J.R. Stafford’s Olive Tar was a versatile Victorian medicine, first sold in the 1850s. It could be inhaled for its “healing balsamic odors” to soothe the throat and lungs. Or else you could take it “upon sugar” as a sort of makeshift cough syrup. And if you had muscle pain or a skin irritation, you could take whatever of the Olive Tar that you hadn’t inhaled or eaten, and rub it on for “its magnetic or concentrated curative powers” of relieving pain.
It was supposed to be “a highly refined extract of the juices of the Olive and the Pine,” according to an 1880 advertisement in the National Repository.
Olive Tar was used by at least one mother in the 1880s to cure whooping cough; it was rubbed on “the throat, the chest and spine…also the pit of the stomach. Then I gave them three or four drops on a lump of sugar to eat…” The mother, who had written to the publication Babyhood, noted that the children had the whooping cough for six weeks even with the Olive Tar, but that it soothed their coughs at night.
Olive Tar was also supposed to work as an ointment for horses, too. Letters in the Working Farmer (1855) testify to its efficacy in healing the backs of horses, as well as cases of croup and asthma in people.
J.R. Stafford also made Iron and Sulphur Powders to “Re-Vitalize and Purify the Blood,” to energize the nervous system, invigortate the liver, strengthen digestion, “regulate the Secretions of the Body” and worked on “all Female Weaknesses” in the bargain. But at a dollar it was twice the price of Olive Tar.
Mr. Stafford’s establishment was at 442 Broadway, New York on “the east side of the Battery.” The 1856 ad above has a rather bucolic picture of Olive Tar HQ, showing how much of the rural was still in New York City in the 1850s.
He also made Iron and Sulphur Powders to “Re-Vitalize and Purify the Blood,” to energize the nervous system, invigorhttp://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thevi0c7-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B003IULAK8&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrate the liver, strengthen digestion, “regulate the Secretions of the Body” and worked on “all Female Weaknesses” in the bargain. But at a dollar it was twice the price of Olive Tar.
Sources:
Advertisement in Scientific American (Volume 3, 1860), p. 143.
Advertisement in the National Repository (Vols. 7-8, 1880), p. 623.
Letter by “M. or F.B.” to Babyhood Magazine (Volume 4, 1888), p. 216.
Olive Tar bottle at Odyssey’s Virtual Museum.
Olive Tar bottle with label at WorthPoint.
The Vintage Medicine Cabinet 