not yet exist. It was not until the German Medicines Act of 1976 that official rules were stipulated for the approval of drugs.