No reference to patent medicines would be complete without mention of Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound which continued in production until the 1970s.
Hardly a day passes that we aren’t reminded that we are an aging population, that our medical systems are under siege, that health care consumes ever-greater portions of government budgets, that we can’t go on this way indefinitely. (All this before the opiod crisis.)
They had doctors, nurses and midwives in the old days, too, of course, although it’s just over a century or so since the establishment of public hospitals. But there was no Medicare, no Pharmacare or anything like that. The closest thing they had to any kind of medical plan was that provided by Vancouver Island’s largest collieries, which had surgeons and physicians under contract, a portion of each miner’s wages being deducted towards his being treated for injuries suffered on the job.
For anything else, however, they and their families were on their own. And should they avail themselves of a doctor’s care they paid from their own pockets or, as seems to have been quite common, squared the debt through the exchange of goods and services, such as garden produce, poultry, fish and game.
The rest of the time people seem to have self-medicated. It’s not known who received the first patent for “bottled” medicine but Richard Stoughton was granted the second such patent for his “elixir” in 1712. By the mid-18th century, more than 200 so-called “proprietary medicines” were being sold in Britain and in the American colonies; each of them was touted by means of a descriptive title (usually that of its discoverer/proprietor), and all claimed to cure every ailment known to humankind.
These cures came in the form of bitters, elixirs, liniments, tonics, vegetable compound painkillers, balsams and panaceas. No medical complaint or physical discomfort, be they internal or external, couldn’t be cured according to the “snake oil salesmen” and “medicine men” who toured the countryside to hawk their wonderful wares on street corners or in “medicine shows”. With a mix of showmanship and oratory, these angels of mercy sold bottled cure-alls by the barrel.
The joke is, very few patent medicines were actually patented because patent laws required that the ingredients of each bottle be listed on the label. This, of course, would have been bad for business because it would have given away the formula and, of necessity, revealed the alcoholic and/or narcotic content which usually made up the bulk of any medicine. Ergo, manufacturers left consumers to distinguish by flavour which medicines were more generous in content. How much alcoholic content, do you think? Would you believe that one popular bitters was rated, upon analysis, at 118 proof?!
Hence it should come as no surprise that, unsupervised and unregulated by government agencies, the manufacturers of so-called patent medicines became the biggest and most frequent advertisers in newspapers and other popular publications of the day. In the boldest of print they extolled the wonders of their magical elixirs.
“Operation not necessary,” declared the Ottawa makers of Fruit-a-tives in 1920. Mme. F. Garneau, of 158 Papineau [Street], Montreal, enthusiastically deposed: “For three years I suffered great pain in the lower part of my body, with swelling or bloating. I saw a specialist who said I must undergo an operation. I refused. I heard about Fruit-a-tives so decided to try it. The first box gave great relief and I continued the treatment. Now my health is excellent — I am free of pain — and I give ‘Fruit-a-tives’ my warmest thanks.”
In short, such relief was available to everyone for just 50 cents a box, or six boxes for $2.50. Fruit-a-tives could be purchased across the counter or directly from the company, shipped postpaid.
For a cold you could dissolve a Peps in your mouth and your breath would carry the medicinal pine vapour (not peppermint as its name suggests) to all parts of the throat, nasal and air passages, areas that “liquid medicine simply could not reach”. It also killed germs and soothed and healed the inflamed membranes while fortifying the user against coughs, colds, sore throat, bronchitis and grippe. Because Peps claimed to contain no harmful drugs the makers recommended it for children.
The reference to harmful drugs is an interesting one for that unregulated age when many patent medicines promised instant “relief,” at least so far as immediate symptoms were concerned, thanks to their formulations consisting of high-proof alcohol and opiates.
An exception of sorts was the Charles H. Fletcher Co., maker of Castoria — the children’s comfort and mother’s friend — for many years a popular household antidote to constipation, flatulence, wind colic and diarrhea, proudly asserted that its remedy contained “neither Opium, Morphine nor other narcotic substances”. As an expression of self-validation, Charles H. Fletcher’s signature was embossed on a side panel of every bottle.
To cleanse, purify and enrich the blood, Kennedy, a Nanaimo druggist, advertised Wampole’s grape salts. To rid oneself of unsightly freckles one had only to apply double-strength Othine. Usually a single one-ounce bottle was sufficient. Just apply a little of it at bedtime and in the morning, and nature’s unsightly blemishes (there was no mention of acne) would disappear. Money back if not completely satisfied.
A curious side-effect, at least by today’s standards, is that given by Mrs. C.A. Dodge in her endorsement of Dr. Hamilton’s Pills of Mandrake and Butternut for liver and kidney ailments — she gained weight. (Mind you, ladies were favoured for having larger figures in those days, hence that old expression, pleasantly plump.
And speaking of women, no reference to patent medicines would be complete without mention of Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound which continued in production until the 1970s. Lydia’s compound promised to relieve “women of middle age” of nervousness, sleeplessness, headaches, hysteria and “the blues”. Either it worked or it was a case of successful marketing, because the Brookyln, N.Y. firm operated for almost a century. Now even Lydia E. Pinkham has gone by the wayside, victim of this belated government scrutiny of medicinal contents and their makers’ often outrageous claims.
It was the belated discovery — perhaps recognition is a more appropriate term — that most of these so-called medicines were little more than alcohol and opiates mixed with common herbs of no proven medicinal value that finally prompted government legislation. The result was a death blow to most popular patent medicines — as many as 50,000 of them — at the turn of the last century.
Those which survived were forced to tone down their claims as curatives for every disease known to humanity. Ads which had regularly appeared in thousands of newspapers and magazines vanished. Today, they’re perhaps the most intriguing legacy of the golden age of patent medicines.
Some of those ads were out-and-out lies, cruelly and cynically aimed at the desperately ill, such as those who fell for the likes of Nujol that was sold by the barrel (just like the distilled petroleum it was brewed from!) for decades for illnesses that included cancer. Nujol didn’t work but its advertisements surely did if you go by number of bottles that diggers turn up at old Island dumpsites.
They may have been the good old days — but God help you if you became ill and couldn’t afford proper medical treatment.
How bitterly ironic, then, that opiods prescribed by physicians for pain relief have become a major part of today’s drug abuse crisis.