Dr. Edwards’ Olive Tablets

Olive Tablets – which contained several herbal laxatives, and, supposedly, olive oil – were created and sold by Dr. Frank Mott Edwards of Portsmouth, Ohio beginning in 1909. At the link, you can read about Dr. Edwards and see some photographs of his Olive Tablet Company in Portsmouth.

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Despite their olive green color, in 1913 the American Medical Association noted that the pills didn’t actually contain any olive oil. What they did contain, though, was an assortment of laxatives. The active ingredients were stramonium, podophyllin, aloin, and cascarin bitter.

Datura stramonium – also known as Jimson weed – was used traditionally as a pain reliever but is also a hallucinogen and overdosing on it is fatal. Podophyllin is a powder made from the mayapple and can also be toxic when taken internally; it’s been used externally to treat genital warts since the 1940s. Aloin is an extract of the aloe vera plant and it has a pretty strong laxative effect, as does cascarin. Cascarin is derived from the dried bark of Rhamnus purshiana, the cascara tree, and is a traditional treatment for constipation in the Pacific Northwest.

In other words, these tablets are pretty powerful – which is probably why the ad implies that you really only should take them for a week at a time. You can still buy Dr. Edwards’ Olive Tablets today, but the formula is completely different.

 

Mrs. Allen’s World Hair Restorer

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of a balding head must be in want of a hair restorer. That is what Mrs. S.A. Allen (and plenty of other enterprising Victorians) counted upon when she introduced her modestly-named World’s Hair Restorer.

Hair Raising Stories notes that Susan A. Allen sold the hair restorer in the 1840s. A blurb entitled “Who is Mrs. S.A. Allen?” appears in some 1860s ads. It tells us that Mrs. Allen was a New Yorker who, sometime in the 1840s, “dislik[ed] the idea of going grey” but also distrusted dyes.

She therefore invented “something” that was not a dye, that restored color and moisture to hair. Naturally she had not intended to establish a business but was “forced to commence making it for sale,” because everyone she knew was clamoring for it. By the 1860s “she now probably does one of the largest cash businesses in the City of New York” and even had a depot in London. By the early 1860s, however, Selah R. Van Duzer was selling the Mrs. Allen hair products; he registered the name Mrs. S.A. Allen’s World Hair Restorer as a trademark in 1876 [Hair Raising Stories].

Mrs Allen also offered the public a “World’s Hair Dressing” with the wonderful name Zylobalsamum (sometimes these were sold as two products, sometimes as one and the same). Zylobalsamum was suitable for women and children as well as for balding men. Mark Twain named one of his characters Zylobalsamum, in The American Claimant (1899). Another character, on hearing this name, says “I never heard such a name. It sounds like a disease. Is it a disease?”

It wasn’t, but if you believed the ads, it could certainly cure several diseases and conditions.

Via Pinterest

Clergymen in particular appreciated Mrs. Allen’s  remedies, and their testimonials fill her ads. Reverend A. Webster of Boston wrote with succinct pleasure, in 1864, that “I am now neither bald nor grey.” Clergymen would be seen as reliable sources of information, easily believed in an ad. And they would very often be balding or greying, too. Perfect friends for Mrs. Allen. She gave discounts to them, too, and noted that her Principal Depot and Manufactory was at 355 Broome Street, New York “opposite Dr. Cone’s Church.”

Dr. Cone’s Church, at the corner of Broome and Elizabeth Streets, was also known as the First Baptist Church. His 1855 obituary in the New York Times tells us that he had had “a checkered career.” Born in 1780, Cone had been an actor when he was young, and then a bookkeeper for a newspaper in Baltimore. He then worked in the Treasury Department in Washington. Finally, he became a Baptist minister at age 34, in 1814. It is not known whether he ever used Mrs. Allen’s hair products, though.

In 1870 the Chicago Medical Journal (vol. 27, p. 474) reported that English chemist Henry Matthews had analyzed an 8 ounce bottle of the World’s Hair Restorer and found that it contained 75.6 grains of sulphur and 87 grains of acetate of lead – which would produce lead poisoning in a regular user and “in many instances has caused incurable paralysis” through absorption via the scalp, as well as the inhalation of fumes from the lotion. They also cited the case of a Dr. J. M. Witherwax from Davenport, Iowa who had been in the habit of dousing his hair and whiskers with “a popular hair restorer” over a long period of time, and died from lead poisoning that was most likely the result of this practice. Much better to be grey or bald.

In 1872, Benjamin Godfrey wrote in his Diseases of Hair that Mrs. Allen’s hair cure contained acetate of lead, sulphur and glycerine just like most other “common hair cosmetics of the present day.” These included Rossetter’s Hair Restorer, Hall’s Vegetable Sicilian Hair Renewer and the literary-sounding Melmoth’s Oxford Hair Restorer – which were identical to Mrs. Allen’s. Oddly, Godfrey did not think that putting lead on your hair was a bad thing, because (he said) there wasn’t very much lead in any of them.

As late as 1915 you could purchase Mrs. S.A. Allen’s World’s Hair Color Restorer  for a dollar a bottle from her depot at 55 Barclay Street, New York City.

Barbo Compound

Barbo Compound was made by the Barbo Manufacturing Co. in New York City and was sold until at least 1955. The ad pictured above dates from 1917.

A 1942 report by the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station [link] describes Barbo Compound as a “pale yellow powder slightly acid to litmus” which is slightly alarming. Even more alarming: this statement in 1919 in the Michigan Food and Drug Monthly calling Barbo “poisonous” – it was roughly 1/3 lead acetate. “Little wonder…that in their circular they state specifically that they ‘assume no liability for the results of its use by anyone.”

A Pink Abomination

Pink, but quite nice really (The Bottle Depot)

Toothpaste and tooth powders were first made my the ancient Egyptians, but it was only in the late 18th, and increasingly in the 19th century, that they started appearing in various fancy flavors such as honey, cherry,orange and areca nut (betel). Toothpaste ingredients included chalk or salt, and sometimes bits of old toasted bread “blackened in the fire, reduced to powder and…mixed with a little honey and a few drops of essence of peppermint”* – not the sort of thing that would make your teeth clean!

In 1879 The Living Age told the story of an fictional inventor whose tricks were probably pretty close to those employed in some Victorian advertising:

1887 ad – will not go mouldy (in theory, anyway) as is “Climate Proof”

A tooth-paste had grown mouldy upon the counters of a score of chemists. The inventor, in an access of despair, sent a pot to the Princess of Wales, and then printed forty thousand labels calling his pink abomination the “Royal Sandringham Tooth-Paste” as used by H.R.H.” What followed? The tooth-paste thus relabeled found a thousand purchasers, and in an incredibly short space of time the inventor was rich enough to fill a column of the Times with testimonials, all proving that until the Sandringham tooth-paste came into use there never was known in England such a thing as a really white set of teeth. Why did the public buy this tooth-paste?…It likes to buy what royalty buys. [The Living Age, vol. 142, 1879 p. 256]

And of course we do still like to buy things because celebrities wear them, eat or drink them, or lose weight using them. The closest thing I found to the imaginary Royal Sandringham Toothpaste was Gabriels’ Royal Tooth Powder, made in the 1870s and 1880s in England. But the Gabriels’ ads were rather terse and didn’t have any testimonials or amusing illustrations, unfortunately. Their tooth preparations were not pink abominations, it seems.

*Lippincott’s Magazine (vol. 18, 1876, p. 125).

A Thrilling New Tooth Powder

Life, Sept. 13, 1937 [big version here]

Do you ever get bored with everything…the same old things every day?

Um, yes. Yes, I do! How did you know? I am tired of getting up and doing the same things every day: working, cleaning things that just get dirty again, cooking the same old dinners, and don’t get me started with what’s on television… 

Right now, I’m sick of using the same old tooth powder.

Oh, right. Tooth powder. That’s toothpaste’s dry boring ancestor. Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, tooth powder (also called dentifrice) would have been made of things like salt, or powdered chalk or brick or even charcoal. And in Britain tooth powder might have meant crushed-up cuttlefish bones or china! The cuttlefish bone mixture was sold as “white coral-powder” in the 1870s. Frightening, don’t you think? Now in the up-to-date 1930s, you could always have used some baking soda to brush with, I suppose – but that wasn’t exactly peppy, is it?

Just like pearls maybe, but not thrilling (Vintage Ad Browser)

Well, brace yourself, dear. There is a new one. LISTERINE TOOTH POWDER made without soap.

Wow, without soap! That really is good news. My teeth will be thrilled. They are tired of all those suds. And foaming at the mouth is not my best look, really.

Yes, this is going to change my whole life. I know it. Just promise me that Listerine Tooth Powder doesn’t have any cuttlefish bones or chalk in it, all right?

A Medicine Chest In Itself

From Ward Lock & Co.’s Guide To London (1935), an ad for the only medicine you will ever need, apparently. Depending upon how you feel about the use of opiates and hallucenogenic drugs, of course.

Chlorodyne was a patent medicine invented by British Army Dr. J. Collis Browne, who developed it while in India as a treatment for cholera. It was a dangerous opiate, however, consisting of laudanum, tincture of cannabis and chloroform.

It was also popular in the US throughout the 19th century. One advertisement from 1871 calls it “the most wonderful remedy ever discovered…the best, safest, and most effectual remedy for COUGHS, COLDS, BRONCHITIS, CONSUMPTION, ASTHMA, DIARRHOEA, COLIC, CRAMP, NEURALGIA.” The General Board of Health in London is quoted in the ad as saying that Chlorodyne had “immense value” and that they could not recommend it strongly enough.

Unfortunately many people died from accidental or intentional overdoses of Chlorodyne. During the 20th century, the opiates were decreased, and the tincture of cannabis was removed from Dr. Browne’s mixture. But it was so popular that chemists and other medicine companies made their own versions of Chlorodyne.

It is startling to see an ad for Chlorodyne as late as 1935; the text and the design of the ad look quite Victorian. It was still being touted as a cure for nearly everything that could ail one. Most of the 1871 ailments are listed (excepting consumption) and by 1935 Chlorodyne was also supposed to be good for toothache, all bowel complaints, stomach chills (whatever they were), gout and rheumatism.

According to Wikipedia, there is still a medicine available in England called Dr. J. Collis Browne’s Mixture -it is supposed to be good for coughs and diarrhea. The main ingredients are peppermint oil (which was a harmless component of the original, and morphine.

The Only Smith

Well, he was the only Smith who ran a Homeopathic and Allopathic Pharmacy in Brooklyn. He certainly wasn’t the only Smith in Brooklyn. In fact, I didn’t find him in the census at all, and in only a few city directories. And there was a different Lewis H. Smith in Brooklyn who was a truckman, listed just beneath “Lewis H. Smith, drugs,” in the 1878 Lain’s Brooklyn City Directory. So calling himself “the only Smith” was a bit of a misnomer.

Smith did business under the sign of the golden mortar at 134 Court Street, which is in downtown Brooklyn, near the ferry docks. The Brooklyn Homeopathic Dispensary was just down the street at 83 Court, in the early 1860s. This ad, from the city directory, dates from 1861-62.

Homeopathic medicine works on the principle that the cure for an illness was a diluted dose of a preparation than, in its concentrated form, would mimic (homeo being the Greek for “same”) the disease in question, in a healthy individual. It was first developed by German physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843). Allopathy, or conventional medicine (a term created by Hahnemann, from the Greek “allo” or different) featured medicines that would evoke, in a healthy person, a response opposite to the symptoms of disease. in other words, conventional medicine cures the symptoms by counteracting them. Homeopathy cures roughly the same way that a modern vaccination works: it gives the person a mild, simulated form of the disease itself. However the homeopath creates the medicine by diluting the mixture so that, theoretically, the elements that provoke the disease are diluted, and the strengthening elements remain.

Several homeopathic hospitals and institutions were founded in the New York area in the 19th century, incuding Hahnemann and Flower Hospitals in New York City, and Dr. Clemence Lozier’s New York Medical College for Women. Dr. Lozier, a colleague of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell’s, was a dedicated homeopath.

Lewis H. Smith was an equal opportunity “pharmaceutist” ready to dispense to homeopaths, allopath, and the general public. He also sold “proprietary, toilet and fancy articles.” The “Proprietary Articles” were products that he alone had the right to produce or sell – in that sense he would certainly have been “the only Smith.” “Fancy” items were ribbons and sewing notions (as in a fancy goods shop). The toiletries were of course products such as soap, talcum and perfumes.

If you wanted special water, you were in luck: Smith sold “Soda, Missiquoi, Gettysburg, Kissingen, Vichy, Selters [Seltzer?] and other Mineral Waters, always on draught, or by the bottle and case.”

The “sugar of milk” that Smith advertised was a sugar derived from the whey of milk and recrystallized, used in the trituration (powdering) of medicines. It would also be used in pellets or globules (spherical capsules made of saccharose or lactose, which were filled with a diluted medicine). “Envelopes” were simply envelopes filled with pellets or globules, and “powder papers” are self-explanatory: powdered medicines dispensed in folded paper.

For more information about the history of homeopathy:

A Homeopathy Timeline

A Vital Force: Women in American Homeopathy, by Anne Taylor Kirschmann

History of the New York Medical College for Women

Cotton Root Pills

Cotton root pills were a common Victorian abortifacient, which like many things in that era, were known about (by some people) without being overtly discussed. This 1893 ad from the newspaper, the Toronto Telegram, implies the true use of cotton root pills by stating that they were not to be taken during pregnancy. The euphemism “Female Regulator” could cover any number of women’s issues, of course. Note also that the ad warns that one’s druggist might not even carry them, in which case you could buy them through mail order – as long as you sent the money first.

Cotton root is still said to be an effective means of starting menstruation and terminating pregnancies, as can be seen in this discussion at Sister Zeus. In their 2001 book, Regulating Menstruation, Etienne Van de Walle and Elisha P. Renne mention a number of so-called “female regulators” than were marketed to address menstrual problems, including pills and liquids which contained either cotton root, tansy or pennyroyal.

In Nostrums and Quackery (1912 edition), the American Medical Association discuss the cotton root pills sold by the Darwin Medical Company of Rochester, New York. The company was supposedly run by a Martha C. Potter and Dr. Darwin Potter. There was indeed a Dr. Darwin Potter residing in Rochester in 1900, but there was no Martha C. Potter in his family. His late wife’s name was Adaline; he had a daughter Justine and a daughter-in-law Elizabeth. Martha was most likely a fictional proprietor created to make customers feel more comfortable ordering their Female Regulators from the Darwin Medical Company:

Dr Darwin’s Compound
COTTON ROOT TABLETS

Will positively relieve the most obstinate female IRREGULARITIES, any cause, in twelve hours. Price $1. Guaranteed a powerful, harmless regulator for women. Will not injure the most delicate person. Specialists of 40 years’ experience. LADIES’ RELIEF. Particulars and testimonials free. LADY ATTENDANT. Office or mail. Hours 12 to 2 p.m. Refuse dangerous substitutes. SOLD ONLY by Dr. Darwin Medical Co., 108 Beckley Bldg., Rochester, N.Y.

The AMA authors state that a “post-office inspector” wrote to the Darwin Company under a false name to see “if this was an advertisement of an abortifacient,” and received literature from them indicating that this was indeed the case. The inspector then wrote back pretending to be a pregnant woman, and was sent a box of tablets in a box labelled “Throat Tablets.” The company was issued a “post-office fraud order” in 1906 and possible criminal proceedings were launched, though the outcome of all this is not made clear in Nostrums and Quackery. The AMA did not follow up every patent medicine that they discuss. This is understandable, as the book is over 700 pages long.

SOURCES

Nostrums and Quackery (Chicago: American Medical Assocation Press, 1912, 2nd ed.), pp 205-6.

Van de Walle, Etienne and Elisha P. Renne, Regulating Menstruation: Beliefs, Practices, Interpretation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp 54-5.

Darwin Potter household, 1880 U.S. Census, Minden, Montgomery, NY; FHL #1254865, National Archives # T9-0865, p. 294C.

Darwin Potter household, 1900 U.S. Census, Rochester City Ward 1, Monroe, NY; p. 12A, #185/271, GSU # 1241074, Ref. #36.

Yonkerman’s Tuberculozyne

By 1900, tuberculosis was one of the biggest public health problems both in Europe and the United States. A contagious disease which most commonly affects the lungs, it killed roughly 50% of those who entered sanitariums, the first of which was established in Germany in 1859.

Therefore it is not surprising that many people tried to sell medicines which purported to cure tuberculosis. One of these was a veterinarian from Kalamazoo, Michigan named Derk P. Yonkerman.

Yonkerman’s passport states that he was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan on September 26, 1859. A “Durill P. Yoniker” is listed in the 1860 census in the Village of Kalamazoo, Michigan, age 9 months, son of John Yoniker, a 30 year old Turner born in Holland and Anne, age 28, also born in Holland. The family was in Cleveland, Ohio by 1880. John Yonkerman was then 53 years old and working as a veterinary surgeon; his wife Annie was two years younger. Their son [Derk] Peter, listed under his middle name, was age 21 with no occupation listed.

Yonkerman married Elizabeth Born about 1886, and had at least one daughter (who also married a veterinary surgeon). By the time of the 1910 census Derk Yonkerman was a veterinary surgeon back in his hometown of Kalamazoo. But by 1910 his aspirations went far beyond the treatment of sick animals. He was actively marketing his “cure” for tuberculosis, both in the United States and in Great Britain, which he called Tuberculozyne. In fact, the D.P. Yonkerman Co. Ltd. is listed in the 1910 London Post Office Directory at 6 Bouverie Street, EC (in Holborn).

The American Medical Association’s 1912 book Quackery and Nostrums devotes several pages to Tuberculozyne. They note that Yonkerman was of “Kalamazoo, Michigan and London, England” and that he sold his medicines “on opposite sides of the Atlantic.” In his promotional material he states that he “graduated from Ontario College, Ontario, Canada.” There is no such place; but apparently Yonkerman was indeed an 1882 graduate of the Ontario Veterinary College in Toronto; it is not stated why he went to Canada to train. Yonkerman also lists “Stuttgart University, Germany” as a place where he had studied, though the AMA points out (with exclamation points flying) that “there is no such university!”

In 1884, D.P. Yonkerman applied for a passport. He requested that it be sent to him at the Ashland House, a hotel at 24th Street and 4th Avenue in New York City. It is entirely possible that Yonkerman’s passport was applied for so that he could travel to England to set up his Tuberculozyne company. His passport application does not state where he would be travelling, but has the curious addenda of a note asking that the application be hurried as Yonkerman wishes to sail “Tuesday.” He is listed in the London Post Office Directory for several years after 1910, at least into the early 1920s. He probably travelled back and forth across the Atlantic quite a bit.

The Yonkerman Company in Michigan published a book entitled Tuberculosis and Allied Diseases by Dr. Freeman Hall, in 1909. An advertisement for this book, reprinted in Quackery and Nostrums, states that:

If you know of anyone suffering from Consumption, Bronchitis, Asthma or any throat or lung trouble, or are yourself afflicted, this book will help you…Write at once to the Yonkerman Co., 5136 Water St., Kalamazoo, Mich., and they will send you the book by return mail Free and also a generous supply of the New Treatment absolutely Free, for they want you to have his wonderful remedy before it is too late.
Note how a whole range of diseases are said to be cured by the Tuberculozyne – it has become a miracle cure for many medical problems; and also that is is all free – initially. In many cases in the AMA book, the initial free sample has a charge appended to it later on. Even in 1910, there really was no such thing as a free lunch – or a free miracle cure, either.
The section on Yonkerman in Quackery and Nostrums was originally printed in the Journal of the A.M.A. on October 8, 1910. They note that the English Tuberculozyne was packaged with far more sweeping recommendations printed on the packaging than the American product was. The English label states that it is “The Only Known Remedy for all Forms of Consumption” and that it is “of the greatest Therapeutic Value” whereas the American label merely states that it is “a New Remedy for Consumption” and “is not a Patent Medicine.” The American version sold for $10, the British version for the equivalent in pounds of $12. The AMA notes that the elements of the medicine cost about a nickel a bottle to manufacture.

The AMA analysed the two kinds of Tuberculozyne that were available. Tuberculozyne No. 1 was a bright red liquid consisting primarily of potassium bromide, glycerin, red coloring (cochineal) and oil of cassia (which gave it a cinnamon taste). The No. 2 variety was a brown liquid with glycerin, oil of almonds and something that the testers thought was probably burnt sugar to give it a brown color.

It is interesting to note the differences in the advertising and selling of the same product in the US and in England. The English advertisements are much more florid and tell of Yonkerman’s prize-winning abilities at school, hinting that he was a celebrated M.D. in the United States. The American ads are far more restrained, though they are quite complimentary, as such ads always are. Sadly, the advertisements gave a lot of people false hopes for a miracle cure for the disease. It was not until 1946 that the antibiotic streptomycin was developed that there was truly any cure for tuberculosis.

Sources

Nostrums and Quackery, 2nd ed. (Chicago: American Medical Association Press, 1912), pp 175-82.

London Post Office Directories, various, 1910-1922

US Passport Applications, Cuyahoga Co., Ohio; Application of Derk P. Yonkerman, issued 19 May 1884 [Ancestry.com]

1860 US census, Kalamazoo County, Michigan, Village of Kalamazoo, M653_548, p. 0. John Yoniker household.

1880 US census, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cleveland FHL Film 1255006, Na Film No. T-9-1006, p. 41D. John Yonkerman household.

1910 US census, Kalamazoo County, Michigan, Kalamazoo Ward 3, District 141, Roll T624_684, p. 17A, ED 141. D.P. Yonkerman household.

Goff’s Magic Oil Liniment

Camden, New Jersey is a town that is famous for being very near Philadelphia, for being RCA Victor’s headquarters from 1901 to 1969, and for being a center for shipbuilding. Camden was also the home of the first drive in movie in 1933.

It was also the home of this supernaturally excellent cure-all, manufactured in Camden around 1900.

This bottle of S.B. Goff’s Magic Oil Liniment could cure just about anything that was the matter with you. That included rheumatism, neuralgia, toothache and earache, Gravel and Kidney Affection, Frosted Feet, chapped hands, and cuts.

When you were feeling better you could go out to the stable and use it on the horses for their sprains, stiff limbs, Frosted Feet and other ailments.

It is also “free from the fiery qualities,” which is surprising since it is so good at assuaging the frosted qualities of feet both human and equine.

Image from the National Museum of American History’s wonderful Balm of America collection.