Snake Oil Salesmen and Tippecanoe Too

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Got gout?  How about cough due to cold, convulsions, nervous prostration, brain worry, blood sores, or St. Vitus Dance (jerky movements of face or hands)?  If one suffered from any of these maladies in the 1880s there was sure to be a snake oil salesman ready to provide a cure.  Pages of old newspapers are filled with ads and testimonials for miracle cures for all sorts of ailments.

   

Readers were led to believe that Allen’s Lung Balsam cured a mother of consumption (TB).  Another testimonial claimed a severe case of bronchitis--one that had existed for twelve years--was cured by the Balsam.

 

Coughs, colds, croup?  There was a remedy fit for the whole family.  Always touted to be harmless to the most delicate child and containing no opium in any form, these bogus “medicines” were supposedly “recommended by physicians, ministers, and nurses.”  In fact, they were recommended by everyone who had given several bottles a good trial.  “Never failed to bring relief!” they claimed. 

    

Ailments you never hear of today could be cured with a good tonic.  Be it Scrofula, Kings Evil, Ugly Blood Disease, Catarrh, or Nervous Weakness, for $1.50 per bottle, the Dr. S. A. Richmond Medical Company would cure what ails.  Sold at all druggists! 

Apparently, a physician’s testimony was presumed to be very persuasive in an advertisement because the ads almost always touted an M.D.’s recommendation.  For instance, Dr. P. C. Ballou, of Monkton, Vermont, endorsed Kidney Wort as the sure cure for liver complaints, constipation, piles, and blood diseases. 

Cleanse the blood, strengthen the kidneys.  Rid the liver of all disease!  Bowels were sure to move freely and healthfully with another remedy, this one liquid or dry.  One such patented remedy was a vegetable concoction called Craig’s Original Kidney Cure.  Later the formula and rights were sold and the concoction was renamed Warner’s Safe Kidney & Liver Cure. 

Dr. Root’s ad claimed, “I CURE FITS!”  Root wrote, “When I say cure I do not mean merely to stop them for a time and then have them return…I mean a radical cure.”  A free trial bottle was available by mail order. 

Dr. Slocum of New York would send two bottles of his unnamed consumption elixir for trial along with a valuable treatise on the disease. 

B. M. Wooley, M.D. of Atlanta, Georgia, could cure opium and whisky (sic) habits at home without pain.  A book of particulars was available by mail from his address.

St. Jacob’s Oil, “The Great German Remedy for Pain,” claimed relief of everything from burns to frostbite, backache to toothache, swelling, scalds, sprains, and sciatica.  Bruises, too. 

At least those claims were billed as advertisements.  A more cunning sales approach was taken by Hulbert Harrington Warner (of Warner’s Safe Kidney & Liver Cure fame as mentioned above).  H. H. Warner was a businessman who made a fortune selling patent medicine and later lost his fortune in risky speculation.  One of his patented tonics was H. H. Warner & Company’s Tippecanoe.

Tippecanoe was peddled in a newspaper article which was not labeled as an advertisement.  A. G. Richards, M.D. of Boston, Massachusetts wrote in a Kewaunee County newspaper in 1884 that he was in possession of a truth, a revelation of “inestimable value.”  He related a story of his years of suffering from a sluggish brain and a “certain falling off in…natural intellectual acuteness, activity and vigor.”  He tried everything he could think of and ultimately sought help from a fellow physician who prescribed a bottle of tonic.  It provided no relief.   

His neuralgic pain caused him agony, his muscles were sore, his bowels were constipated.  There were no prospects for recovery.  Even the advice of yet another doctor to take five to ten drops of Magende’s solution of morphine two or three times a day didn’t do the trick nor did a blue pill to relieve constipation.  He had sleepless nights and irregular heartbeats.  He lived for days on rice water and gruel; his digestive function was destroyed. 

He became hypochondriacal and bent on self-destruction.  To snap himself out of it, he decided to take a trip to Europe.  He returned, still ill, and filled with no hope of ever again being able to leave his home.

Then, he was visited by a friend who had been similarly afflicted.  The friend told of his own remarkable restoration to perfect health.  To make a long story short, it was H. H. Warner and Co.’s Tippecanoe elixir that miraculously cured what ailed him.  After several bottles of Tippecanoe, Dr. Richards was brought back from the depths of debility.  He was cured!  Thereafter, he declared Tippecanoe to be overwhelmingly superior to all other tonics, bitters, and dyspepsia cures of the day.

Of course, the article made no mention that the product was about 99% rum.

Eventually the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was enacted to limit the excessive claims of patent medicine swindlers, preventing the manufacture and sale of deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors and their trafficking.  The Act required bottle labels to indicate their contents.