Patent medicines

Dr. Sibly's Re-Animating Solar Tincture

Googling for info on this remedy will get you quite a few results giving some variant on: “Dr.” Sibley, an English patent medicine seller of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, even went so far as to claim that his Reanimating Solar Tincture would, as the name implies, “restore life in the event of sudden death”. […]

Centaur Liniment

As we have seen before, nostrum-vendors’ talents were more suited to salesmanship than to poetry. This ad gets off to a tolerable start, but come verse 3 it goes downhill fast, and by the bit about the sheep it’s apparent that the copy-writer just wanted to get the wretched thing out the door and go […]

Hystericon

I’m attempting to use the long ‘s’ for this transcript – I hope Wordpreſs doesn’t do anything weird with it: . HYſtericon, or Antidote againſt Fits, Vapours, Hypochondriack Melancholy, Vertigoe, Gid- dineſs or Swimming in the Head, Phrenzy, or Deprivation of Senſes, Suffocations, or Riſings in the Throat, Faintings, Swoonings, &c. (common- ly called Fits […]

Gibson's Cordial Balls

The Gentlemen, Farmers, Jockies, Stage-Coachmen and Carriers Universal Medicine in the true Cordial Horse Balls and Preparation of Antimony, adapted for the Use and Benefit of all, as well the Race as Cart Horse, THE CORDIAL BALLS at 4s. per Pound, which in above 40 Years private Experience and 12 Years Publication, are approved of and recommended by several Noblemen, Gentlemen and […]

Empress Josephine Face Bleach

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 […]

Dr Rock's Restorative Viper Drops

I originally posted this on my (now defunct) other blog before I started The Quack Doctor, so I thought I’d move it over here as not many people will have seen it before: Are your spirits hurried and your brain in need of comforting? Are you suffering from the effects of hard drinking? Do your […]

Ambition Pills

At first glance I thought this showed pictures of three men, but no – it’s the same fellow, transformed from the seedy old roué on the left into a fine specimen of manly vigour, ambitious to take on the world and all its laydees. The perkiness of a chap’s moustache was a good indicator of […]

Every Woman's Flesh Reducer

Diet products that promised you could eat what you like and not have to do any tedious exercise had a market in the early 20th century, even though today’s media would have us believe that everyone in the good old days was more robustly active than us morally decrepit modern lard-arses. While many of today’s […]

The Modena Fossil

. This is perhaps the most bizarrely named product yet featured on this site. It is not surprising that it should be obscure to the modern observer, but in fact it made no sense to the denizens of the early 19th century either. . . ……………HEALTH ……….A MOST IMPORTANT DISCOVERY. ……….The Modena Fossil ……….A SPEEDY […]

Derk P. Yonkerman's Tuberculozyne

Consumptives There is Hope for You! Derk P. Yonkerman, Specialist, discoverer of a remarkable Cure for Consumption. To every consumptive person there is hope of life and health, for, incredible as it may seem, a specific which cures Consumption has at last been found. Seeking year after year, working early and late, […]