Medicine: The Word

For almost 16 years, a bitter battle has raged between Carter Products, Inc. and the Federal Trade Commission over one word: liver. The FTC first tried in 1943 to get the "Liver"' dropped from Carter's Little Liver Pills. The pills, said the agency, did not help a sluggish liver, would not necessarily relieve that ''worn-out, sluggish, allin, listless, tired, stuffy, cranky, peevish, bogged-down" feeling. After 142 hearings in six cities (and 11,000 pages of testimony), the FTC issued a cease-and-desist order, only to have it tossed out by the U.S. Court of Appeals....

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