The Quack Doctor

Source: Country Life Illustrated, 8 Jan 1897 (this image from a later facsimile edition)

Unusually for anything involving exercise, this contraption looks almost fun. Although perhaps not completely  ‘a perfect substitute for a live horse’ – at least, not if you wanted to travel somewhere – it was well-received as an aid to fitness. The medical profession increasingly advocated taking exercise on purpose to improve the health, and this product (also called the Hercules Horse-Action Saddle) appears to have given a pretty good workout.

The machine was 4 ft high and about 30 inches square. The advert’s claims that it could trot, canter and gallop make it sound as though it moved independently like one of those fairground buckaroo things, but this wasn’t the case – the different paces were powered by the rider’s own exertions.

Within the mahogany frame was a mechanism that consisted of four platforms separated by springs. By turning the control on the front, one could adjust the distance between the platforms so that the more adventurous could experience a ‘bone-shaker’ feel, while a smoother ride was available for invalids. Ladies could buy a side-saddle version.

At 7 guineas for the cheapest one and 21 guineas if you went top-of-the-range, these were quite an investment – which can’t have paid off if they met the fate of every exercise machine ever bought and were consigned to a shed to gather dust.

Vigor also sold a rowing machine at 4 guineas, but this one looks a bit too much like hard work to me:

Source: Black and White, 14 March 1896

STRENGTH, VITALITY, MANHOOD.
­A Valuable Treatise on Nervous Exhaustion, Loss of Strength, Mental Depression, Exhausted Vitality, and all special diseases and weaknesses of man; their causes, and means of cure.
This book not only contains valuable remarks on how to preserve strength and retain the powers to an advanced age, but points out the best means of restoring Exhausted Vitality, Poverty of Nerve Force, Mental Depression, and will especially interest those who wish to fit themselves for business, study or marriage. This brief work is the only one that contains any sensible advice to the inexperienced, and to all young and middle-aged men will not only prove instructive but a valuable safeguard.
Sent sealed on receipt of 4 penny stamps to any address, by
CHARLES GORDON, 288, Great Horton Road, Bradford, Yorks.—Advt. Copyright.

Source: The Illustrated Police News, 22 December 1900

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Other than the romantic-haired individual in the illustration, this advert doesn’t offer much to distinguish itself from the plethora of late 19th-century ads promising restored manhood or cures for nervous debility. Should you send off your 4 penny stamps, however, you would receive a 43-page booklet recommending a ‘concentrated herbal remedy’ with the brilliant name of Gordon’s Vital Sexualine Restorative.

The Restorative cost a rather steep 22s a bottle, and was a red-brown syrupy liquid that was to be taken at a dose of one teaspoonful in a glass of water three times a day. The pamphlet claimed it would cure a range of problems:

Onanism, Night Emissions, Seminal Losses, Waste of Vitality, Brain Fag, Depression, General Weakness, Loss of Energy, Nervous Debility, Spermatorrhoea and Variocele.

On the bottle label was a list of even more conditions, including Brain Wreckage and Nerve Tire.

Described as a ‘Brain Fertiliser’, the product was supposed to ‘create nervous fluid, brain matter and nerve force.’ It:

Brightens the intellect, improves the memory and mental faculties, restores strength, and promotes a renewal of life in the entire system.

The BMA analysed the mixture in 1911 and found it to consist of iron, calcium, sodium and potassium hypophosphites, quinine sulphate, citric acid, sugar, colouring and water. As they dryly pointed out:

Metallic hypophosphites are not generally considered to be “concentrated herbal remedies.”

Gordon (who used the meaningless letters P.M.B. after his name in an attempt to impress punters) sold a number of other medicines for the not-so-discerning gentleman. There were the Viro-Erectile Elixir, the Varixolene Liniment, the Bubo Compound, Gentiana Tonic, Gravolene, and anti-syphilitic and anti-gonorrhoeal mixtures. And, as I’m sure you will be delighted to know, the range was completed by the Gleet Compound.

THE

Brinkerhoff System
—–OF—–
RECTAL MEDICATION!!

Piles, Fistulal Fissue [sic], Polypsus, Pru-
ritus, and Rectal Ulceration
Permanently and Pain-
lessly Cured.

Rectal Ulceration is the most dangerous of
all Rectal Maladies, owing to its undermining
the system before its victims realize their dan-
ger, this being due to the scarcity of nerves of
sensation in that portion of the rectum mostly
afflicted.
SYMPTOMS OF RECTAL ULCERS
Pain or weakness across lower portion of
back, often referred to kidney troubles, burn
ing in rectum, after, stool, itching about anus
attended with a moisture caused by discharge
from ulcer—constipation, sometimes being at
tended with spells of diarrhoea, finally result
ing in chronic diarrhoea when the case is a
lmost beyond cure, but if not too longstanding is
curable. Much and mattery discharges from the
rectum, soreness through the bowels extending
to stomach causing dyspepsia. In females fre-
quently vaginal and uterine inflammation and
ulceration. Make examination and consultation
free.
Write H. S. KISKADEN, M.D., 253 Wood-
ward Avenue, Detroit, Mich, for 58 page pamphlet
H.S. KISKADDEN, M.D.
Successor to
DRS. KISKADDEN and BRINKERHOFF, will be at
SANDUSKY CITY, West House, Thursday,
April 17, from 8 to 12a.m.
Fremont, Bail House, Thursday, April
17, from 2 to 5p.m.

Source: The Sandusky Daily Register (Sandusky, Ohio) 15 April 1890

………………………………………………………………..

There’s nothing unsurprising about the patentees of medicines or devices being out to make money, but Alexander W. Brinkenhoff was slightly different. His market wasn’t the end-user (as it were) but the people who would administer the treatment. For $200 plus a 10% royalty on fees earned from patients, anyone could buy ‘the Brinkerhoff System’ and set up as a travelling practitioner bringing relief to the suffering sphincters of the 19th-century U.S.

This was not a business opportunity for the squeamish. It didn’t involve selling the punter a useless medicine and then making a run for it before they found out it didn’t work. It was really hands-on stuff.

Although the ad above doesn’t focus on haemorrhoids, they were the System’s main target. The secret pile mixture – of which the franchisees had to buy new supplies when they ran out – comprised carbolic acid, olive oil and chloride of zinc. This wasn’t a soothing ointment for the sufferer to apply in privacy – the pile-doctor administered it by hypodermic needle direct to the seat of the problem. Quantities as follows (a U.S. minim = o.0616 ml):

Largest Piles………………………………………..8 minims
Medium “ ……………………………………..4 to 8 “
Small… “ …………………………………………2 to 3 “
Club-shaped painless piles near orifice….. 2 “

You would not have all your piles seen to at once. One at a time, or perhaps two, was quite enough, with the pile-doctor returning 2-4 weeks later to do the next one – by which time the first should have shrivelled up and fallen out. Brinkerhoff only recommended the injections for internal piles, because treating external ones this way would be far too painful. Some pile-doctors, however, got round this by injecting external piles with cocaine first.

When local pile-doctors advertised, they usually described the treatment as painless (or the less reassuring ‘nearly painless’), but Brinkerhoff’s instructions suggested that if agony did follow, hot sitz baths would be beneficial.

Reputable doctors also purchased the System for use in their practices, but some, like Illinois physician Dr Layton, soon realised they had got a bum deal:

As to its being painless, I can say from positive experience that this is far from being the case, as I have had several of my patients hint at a suit for malpractice on account of such excruciating pain and soreness; so that I even forgot to ask them for my bill.

The rectal ulcers referred to in the above ad required a different treatment – carbolic acid was still involved, but this time it was combined with ferric subsulphate solution, glycerine and witch-hazel. A genuine rectal ulcer was as unpleasant as it sounds, but luckily for the pile-doctors, they could diagnose normal anatomical features as ulcers, thus ensuring that everyone needed the treatment:

They [the itinerant doctors] generally show the patient’s friends the rectal fossa and term it a horrible eating ulcer, that is daily destroying the patient’s vitality, and which will sooner or later cause him to fill a consumptive’s grave.
The Medical Waif, quoted in C.W. Oleson, Secret Nostrums and Systems of Medicine

Apologies if this occasions you an image of all your extended family and neighbours clustering round to discover your hidden depths. They should be able to get a pretty good view, however, because the Brinkerhoff kit included a rectal speculum (pictured below). This invention was well-designed and well-made, and Brinkerhoff specula are still in use.

Carbolic acid was already widely known as a treatment for rectal disorders and the Brinkerhoff System was no worse than other treatments of the time, which included the ‘clamp and cautery’ method. This involved drawing the pile out with forceps, clamping it and then snipping it off with scissors. The stump would be sealed with a cauterising iron ‘so applied as not merely to sear the cut surface, but to thoroughly “cook” the whole projecting stump well up to the clamp.’ As Edmund Andrews acknowledged in his highly informative Rectal and Anal Surgery (1889): ‘the idea of burning the parts with hot irons is horrifying to the imagination of the patient.‘

What was unusual about the Brinkerhoff System was the investment fee and royalties for the privilege of using a method that anyone could put together for a few dollars. Even more unusual is the idea that anyone would fancy this as their next career move.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Source: The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times, 31 December 1892

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I’ve decided to have a go at doing a podcast. It’s about 13 mins long and goes into much more detail than the post below, so if you’ve got time, do have a listen. If for some reason you desperately want to download it, you can do so here by right-clicking on the player thingy.

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The Electric Corset was sold by Cornelius Bennett Harness, proprietor of the Ammoniaphone. His Medical Battery Company’s main product was the ‘electropathic’ belt, which contained zinc and copper plates that were somehow supposed to generate a health-giving current.

The Electric Corset was magnetic rather than electric, because all it had was a magnetised steel busk (the plates at the front that attach together to fasten the corset). Harness was initially a distributor for the famous American invention, Dr Scott’s Electric Corset (which Lidian at The Virtual Dime Museum has blogged about here). By 1891, however, he was selling his own version out of his opulent premises in Oxford Street.

A supposed visitor to this ‘Electropathic and Zander Institute’ described it as follows:

It seemed to me that I was standing in a Temple of silence. Outside was the rush and roar of London life. Inside, all was calm and peaceful. The interior, in its blend of colours and graceful hangings, and its rich carpeting, reminds one of Oriental times. The attendants move so softly and speak so gently. Here and there, young women, in neat print dresses and caps, move gracefully about. You yourself feel hushed and awed, as if some magician were about to appear.

The excerpt is from the Pall Mall Gazette (August 5 1892), and continues in a gushing manner about the numerous diplomas on display in Mr Harness’s consulting room. Although presented as a feature article, the piece turns out to be an advert, and was an attempt to cover up the fact that the company was in trouble.

Earlier that year, a customer named Mr Jeffrey had consulted the company’s hernia specialist (a former salesman of Oriental furniture). He was prescribed an electropathic belt but later consulted a doctor and got fitted with a proper truss. He refused to pay the balance of £3 3s. on the useless belt. In July 1892 the company sued him but lost, and had to give back the £2 2s. he had already paid. Harness had occasionally got into similar situations over the past few years, but this was really the start of a slippery slope for his electropathic empire.

In reporting the case, the Electrical Review described Harness’s activities as ‘one of the grossest cases of misrepresentation of the present day.’

In response, Harness sent a circular to newsagents warning them that he would hold them responsible for these ‘malicious libels’ should they continue to sell the Electrical Review. Many, including W.H. Smith & Co., did stop selling it, so the periodical’s owners took Harness to court and were granted damages of £1000.

In October 1893, the Pall Mall Gazette stopped accepting advertisements from the Medical Battery Company and printed a series of articles headed ‘The Harness “Electropathic” Swindle’, which stated:

The Medical Battery Company has for years past been fattening on a system of fraud and imposture which is absolutely unequalled in the annals of swindling.

Harness himself (pictured below) it described as:

… a man of no pretensions whatever to scientific or medical knowledge, but [is] a common, illiterate and unscrupulous charlatan.’

The articles resulted in a lot of customers demanding their money back. In early November 1893, he and his business associate, Dr James McCully (originally a qualified physician but struck off the Medical Register), were arrested and charged with unlawfully conspiring to defraud.

Dr McCully was found not guilty but the jury couldn’t agree about Harness. The courts ordered that the company be wound up. Almost immediately, Harness tried to resurrect it as the Medical Electrical Institute and was allowed to do so on condition that it was under control of a qualified medic. The creditors and shareholders of the old company unanimously agreed that it should go ahead, and Mr Harness became manager of the new company on a salary of £600 a year.

The trouble was that in spite of considerable advertising, no one would buy the products. Within a few months he went bust. After that, Harness faded into obscurity, dying in 1921 at Christchurch.

THE COMING EPIDEMIC!
THE COMING EPIDEMIC!!
———————————-
SALT REGAL A PREVENTIVE AND SAFEGUARD!!

EXTRACT FROM LONDON PRESS—
TELEGRAMS FROM BERLIN AND VIENNA state “that the Epidemic of
Influenza, which has been playing such havoc in Russia, has now spread to Germany and Austria, and will shortly make its appearance in England”
FORTIFY YOURSELVES
Against the attacks of this and all diseases by using the pleasant and refreshing
SALT REGAL
Heads of Families NEED HAVE NO FEAR of Infectious Diseases for themselves
or their children if they will use SALT REGAL. Influenza, Fevers, Malaria, Cholera, and the like are harmless to those who use SALT REGAL. See Analysis and authentic Testimonials with every Bottle.
The Press and Public declare SALT REGAL to be a pleasant and refreshing SAFE-GUARD AGAINST DISEASE. There is no preparation like it in the world.
SOLD EVERYWHERE, 1s. 6d. and 2s. 9d.
PROTECTED BY HER MAJESTY’S ROYAL LETTERS PATENT

Source: The Graphic, Sat 4 Jan, 1890

Salt Regal, the “King of Effervescents,” was in a similar vein to Eno’s Fruit Salt, and formed a pretty pink fizzy drink when mixed with water. It enjoyed a brief period of fame between about 1887 and the turn of the 20th century, and was advertised widely with claims ranging from the wild – e.g. that it would prevent influenza and cholera – to the vague:

…a high-class Antiseptic Salt, possessing hygienic properties hitherto unknown to science. A grateful, cooling cup, developing Ozone (the principle of life). Will cleanse the mouth, clear the throat, sweeten the breath, and maintain a natural condition of the system. Corrects all the impurities arising from errors of diet – eating or drinking. Salt Regal has the special property of purifying the water in which it is mixed.

Adverts often contained ‘analyses’ by some of the eminent chemists of the day, including A. Norman Tate, John Muter (click for pic of his epic moustache) and Henry Thomas Jones, but they were similarly wishy-washy and never actually said what was in the product:

I have examined the example of SALT REGAL handed to me some time ago. I find it to be a very carefully prepared saline. Its special feature is that is contains a small proportion of a very useful antiseptic, the value of which in such a preparation must be very great. Its use in warm climates will be found to be most valuable, both on account of its gentle aperient qualities, and of its antiseptic property. HENRY THOMAS JONES, F.I.C., Asst Professor of Chemistry, University of Aberdeen.

I don’t know whether the analysts’ names were used without their permission, or whether their testimonials comprised the best bits from genuine reports, but it seems unlikely that these top chemists would write up an analysis without even mentioning any ingredients.

As for “The Coming Epidemic!!,” by the time of this advert, it was already here. The Russian Flu reached the UK at the very end of 1889. Concern had been building up for several weeks, as reports came in of high mortality in Moscow and a rapid spread of the disease across Europe. Some reporters were less worried – The Daily News‘s Paris correspondent, for example, pointed out that “La Grippe” was prevalent every winter, and while the elderly or very young might suffer complications, for most people the disease ran its course within a few days.

Other reports scraped the barrel for evidence of dire consequences – in Vienna, said The Birmingham Daily Post:

The Christmas festivities have been interfered with to a very great extent by the epidemic, and the usual Christmas tree was missing from the homes of one-third of the families in this city, owing to sickness.

While the British just about got through Christmas intact, by the New Year the flu had arrived, apparently bearing “a special grudge against post-office officials,” as postmen in suburban offices rapidly succumbed.  Some people blamed the post for spreading the disease across the country.

Orthodox treatment usually involved quinine, but the main way of getting over the flu was to stay in bed for a few days and keep warm. Looking back a year later, the Bristol Mercury was rather dismissive of the mildness of the epidemic. As it happened, they spoke too soon – the flu returned with a vengeance in the spring of 1891, and again later that year, with worse outbreaks occurring over the next few winters. The Mercury‘s comment is nevertheless amusing for its relevance today:

The influenza was the fashion of the hour, and everyone who could manage two or three consecutive sneezes satisfied themselves that they were suffering from the prevalent complaint.

WINE
FOR
WOMEN!

Woman’s modesty and ignorance of danger often cause her to endure pains and suffer torture rather than consult a physician about important subjects.
Pains in the head, neck, back, hips, limbs and lower bowels at monthly intervals, indicate alarming derangements.

McELREE’S
WINE OF CARDUI

is a harmless Bitter Wine without intoxicating qualities. Taken at the proper time it relieves pain, corrects derangements, quiets nervousness and cures Whites, Falling of the Womb and Suppressed or too Frequent Menses. Price $1.
For sale by medicine dealers.

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Source: The Emmet County Republican, (Estherville, Iowa) 1 April 1897

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As the ad says, this had no intoxicating qualities. Honest, guv, none whatsoever. The 19% alcohol just happened to be there to stop the proper ingredients going off.

These other ingredients were Black Haw, Blessed Thistle (then classified Carduus benedictus, hence the product name) and Golden Seal. The remedy was popular in the southern US and was advertised not only in the newspapers but by means of almanacks, calendars, a pamphlet called Home Treatment for Women, and even The 20th Century Song Book, which featured popular tunes alongside glowing testimonials from women whose ‘female weaknesses’ had been cured.

Next to the music for ‘Rock me to Sleep, Mother,’ for example, was a message from Mrs C M Ladd, who wrote:

I take pleasure in telling you and afflicted women that I owe my life, my health and my happiness to Wine of Cardui. After my marriage my health broke down and after having tried several physicians and several kinds of medicines, I was given up to die.

I had heard of Wine of Cardui and decided to try it. I began to receive benefit at once, and now I am well and strong and our home has two fine little boys to make it bright and happy.

The testimonials are generally not coy about discussing symptoms. These are from Home Treatment for Women, a 64-page booklet that gave brief descriptions of common female ailments, but devoted most of the space to recommending Cardui (the ‘Wine of’ bit was dropped at some point).

“I could hardly walk from one room to the other without my womb coming down,” writes Mrs Grace Brown, of Taskee Station, Mo. “I took Cardui, and was well from it, and have never had falling of the womb since, even after childbirth.”

Mrs J W Thomas wrote:

About six years ago, as I was cooking a meal, a pain struck me in the back. One pain after another followed, and I had to be carried to the bed. I must have fainted. The doctor pronounced it falling of the womb, and he replaced it half a dozen times with instruments. I flooded dreadfully for about eight weeks. The doctor’s medicine did me no good, and he advised me to take Cardui.

And from Mrs C C Redmon:

I got very weak and I looked almost like a skeleton. I suffered extreme agony in back, stomach and head, and had burning and itching whites so bad I could hardly stand.

In 1916, The Chattanooga Medicine Company, which made the Wine of Cardui, brought a successful libel suit against the American Medical Association for its claims that the business was ‘built on deceit’ and that the product was ‘a vicious fraud.’  During an adjournment of the court in April 1916, company owner John A Patten was seized with acute intestinal pain – he was rushed to hospital and operated on, but died.

At this unexpected incident, a personal suit brought by Patten lapsed, but he and his brother had also brought a partnership suit for $100,000, and once the funeral was over, this continued. The verdict, after the jury had been out a week, was in favour of the Chattanooga Medicine Company – it was awarded damages of one cent.  Both sides could claim a victory of sorts. As the California State Journal of Medicine pointed out in Aug 1916, ‘it is permissible to suggest that the American Medical Association will hardly find its prestige diminished among good citizens by its opposition to the sale of proprietary medicines containing a marked percentage of alcohol.’

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Source: The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times, Sat 26 January 1895. To view this rather fine-looking gentleman in full technicolour glory, click this ad from the National Archives.

Allcock’s Plasters had their origins in an invention patented in the US in 1845 by Horace Day and William Shecut. (Day was a wealthy manufacturer of rubber goods but in 1846 was sued by one Mr Goodyear for an infringement of a patent and lost $500,000.) The porous plaster patent described the ingredients and method thus:

We first cut five pounds of India-rubber into fine shreds and boil it an hour in common soft water to soften it. We then drain off the water and put the rubber into a tin or copper vessel which will hold at least sixty gallons, and pour into it a sufficient quantity of spirits of turpentine to cover the gum completely, adding from time to time more spirits of turpentine as the gum soaks it up. This process may be hastened by placing the vessel over a water-bath. When the rubber is sufficiently dissolved to admit of its being pressed through a fine wire seive [sic] is may be set aside for use. We next simmer four ounces of Capsicum annuum or cayenne pepper in a quart of spirits of turpentine about one hour and strain it with a portion of this tincture. We grind a pound of litharge on a slab or in a paint mill, mix it with the remainder of the tincture of cayenne, and add to it six ounces of balsam of Peru. Then we melt a pound of pine-gum and add spirits of turpentine until it is thin enough to strain when nearly cool, and, lastly, mix the whole of the preceding preparations together until the mixture is of uniform color, without specks or lumps. It is then ready for spreading on any suitable material. Cotton cambric or muslin will answer the purpose very well.

Holes were punched in the product – the colour image in the National Archives link gives some idea of what it looked like. Thomas Allcock, a British-born druggist living in New York,  appears to have acquired the rights almost immediately, and a few years later the company went into association with Benjamin Brandreth (great-great-grandfather of Gyles), whose Brandreth’s Pills were already famous.

The plasters were not only supposed to to help lumbago – other adverts suggested using them for such varied disorders as quinsy (you had to put a strip of plaster under your chin, stretching from ear to ear), diabetes, St Vitus’s Dance, epilepsy, dyspepsia, diarrhoea, coughs and colds, asthma, pleurisy, whooping cough, consumption, ruptures, sciatica, paralysis, rheumatism, tic douloureux and kidney problems.

The ads boasted that it only took 2 seconds to apply the plaster. Getting it off, however, was another matter. Dick’s Encyclopaedia noted in 1872 that:

These plasters adhere very firmly, frequently requiring the application of heat (by means of a hot towel or warm flat-iron), for their removal.

One 1876 ad advised customers to ‘Beware of piratical imitations.’ Presumably these were called Arrrrlcock’s.

Source: The Graphic (London) 13 October 1894

I haven’t tried to transcribe this for obvious reasons, but I think it should be clear enough, and you can click to make it bigger. Some of the assertions on the sleeves of those elegant arms sound better than others; ‘touches the spot for hemorrhoids’ doesn’t conjure up a particularly attractive image, but an accurate one nonetheless. For stubborn cases, suppositories were available, and one advert cheerfully announced to the world that Lord Carrick was indebted to Homocea for the cure of his piles.

Homocea and its tagline ‘touches the spot’ became a household name in the last years of the 19th century and it was certainly still around during World War II, if not later. As well as the original ointment, there was a strong form called Exaino or Homocea Fort, and a Homocea Soap. In 1897 the Soap and its related product, the Hair Wash, were highly recommended in The Nursing Record and Hospital World, which said that the soap was ‘very soothing and softening in its action, and is very fragrant and pleasant, moreover, to use.’

The BMA’s More Secret Remedies reported in 1912 that the ointment comprised a large proportion of eucalyptus oil, small amounts of lemon oil and ammonia, beeswax, lard and coconut oil. The 2s. 9d. tin contained 2 ½oz, the cost of ingredients being about 2 ½d.

Homocea Ltd certainly went in for eye-catching advertisements. The one below is from The Graphic in 1895. The lifeless body of the poor faithful little dog, who only moments ago was trotting happily along the path day-dreaming of chasing rabbits, adds a certain level of drama that we could probably have done without.

P.S. I’m scheduling this post to appear on Monday 12 Oct. I’m not actually here as I’m speaking at Chester Literature Festival, so if the post doesn’t come out right, I’ll fix it when I get home on Tuesday.

In a testimonial included in another Empress Josephine Toilet Co. advert, “Mrs Jos. C. Morton” wrote:

Some years ago I ruined my skin and complexion by the use of worthless face powders. Pimples would raise up in large lumps all over my face. They oft times resembled more closely a boil than a pimple. Modesty and sensitiveness of my condition banished me entirely from my friends, and I also felt that my husband was really ashamed of me…

Fortunately for marital harmony, Mrs Morton grasped the “golden cord of hope” that was Empress Josephine Face Cream, and was entirely cured, making her shallow wastrel of a husband “more proud of [her] than ever.” (Newark Daily Advocate, Ohio, 5/7/1893)

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BEAUTIFUL
WOMEN
OF PARIS

Have been using Empress Josephine Face Bleach, Cream and Soap for more than one hundred years to protect and preserve their pretty complexions. The
EMPRESS JOSEPHINE
FACE BLEACH
is positively guaranteed to be an effectual, pleasant and permanent cure for the following blemishes of the skin:
Freckles, Pimples, Moth Patches, Blotches, Extreme Redness, Eczema, Acne, Excessive Oiliness, Tan, Sallowness, Brown Spots, Blackheads and Roughness. Money refunded whenever it fails to do as represented.
CUT THIS OUT
———————–
DEAR MADAM. —This ticket
entitles you to a cake of
Empress Josephine Face
Soap free of charge, with
your first purchase of a
bottle of Empress Joseph-
ine Face Bleach.
JOHN F. COULSON, 804 Market St.
H.C. PURCELL, 821 Fourth St.
J. L. HANSON, 528 Broadway.

Source: The Logansport Journal, Indiana, 14 June 1893

The Empress Josephine range was one of many cosmetic brands designed to give women that fashionable Victorian pallor. Others included Madame Ruppert’s Face Bleach, Mrs Graham’s Face Bleach, Malvina Cream and Lotion, the Royal Face Bleach and Hagan’s Magnolia Balm. A variety of dangerous ingredients formed the basis for such skin products, the main ones being lead carbonate, zinc oxide and corrosive sublimate (mercuric chloride). These could be absorbed through the skin, causing a wide variety of unpleasant physical, psychological and neurological  side-effects – for example,  death.

Harriet Hubbard Ayer, proprietor of unguents called the “Recamier Balm” and “Recamier Moth and Freckle Lotion” gave a recipe for face bleach in her Complete and Authentic Treatise on the Laws of Health and Beauty (1899). She suggested a solution of bichloride of mercury with glycerine, but in the quantities given it was luckily ‘not strong enough to blister the face in average cases.’ Good news for the average among us. Ayer helpfully warned:

Do not forget that bichloride of mercury is a powerful poison and should be kept out of reach of children and ignorant persons.

Which was all very well, but what if the ignorant persons were really tall?

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PIGEON MILK
THE GENTLEMAN’S FRIEND
Fits vest pocket (no liquid). Does
not stain. Stricture impossible.
Cures Gonorrhea and Gleet
in 1 to 4 days. A safe, sure cure.
Mailed (sealed) to any address
for $1. Ask druggists or write,
RUST MEDICAL COMPANY,
DETROIT, MICH.

Source: Sandusky Daily Register (Ohio) 1 April 1891 (sorry about the bad scan.)

This one comes from the “men will buy any damn thing if we randomly associate it with boobs” school of advertising. Rust Medical Company displayed marketing genius when they plastered their product name over the one place on the whole page a man’s eyes would immediately travel to.

Especially the kind of men in need of this remedy.

Other adverts for Pigeon Milk reveal that it was an injection – not in the modern hypodermic sense but in the sense of using a needle-less syringe to squirt the stuff straight up the affected part. Allen Vegotsky, in his 2004 article on Dr Hatchett’s Drug Store Museum, describes the pack as containing a bottle, syringe and a tin of pills, somewhat accounting for the hefty price. (The ad’s ‘no liquid’ assertion is puzzling, though.)

There is a natural substance called pigeon milk – it’s a curdy secretion produced by both hen and cock pigeons to feed their young. They regurgitate it for pigeon junior to gobble down, but when he’s full, they can swallow what’s left and keep it for next time. And here is where the marketing ploys fall down, because if I were a man, I for one would not want even a fake version of pigeon sick anywhere near my most prized appendage.