Located in the FDA History Vault are several samples of so-called patent medicines labeled for both human and veterinary use, what the manufacturers called, “for man or beast." These products date from the late 19th to the mid 20th centuries, before drugs intended for human use or animal use began going through independent approval reviews based on physiology, how drugs act in the body, and on other essential differences between species.

There is no evidence that the FDA moved against any of the History Office’s collection of products just because they were labeled for “man or beast.” Indeed, the amended 1906 Food and Drugs Act - to the extent that law could be applied to those products - did not inherently prohibit a medicine from claiming a use in multiple species as long as the label adhered to the limited parameters of that statute (e.g., labeling of selected dangerous ingredients and not making false and fraudulent therapeutic claims

However, the agency did take action against dozens of such preparations under provisions of both the 1906 Act and the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that prohibited misbranding. These included Dr. Holland’s Liquid Gall Kure, which claimed to treat all abrasions of the skin of humans and multiple applications in veterinary cases; Denton’s Healing Balsam, a cure for burns, bruises, bites, coughs, and colds in all animals; and Stark’s Reducine, “a veterinary preparation for lame, sore, worn, wounded, and blemished horses and all other animals and for certain uses by human beings,” including “eczema even on a tender babe.”

Many other examples can be found by browsing the collection of Notices of Judgment, the summaries of actions taken by the FDA under the 1906 and 1938 Acts, at go.usa.gov/xNNSf