The Quack Doctor

Australian Women’s Weekly, 17 Jan 1962

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Although I focus on medical advertising here at The Quack Doctor, I do like to feature the occasional beauty product when it catches my eye. I stumbled on this mid-20th-century Australian hair lotion while failing to find something else I was looking for.

Curlypet’s heyday was the 1930s to the 1960s, though it was still around until at least the early 70s. It was sometimes advertised as a setting lotion for ladies hairstyles, but what makes it unusual is that its main targets were children – or rather, their mothers. The advertising set out to persuade mothers that they wanted a curly-haired cherub who would take first prize in baby shows and go on to possess advantages over its straight-haired friends.

My mum remembers having foul-smelling Tweeny Twink perms inflicted upon her in the 1950s by my grandma (I don’t recommend googling Tweeny Twink, by the way), so I wondered if this was something similar, but it appears to have required a lot more perseverance. Six to nine months of use should start to create a permanent change in the way the hair grew.

Curlypet arrived in concentrated form in a tube, and one had to dilute it before rubbing the solution through baby’s straight locks. Unlike with modern hair products, the advertising didn’t go overboard on pseudoscientific claims – but they do creep in occasionally:

[The hair's] curliness then is due to a different and looser construction of the cells in the hair shaft itself. The Curlypet treatment has been perfected by scientific investigators to influence the growth of hair in this way by a process which they know as “osmosis.”

Early Curlypet ads attribute the fashion for curls to the impressive heads of hair sported by Princess Elizabeth and her sister Margaret Rose. One advertorial-style feature presented this before and after picture of young Master Duncan, who appears to have been transformed from a cute little chap into something akin to Beelzebub.

Curlypet created a need by presenting an assumption that the curly-headed child was the epitome of perfection and that mothers would – indeed, should – be unhappy with anything else. In one 1935 testimonial, Mrs. M H. practically signs up her kid for a lifetime of therapy when she announces:

Much to my disappointment, my baby girl was born with straight hair. I used to try and coax it to curl by setting it every day with warm water, but it still remained straight.

Mrs M. H.’s disappointment turn into envy when a friend from Melbourne came over with a beautiful curly-haired four-year-old in tow, but the friend imparted the secret – Curlypet – and little Joan H. soon acquired both a mass of golden ringlets and her mother’s acceptance.

Ambitious parents could even dream of stardom for their Curlypetted young – such children were supposedly in demand in the movie business. According to the product’s promoters, ‘languishing heart-throbbers of eighteen-inch cigarette holders and two-inch eyelashes’ were going out of style, to be replaced in the public’s imagination by ‘something new in the shape of one or two super children’ with ‘the loveliest curly heads of hair.‘

Even at a more local level, Curlypet might increase the tot’s chances of winning prizes, like little Baby Drummond here, who carried off the trophy in the Open Championship at Sydney Baby Show. This ad is from 1938 but Baby Drummond’s example was still being used in 1947, by which time it must have got pretty embarrassing for him (if he were a real person, that is).

Do any of my readers from Australia or New Zealand remember Curlypet? Were you doused in it in your youth and did you end up with a crop of beautiful curls? Are you Baby Drummond or Master Duncan? I would love to hear any reminiscences!

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The pictures in this post are from the wonderful site Australia Trove.

Advertisement from The Pomeroy Herald, Iowa, 27 January 1910

Centuries after the figure of the ‘pisse-prophet’ had descended into the realms of quackery and ridicule, a modern kind of urine analyst popped up in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In the early 20^th century, scientific urine tests were part of mainstream medical practice, so there was not necessarily anything dodgy about the activities of Antonius W. Van Bysterveld. As it turned out, however, he was every bit as dubious as Dr Cameron of a hundred years before.

There are several red flags in Van Bysterveld’s advertising. The 1910 ad above makes the arcane suggestion that his skills work even when the patient ‘tells nothing’. Other ads described his method as ‘a careful and secret process handed down generation after generation and most carefully guarded by the old families of Europe.’ There is some indication in the advertising that the analysis involved dripping chemicals into the urine sample, but beyond that it is kept under wraps. After diagnosis, the doctor would prescribe his own medicines at a cost of $1.25 a week.

Writers from the American Medical Association, in Nostrums and Quackery (1911) rather uncharitably passed comment on Van Bysterveld’s appearance:

Mr. Van B seems, from his picture, to be a man of mediocre intelligence who runs to naturally curled hair and an artificially curled mustache.

Van Bysterveld can’t have been the only fellow ever to have curled his ‘tache for a publicity pic, and however mediocre he might have appeared, he deserves some admiration for the sheer number of scrapes from which he managed to extricate himself.

In February 1903 he was prosecuted and fined for practising medicine without a licence, but went straight back into business with a dodgy but fully qualified medic, G. R. Adkins, who was permitted by law to write prescriptions. Within two months, Dr Adkins was arrested too, for writing a death certificate without ever having seen the deceased. Van Bysterveld bounced back and started seeing patients again, brazenly advertising himself as ‘The Wonder Doctor’ – though, if challenged, he would say that he was a chemist and did not claim to have medical qualifications. In March 1904, however, he discovered that quackery can be as dangerous for the quack as for the patient.

Fifteen-year-old Katie Bass had been consulting him for epilepsy for 3 months, when she alleged that he mistreated her. Although a report in the Chicago Tribune is coy about the details, a letter to Van Bysterveld from her furious father implies that it was a sexual assault:

You have laid the whole being of that pure, good girl, with all its enjoying capacities and angelic virtues, in ruin. You have converted all her life’s joys into sorrow; dressed all nature in mourning; hung her very sun and moon in gloom, and made her say with poor Charlotte Temple, and all others betrayed:

“Thou glorious orb, supremely bright,
Just rising from the sea
To clear all nature with thy light,
What are thy beams to me?”

I am only waiting for next Tuesday to meet you face to face.

John Bass applied for a warrant for Van Bysterveld’s arrest, but the judge refused to issue it unless Katie made a complaint in person. Katie, however, was too ill to go to the court, so Mr Bass took the matter into his own hands. He grabbed his revolver and set off in search of the doctor.

‘I am sorry I did not kill him,’ Bass later announced to the judge. ‘He laughed in my face when I upbraided him, told me she was crazy, and that no judge would believe the word of a lunatic. Then I shot him.’

Van Bysterveld sustained a gunshot wound to his leg but quickly recovered and does not appear to have been found guilty of the alleged assault, for he was soon back advertising his services. In 1906 he was again charged with practising medicine illegally, when a young woman died shortly after having taken medicine prescribed by him. And once again this had little effect on his business. He was still going strong in 1911 when the A.M.A. decided to test him out.

They made a mixture of water, ammonia, pepsin and anilin dye, and got three volunteers to send samples off to Van Bysterveld. Three different diagnoses came back, all consisting of a paragraph of vague analysis that could apply to anyone:

1. Careful examination of the urine shows there is too much acid in the blood, which will cause a rheumatic condition, the back is weak, and you will have a tired nervous feeling most of the time.

2. Careful examination of the urine shows the circulation of the blood to be very poor, the liver is not working properly, which will cause gas in the stomach and bowels and will effect (sic) the heart, you have caught a little cold which has settled in the back and stomach and you will have a nervous feeling.

3. Careful examination of the urine shows you are losing too much albumin in the urine, which will cause the back and kidneys to be weak, and there is a catarrhal condition of the stomach and bowels, and you will have a tired nervous feeling most of the time.

In an even more blatant test, the A.M.A sent in samples consisting of 95% water and 5% sugar. They got back two diagnoses using a mix of statements from the previous ones, and no mention at all of the dangerous glucose levels.

The A.M.A. unreservedly condemned Van Bysterveld’s practice as a ‘fraud and a swindle’ and a ‘picturesque, but vicious humbug’. As for the Wonder Doctor, however, he ignored them and cheerfully carried on treating his patients.

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Source: Popular Mechanics December 1909

When a bald fellow had got fed up with rubbing lotions on his scalp or taking bullocks’ blood supplements, it was time to go for something more drastic – a vacuum cap.

An early form of this device was invented in New York in 1898 by Claude O. Rosell. The cap, which he dubbed the ‘Capillary Chalice’, took its inspiration from the ancient surgical practice of cupping. By using suction to draw blood into the scalp, the rubber device was intended to stimulate the circulation of blood and to loosen the scalp from the skull.

‘When the scalp has thus been loosened,’ read the patent, ‘it ceases to impede the normal circulation of the blood among the roots of the hair, and as a consequence there is a proliferation of cells and a new formation of blood vessels.’

It reminds me of one of those hopper popper toys from the 80s, and I imagine it coming unstuck and pinging off into the atmosphere, to the wearer’s disgruntlement. To prevent air getting in around the edges, the cap had to be coated with a suitable substance such as cold cream, petroleum jelly or beeswax, and Rosell also suggested that if desired, the patient could first apply diluted formaldehyde to the scalp as an antiseptic. The invention was versatile and could be used to provide a cupping action to other parts of the body – the biggest size available (6”) was also recommended as a breast enlarger.

A year later, another inventor, Frederick Watkins Evans, had improved upon the idea by incorporating a tube that the user could either connect up to a vacuum pump or simply put in his mouth and suck.

The inventions proliferated and within a few years had become solid bell-like structures with a rubber seal around the base.

In 1904, Napoleon W. Dible recognised that there was a problem with the devices then on the market – the patient’s whole head tended to get sucked up into the cap, uncomfortably stretching his neck. To alleviate this objectionable feature, Dible’s invention contained an internal support that pressed on the scalp, keeping the patient down. Dible’s cap had a greater volume inside than the earlier versions, and the tube shown on the left was to be attached to a pump.

As to their efficacy, it is interesting to note that these devices frequently cropped up for sale second-hand in the classified ads of early 20th-century US newspapers. Either they worked so wonderfully that their owners didn’t need them any more, or – perhaps more likely – they simply sucked.

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TAPE WORM

Removed ALIVE IN TWO HOURS with HEAD or no charge. (No Fee in Advance.) No fasting. Have cured over 2,000 people of Tape worms with this harmless infallible specific, 50 per cent of which were doctoring for various other diseases, thereby eking out a miserable existence as thousands are doing. (Also cured two persons of LIZARDS.) Send stamp for circular.
Dr J. G. SHIPLEY
Montezuma, Iowa, Tape Worm Specialist of over twenty years’ experience.

Source: The Burlington Hawkeye, Iowa, 9 July 1895

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Tapeworm specialists advertised widely in late 19th-century American newspapers— Wait, what?… LIZARDS?

I wondered if ‘lizards’ was a colloquial term for some variety of parasite, but it seems Dr Shipley wasn’t the only one claiming to remove actual lizards from people’s innards. In 1900, Dr H D Rucker advertised that his medicine, ‘Korak Wonder’, had caused one Mrs E. J. Welker to expel a lizard ‘well formed and having four legs and feet.’

Tapeworm specialists had a variety of techniques and potions, but Charles Oleson, M.D, in Secret Nostrums and Systems of Medicine, describes a common method used by irregular practitioners. Oleson, though cataloguing the formulae of dodgy remedies, was not afraid to stand up for those he believed would work. This was one of which he heartily approved.

The patient must fast for a day, taking only a saline cathartic to empty the bowels. The next morning, he or she would take a teaspoon of the essential oil of male fern (whose Latin name, Dryopteris filix-mas, is one of the few things I remember from A-level biology) in a cup of warm milk. Milk was supposed to be ‘an article of food in which the tape-worm greatly delights.’

After this, the patient had to lie down for a few hours, keeping a slice of lemon handy in case of nausea, and then take a dose of castor oil, turpentine and croton oil – the latter being toxic and a rather drastic purgative. The spectacular effects of this mixture can be imagined. If you put a piece of mosquito netting over your chamber pot, ‘the worm itself can be easily retained for further examination,’ or for keeping as a pet or whatever.

Some tapeworm specialists did medicine shows in the street, and for this they needed to impress the punters by displaying preserved worms of enormous length. The Decatur Review (Illinois) in 1903 printed an anecdote about a worm doctor called Joe Bowen, who had given up a successful career as an auctioneer in order to go into the lucrative worm business. When he started out he did not have any specimens to display, and as the newspaper said:

If these tapeworm specialists haven’t something to show and scare the people, there is no use for them to set up.

Mr Bowen found an inventive solution:

He borrowed a crimping machine then he went to the slaughterhouse and gathered a lot of entrails. In a few hours after that, Joe had the finest exhibit of tapeworms that ever went on the street.

The exhibit did the trick and Bowen earned a fortune.

Less successful in the fight against tapeworms was an invention from earlier in the 19^th century — Alpheus Myers’ Tapeworm Trap.

This small metal capsule, about ¾ of an inch long and half an inch in diameter, was patented in 1854. It had a hole in one end and, inside, a sprung trap. The patient had to insert some bait – when making fun of the invention, newspaper reporters suggested cheese, but in fact the patent says any nutritious substance will do. The brave sufferer, having fasted for a couple of days to get the worm hungry, had to swallow the trap, keeping a string dangling out between their teeth. The peckish parasite was supposed to lunge for the bait and get its head stuck, after which all you had to do was pull the whole length of worm out through your mouth. It was important that the trap wasn’t too vicious:

… care should be taken that spring g, is only strong enough to hold the worm, and not strong enough to cause his head to be cut off.

The invention was about as effective and popular as you might expect – i.e. not very. Whether it would also work on lizards, I don’t know.

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Last October I blogged about the Magic Foot Drafts, a remedy for rheumatism that required the patient to stick pine-tar-coated oilcloth plasters to the soles of their feet. This was supposed to draw out uric acid through the pores, but as Samuel Hopkins Adams said in The Great American Fraud,

…they might as well be affixed to the barn door, so far as any uric acid extraction is concerned.

A few weeks ago, Linda Riordan, who lives in Ohio, found the blog post while searching for some info about a letter that her late grandma had kept in a shoebox since 1915.

Linda’s grandfather had sent off for a trial pair of Magic Foot Drafts but sensibly decided not to place a further order. By then, however, he was on their mailing list and they weren’t about to let him go. Linda kindly sent me the letter – it’s in beautiful condition and a very entertaining read.

It’s signed by Frederick Dyer, Corresponding Secretary of the Magic Foot Draft Company, and he doesn’t take the softly-softly approach to sales.

Dear Mr. Greene:

If you have written us a letter regarding the Dyer Foot Drafts we sent on your order last week, it has failed to reach our office yet. We were quite disappointed not to get your letter this morning, for you must know we expect you will be prompt to inform us just how your case is progressing.

The letter goes on to explain that the effect of the Drafts will vary according to the severity of the disease and how the plaster is applied – in other words, if it doesn’t work, it’s because your case is a complicated one or you put the plaster on wrong. Chronic cases might require up to 6 applications.

Any effect like this comes by degrees, perhaps slowly at first, but none the less surely if the patient is faithful in the effort and not over-eager to see a miraculous change right away quick.

Once again, an unsatisfactory result is the patient’s fault for being too impatient or giving up too easily.

Dyer then goes on to ask Mr Greene to read ‘every one of the enclosed fifty-odd letters’ from satisfied patients (these testimonials have not survived). The hard sell continues:

Now then, to be fair with yourself and square with us, what do you intend to do? Try to get rid of your misery as others have, or go on suffering the rest of your natural life? There is positively no reason in settling down and saying: “Oh, I believe my case is incurable, for I have tried so many things, etc., etc.”

There was a money-back guarantee if the Drafts didn’t work, but the company probably relied on the patient wanting to believe there was some improvement, or feeling like an idiot and putting the episode down to experience without bothering to claim a refund.

The letter ends:

Unless you have already sent your order we shall expect a letter from you very soon, and there will be no failure to send the treatment just as you instruct, so you will have it and keep your recovery going steadily on day and night until every last twinge of pain has left you.

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A huge thank you to Linda Riordan for sending me this letter.

My Scottish grandma could be rather forthright at times and was wont to sum up the appearance of passers-by with the succinct phrase ‘She’s no stranger to a fish supper.’

Had grandma been around in the early 20^th century, however, perhaps she wouldn’t have had as much opportunity to make this pronouncement. Help was at hand for those who wanted to lose weight.

Source: The Theatre Magazine, January 1911

Jeanne Walter patented a rubber bandage in 1904. The following year she invented a two-piece rubber suit of undergarments designed to retain perspiration and heat for therapeutic purposes. By 1909 this had developed into a severe-looking full-body garment that was supposed to compress all your extra flesh down into a svelte figure – and, according to this drawing from the patent, make one arm shorter than the other.

Walter’s range grew to include specialised garments for different parts of the body – a brassiere to reduce large busts, leg wraps to create slender ankles and a beer-gut minimiser for men. Those with a double chin could try the Chin and Neck Reducer, to be worn for a few hours daily in the privacy of one’s own home. Pictured in the advert shown above, this also appears in the following image from 1915:

Walter’s 1909 patent presented the garments simply as foundation wear for holding in the flesh, but later advertising also capitalised on the sweatiness of the rubber and claimed that this would actively result in weight loss. One Canadian stockist used the slogan: Perspire and grow thin.

Taking rubber to your blubber was just one of many ways to try and lose weight in the early 20th century – pills, supplements and fat-reducing soaps were widely advertised as a quick and easy fix. But then, as now, there was no overnight solution.

A correspondent to the Washington Herald’s beauty column in 1910 received the following perennial weight loss advice from agony aunt Mrs Symes:

If you wish to reduce flesh, you should live on a diet and exercise.

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Would you buy a homeopathic remedy from this man?

Source: The Morning Times (Washington D.C.) 13 December 1896

James Monroe Munyon’s pompadour hairstyle was a familiar feature of American newspapers around the turn of the 20^th century. Having tried his hand at teaching, law, social work, publishing and song-writing, he started his Homoeopathic Home Remedy Company in the early 1890s and hit pay dirt.

In 1897, Munyon opened a London head office and a depot in Liverpool. A massive advertising campaign promised free vials of the remedies and challenged the British public to test his new system of curing disease. Perhaps Munyon anticipated lasting fame in the UK, but he couldn’t have predicted what his company would be remembered for.

There was a separate remedy for every disease. To name but a few, there were…

Munyon’s Kidney Cure, which a 1907 analysis showed to be 100% sugar.
Munyon’s Asthma Cure (sugar and alcohol)
Munyon’s Blood Cure (sugar)
Munyon’s Special Liquid Blood Cure (sugar, potassium iodide and corrosive sublimate)
Munyon’s Catarrh Cure (sodium bicarbonate, salt, borax, phenol and gum)
Munyon’s Special Catarrh Cure (sugar)
Munyon’s Grippe Remedy (sugar and arsenic)
Munyon’s Pile Ointment (a farthing’s worth of soft paraffin).

At various times these products were declared misbranded in the US because of the claims that they could cure disease, and Munyon received fines – but he carried on his business regardless. One of the slogans he used in his advertising was:

There is no punishment too great for him who deceives the sick.

While his remedies were coming under scrutiny from the BMJ and the American Medical Association, 60-year-old Munyon was busy marrying his third wife, 24-year-old actress Pauline Neff Metzger. His fortune was not an effective enough remedy for their differences, and they divorced in 1913.

Munyon had bought an island off North Palm Beach, Florida, and opened a resort there in 1903, calling his luxury hotel the Hygeia and attracting wealthy invalids. One of the attractions of the place was the ready supply of Paw Paw Tonic, a cure-all made from papaya. The place burnt down in 1917 and Munyon died a year later of an apoplexy while having lunch at the Poinciana Hotel on the mainland. His obituary in the New York Times quoted him as having said he started out with:

virtually no capital except ambition and a belief in letting folks know about it.

The company continued, and as late as the 1940s, shipments of its products were still being seized by the government and condemned. In 1944, a batch of Paw Paw Tonic was found to contain strychnine.

Above: Munyon’s Catarrh Cure. Photo credit: Michael Till. This was part of an inhaler that would originally have had a stopper with a tube insertion, allowing the patient to snort the remedy.

Munyon’s Homoeopathic Home Remedy Company has a colourful enough history of its own, but is now chiefly remembered for its other claim to fame.

The London office’s first manager was an industrious employee who had spent the past few years as a Consulting Physician in the Philadelphia and then Toronto branches, impressing Munyon with his work ethic and ability to improve sales. Unfortunately, the London manager started having problems with his wife, who was still in the US trying to become a professional singer and openly having affairs.

When she moved to London in 1900, he made some attempt to support her in her music hall career, but the stormy relationship interfered with his work. He left Munyon’s and did the rounds of various other patent medicine companies, including the Sovereign Remedy Company, his own business the Yale Tooth Specialists, and the Aural Clinic, later returning to the advertising department of his original employer.

Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen eventually got the sack from Munyon’s. By then he had taken up with Ethel le Neve, his wife was still giving him trouble, and things kind of went downhill from there.

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Unlike the La Vida Electric Vibrator, this one was hand-operated. Snyder explained its action in his patent application as follows:

In a general sense my present invention comprises a main staff and a vibrator-head, the latter mounted for movement longitudinally on the staff in such manner that said movement will give a series of shocks to the staff, which may be communicated to the body of a user.

The accompanying drawings suggest it was a bit like a woodpecker toy:

In 1904, a similar invention called the Marvel Vibrator went on the market. Even though it was advertised before Snyder’s patent was granted, he took the Marvel company to court in 1906 for infringement. In their defence, Marvel presented patents for mechanical toys, suggesting that the general idea had been around for ages, but the judge wasn’t buying it and granted Lambert Snyder an injunction.

Boston Daily Globe, 11 August 1904

Source: The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette,17 April 1907

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Following on from the last post, we remain in early 20th-century America. But while Mayr’s Wonderful Stomach Remedy was fairly harmless (albeit rather revolting), this nostrum was notorious for the damage it caused in just 6 years of existence. Between 1906 and 1912, the Delta Chemical Company made more than half a million dollars by supplying morphine addicts with its own branded version of the narcotic.

The company was run by Dr Robert Prewitt and Ryland C. Bruce. Prewitt’s medical qualification was genuine, but he never had much success as a practising physician, trying his hand at surgical instrument selling in Little Rock, AR, until this venture went down the pan. He then became a travelling salesman for various chemical companies and ended up working at a St Louis sanatorium that ran a mail-order addiction cure business on the side.

Prewitt, in partnership with former insurance salesman Bruce, took over this business in 1906 and started to think big. They traded as the Delta Chemical Company and dubbed their product Morphina-Cura, an ‘infallible remedy’ for drug habits of all kinds.

The product name changed to Habitina in 1907, probably because titling something a ‘cure’ could lead to allegations of misbranding under the Pure Food and Drug Act. Addicts – then often referred to as habitués – were advised to ‘discontinue the use of all narcotic drugs and take sufficient HABITINA to support the system without any of the old drug.’ They should then gradually decrease the dose until they stopped taking it altogether.

This was in line with reputable medical practice, but for addicted patients with no supervision, life didn’t work out according to the instructions. Habitina contained 16 grains (approx 1g) of morphine sulphate and 8 grains of heroin per fl. oz. It was simply a more expensive way of continuing to take huge hits of narcotics – and of course the money went straight into Prewitt and Bruce’s pockets. The company hooked people in with free samples, and although they claimed to make patients answer a questionnaire, in reality they would send the freebies out to anyone who asked.

In 1912, Prewitt officially changed his name to Gregg because of his wife’s father’s will. Old man Gregg stipulated that his daughter must keep her maiden name or forfeit her inheritance of $50,000. Her first husband had gone along with it without changing his own name, but romantic Prewitt decided to be at one with his spouse, and the couple became Dr and Mrs Robert Prewitt Gregg.

Just a few months later, however, Prewitt’s fortunes changed. He and Ryland Bruce were arrested and charged with sending poison through the mail and with using the mail for a scheme to defraud. The trial revealed the devastating effect of Habitina on its victims, several of whom testified in court.

Some had experienced periods of insanity – Missouri mechanic Mr. H. I. C. lost everything and became a ‘maniac’ consuming a whole $2 bottle of Habitina every day. Mrs M. P. of Pennsylvania lost her reason and went blind as a result of taking the medicine, but hospital treatment eventually cured her addiction.

Perhaps the most tragic case is 26-year-old Mrs G. M. S., who spent more than $2,300 on Habitina over the course of 5 years, even going without shoes to be able to afford it. At the time of the trial she was still addicted.

Prewitt and Bruce were found guilty on both counts, fined $2000 each and sentenced to five years’ hard labour. It would be nice to end on that note, but the pair appealed. At the appeal court, Judge Munger dismissed the count of sending poison through the mail, as registered physicians were still permitted to do this, and sent the second count – the scheme to defraud – to a new trial.

At this point, I must own up to an epic fail, because I haven’t been able to find out anything about the second trial – if anyone can point me towards any sources, I’d be grateful. I imagine Prewitt and Bruce were acquitted because being unscrupulous doesn’t necessarily amount to a crime. They were careful to remain within the law as regards labelling their product, and made it very clear that Habitina contained morphine and that a cure would only result from a gradual reduction in dose.

They surely knew that they would make a fortune from addicts who would take it willy-nilly for years, but even with my lack of legal knowledge, I suspect this couldn’t technically be defined as a scheme to defraud. As you can see from the bottle label, they weren’t exactly misleading people about what was in it:

Source: The Mills County Tribune, Iowa, 12 March 1914

Some secret remedies remain secret for centuries. Not Mayr’s Wonderful Stomach Remedy. Within about a year of it becoming famous, a Chicago newspaper was describing its promoter as a ‘comical quack’ and ‘one of the most entertaining medical fakers in Chicago.’

The Stomach Remedy was inspired by the methods of the itinerant con-artists who worked the small towns of the US in the late 1800s. In the early 20^th century, similar products began appearing in the advertising columns, and druggist George H Mayr was quick to get in on the act. Described by the A.M.A. as ‘the fake gallstone trick,’ his method provided patients with immediate, visible results so convincing that the testimonials flooded in.

Mayr was evangelical about his medicine’s properties:

I have watched sick people for years and have reached out my hand to thousands in the great depth of the Valley of Despair and brought them into the light of life and happiness. I want you, and each one suffering, to know the full joys of living with every part of your system in beautiful accord and absolute perfect harmony.

His remedy comprised a bottle of medicine and two sachets of powders. The patient had to take the first powder at about 3pm, then the whole contents of the bottle before bed, then the second powder in the morning. All going to plan, there should be spectacular results:

When the bowels operate, use a vessel and note the poisonous secretions removed by this remedy, in some cases dark green or yellow lumps varying in size from a fine bead to an olive – in severe cases even larger. In other cases quantities of thick tenacious slime or mucous.

Mayr claimed that it was an old French remedy, used for generations to ‘relieve all stomach ailments and keep the bowels free from foul, poisonous matter.’ France, he said, was ‘the nation without stomach troubles.’

Whatever the state of our Gallic friends’ alimentary canals, Mayr’s medicine bottle contained nothing more interesting than olive oil. The powders were flavoured with licorice but other than that, analyses varied. One said they were mainly Rochelle salt (potassium sodium tartrate) while another suggested that one sachet contained Epsom salts (magnesium sulphate) and the second a sodium phosphate.

Either way, the patient would expel greenish waxy globules that looked a bit like stones. The A.M.A.’s report concluded that these were a mixture of fatty acids and soap caused by the alkaline intestinal fluids operating on the oil.  Anyone taking the remedy and cheerfully rummaging through their subsequent excretions would get the same result, regardless of whether or not they had anything wrong with them.

Stones expelled by a patient using Mayr's Remedy. Pictured in Nostrums and Quackery, A.M.A, 1921

Mayr’s dodginess extended to his advertising methods too. In 1918, the New York Tribune revealed that he sent round a list of instructions to editors, giving them advertising copy like this…

………… SOLDIER UNDER FIRE
“We have had several brushes with the enemy since reaching the trenches here, which I am sure I would not have reached had it not been for Mayr’s Wonderful Stomach Remedy. It has entirely cured me of indigestion and awful gas in my stomach. Army food now digests as good as mother’s used to.”

The newspaper was supposed to fill in the blank in the headline with the name of its own town, to present the imaginary soldier as a local lad. The Tribune was quick to take the moral high ground against the papers that accepted this form of advertising, saying rather self-righteously:

But the publisher who cooperates with the quack by deliberately printing what he knows to be a lie is guilty of unspeakable treachery to those who believe what they read in his paper.

Mayr wasn’t the only one to use this advertising ploy, and not the only one promoting the oils-and-salts method. A hundred years later, a similar process called the liver cleanse or liver flush is still going strong. The difference is that now we have the internet, where people can (and do) post pictures of their poo to show off the wonderful things therein. A link to such biological delights is not necessary on a history site, but you’re big enough and ugly enough to do a bit of Googling if you desperately want to know.

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