Vintage advertisements are always fun to look at, giving a window into the early world of consumerism. These advertisements offered solutions to all your problems, be it indigestion, graying hair, wrinkles, jangled nerves or other issues. The promises they made were often extravagant.
Parker’s Hair Balsam would have you believe an aging codger can be transformed into a happy, youthful looking husband with children playing at his feet. Apparently it does more than just color the hair.
Some hucksters made use of Native American sounding names to give their product added veracity.
The front of this little vintage advertisement card lists many ailments treatable with this marvelous ointment. But if that doesn’t convince you, the reverse of the card gives a long list of ailments which most definitely can be relieved. If it’s sold by all druggists, it must be good!
I have to admit to a certain skepticism about sore throats responding to something slathered on your skin. Scurvy and rickets are nutritional disorders, but never mind that. All will be completely cured. Regrettably an Internet search revealed nothing about this product or what it might have contained, so there’s no way to tell if it actually had any virtue.
The next ad is a little more forthcoming.
Here we get a breakdown of the helpful ingredients in this cure-all. Sarsaparilla contains antioxidants so is potentially useful as an anti-inflammatory. Stillingia, also a root, is an old folk remedy for bronchitis, hemorrhoids and syphilis. Yellow-dock has anti-inflammatory properties and was used in respiratory ailments, as a laxative and also STD infections. Mandrake root is reputed to have effects similar to the other ingredients but can cause dizziness and vomiting, if the dose is too large.
Iodide of Potassium could potentially help the thyroid while Iodide of Iron served as a catalyst. It sounds like the druggists tossed a little bit of everything into their concoction in the hopes of helping their ailing customers. It’s hard to say if this medicine really helped its users but it brought its creator James Cook Ayer considerable success. Advertising was key to his popularity and while he took a fair amount of criticism from competitors, he did quite well for a while.
If his medicines did little good, at least they likely didn’t do much harm either. Not so for other patent medicines which often had alcohol, cocaine or opium as their main ingredients. Especially chilling was the use of radioactive elements such as radium as a curative, which led to the gruesome death of Eben Byers. A noted golfer, the Tiger Woods of his time, he had suffered a painful injury and seeking treatment fell victim to Dr. Bailey, a Harvard dropout posing as a physician, who recommended Radithor, a nostrum laced with radium, which he was hawking as a cure-all. Unaware of the hazards of radiation, the unfortunate Mr Byers swallowed the concoction twice a day for three years until he began developing symptoms of weight loss and bone deterioration which led to the loss of his entire lower jaw and finally his early death.
It was this tragic case which strengthened the FDA’s powers allowing them to eliminate quack cures of this nature off the market and away from vulnerable customers.
As resource shortages plus inflation begin biting, home cures and medicines are starting to make a comeback. Along with their return is the risk of quack nostrums reappearing. One way to avoid mistakes of the past is to inform oneself on how your body functions and what works best for keeping you in good shape. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If illness does crop up, knowledge of herbs and different therapies will help you distinguish between real healing and abject quackery.
And who knows. Perhaps those charming little advertisements of yesteryear will return, better vetted, touting genuinely helpful products.
