Companies offering financial support to eminent researchers and opinion-formers has long been an issue, and the requirement to declare conflicts of interest in academic papers seeks to counter it. While drug companies’ ability to sway individual practitioners has undoubtedly been diminished, the industry has adapted cannily to new realities. The very fact that I can recall Frumil among the numerous, now-forgotten brand names common in that era tells me how effective a marketing strategy it was. I like to think I am impervious to such ruses. The ulterior motive, of course, was to remind me – every day, pretty much – of their product, in the hope that, whenever I needed to prescribe a diuretic, it would be theirs that came to mind.
I didn’t pay for either of my eponymous tourniquets they were given to me by the people that made Frumil. I inked my name in capital letters on mine to stop it getting lost and I also squirrelled a second one away for when I might need a replacement – which, remarkably, I still had three decades later when the original finally began to fray.įrumil was a brand of diuretic or a “water tablet” – drugs that flush water and salt through the kidneys, drying out swollen legs and waterlogged lungs in patients with heart failure. Their stainless steel clasp was an example of design genius a mere flick of a finger instantly released the entire apparatus once the blood-taking or IV cannula-siting was done.
SMOOZE SPELLING SKIN
Their perfectly judged stretchiness made them effortless to pull tight around an arm, and the soft material meant they never pinched the patient’s skin like inferior tourniquets did.
Its green elasticated fabric has been perfectly preserved inside its plastic case, and the yellow letters spelling “Frumil” are as bright as the day it was made.įrumil tourniquets were highly prized when I was a junior hospital doctor. I unwrapped a new tourniquet the other day.
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