Patent medicines

Albert's Grasshopper Ointment

Grasshopper Ointment was registered in 1874 and the name was trademarked in 1884. It was still listed in Martindale’s Extra Pharmacopoeia in 1989, where the ingredients were given as rosin, yellow beeswax, larch oleoresin, arachis oil, white soft paraffin and copper acetate – but no grasshoppers. The copper would have given it a green tint […]

Radam's Microbe Killer

Famous for its trademark showing someone walloping the living crap out of a reanimated skeleton (if skeletons can be said to possess any living crap), Radam’s Microbe Killer was a fraud. Its inventor, William Radam, published a book, Microbes and the Microbe Killer (189o) describing at great length his quest for a cure for his […]

Charles Forde's Bile Beans for Biliousness

While Bile Beans were initially pitched as a cure for biliousness, the influenza epidemic of 1899 was too good an opportunity to miss. Horrible though the ‘flu was, a lot of people would recover after a week or so anyway, and it was an easy matter for quacks to point to cases where the recovery coincided […]

Dr MacKenzie’s Improved Harmless Arsenic Complexion Wafers

‘Dr MacKenzie’ was one of several brand names attached to arsenic products – similar ‘wafers’ (pills) were sold under the names Dr Simms, Dr Rose and Dr Campbell. The wafers made the skin fashionably pale by destroying red blood cells. Although it was possible to build up a tolerance for arsenic by taking regular small amounts, it […]

Eno’s Fruit Salt

Invented in the 1850s by James Crossley Eno of Newcastle, the Fruit Salt sold like hotcakes to sailors looking for something to keep them healthy on long journeys. The product is still available today – now manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, it sells in vast quantities worldwide and is a popular ingredient in Indian cookery. It contains […]

Jackson's Asthmatic Candy

In Autumn 1800, the proprietors of this remedy, J. Barclay & Son, who had taken over the patent in the 1780s, found it necessary to change the name to Barclay’s Asthmatic Candy. According to them, the death of Mr Jackson had “afforded an opportunity for unprincipled persons to assume his name, to put off their pernicious compositions.” […]

Henry Thompson's Real Cheltenham Salts

Although Henry Thompson claimed to manufacture the salts by evaporating spa water, The Monthly Gazette of Health for 1 Sept 1819 claimed that the product was nothing more than Glauber’s salt (sodium sulphate decahydrate). The Gazette had “been informed, by a gentleman residing in Cheltenham, who could prove the fact, that many tons of common Glauber’s […]

J Gerred, Medical Herbalist (and poet)

Joseph Gerred’s talents as a medical herbalist surpassed his poetic abilities, though judging by the verse in the following advert, that’s not saying much. Born in 1816, he took up herbalism in the 1830s, while also editing his own newspaper, The Devonshire Times. In 1856, Gerred was accused of libel after his paper printed a story claiming that […]

Walter De Roos' Compound Renal Pills

Here’s another product from the enigmatic Dr De Roos, who once again uses the ploy of warning the punters against charlatans. The Renal Pills were still available in the early 20th century, when the results of analysis were reported in More Secret Remedies. The pills were made of sodium carbonate, soap, a resin that might have […]

The Guttae Vitae, or Vegetable Life Drops

Although no proprietor is shown in the following advertisement, the Vegetable Life Drops were one of several cures touted under the name Dr Walter De Roos. De Roos was an enigmatic character and the name was purported to be an alias for one John (or George) Robinson, who might well have bought the business in 1858 from brothers Alfred and Samuel Barker. […]