Crossthwaite & Co’s Occult Lozenges

While I’m researching my posts, I find a lot of interesting ads that I put to one side to blog about one day.

But sometimes it turns out that I can’t discover much about them, or they’re so famous that there’s not a lot I can add to the info already available online, or they’re similar to something I’ve written about before. These ads just sit in my files and don’t see the light of day.

So I’ve decided to post a few of them over the next couple of weeks. If you’re the world expert on these products, have family anecdotes about them, or just feel like speculating on what they might have contained, do post a comment.

————————-

Advertisements for Crossthwaite & Co’s Occult Lozenges began to appear in British newspapers in early 1837 and the product was available until at least the 1880s. This ad is from The Weekly Chronicle on 19 April 1840.

The Weekly Chronicle 19 04 1840

 

A glass bottle containing sand.

A Fortune Built on Sand: Health Grains

In early 20th-century New York, a mailman introduced a new patent medicine called Health Grains for indigestion – but the ingredients were far from beneficial. Mrs Bertha Bertsche, a 38-year-old widow, could often be found supervising the pans on the kitchen range at her home in Glebe Avenue, Westchester Square, New York. Inside the pans, […]

Read More
Dr Batty's Asthma Cigarettes

Victorian asthma cigarettes: who was Dr Batty?

While browsing your local newspaper in the 1890s, an asthma-cure advertisement might distract you from tales of the latest sensational crimes. ‘Agreeable to use, certain in their effects, and harmless in their action, they may be safely smoked by ladies and children,’ ran the promotional copy. The product was Cigares de Joy, handy little cigarettes […]

Read More
Sanitized Tape Worms - a spurious 'vintage' ad

‘Eat! Eat! Eat!’ Those notorious tapeworm diet pills

Peoria, Illinois, 1912: the horror begins. A society lady, encouraged by a friend’s success with an easy new weight-loss treatment, pays $25 for ‘two rather large and suspicious-looking pills.’ Her husband sends the pills to be analysed by the Washington public health service, and before long a ‘government secret official’ appears, informing him that the […]

Read More