Some meds from the past ...
Drink to your health: Good for what 'ales' you October 26, 2010 - Bluff Country Reader
Visitors to our Fillmore County History Center museum fall generally into two categories: those for whom artifacts on display are personal history versus the younger demographic for whom old things are brand new things.
I tell students on school tours: you know you're old when things you remember from your childhood are in a museum. They chuckle. I chuckle, too, whenever I pass one of my favorite exhibits - yep, no doubt about it, I'm old.
But in memory I'm my teen self again, swiveling back and forth on the soda fountain stool at the local drugstore sipping a lime. The American pairing of the pharmacy with a lunch counter is a scene straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, or more specifically, advertisement art for Crush soda pop. Check out Rockwell's 1921 illustrations online - there are several posted of the dozen commissioned. You'll more fully appreciate the delightful fruit-shaped syrup containers displayed in our museum soda fountain.
Beverages now woven into popular culture's fabric began their marketing lives in the late 19th century as patent medicines, including Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, and Hires Root Beer. A patient could sidle up to the soda fountain of a pharmacy to be served concoctions touted as cures remedying a variety of ailments.
Druggists commonly sold glassfuls of Pemberton's French Wine Coca as a nerve tonic. Not until the passage of the Harrison Act of 1914, was the addictiveness of the elixir's coca ingredient - cocaine - recognized. By that date, a non-alcoholic, non-narcotic version of the drink developed as leader of the emerging "soft" drink industry. Meanwhile, curatives proceeded beyond the soda fountain.
Our early newspapers are filled with ads boasting "unsolicited testimonials" from patients healed of just about every ailment known to mankind. A nostrum marketed as patent medicine was a misnomer since few were ever patented. To do so entrepreneurs needed to disclose ingredients - which was precisely what they tried to avoid. Instead, they peddled promises in order to sell hope to a naïve public. Desperate for cures and ignorant of potential adverse consequences, people fell for false claims.
The Fillmore County Republican of 1870 ran weekly advertisements for "The great blood purifier, Warner's Vinum Nitae. Far superior to brandy, whiskey, wine, bitters ... and cheaper. Both male and female, young or old, can take the Wine of Life. It is sold by druggists and also at all respectable saloons." (Kind of makes you wonder what the difference was between a respectable saloon and unrespectable saloon!)
The shelves of our little pharmacy include the following. My comments and definitions for archaic terms are in italics.
Dr. Von Hopf's Curacoa Tonic Bitters The label asserts: "It is a certain cure for Dispepsia, Liver Complaints, Indigestion, and Costiveness (constipation). A mild and invigorating cordial especially adapted to delicate females. Directions: for adults a wineglass full three times a day." (Note the dosage as a "wineglass full"-nearly all directions on product labeling in our medicinal collection urge that measure.)
Dover's Powder The label states its analysis as 43-3/4 grams of powdered opium and is to be "Used for producing sleep and diaphoresis (inducing perspiration)." This potent potion of opium and ipecacuanha was widely used by the general public for years before laws regulating sale of opiates.
Miller's Antiseptic Oil Linament A snake oil imitator of the early 1900s, its bottle proudly proclaims "Known as Snake Oil" - a marketing ploy used before the phrase "snake oil" became synonymous with charlatans.
Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup advertised in the 1880s as "used for over 60 years by mothers to soothe teething children," its active ingredient was morphine, which may explain why the term "teething" is so often found in death registers.
Peruna Its paper label is written in German with an English translation along the side. Peruna's medicinal properties were promoted as "a permanent cure" for coughs, colds, consumption, diseases of the lungs, bronchial tubes ... neuralgic pain in the brain or anywhere else." (Not leaving any pains whatsoever out of the promises, eh? I'm a little wary, too, of the word "permanent" having studied early death registers. Packing a wallop of 18 percent grain alcohol, Peruna gained a wide following during Prohibition for its, ahem, medicinal properties. What's scary is the packaging of this product to mothers.) "Children from two years up, a teaspoonful before each meal three times daily by itself or in sweetened milk. Infants at 6 months, a half teaspoonful in sweetened milk, and if colicky it may be repeated as often as necessary."
Chamberlain's Colic Remedy Continuing the theme of putting the colic in alcoholic, a similar nostrum was marketed for "Flatulent or Wind Colic." It contained 45 percent alcohol by volume and was mixed with chloroform, ether, camphor, and aromatics. Its wrapper carried dosage particulars in several foreign languages - lest any immigrant be left out of relief.
Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root Liver, Kidney and Bladder Cure A mixture of sugar, water, and herbs with 9 percent alcohol content, this extremely popular elixir was prescribed in unlimited dosages four times a day which is particularly alarming considering it was to "cure" liver diseases.
En-Ar-Co Oil The chief ingredients listed are fusel oil (mixture of amyl alcohols and propanol and butanol formed from distillation of fermented liquors), capsicum, turpentine, and camphor oil. Advertised as "equally valuable to Man, Beast or Fowl," it was additionally recommended as "excellent for making hens lay." (Perhaps -but I'd be careful lighting a match anywhere near the hen house.)
Dr. Miles Laxative Tablets The good doctor, if indeed there actually was one - for in most cases a nostrum's physician namesake was no more real than Betty Crocker - chose the slogan, "You should see that your system is as clean as your house." If the sufferings of our pioneer ancestors can be determined from the sheer quantity of costiveness (constipation) advertisements, a book could have been written titled "Little Regularity on the Prairie."
Adlerika Invented in 1902 as a bowel cleanser, its maker claimed it cured inflammation of the appendix. Boasting "large amounts" of Epson salts, the concoction was advised for use by "the vast multitude who think they have or are going to have" appendicitis. (Kind of gives new meaning to the philosophical statement, "I think, therefore I am.")
Women's issues Tiny, square, colorfully lithographed cardboard boxes beckoned the attentions of "delicate females," as early advertising routinely described women. The majority of cures for ladies' complaints focus on herbal remedies. Our collection of Allaire Woodward & Company's curatives includes Raspberry Leaves, Blue Vervain, and Blood Root.
Local newspaper advertisements urged women to send "One Dollar and a Quarter" for "Warner's Emmenagogue" as a sure cure for "female irregularities." The term emmenagogue was understood to imply usage as an abortifacient.
Beside herbal remedies, Allaire Woodward & Company took aim at ridding pioneer homes of insects with its "El Vampiro Bug Killer." You've got to appreciate the marketing genius who came up with that name. Nothing says dead better than does a vampire.
Although the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, following up on the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, established laws protecting consumers from dangerous or poisonous medicines, similar frauds in the digital age prove there's nothing new under the sun.
The snake oil charlatans of old have adapted to new means and methods as anyone with an inbox full of spam can attest. Sidestepping legalities, disreputable deceivers employ a full dosage of disclaimers in hopes that the vulnerable fall for pitches of "belly fat shrunk," "natural male enhancements, or, the ultimate pie-in-the-sky promise, the "Chocolate Weight Loss Diet."
Some things never change - including the age-old wisdom that if something is too good to be true, it probably isn't. With that in mind, here's to your health - cheers!
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