Patent medicines

A Fortune Built on Sand: Health Grains

In early 20th-century New York, a mailman introduced a new patent medicine for indigestion – but the ingredients were far from beneficial.

Dangerous beauty: Madame Anna Ruppert

Anna Ruppert’s career as a beauty specialist brought her acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, but there was a deadly secret to her success.

Victorian asthma cigarettes: who was Dr Batty?

Some 19thC doctors saw smoking as an efficient way to deliver medication to the lungs – but the popular ‘Dr Batty’ advertisement isn’t real.

Sanitized Tape Worms - a spurious 'vintage' ad

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

The tapeworm diet claims a long history, but did our great-grandmothers really fight weight gain with parasites? We look at the evidence.

Avoiding the trickcyclist and nutpicker: First World War home remedies and miracle cures

Suzie Grogan, author of ‘Shell Shocked Britain: The First World War’s Legacy for Britain’s Mental Health’ explores the commercial remedies that claimed to tackle the psychological effects of war.

A devil of a cure: the Sa-Tan-Ic Tonic Laxative

A company in early 20th-century Kansas named their constipation medicine after an unlikely figure – Satan.

Mademoiselle Cavania: England’s ‘only female doctor’?

Roger Cavania Sanders tells us more about his ancestor Mademoiselle Esther Cavania, who sold ‘Cavania’s Wonder-Worker Lotion’ in 1870s England.

Mr Grimstone and the Revitalised Mummy Pea

In 1840s London, the proprietor of Grimstone’s Eye Snuff claimed to have grown plants from peas found in an Ancient Egyptian tomb.

Stay Vigorous at Seventy

ADvent Calendar Day 23 Ah, good old John Harvey Kellogg – everyone knows the cornflake-inventing, masturbation-disapproving, enema-giving sanitarium owner of Battle Creek, Michigan. It’s not much of a surprise that he would be promoting something called Sanitone Wafers… But, hang on a minute, this ad says F. J. Kellogg. Who’s he when he’s at home? Frank […]

An advertising poster in the Art Nouveau style, showing a knight on horseback sticking a lance into a humanoid figure composed of tobacco leaves. The desing includes the words 'Narcoti-cure, cures the tobacco habit in from 4 to 10 days. The Narcoti Chemical Co., Springfield, Mass. Price $5.00. Book of particulars free.'

Narcoti-Cure: ‘Why smoke and spit your life away?’

Last updated: 20 April 2024 This beautiful 1895 poster, created by leading Art Nouveau designer William H Bradley (1868-1962), formed part of a widespread advertising campaign for Narcoti-Cure, a product that was only available for about a year. Narcoti-Cure claimed to put smokers, tobacco-chewers and snuff-takers off their filthy habit for life. ‘Why smoke and […]