The Make-Man Tablets | The Quack Doctor

Do You Want A Vacation?
It’s Make-Man Tablets You Need.
Fifty Cents Worth of Make-Man Tablets Often Do More For A Man or Woman Than a Three Hundred Dollar Vacation.
Do you feel played out—nervous, tired, irritable, don’t sleep good, wake up every morning with a bad taste in your mouth and a dull, hot, tired feeling in your head? Of course a vacation seems just the thing—but it cannot reach the seat of your trouble.
It’s your nerves nine times out of ten that make your back ache. It’s your nerves that give you that dull, dumb headache. Your muscles are just as strong as ever, but the nerves are off tune.
They need feeding—rest is no good for them. There is some constituent—nerve constituent—the blood lacks, and Make-Man supply it.
Men and Women who have let their nerves go so long without feeding that they are pale, listless creatures, instead of strong, lively, full of vim and energy for the day’s work, have found quick results in the use of this splendid tonic, blood purifer and nerve strengthener.
Manus Bonner, 33 W. Market St., Pittsburg, believes he has found something better than a vacation:—“Since I began to take Make-Man Tablets I feel better and stronger. I have gained five pounds in weight and otherwise feel fine.”
Man-Made Tablets will make you well. You can try a 50 cent box, free, by writing—today—to the Make-Man Tablet Co. 145 Make-Man Building, Chicago, Ill. If you are already convinced that Make-Man Tablets are what you need, you can obtain them from your druggist at 50 cents a box, with money back if not satisfied.

Source: The Pittsburgh Press 14 Sept 1910

Any woman whose cheapskate husband refused to go on holiday in favour of taking these pills would have the last laugh – the main ingredients were arsenic and strychnine.

The Make-Man tablets were an early casualty of the US Food and Drug Act. In 1910 the government seized a consignment of 360 tins, and analysis showed the presence of the poisons together with aloes, potassium sulphate, iron carbonate and iron oxide. The product was judged to be misbranded and the company was fined, but they reformulated the tablets to contain quinine and iron, and continued to promote them until at least the mid-1930s, when they were still only 50 cents a box.