The Bonesetter's Cure for Frost & Fire (version 2.0)

Discovery of Vermont's forgotten family of natural bonesetters.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

     I realize this blog was just posted yesterday, but as I continued to research the Chase family, I found that my previous research of Ebenezer Chase, father of Elmina, was incorrect. I had inadvertently tapped into another man by the same name who lived in Andover, not Athens, Vermont. Andover is about 14 miles northwest of Athens and there was an Ebenezer Chase in both locations during the same timeframe. I have therefore removed references to the Ebenezer Chase of Andover and replaced it with the story of the Ebenezer Chase of Athens who was, indeed, the husband of Betsey and father of Elmina and her siblings. Elmina's father is referenced throughout the blog post; consequently, changes have had to be made everywhere he is mentioned.

     The result of these changes is that the history of bonesetting within the Chase family of Vermont has been improved with valuable details. The only way for me to make all my readers aware of these changes was by republishing the post and deleting the original version. I'm sorry for the confusion I may have cause for those who read the blog in the last 24 hours, but I steadfastly insist on providing factual histories on this website - anything else is just a piece of fiction and historically pointless. Thank you for your understanding, forgiveness, and continued support.

PREFACE

     It sat there in the American Glass Gallery Auction Catalog #42  looking old, tired, and worn out. Next to the sleek, tall vial that shared the auction block for Lot 250, it wallowed fat and frumpy, neglected and forlorn. Light struggled to pass through the old glass that was still smeared inside with the greasy concoction it once held. It was certainly not at all like some of the auction’s other dazzling, richly colored bottles that ended up selling for more than I’ve ever spent for a car.

     Nonetheless, the squatty little misfit was the one bottle that tugged at my heart. It had a fragrance of history – a very personal story waiting to be told. Repeatedly I bid up to as much as I could afford … then I bid once more, hoping it would not cost me as much as I had just committed. When the dust of bidding warfare settled, I was stunned to see I had lost the battle – Lot 250 went to the victor and that wasn’t me.

     I felt devastated and empty inside: I had spent many days that plunged deep into the night, researching the Frost and Fire Ointment and its maker, Mrs. Dr. Ryder of North Randolph, Vermont, and my research had harvested several dozen pages of historical information about this fascinating woman. Full of information but no bottle to call my own, I was the adoptive parent who had gone all out, getting the baby’s room painted, decorated, and beautified for the precious arrival that the stork delivered to another at the last minute.

     But this story needs to be told, so I’m sharing it with you here today. Through the kindness and gracious support of John Pastor, owner of American Glass Gallery, I have also been enabled to share images of the bottle that inspired this blog post to happen. Let’s get to it.

RELOCATION TO PERFORM RELOCATION

     To truly understand Dr. Mrs. Ryder, it’s essential to go back to her roots. She was born on 14 April 1822, the ninth of twelve children in the Chase family of Athens, Vermont. Half way through the birth order, the girls were given names that sounded like an incantation: Almira Saphrina, Elvira, Elzina Eliza, and Elmina Eusebia, our protagonist; perhaps it was inevitable with parents named Ebenezer and Elizabeth. Although they gave their daughters names that were awkward and strange to our ears, they were typical of their time, but most everything else about the Chase family was offbeat.

     Ebenezer Chase was a native of Maine and was also a healer. He learned the healing art from his father, also named Ebenezer Chase and also a doctor. Father Ebenezer was said to have had a large practice in Sebec, Maine, until he suffered a tragic end at 54 years old by drowning in Sebec Lake in late December 1828 (perhaps by falling through the ice?).

     At least by the time he was 18 years old, Ebenezer (Elmina's father) had moved far from his central Maine home to establish his own career as a healer in Windham County in southeastern Vermont. There he settled, married, and raised his family. After the births of their first two sons at two other towns in the county, their next ten children were born in Athens, Vermont. The village center consisted of a church, a store, a post office, and a blacksmith shop with a tavern and a few mills nearby; the locals grandiosely nicknamed their small cluster of civilization, "The City." It was, in fact quite small, like most rural Vermont towns and villages of the era, reaching its zenith in 1820 at 507 residents, of which nine, almost two percent of the population, were in the Chase house.

     Ebenezer was a bonesetter; he made a specialty of "[setting] broken limbs and long-standing dislocations; [he] had a high reputation for reducing fractures after other doctors had failed." (While there is no documentation proving his father was also a bonesetter, it is highly unlikely that the 18-year-old spontaneously began using bonesetting techniques when he began his own career almost 300 miles away from his medical mentor.) The scarcity of practitioners in the ancient bonesetting method, combined with his apparent bonesetting skill caused him to be called upon to travel from his new residence in Vermont to patients in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, and Canada. Most rural homes in northern New England had one or more occupants who made their family's traditional medicines from the plants they grew in the garden and picked in the woods and fields. While we today would be mystified by how an Athens woman of 1840 made remedies from Hollyhock blooms, black cherry bark, wormwood, butternut twigs, dandelion roots, and cranberries, it was bonesetting that was the mysterious cure to colonial and Victorian Americans; therefore, Ebenezer Chase of Athens, Vermont, was a healer in demand near and far.

     Elmina Eusebia’s mother, who was best known as Betsey, was remembered in her 1846 obituary as “the famous Doctress,” although her fame was likely limited to notoriety among an apparently wide collection of patients and friends.  The posthumous praise was carried by several newspapers published across half the state, in Brattleboro, Woodstock, and Rutland, most likely because she had been well known and respected over that large swath of Vermont and her passing was therefore expected to be mourned by many. There is no indication what type of healing methods she used; perhaps she learned some of her skills from her husband.

Newspaper ad for Dr. L. (Lorenzo) Chase / Indian Botanic. Thirty years after the passing of his father, the "Indian root doctor," and his mother, the Indian Physician," Lorenzo was keeping their legacy alive. Rutland Weekly Herald, 28 SEP 1876.

HEALING IN THEIR BONES

     Cookie crumb trails of evidence point to the Chase household being open to any form of healing that didn’t involve medical school and bonesetting was considered an identifying characteristic of the Chase family. At least eight of the ten Chase children who lived to become adults provided healing services; we just don't know at this point whether just one, several, or all of the healing children practiced bonesetting, but one of the Chase scions identified himself in an 1876 advertisement as “one of the original family so well known in this state many years ago as the famous BONE SETTERS …” 

     The oldest of the Chase children, Ebenezer Jr., was called “the celebrated Indian root doctor”; his wife was also listed in Vermont’s earliest almanac as an Indian Physician (Walton’s, 1839), and their 17-year-old son Lorenzo told the public when his father died in 1846 that he and his mother would continue administering medicines to all those afflicted who would call on them. The pretentious teenager then revealed he had already been treating them for a few years:

I also hereby certify, that during the last one or two years and … during the protracted illness of my deceased father, that I have prescribed medicines for several hundred patients, … call and give me a try…

     In the Chase family, practicing medicine without a formal medical education wasn’t inappropriate – it was standard practice; all of the healers in the family did it. Ebenezer Jr’s brother Isaac was a practitioner in both “the botanic school” and “the German system of medicine” (homeopathy) and his daughter became another “pioneer physician,” learning medicine in the bedroom and kitchen instead of the classroom and laboratory. Elmina’s older sister, Almira Saphrina, was also credited with the gift of doctoring people. She was remembered for taking the ill into her home where she would nurse them back to health with her homemade soups and stews. All of the medical practices of the Chase family were sympathetic to each other. Indian medicine and botanic medicine were virtually synonymous; homeopathy was based on infinitesimal amounts of plant-based material, and eclecticism blended the elements of nature into its arsenal. The large Chase family developed a reputation for being “eminent for their medical skill and knowledge and seemed to have inherited a strong tendency to the healing art.” To their credit, they were each remembered at the end of their lives as popular physicians, thus proving the axiom in an 1837 newspaper article that while bonesetters and others didn’t earn a degree, they earned a ‘degree’ of notoriety by their successes.

     Healing was the sap that ran through the Chase family tree and it flowed freely into the branch that was Elmina Eusebia Chase. Under the sprawling trees of quiet Athens, Vermont, the Chase family home was a hive of busy bodies; Elmina was surrounded by all sorts of relatives and family healers with Mother Betsey as its queen bee and Father Ebenezer sometimes buzzing off to respond to urgent requests for his bonesetting skills. The medical method for which Elmina developed notoriety in the press was the very rare and specialized bonesetting skill that was passed on within families from generation to generation; Elmina almost certainly inherited her talents from the combination of both parents.

 

A QUICK HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND BONESETTING

     Over the more than two centuries that Europeans had crossed the ocean and become New Englanders, most of the thinly settled rural population relied on generational family self-sufficiency, learning to fill the gap created by the absence of shops and professionals. Home-taught and homemade were essential skills in the 17th to mid-19th century: making stew, pies, and pudding, cough syrup and tonics; canning and planting, quilting and darning, and many more skills were passed down from grandparents to parents to children and on into the future. Bonesetting was possibly the rarest of medical skills that was practiced and passed down in just a few special families.

Illustration at the top of an advertisement for Robert Hewes, Natural Bone Setter. The ad stated he had “learnt this art of his late father and has practiced it for almost fifty years …” and during the American Revolution, “he broke both of his own knee pans and set them himself, and that they were well set needs no better proof than he being a Fencing Master ever since.” The Boston Patriot, 28 SEP 1818.

     Bonesetting was most often practiced by men, probably because of the strength that was often required to reset dislocated bones; but during the late 18th century, a British woman and daughter of a bonesetter proved that women could be bonesetters too. She traveled the countryside in miserable clothes and called herself “Crazy Sally,” inferring mental instability or outrageous behavior, but she proved to have enough strength to reset a man’s shoulder without any assistance.

     The Sweet family, based principally in Rhode Island, are the best-documented family of American bonesetters, a multi-generational dynasty. Some were especially in demand, like Job Sweet who, after the Revolutionary War, was summoned by Aaron Burr to sail from the old bonesetter’s home in Newport, Rhode Island, to Burr’s New York estate to reset the dislocated hip bone of his daughter:

In the evening [Sweet] … talked with her familiarly, dissipated her fears, [and] asked permission, in the presence of her father, just to let the old man [Sweet] put his hand upon her hip; she consenting, he in a few minutes set the bone; he then said, now walk about the room, which to her own and her father’s surprise, she was readily able to do.

Business card of Benoni Sweet, (about 1900). He had been a stone mason by trade for decades, but upon the 1893 death of his bone setting brother, George, Benoni took up the family’s calcified baton and continued on as a natural bonesetter until his death in 1922. On the day he died, Benoni reset the fracture of a boy’s wrist. (Rapoza collection.)

     Another distinguishing feature of the early American bonesetters besides their training from seasoned bonesetters within their own family was that they downplayed their skill; bonesetters from the Sweet family, for example, rarely advertised their services until the late Victorian era. Benoni Sweet (ca.1812) was a blacksmith. Waterman Sweet (ca.1830) placed an ad that mentioned he was a Bone Setter, but the central thrust of his ad was about “a lot of good Butter for sale” at his new shop in Providence. When bonesetter Stephen Sweet (ca.1843) was sought out by a newspaper correspondent for his special skills, he was found “industriously at work with his scythe in a field.” Neither he nor his equally sought-after bonesetter father published accounts of any of their remarkable cures nor even maintained a private list of the most difficult cases and when the writer was introduced to Stephen Sweet’s “troop of children,” he found that some were already beginning to prove themselves in the work of bonesetting.

 

THE PIONEERING MRS. DR . RYDER

     Elmina Eusebia Chase emerged early from the home of her youth in Athens. She was a bride at 16 years old, having married a self-made healer named Ransellear Chillson, who was 21 years old; two and a half weeks later, she gave birth to their first child in Andover, about 19 miles from her childhood home.

     In the next three years she had two more children. At about this time, when the 19-year-old mother was pregnant with her second, she began practicing as a physician. Why she began at this point in time is unknown; perhaps it was financial necessity compounded by an extended illness of her husband. He died in 1848, three years after she had borne him their third child. Consequently she was, at 26 years old, a widow and single mother of three children under 10 years old. She had also lost her beloved mother and mentor in 1846 and two of her brothers: Isaac, the homeopath, and Ebenezer Jr., the Indian root doctor. With her husband gone and a big chunk of the family that had been her world for sixteen years, Elmina had to survive on her own and protect her young cubs in the Vermont wilderness.

     In the midst of the staggering losses of her husband, mother, and brothers, Elmina did more than just rebuild her life by putting herself out there as a physician. With inspiring fortitude and determination, she attended classes at the Woodstock Medical School sometime between 1846-1850, about six miles away from her Bridgewater lodgings. She joined other area residents who attended classes at the school in “the basic natural sciences” (chemistry, geology, botany, zoology, etc.) Women weren’t allowed to attain a medical degree there before 1850, plus she was raising her children alone and beginning to work as a physician, so her limited time at the school was to improve her knowledge generally and in some aspects of her new profession (perhaps in chemistry and botany), even though she wouldn’t be able to get a degree as a result of her efforts. Elmina remarried to James Ryder late in 1850 and they moved to Randolph, Vermont, another 33 miles and several covered bridges further north into Vermont’s woods.

     When the newly married couple and blended family reestablished themselves in Randolph, husband James redirected his career path onto a similar trajectory as his bride; he put away the hoe and for a time worked in a drug store as its clerk and he “also became known as a manufacturer of medical preparations" (perhaps he assisted his wife by preparing her medicines, like the Frost and Fire Ointment). All was not family harmony and optimism during the several transitions they were making; less than a year later, James posted a notice in the newspaper that his stepson, Elmina’s oldest boy, a 15-year-old minor “who has been under my care, has left my charge without a cause”; so he put all on notice that he wasn’t going to pay any bills that his wayward stepson may incur. Like the bones Elmina reset, the relocations of home and family caused some pains before the healing could begin.

 

MOTHER, WIFE, BONESETTER, PHYSICIAN

     In short order, Elmina’s three Chilson children left the familial nest over the next decade by skedaddling at fifteen, marrying at sixteen, and dying at thirteen; but the losses were replaced with another brood during her second marriage, in 1853, 1857, and 1862. No details of her medical career appeared during these years that she was delivering and nurturing her second family, but soon thereafter Elmina’s healing works blossomed in print. Her husband’s service in the Civil War (for which he was registered as a physician) also contributed to her increased attention to home and family. She had been practicing medicine for some twenty years, but it took a back seat to her role as mother.

     When James returned from the war, Elmina emerged again in an active and accelerated role as a physician. In 1863 James had paid the license tax for being a physician, but in 1864 it was Elmina who was charged with the physician’s tax. She gave medical exams to veterans applying for pension increases due to wartime wounds and disabilities. In 1868 she reported that she had been doctoring one such veteran, George W. Badger, for years because he was

… laboring under a chronic disease of the Liver and Kidneys. Effecting the Spinal column and heart. producing palpitation and other diseases which wholy [sic] prevent his performing any labor … sufficient to sustain himself. … I have prescribed for the said [Geo. W.] Badger for the last 5 or 6 years and I don’t discover that he is e[n]joying no better health at this time than he was at the time that I first prescribed for him. I think that his disorders are such that he cannot be cured and made a healthy man

     She signed her medical testimonies “Elmina E. Ryder M.D.” and “Mrs. Dr. J. C. Ryder / Physician of North Randolph.” The Justice of the Peace certifying the documents stated that she was “a physician respectable and reputable in her Practice.” Later that same year she filed her own claim due to her husband’s disability.

 

Signatures of Mrs. Dr. Elmina Eusebia Ryder. Certificate of Disability for Discharge of George W. Badger, (TOP) Image 727, dated 17 NOV 1868; (BOTTOM) Image 729, dated 7 SEP 1868. Courtesy of FamilySearch.org.

     Badger, her sickly veteran patient, resided in Sharon, Vermont, some 19 miles from North Randolph, and she made many trips there to doctor him over the space of a half dozen years. She again appeared in the newspaper for providing medical aid to a schoolteacher in Woodstock, about 28 miles from her home, and when she tried to collect on her debts from the estate of a deceased patient in Hartland, 40 miles away. Her reputation was her advance agent and reminiscent of her mother; her whereabouts were being monitored for the public in the newspapers. As late as 1878, at the age of 56, she was located 34 miles from home, doctoring and apparently even doing some teaching, perhaps providing private lectures for women on health topics as was popular in that day: “Mrs. Dr. Ryder is out of town practicing most of the time this season. ‘Mina’ has been at White River Junction for some time, teaching, but is at home now.” 

     Perhaps her out-of-town medical travels gave her youngest son the opportunity for criminal mischief; at 16 years old, “Cash” (Cassius) Ryder was one of three rowdies who were arrested for disturbing the peace in the village of North Randolph one August night in 1878 when they “commenced depredations” on several others, “without any cause whatever.” On the other hand, when James, the oldest son from her second marriage, was 16 years old, he began assisting his mother in her professional labors. He went on to become an eclectic physician after attending the University of Pennsylvania in 1874 and doing some residency work at Bellevue Hospital in New York, in 1875; despite his formal training, he followed the example of his mother and made a specialty of the treatment of dislocations and fracture. Bonesetting had been passed down one more branch of the Chase family tree.

     Bonesetting was a unique system of healing that required skillful, experienced hands and a strong knowledge of skeletal arrangement and required no medicine to perform the relocation of joints or resetting of bones; however, it was common for the bonesetters to have their own topical medicines to reduce inflammation and swelling, relax stiff muscles, quell pain, and return circulation to numbed limbs. In 1817-1818, Robert Hewes of Boston offered Hewes’ Nerve Ointment and in the early 1860s Stephen Sweet made his Dr. Sweet’s Infallible Liniment.

 THE BONESETTER’S CURE FOR FROST AND FIRE

     Mrs. Dr. Ryder also had her own topical product – Frost and Fire Ointment – that wonderful bottle that got away from me at the auction. The label of the small, twelve-sided bottle described the ointment inside as “unsarpassed [sic] for the cure of Burns, Scalds, Freezes and Chilblains, also old ulcerated sores.” “Frost” was the creative description of frostbite and chilled body parts it promised to cure and “Fire” referred to burns and scalds. The medicine’s name is creative genius, applying the opposite temperature extremes in one product name to constantly call to mind the totality of its healing benefits. The medicine had high viscosity, so the label instructed that the ointment needed to be warmed by the fire. Remnants of the thick ointment still coat the bottle’s neck, resolutely unmoved by the passage of time. The label on the auctioned bottle also has handwriting that crossed out the frequency of application in the printed instruction, “to be used once or twice a day,” replaced by “to be used at night.” More handwriting along the label’s top edge repeats the advice, “use at night.” The handwriting was definitely Mrs. Dr. Ryder’s (when compared to the letters she wrote as the examining physician for Badger’s disability petition). It was a personal touch, important enough to her to correct its use for the benefit of the patient; using it once instead of twice a day meant one bottle would last twice as long – clearly an instruction of a physician who was putting the patient before profit.

LEFT VIEW OF LABEL – Frost and Fire Ointment, prepared by Mrs. Dr. Ryder, North Randolph Vermont (about 1855-1865). View of the left side of the label that wraps completely around the bottle. Aqua, unembossed, smooth-based, 12-sided jar, height: 3 1/8" (7.9375 cm). It had an extra-wide neck to get out the viscous contents as needed.  The 50-cent price ($18.62 in 2025 USD) was a considerable expense; the medicine had to deliver on its promises to justify the significant cost. Courtesy of John Pastor, American Glass Gallery.

RIGHT VIEW OF LABEL – Frost and Fire Ointment, prepared by Mrs. Dr. Ryder, North Randolph Vermont (about 1855-1865). View of the right side of the label that wraps completely around the bottle. Courtesy of John Pastor, American Glass Gallery.

VIEW OF FULL LABEL - Frost and Fire Ointment, prepared by Mrs. Dr. Ryder, North Randolph Vermont (about 1855-1865). Complete label view, digitally reconstructed from the fully rotated bottle. Courtesy of John Pastor, American Glass Gallery.

BONES SET AND FRACTURED

     A patient’s desperation and the physician’s reputation combined to create demand for medical services and products. Elmina Eusebia Chase, aka Mrs. Dr. Ryder, was the female bonesetting prodigy of the Chase family and, like her mother, she traveled up and down the Vermont countryside gathering a notoriety among those who experienced or knew of her unusual skillset.

     Elmina used her bonesetting talents along with other healing techniques that she had learned around the Chase family’s cast iron stove and bedside. She was consequently sought out for her broad range of skills, as demonstrated by a very sick Sylvester Thurston in 1870. Sick at his West Braintree home for about two months, his anxiety continued to escalate as his health steadily decreased. A legion of friends and physicians advised him to try all manner of remedies and healing methods but all were to no avail. Within a few weeks of his death

… he became discouraged and was almost frantic at times with the idea that he should never get well. Fearing that insanity would be the result of such a state of mind, he was persuaded to spend a few weeks at Mr. Ryder’s, in North Randolph… Said he, “if Mrs. Ryder cures me I shall think she can almost raise the dead.

     But even Mrs. Dr. Ryder couldn’t perform miracles and the desperately unhinged patient took his own life.

     There were plenty who wanted irregular healers to fail and Mrs. Dr. Ryder was an exemplar of everything wrong with irregulars – she was a woman; one of those strange bonesetters; a female scandalously daring to treat males among her patients; and a healer practicing medicine without a degree or license. Every failed diagnosis, treatment, or prescription was potentially hazardous to her reputation; every misstep could bring a big fall. On one occasion she tried to reset the foot of a man who had injured it by jumping off an out-of-control wagon in motion; pulling on his foot, however, just made the pain worse. In 1870 a lawsuit was leveled against Mrs. Dr. Ryder when a disgruntled former patient sued Elmina and her husband for her malpractice in setting the shoulder of the plaintiff. The jury returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff for $600 ($17,312 in 2025 USD) in damages plus court costs. In 1877 she was arrested along with a few others for allegedly performing an abortion that also resulted in the pregnant woman’s death; fortunately for Elmina, two of the others were held for trial but the prosecutors decided they would not pursue the prosecution of Mrs. Dr. Ryder.

     The favorable reports about the practice and personality of the female bonesetter were more frequent and consistent that the negative ones. In late January 1876, the Green Mountain Freeman  reported that a woman in Brookfield fell down the cellar stairs and was in very critical condition, not expected to recover. In early February the newspaper followed up that Mrs. Dr. Ryder was called upon to make an examination of the fall victim’s injuries “and endeavored to set the bones of her dislocated wrist. Her recovery, considering her age and the amount of injury sustained, is marvelous.”

     When Elmina passed in 1881, her obituary gave a glowing tribute to the life, career, and character of the unusual bonesetter from Athens, Vermont. Like her father and mother, she had earned widespread admiration:  

You can go into hardly a town in this State where she is not known. She has many who regarded her with feelings of gratitude and love for the valuable medical service she has rendered them. She has given permanent help to many patients who had received treatment from others with no good results. Few physicians have endured more exposure to storm and rain, heat and cold.  … [she was a] faithful wife and kind mother …

     Two years before her death, she also got an endorsement from a stranger who recognized that her good deed was the sign of a rare individual of quality:  

A. C. Hitchcock, a few days since, while on his way from St. Albans to Waterbury, on the cars, lost his pocket book containing a sum of money, and a $100 note. Since his return, a lady from Randolph has written him that she is the finder thereof. Mr. Hitchcock writes that this was Mrs. Dr. Ryder, a lady whom he had never seen or heard of before, and he thinks that in these days when dishonesty stalks abroad so defiantly, an honest person, man or woman, should be made known to the public.”

     It would clearly be considered an extraordinary act of integrity in 2025 as much as it was in 1879. Everything about Mrs. Dr. Elmina Eusebia Ryder makes me wish I could have met her, but then again, researching every available fact about her life has made me feel like I have gotten to know her very well. One additional phrase in her obituary resonated with me for its unique expression and symbolism: “her memory will be fragrant through all the years to come. …” What a beautiful phrase of heartfelt praise.

 

SUMMARY

     Bonesetters are the unicorns or leprechauns of American healing history; so little is known about the few, unassuming bonesetters, they almost feel like the stuff of legend. Many irregular medical methods and systems were being heavily promoted, especially in the 19th century, but bonesetters were discovered, not advertised. They might be your blacksmith or grocer or botanic physician who suddenly offered to reset your dislocated limb, then would go back to making your horseshoe or selling you some butter when they were done. Some of the bonesetters did begin advertising late in the century, but they were the exception to the rule. That elusive little auction treasure of Frost and Fire Ointment revealed Vermont’s obscure Chase family of bonesetters and the little-known world of bonesetting during some anxious auction hours and once more in this blog post.  For a few minutes today you’ve caught the elusive golden snitch of American medicine. Congratulations – it’s a rare victory.

Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine

Magic Cures for a Painful World

Pain Attacks. The first of a two-part “before-and-after” advertisement for Wolcott's Instant Pain Annihilator aka Wolcott’s Pain Paint. Created by: W. Endicott & Co., about 1863. Library of Congress; Museum No. LC-USZC2-36.

PAIN. Throbbing, stabbing, aching, distracting, excruciating, agonizing, unbearable PAIN.

Hannibal Lecter and S&M enthusiasts aside, most people don’t like pain. We’ll do just about anything we can to avoid it and when it does happen to us, we’ll do everything we can think of to get rid of it, as quickly as possible.

A toothache; a hangnail; a sprained ankle; a leg cramp; a migraine headache – every pain is one we want to have go away. You, me, and every one of our ancestors have tried almost everything to get rid of pain quickly. Sometimes what we try defies logic – and almost certainly flies in the face of science – but for thousands of years, in moments of excruciating pain, we have turned to methods and cures that win our praise if the pain goes away. That has often been the sole measure, whether it’s with two Advil pills today or a teaspoon of Wolcott’s Pain Paint over a century ago. When pain hits, our animal instinct just wants it to stop and the method, be it scientific or magical, really doesn’t matter. Be honest with yourself – you probably couldn’t explain the chemistry and active ingredients of Tylenol any better than your Victorian forebears could with Dr. William’s Pink Pills for Pale People.

      The image above shows a Victorian era man plagued by a legion of demons in full attack mode, causing his headaches, sinus pain, toothaches, neuralgia, and more. To his right, the Grim Reaper emerges from his fog-shrouded netherworld, looking pleased at the pain being inflicted by his minions. In the same primal way that such imagery symbolically described their pain, Victorians also wrapped their aching heads around the idea that pain could be cured by magic.

Bartmann Bottle, about 1650. At its base is a modern recreation of typical “witch bottle” contents: nails, a fabric heart pierced by bent pins, and human hair with fingernail clippings. Rapoza collection.

      Such a belief was likely passed down to them by old-timers in their lives who insisted that a special home-made medicine had to be swallowed during the waning of the moon or who still hung a horseshoe on their door. My own grandmother winced as she told me how her grandfather made his own medicinal tea from rat droppings because he distrusted doctors so much; he may have thought it was a magical brew but my grandmother thought he was full of crap.

      America has a long history of reliance on magic and superstition to influence our behavior. Today’s post offers just a few examples for you to steep in your cauldron of possibilities for the next time your body screams at you, “I’M IN PAIN!”

     

Colonial Magic

As I shared with you in my post, “Weaponized Witch Bottles” (10 AUG 2024), colonists in North America relied on biblical passages that warned against the evils of witchcraft. They turned their empty wine and beer jugs into weapons to protect against the attacks of witches and their familiars, especially to protect the sick in their families. They further strengthened their defenses by hanging a horseshoe outside their door and making ritual protection marks around their doors, windows, and fireplaces – all the possible entry points for evil spirits to enter the home. Even biblically-inspired numerology was taken seriously: a braid of 12 garlic bulbs (symbolic of the 12 apostles) hanging behind the door was believed to prevent witches from entering the house; just 11 bulbs was nothing more than a bunch of smelly vegetables hanging on the door.

It was a time when magic was medicine and superstition dominated in the absence of science.

 

Victorian Magic

      Two hundred years after the Salem witch trials, well after the colonies had merged into the United States of America, the country had survived its Civil War and two wars with England, and it leapfrogged into an era of electricity, telephones, x-rays, anesthesia, vaccines, blood transfusions, and the discovery that germs cause disease. Amid all this growth, modernization, and sophistication, it might seem like there was no longer a need for superstition and magic.

Magical Medicine from the Mystical Kingdom. The Egyptian theme of Colwell's medicine tied in perfectly with its promise of magic. The eye-catching trademark featured the bizarre Sphinx above and baffling Egyptian heiroglyphics flanking the word MAGIC. The Egyptian-inspired trademark hinted at the mysterious origins of the magical cure. There was absolutely no effort to ensure scientific efficacy. (Library of Congress: Trade Mark No. 10,302, registered 22 MAY 1883)

If that’s what you’d choose to believe, you have chosen … poorly.

      Pain and disease had not been eliminated and science and medicine still had a long way to go. People were still having headaches and toothaches, rheumatism and sprains, and a bottle or box of medicine still offered low-cost, high-promise alternatives to doctors and dentists. 

      The absence of regulation in the medical marketplace meant medicine makers didn’t have to reveal the contents of their products and it’s fascinating how often they chose to claim their cure was  MAGIC – far too many to list them all here, but a few examples were:

• Bennet’s Magic Cure

• Dr. Colwell’s Magic Egyptian Oil

• Fink’s Magic Oil

• Van’s Magic Oil – None other than a customer named Mrs. A. Pain wrote to the manufacturer, “We will never employ a doctor for cold or diphtheria while we can get your Magic Oil.”

• Dr. Horbson's Magic Oil

• Dalley’s Magical Pain Extractor

• Dr. Hardy’s Magical Pain Destroyer

 

Dr. Hardy's Magical Pain Destroyer (box & bottle), about 1885. It's hard to believe that Dr. Hardy's brooding face could encourage any confidence in the success of his medicine. It was likely a rendering from some early form of photography that required expressionless faces so the result of the slow shutter speed would not be fuzzy. But come on, Dr. Hardy - crack a smile! It's not magic! Courtesy of Sheaff-Ephemera.com

Dr. Hardy's Magical Pain Destroyer (label on interior counter display box lid), about 1885. Courtesy of Sheaff-Ephemera.com

      One look below at the Victorian poster for Renne’s Pain Killing Magic Oil vividly reminds us of how much we hate to hurt. His puffy eyes are almost squeezed shut; a large tear streams out of the corner; his lips look aquiver in misery. The head bandage under his jaw was usually a symbol of tooth pain, but this pathetic soul is also holding his stomach, apparently yet another locus of pain. We empathize with our young friend – we feel his pain.

      Miserable in pain and apparent low on funds with a patched and tattered jacket, the young chap stands dumfounded in front of a drug store full of Renne’s Pain Killing Magic Oil; it’s frankly hard to tell if we are supposed to be witnessing that magical moment when he realized he had just found the cure for his woes or if his tear is because he couldn’t afford to buy the magical painkiller. Either way, he clearly wants some magic in his hard-luck life.

Renne's Pain Killing Magic Oil (bottle & poster, about 1885). Bottle courtesy of Library of Congress. Poster courtesy of Wm Morford Antiques, AntiqueAdvertising.com

      Notice that on the bottle, above the picture of Mr. Renne, was the magical medicine’s slogan, “IT WORKS LIKE A CHARM”; some newspaper ads for assured that its effect was “very magical.” It was, of course, a great word to hide behind, since the public were not invited to know the ingredients and proportions being used in the medicine. Medicines not promising magical results hid behind other fanciful names, such as Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp Root Kidney, Liver, & Bladder Cure, Pocahontas Barrel Bitters, and Smith’s Bile Beans. But “Magic” was more than a just camouflage; it was also a promise of potency and results even though sick customers had no idea why it would work for them. Subconsciously, people who enjoy magic shows want to be deceived. It fills us with wonder and awe and lets us believe that the world is full of unexplainable things. Magic gives us hope there are answers for problems and pains we could not solve ourselves.

      Anyone who collects antique medicines knows that patent medicines had all sorts of names; those promising to stop pain weren’t limited to names implying magical ingredients. Perhaps the biggest selling pain cure of the century was the magic-free Perry Davis’ Pain Killer. Another example is from my own collection, Thurston’s XXX Death to Pain. Not only did its name promise to be the death of pain, but the triple “X” meant triple-strength – no indication of what, but it certainly sounded powerful!

Thurston's XXX Death to Pain (box & bottle, about 1890). Rapoza collection

      Similar to the magic cures was a smaller subset of medicines called “mystic”. The name of Dr. I. A. Detchon’s Mystic Cure made it clear that the contents transcended human understanding and were somehow connected to ancient and perhaps occult mysteries. One of its ads explained that “Its action upon the system is remarkable and mysterious.” - take it, just don’t try to understand it.

      Note that the bottle label explains that the Mystic Cure should only be used in combination with the Mystic Life Renewer.

Detchon's Mystic Cure (box & bottle, about 1885). Rapoza collection.

Newspaper advertisement for Mrs. Wilson's Mystic Pills by the Gray Medicine Co., Toronto, Canada.The Daily Expositor (Brantford, Ontario), 2 OCT 1880.

      Mrs. Wilson’s Mystic Pills from Toronto, Canada, was the perfect name for a medicine designed for the many diseases and disfunctions of the mysterious female reproductive system. The title implied secrecy, the dark closet in which many high-strung Victorians wanted to have the subject hidden. The trademark shows the female angel holding a box of the medicine in her right hand and her left hand pointing to the banner that displayed the “Mystic Pills” part of the name. An enlargement of the knuckles actually suggests the angel may be using the middle finger, but let’s just say it's the index finger!

      For at least some of the many late-19th century remedies, the evocative words “Magic,” “Magical,” “Mystic,” or “Mystical,” in their name were used as more than just convenient marketing adjectives; they were designed to attract those customers who continued to harbor the centuries-old beliefs in magical potions, hoodoo, astrology, charms, and promises of good luck and fortune. The reason so many medicines seemed magical in their result was most likely due to the active ingredient (besides alcohol): opium, morphine, cocaine, or cannabis - they were each dangerous in excess but truly potent and successful in temporarily diminishing or eliminating pain.

Columbia believes in Magic. This Civil War-era newspaper advertisement for Weeks' Magic Compound invokes the patriotism of Columbia herself. The manufacturer was E. B. Magoon & Co. of North Troy, VT, 1862.

      Of course each era has also had its critics. Just like there were colonists who insisted there was no such thing as witchcraft, magic and mysticism had its detractors in the Victoria era. In 1900, Missouri’s Joplin News-Herald complained bitterly that “Americans are still believers in magic …” The newspaper pointed to a single factory of “magical devices” and found that it produced crystal balls and “not less than 5,000 divining rods and many other similar contrivances which are supposed to have the virtue of locating gold mines or hidden treasure.” – and the newspaper was disgusted that gullible fools would spend their money on things supposedly imbued with magic:

For one of these treasure indicators a farmer will pay from $15 to $35, and then, neglecting his toil, firm in the conviction that he has a truly magical device that will bring him untold wealth, he will tramp for days and even weeks over the old fields he had farmed since boyhood, seeking the gold mines and buried treasure the “magician” has assured him is there.

      Medicines made in the name of “Magic” were another clear evidence of a portion of the population still hanging on to remedies emanating from the occult universe. In fact, even as the new Food and Drug Administration clamped down on specious patent medicines, magic oils and the like lingered, defiantly, deep into the 20th century.

     

Digital Magic

      So now, dear readers, we sit in front of the screens of our cell phones and computers, reflecting a little smugly at the centuries of Americans who have believed in and resorted to magic, luck, and the mystical. But while our country may have continued its forward march in medicine, science, and technology, we are clearly far from giving up our superstitions and symbolic acts for warding off evil, eliminating physical and emotional pain, and encouraging good “mojo.”

      Many doctors still administer placebos and patients often believe those harmless pills have made them feel better. Copper bracelets have never been proven to improve health, but many swear by them, nonetheless. (No offense intended to the placebo or copper bracelet manufacturers.) Family, friends, co-workers, and sometimes even strangers will say “bless you” after you sneeze, to ward off illness. And lots of Americans still act out in similarly irrational behavior today to improve, protect, and bring comfort to other areas of their lives in the midst of an often harsh and painful world:

• Since 1952, fans of the NHL hockey team, the Detroit Red Wings, have thrown a dead octopus on the ice for “good luck” in the playoffs, despite the fact that the team has won only 7 Stanley Cups in the 73 years that octopi carcasses have slid across the Detroit ice. Oh, and catfish are similarly tossed onto the ice to invoke good luck for the Nashville team, and plastic rats keep getting flung into a hockey rink just north of Miami after a player killed a rat in the locker room with his hockey stick before the game and then scored two goals with that stick.

  
  

• After you eat your Chinese food, do you throw away the fortune cookie or do you open it to see what the fortune says? (… And does the rare fortune that promises, “Great wealth is coming your way,” get quietly tucked into your pocket?)

  
  

• Do you save the turkey wishbone to engage in a little post-Thanksgiving tugging match for luck?

  
  

• Have you noticed that tall buildings usually have no 13th floor selection in the elevator? The architects and engineers didn’t forget how to count.

  
  

• For the last 51 years, Lucky Charms cereal has featured marshmallow bits in the shape of such luck-laden symbols as blue moons, four-leaf clovers, and horseshoes. (My guess is that witches can’t eat that cereal.)

      We may not have been comfortable living in Colonial or Victorian America, but they would probably feel right at home in home here. Our modern world might be full of advanced knowledge but pain still haunts us all and hope for magical improvements still ripple through our souls.

Pain Vanquished. This is the second of a two-part “before-and-after” advertisement for Wolcott's Instant Pain Annihilator aka Wolcott’s Pain Paint. Created by: W. Endicott & Co., about 1863. Courtesy Library of Congress; Museum No. LC-USZC2-36.

Price Gouging in the Republic of Texas

How much was too much for a new life?

"A New Thing Under The Sun": front bottle label for Price's Patent Texas Tonic, ca.1845. (Courtesy of PeachridgeGlass.com)

To the best of my knowledge, there is only one bottle from the era of the Republic of Texas (1836-1845) that actually has the name of that short-lived country embossed on it. PeachridgeGlass.com states that only three examples still exist, and I have recently had the privilege of holding one of those three treasures in my hands. I thought I could make a worthwhile contribution to history and the bottle-collecting hobby by researching and writing about Price’s Patent Texas Tonic. The results? A web of patent medicine connections between a war hero, governors and ministers, slaves and  plantations, Mormons at Nauvoo, Transylvania University, and the infertility of a U.S. president. I came to realize that probably only three examples of this old glass bottle still exist because the others burst at the seams with the explosive story they tried to hold inside.

Opportunity Knocks

The year 1840 was a hopeful, fearful, profitable, risky time to be in the Republic of Texas. The continent’s newest country had come into existence just four years earlier when the far superior, better equipped, professional army of General Antonio López de Santa Anna had been soundly defeated by a ragtag assemblage of untrained volunteers under Sam Houston. Suddenly, the northeast borderlands of Mexico had become the Republic of Texas, where land was cheap and plentiful, and opportunity was as big as the Texas sky.

Map of the Republic of Texas, ca.1837. The area under control is in pink; the area disputed by Mexico and Texas is outlined in a solid red line; the disputed area included what today comprise sections of Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. McConnell's historical maps of the United states (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division).

Even with the challenges of continued Mexican raids, Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache attacks,  a lack of roads and mail service, and a seasonal rotation of epidemics, the opportunities proved irresistible to the many arriving from the U.S. and Europe. The defiant taunt that had been stitched into the Texian flag at the start of the revolution could have been willfully misread by the new wave of opportunistic invaders as a friendly invitation: "Come and Take It".

The Merchant Prince

No one heard the siren call of opportunity in Texas more than a certain middle-aged merchant of Nashville, Tennessee. His name was John Price and he was all about the money. It was how he measured his house, his business, and even his family. Born in 1790, some of his values were formed in his childhood: his mother was a devout Methodist and his father was a slaveowner. He was remembered as an eccentric man but shrewd, fond of Methodist camp meetings and a zealous participant in revivals. Deeply involved in Nashville’s Methodist church, he was a manager of its missionary society and bible society, as well as the county temperance society.

In 1814 at age 24, he married the daughter of a Methodist preacher whose family were said to also be quite wealthy. From the time of his first marriage and into the 1820s, John Price was already one of Nashville’s elite, a slave-owning merchant, selling virtually anything for a profit and renting out houses and warehouses for still more gain. His advertisements listed for sale or barter everything from 19,000 pounds of pig lead, 400 pounds of cotton, 40 hogsheads of tobacco, 100 barrels of pecans, and 500 bags of salt to Kentucky Whiskey, Virginia tobacco, Jamaican rum, and peach brandy. His ads were also found selling sugar, coffee, and bacon, a large work horse, anvils and vises, and cooking and parlor stoves. His strong support of Methodism was clearly a strong motivation behind him also selling a popular Methodist book, Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible, and he got his first taste of promoting and selling medicines with Lorenzo Dow’s Family Medicine, the product offered by the eccentric, unorthodox, and zealous traveling Methodist preacher who was widely known as “Crazy Dow.” His first ad for Dow’s medicine in 1828 listed the he had an inventory of 3 dozen bottles along with the hogsheads of tobacco and the barrels of pecans; a year later he still had a few bottles of the stuff left and tried to get rid of them by bluntly pushing,

“LO OK– DOW! –Save yourselves from sickness and death.”

Not only had John Price made the effort to help out the Methodist preacher, but his wealth and reputation seemed to have helped him establish connections with some of Nashville’s favorite sons, like Sam Houston, who became governor of Tennessee and later the Republic of Texas, and James K. Polk, who became President of the United States. There’s no evidence that John Price sought elective office, but he may have risen from a merchant to a merchant prince had he stayed in Nashville long enough.

Five-Dollar Bill, Republic of Texas Currency, ca.1840. Five dollars was all the money John Solomon Fullmer had when he arrived in Nashville, not nearly enough to get permission to marry the daughter of John Price; it was, however, enough to buy a bottle of his Texas Tonic. (Courtesy of CABANISS CURRENCY).

Father Knows Best

The wealth and luxury he was busy accumulating provided more than just a birthright for his children to enjoy; it was a social status they were expected to maintain. They grew up with servants and houseslaves, a handsome home and fine clothes, and received the best education money could buy, but they were forbidden to marry beneath their station. John’s oldest daughter, Mary Ann Price, was a perfect example of her father’s formula for success. She was his oldest child and never had to experience need or hardship. She had her own maid and a private tutor and she graduated from the Female Academy of Nashville. But then she went and fell in love with the wrong guy.

Mary Ann had turned 21 in September 1836; in the eyes of the law that made her an adult who could choose the man she wanted to marry – but not in her father’s eyes. The man she loved was John Solomon Fullmer; he had some education, worked hard at a newspaper, and showed entrepreneurial promise but he had arrived in Nashville a few years earlier with “a five-dollar bill in his pocket … without friends … and no training in a trade” – not at all good enough to marry a daughter of John Price. His marriage proposal having been rejected by the obedient daughter, the embittered beau put all the blame on the “wicked and avaricious heart … of Old John Price”:

… Mary’s reject[ed] me, solely for her father's sake … I have abundant evidence that she loves me still, and that she would still marry me if she were not prevented by her father; but without his consent she would not marry any man living.

The young lovers went off and eloped in May 1837 and her father never forgave her. About two decades later, another daughter of John Price married the man who had been the fourth governor of Texas; it was exactly the kind of union John wanted for his children while the unprosperous newspaperman certainly was not – and Price’s relationship with his daughter and her unacceptable husband only went from bad to worse.

In February 1841, the son-in-law non grata wrote to John Price about how he had taken Mary Ann far away, “It was no doubt with great surprise that you first heard of our removing to Illinois." In 1839, Fullmer had gone to the Mormon colony at Nauvoo, Illinois, where he was baptized by their founder and prophet, Joseph Smith. He then returned to Nashville to gather Mary Ann, their child, and possessions to move and join the Nauvoo colony. John Price was incensed at the planned move and offered Mary Ann a restoration of her wealth and social position if she would desert her husband and stay behind with their family in Nashville. Mary Ann refused and was consequently shunned by her father – she never saw her parents, siblings, or Nashville again.

John Price just moved on; while his forsaken daughter and her family moved over 400 miles northwest to Nauvoo, John took the rest of his family twice as far to Galveston, Texas. To him, his daughter’s departure was based on delusions while his was based on opportunity: he was certain she would pay for her choices, while he would earn for his.

Port of Galveston, ca.1845. Public domain book illustration, Library of Congress.

Making Money in Galveston

In March 1837, even before Mary Ann eloped, John Price was already preparing to move his family to the new Republic of Texas. He had entered into a business arrangement that apparently necessitated a substantial investment on his part.

In consequence of a recent compact entered into with a company of respectable gentlemen as their agent in the Republic of Texas … it is probable that myself and family will or may be required to move to the Republic. (emphasis added)

His preparation involved mortgaging his properties in Nashville and Columbia, Tennessee, and Huntsville, Alabama, to fund the relocation and business investment. It was a big move, a big investment, and a big opportunity. Three years later, early in 1840, the Price family, with the palpable absence of daughter Mary Ann, relocated to Galveston Island in the Republic of Texas. With a population of about 3,000 in 1840, the city of Galveston wasn’t even half the size of Nashville and it was dwarfed by New Orleans, which exceeded 100,000 but the tin island city was the front door of Texas; everything the new republic needed would have to pass through it. It was a merchant’s paradise.

The signature of John Price on a Galveston property document dated 6 November 1840. The letter "i" in the surname appears to be creatively dotted three times in sequence but it also could have been the result of a dripping pen trip.

John invested heavily in his new country; he purchased properties in Galveston, Jefferson, Crockett, Fort Bend, Sabine, and Bastrop counties, and city lots in Houston, Galveston, and Fort Houston – 11,262 acres in all by 1844. The Price family lived in a mansion on the north end of Galveston Island on Twelfth Street, between Church and Winnie Street. It fronted to the east towards the gulf; it was “one of the largest and most conspicuous residences in Galveston.” The family and mansion continued to be served by domestic slaves, starting with three under 15 and four adults upon their arrival in 1840, but settling for the next several years on one adult male, one adult female, and two children under 10. Some other items on which John Price was taxed included a gold watch, a silver watch, a saddle horse, and a “pleasure carriage.” He also became one of the founding members of the Methodist Church formed in Galveston and he purchased $100 in stock certificates ($3,600 in 2024 USD) that were designed to help reduce the Republic’s massive post-war debt. Just like in Nashville, John Price firmly entrenched himself in Galveston’s community, the church, his business enterprises, and his social station.

Price also continued his work as a commission merchant, regularly receiving cargo from the sidewheel steam packets that came across the gulf to Galveston from New Orleans, like shipments of ice for which he advertised he would “keep a constant supply on hand for the accommodation and comfort of the citizens of Houston.” Supplying ice to Houston was as sure-fire as peddling ice cream in Hell – it was a guaranteed money-maker for the shrewd merchant.

He further invested his time and energies in inventing and patenting; John Price was one of the earliest residents of the new republic to get his ideas patented. In 1839, while still of Nashville, he had been granted U.S. patents on a cotton press (for compacting cotton into bales) and eleven days later for a burner of pine knots, providing a source of illumination long before the time of electricity. Over the following two years, as a resident of the Republic of Texas, he was granted some of the first patents the new republic issued. Two were for the inventions that he had been previously given U.S. patents; the other three were for a chimney, a mill-dam, and something he called a “Texas Tonic” – indisputably the first medicine patented in Texas. A cotton bailer, a chimney, a torch, a dam, and a medicine – his five inventions couldn’t have been more different from each other if he tried. He was remembered by one of his contemporaries for having original ideas – the variety of his inventions seems to have amply proved the point.

“A New Thing Under the Sun”

Of his five inventions, Price’s Patent Texas Tonic was the only one that would require retail consumer interest to succeed; the other four were mainly of consequence for business and industrial applications, so his most visible investment of time and money was in the Texas Tonic.

The first advertisement found thus far, in the Civilian and Galveston Gazette of December 1846, featured the sunburst shown here and the slogan, “A New Thing Under the Sun.” He sold it at his business on the Strand in Galveston, the major commercial thoroughfare of the city and the entire region. Price told his newspaper audience to look for “the agency flag” there; that instruction, along with the street address and the sunburst image over the same ad, strongly suggests that the flag marking his business on the Strand was the sun graphic appearing in the ad. The bold image on a flag would indeed make his place easy to locate.

According to his advertising, the tonic bitters, as the back label called them, was first and foremost a cathartic – a powerful laxative that would clear out all the evil, disease-ridden gunk that clogs up a sick person’s internal plumbing, causing maladies from indigestion, constipation, and migraines to hemorrhoids, dizziness, and rheumatism. It also helped prevent the onset of the chills and fever, an enormous seasonal problem in the South. Testimonials appearing in his ads spoke most often of the tonic’s remedial effect on indigestion, chronic headache, constipation, and ague and fever. His ads also stated it was safe for children and “Peerless for females, in a delicate state,” meaning pregnant. Another important medicinal promise, presented in rhyming verse, was that it would cure infertility,

Barrenness.

Oh cheer up your spirits! don’t look so shy,

If husband’s ashamed, a servant can buy;

In three weeks or so! perhaps not so soon,

Gaze with delight on the beautiful moon;

Your eyes become bright – a heart filled with joy,

Good prospects in view – a Girl or Boy.

Aqua medicine bottle with beveled corners; open pontil and short-style double-tapered lip, ca.1840-1845. [LEFT:] Embossing in the front sunken panel: Price's / Patent / Texas / Tonic; [RIGHT:] Embossing in the back sunken panel: Republic / OF / Texas. (Courtesy of PeachridgeGlass.com)

As boldly impressive as were the curative promises and the flag on the Strand, the caliber of the product’s endorsers was top-shelf, the elite of the social register with whom John Price liked to hobnob: an army major and a mayor, medical doctors and Methodist ministers, an ex-governor of Mississippi, the president of Kentucky’s Transylvania University, and even fellow Tennessean and hero of the Texas Revolution, President Sam Houston himself, who wrote with gratitude:

By occasional use of your Bitters within the last year (in all not amounting to one bottle) I am satisfied that my general health [within the last seven years] has not been as good as it is at present. … My opinion is so favorable of the medicine, that I will keep a supply on hand for family use. … [The testimonial is dated 1814, but that is likely a transposition of 1841, a common mistake during the era when newspaper type was set backwards and upside-down by hand.]

John Price was apparently of the opinion that the price of the medicine was proportionate to its importance – the more it cost, the more distinctively important it was. In a time when a bottle of medicine was usually priced at 25 cents ($9 in 2024 USD), John Price charged a whopping $5.00 ($180.18 in 2024 USD) per bottle, which he said held 100 doses.

Always interested in volume sales, he also offered a bulk discount to plantation owners of 12 bottles at half price to cover the needs of their family and enslaved workforce. Consequently, plantation owners were quick to offer their enthusiastic endorsements of Price’s Texas Tonic, “Prepare me a demijohn for my plantation,” wrote a New Orleans planter; “A negro woman of mine took a violent chill,” wrote another, "I gave her one spoonful; she was well the next day, and so remains” [emphasis added]. Another Texas Tonic ad claimed Senator John C. Calhoun “intends to keep it on his plantation!” and the Mississippi congressman (William M. Gwinn, M.D.) who shared that insight ended with his own endorsement, “I think it will become a valuable plantation medicine and could be introduced into the army and navy of the United States with advantage!” Music to John Price’s ears.

Even with the choicest of southern aristocracy lifting Price’s Patent Texas Tonic on a pedestal, the entrepreneurial spirit deep inside John Price whispered that there was still one more plum to be pulled – the President of the United States – the recently elected James K. Polk of … Nashville, Tennessee.

What a Deal I've Got for You!

It’s not clear whether John Price and James Polk had a friendship or previous business dealings over the years; the two men shared Nashville as their home and John was comfortable to write to the president-elect in a respectful but casual manner, with some familiarity and humor. He wrote two letters to Polk on 31 January 1845 while he was back in Nashville, probably on business: one letter was about Texas debt and the second pitched the Texas Tonic without mentioning it by name (a note within the letter suggests that First Lady Polk was already familiar with the product).

President James K. Polk and First Lady Sarah Childress Polk were married for 21 years when he became the president in 1845. Image ca.1848. (Courtesy of the James K. Polk Presidential Museum. Wikimedia Commons.)

Price believed the President-Elect and his First Lady had a deep sadness in their lives that he could help correct. The Polks had been married for 21 years at the point that John Price was writing to them and they were childless; it was an emptiness that John Price, the father of nine children, couldn’t imagine. As a child, James Polk was operated on for the removal of urinary stones, but it may have left him sterile or impotent. John Price didn’t know about that, of course, and so told the president-elect,

…if everything in regard to your Phisical [sic] history is orthodox or to use an expression more Classical “everything in Denmark is right’ you need not die without children! [emphasis added]

He was proposing that President-Elect Polk use Price’s Patent Texas Tonic to cure the “Elect Excellency’s” barrenness – it was an offer uniquely designed for the President of the United States: Price would give Polk with the tonic bitters for two years, free of charge; if the medicine proved useful, “My prediction!” Price proposed,

… that is if you should have a living child by your best half within 2 years & 9 months from the first of January 1845 you pay me $1,600 … for perhaps a boy worth $16,000. I say again if “everything in Denmark” is right. I’ve known a case at Natchez of very late occurrence that succeeded in less than 12 months & a worse one or as bad as yours! 

The medicine he sold to the public for the 2024 equivalent of $206 per bottle he had just offered to the president-elect for the equivalent of $66,000 in 2024 USD! Early in my career with a trading card company, our CEO developed a line of embossed, 24-karat gold-coated football cards that were extremely expensive, exponentially more than the standard pack of cards. His justification was that it was far more efficient and economical to sell a single Whopper for a million dollars than it was to sell a million Whoppers for one dollar each. The gold football cards were nonetheless a tough sell and our company went out of business shortly thereafter. James K. Polk was 50 years old when he received Price’s sales pitch and the First Lady was 42 years old. Whether or not the President tried the Texas Tonic, they remained childless for the rest of their lives.

Advertisement, The State Guard (Wetumpka, AL), 22 AUG 1848, p.4.

John Price was quite aware that he was making a daring pitch and a hard sell and immediately followed it up with the justification that many innocent people had to pay even higher fees to lawyers to keep from being convicted. He was reaching and he knew it. He ended his letter trying to be sincere and trustworthy:

I assure you solemnly & personally that I am in earnest & also that this is entirely & (unless you make it yourself otherwise, which I think you’re too smart to do) eternally with me private! … even Mrs. Polk I hope won’t read on this delicate subject the whole or any part of this Epistle! … One request – Don’t let Mrs. Polk see this!

In the midst of pitching his medicine to the public for $5 per bottle and to the President for $1,600, daughter Mary Ann pleaded for him to provide “a few hundred dollars” so she and her husband and family could join the Mormon exodus from Nauvoo “to avoid unheard of persecution and mob violence.” His son-in-law suggested, “We intend to leave for the West if possible, before or by the 1st of June; a bottle or two of your tonic … might be of service to us in an uncultivated prairie region” [emphasis added]. Several months later J. S. Fullmer acknowledged receipt of two letters from his father-in-law, observing with concern, “you seem almost frantic with intense anxiety to rally us to a sense of our danger and Wonderful delusion.”

John and Mary Ann Fullmer escaped Nauvoo with their lives, their small children, and a few possessions in their handcart and eventually arrived at the Great Salt Lake Valley, where they did their part to establish a network of communities for members of their faith. As they went through their travels in the Far West, John Price was traveling through the Deep South, establishing a network of agencies for his medicine and promoting it in the newspapers. He set up agencies in Nashville, Tennessee; Selma and Wetumpka, Alabama; Frankfort, Kentucky; and Vicksburg, Mississippi; and his main agency for U.S. trade was at the business of his brother, Thomas Keene Price, in New Orleans, Louisiana; it was the hub of Texas Tonic sales and all the other agencies were spokes on the wheel. John’s own son, John Price Jr., was living and working the business with his uncle Thomas in New Orleans.

Preparing for the End of Days

In the closing days of 1846, John Price was in Galveston, preparing yet again for another extended trip to the east to promote his medicine and establish more agencies. At 56 years old, it almost seemed like he sensed his end of days might be near at hand, so two days before Christmas, he created his last will and testament, which he began, “Being on the eve of leaving Home for New Orleans & perhaps various other places in the U.S. & taking into view the various casualties of life…” and he left very specific, sternly-worded instructions for the continuation of the medicine business after his demise.

Mrs. Price has my Medical Recipe for Price’s Patent Texas Tonic, which she will wisely conceal, during a period of 2 years, after that my son William W. in conjunction with her will jointly hold the secret …

Never, - Never alter the Price of the Medicine 5$ per Bottle by retail and to families or planters at half price [for 12 bottles] …

… [be cautious in] writing or talk or needless exposure of the articles or mode of manufacturing this medicine … [the] loss of the secret … will be a sad folly. [emphasis added]

The persons who manufacture it should do it very privately.

The man who had been a thriving landlord in Nashville and a merchant in two cities, and who owned thousands of acres of land across the Deep South, was very, very serious about parlaying his one patent medicine into big business – it was not a pet project in between bigger endeavors – he wanted it to work.

It should be noted that all of John Price’s known business travel and newspaper advertising focused on points between Galveston on the west, Alabama to the east, and Kentucky in the north. Although it was called the Texas Tonic, its success was only minimally calculated for a Texas audience. During the years of the Republic of Texas there wasn’t a population or transportation infrastructure sufficient to justify the hope of mass marketing and sales inland. The tonic’s product name was more of a promotional device to attract the attention of other more established and populated areas of the Deep South; Texas was a brand-new country filling news stories, sort of like the curiosity that would be generated by an erupting volcano a few hundred miles away. The day was soon coming when the state of Texas was thickly populated, modernized and civilized to an extent that encouraged many patent medicine companies and thousands of other entrepreneurs, but in the 1840s the success of Price’s Patent Texas Tonic was always understood to be to the east of Galveston. It's highly unlikely that the bottle was manufactured in Texas but it was the home and base of operations of its owner.

On one of his many business trips for the Texas Tonic, John Price fell a victim to cholera in Vicksburg, Mississippi, one of eleven listed as dying of cholera in that issue of the Vicksburg newspaper. It was noted that he “died among strangers” but was respected by business associates, admired by church brethren, and loved by his family. Even his daughter Mary Ann begged for a daguerreotype or a locket miniature of her father to remember him by. And for all of his rough and gruff treatment of her, her husband, and their life choices, he was adamant in his will that “… all my children … [are] to be equal in every respect and in all my Estate.” [emphasis added] Despite shunning his daughter, he loved her and you don’t need to take a tonic for that.

After his passing, the family focused on ending the medicine business moreso than developing it. In 1853 John’s widow and brother advertised that they wanted to settle the business's accounts and have all consigned product returned. In 1866 Thomas tried offering the tonic in new small-sized vials of 4 and 8 ounces and put government stamps on every bottle before they left his New Orleans office. In 1873 the recipe was being advertised for sale (most likely making John roll over in his grave), along with a “considerable” amount of remaining inventory. Finally, another 14 years later, in 1887, a fire in the building holding what was still being described as “quite a quantity of Price’s Texas Tonic, owned by the Price estate,” was totally destroyed in a fire of unknown origin. The inventory was insured, which makes one wonder if it was an arson to get the insurance compensation for a medicine that had no apparent value after almost 40 years of not getting sold.

So today there are only three bottles of Price’s Patent Texas Tonic known to exist, which makes them worth exponentially more than John Price was trying to sell them for to President Polk. Maybe he understood its real value after all.

Lynn Massachusetts History - History of Medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century Medicine