Georgian

Rowland's Alsana Extract

The Rowlands – a father and son team – mainly produced cosmetic products. The one shown below veers more towards the medical side of things, as did their Cerelaeum elixir for headaches and vertigo. They also sold a tooth powder called Odonto, a beauty preparation named Kalydor and a hair dye called the Essence of Tyre. Their most famous product, […]

Samaritan Water

The proprietor of this remedy, Thomas Greenough, was better known for his other preparation, the Lozenges of Tolu, which were for coughs and colds. The Samaritan Water, patented in 1779, was not widely advertised, but the lozenges continued to be sold by Greenough’s successor at Ludgate Hill, R. Hayward, during the first half of the […]

Alfred's Royal Composition

Image: Portrait of Madame Récamier, by François Pascal Simon Gérard FEMALE ATTRACTION TO obviate the unpleasant sensation experienced by those Ladies who may have SUPERFLUOUS HAIRS growing on the Face or Arms, and to render their persons more lovely and attractive, was the chief motive that […]

York Medicinal Soap

The one and only benefit of this product was that it made guys wash … BY ROYAL AUTHORITY GENERAL SAFETY, or YORK MEDI- CINAL SOAP, an infallible Prevention against Venereal Infection; a Preparation, though simple, yet so efficacious, as to render it of the utmost importance to every one who values Health; and from its peculiar pro- perties […]

Basil Burchell's Purging Sugar Plumbs for Worms

Here we have an early example of the grocer’s apostrophe. Basil Burchell was well-known not only for his Worm medicine (which was for getting rid of worms, not for making worms feel better, in case you were wondering) but also for the famous Anodyne Necklace, supposed to soothe teething babies. More about the necklace another time, […]

Walker's Jesuits Drops

Robert Walker obtained the King’s Royal Letters Patent for his remedy in 1755, and on his death, surgeon Joseph Wessels took it over. The drops were still around, under the name Wessel’s Jesuit Drops as late as the 1870s. In 1843, the Medical Times published a note stating that the Drops were “a spirituous tincture of […]

White's Restorative Salo Pills

Nothing very funny about today’s remedy, I’m afraid. Adverts for abortifacients appeared in many 18th- and 19th-century newspapers, but they had to be discreet, as is the case with this one, which focuses on the pamphlet before mentioning the availability of the pills. The pamphlet was most likely an advertisement for Mr and Mrs White’s other services – they also offered lying-in […]

Infallible German Corn Plaister

Various proprietory corn plasters were available, and were not greatly different from the treatment you could get from a reputable surgeon. Samuel Cooper, in his The First Lines of the Practice of Surgery (1813) recommended making a plaster from 2oz. Gum Ammoniacum, 2oz yellow wax and 6 drams of “verdigrease.” He said this composition was “said to be […]

Dr. Steers's Opodeldoc

Steers’s Opodeldoc seems to have been fairly reputable, but it was also easy to mix it up yourself, hence the proprietors’ attempts to convince the public of the superiority of their version. The opodeldoc (a general term for this type of liniment rather than a brand name) was made from soap, spirit of wine, camphor, rosemary oil and […]