If a substance improves certain cognitive metrics in healthy adults, then it qualifies a nootropic, even if it has harmful side effects. Purported nootropics are often also marketed as, or alongside, purported life extension products. Maybe that creates some confusion about what nootropics are.

Nootropics are drugs that boost cognitive performance: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nootropic

From your link:

>and possesses very few side effects and extremely low toxicity.

Only if you take the pharmacological definition. The medical definition is exactly as I said.

What a weird hair to split, pharmacology is a part of medicine.

The "medical" definition is incomplete.

I’d have thought so too, but Wikipedia describes it as one, so who knows