Weston's Wizard Oil

Weston was an entertainer who toured Australia and New Zealand from the 1860s to the 1880s, putting on free two-hour shows featuring jokes, songs and comic tales that incorporated lots of plugs for his products. A NZ correspondent to London’s The Era in August 1872 wrote of Weston as follows:

FRANK WESTON, the Wizard Oil Prince, is here. He is a comical card, possessing a great amount of dry Yankee wit, humour and assurance. His entertainments are free, and it is needless to add that he draws “crowded houses” nightly. The usual style of his public announcements are that “he will dig down and speak a piece.”

Audience members would receive a booklet called Frank Weston’s Australian Companion: A Selection of Valuable Recipes for Cooking, &c., with Much Information about Horses, Cattle, Social, Witty, and Other Important Subjects

As well as the Wizard Oil, Weston manufactured Weston’s Magic Pills and Mexican Mustang Liniment.

The image shown was printed as part of the following advert:

THE GREAT AMERICAN MEDICINES
     WESTON’S WIZARD OIL
          PRICE HALF A CROWN
Established in Australia in 1864.
A MEDICINE   to be taken in-
ternally,   and used externally, for
all   NERVOUS DISEASES   and
INFLAMMATORY ACHES and
PAINS, composed of the choicest
Aromatic Herbs, Healing   Gums,
Balsams, and Vegetable Oils.
    Cures      Rheumatism,     Sci-
atica,        Gout,           Neuralgia,
Cholera,   Spasms,   Headache,
Coughs and Colds, etc,
   WESTON’S   WIZARD   OIL has
the   power    to distribute   itself
over   every part    of    the   body
internally   as well as externally,
curing the most inveterate cases
of     tumors,    ulcers,   scrofula,
diseased   liver,    piles,   swellings,
wounds, etc. etc.
I N T E R N A L   U S E—Weston’s
Wizard   Oil, as a medicine for
inward use, may be relied upon
as a prompt relief for a depressed
vital   action, and a regulator of
the   disturbed circulation of the
blood,   produced by any cause
whatever.