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.

Living the Dream

224 years ago, while others were trying to figure out what it meant to be an American, one man was already defining the American Dream.

Today’s blog post isn’t about a promising cure but it is most definitely about a promising life.

I’ve been collecting advertising trade cards for a solid 40 years now. There are some beauties in my collection and some rare ones too, but it had seemed almost impossible to add an Early American trade card to my personal trove of ephemeral treasures; it's been an unfulfilled dream.

American trade cards were in use at least as far back as 1722, but examples from before the end of the Civil War are almost exclusively found in museums and a small handful of private collections. They’re rarer than hen’s teeth – and far more desirable. Absolutely dream-worthy.

However, in the last few months I’ve been able to add the Dr. John Curtis trade card (New York, ca.1865) and the British trade card (ca.1825) of John Conquest, hatmaker. (I’ve shared their stories with you this past May 6th [Curtis] and June 10th [Conquest]). Please check them out!

This trade card of John E. Tyler dates back to 1801. To fully understand its significance, you need to know the detailed backstory. Yes, there’s a lot to read, but it’s the only way to discover the whole story this very special trade card is trying to tell. The past is still trying to talk to us.

J. E. Tyler trade card, ca.1801 - magnified. Rapoza collection.

A FIRM FOUNDATION (1766-1790)

In 1766, achy, weary travelers seven miles north of Rhode Island stopped in the town of Mendon in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The stagecoach rest stop was 37 miles from Boston, according to the ancient milestone marker that is still standing in the town's Founder's Park, by the side of the original Middle Post Road. The rugged, undulating dirt road was jarring and tiring (George Washington complained about it) but nonetheless the vital artery connecting Mendon to Boston; it was the difference between going nowhere and going to the hub of their colony’s universe.

Riding another mile up the road towards Boston, travelers passed the south edge of the 600-plus acre Tyler property. The Tylers had been a prominent family in Mendon for generations since it had become a town a century earlier. John and Anna Tyler farmed their large property and had two children within a few years of their marriage: daughter Anna in 1764 and then son John in 1766.

Let me put this in perspective: 1766 was 259 years ago; slavery was still legal in Massachusetts and a decade before the 13 Colonies became the United States; the Boston Massacre wouldn’t happen for another four years and the Boston Tea Party three more years after that. Before dealing with wartime turmoil, however, the Tylers’ world was tossed upside-down when farmer John’s wife died in 1772; a few weeks later, the newly motherless John junior turned six years old. Despite the devastating personal loss and the challenge of suddenly becoming the single parent of two small children, John Tyler senior risked everything by participating on a committee of six Mendon men who drafted a formal protest to the various acts of Parliament that violated colonial rights and privileges, imposing duties or taxation on the Massachusetts Bay Colony. At a town meeting in March 1773, the committee of six drafted nineteen resolutions, starting with “… all Men have naturally an equal Right to Life, Liberty, and Property”; it was the first time such sentiments were put in writing in the American Colonies. The protest and refusal to accept the Crown’s impositions and seizures of liberties put every man who signed them at great personal risk, but they bravely voted nonetheless:

… that the foregoing Resolves be entered in the Town Book that our Children, in years to come, may know the sentiments of their Fathers in Regard to our Invaluable Rights and Liberties. [emphasis added]

John Tyler probably wondered whether putting his name to those words was sharing his patriotic values with his two motherless children or leaving them his farewell address.

In 1774 Britain closed the port of Boston, prompting Mendon citizens to write new resolves, urging the colony to “suspend all trade with the island of Great Britain until said act of blocking Boston Harbor be repealed and restoration of our charter rights be obtained.”

In response to the British attacks against the colonists in Lexington and Concord, on 19 April 1775, Mendon's soldiers mustered at Founders' Park and marched on to Boston by way of Middle Post Road; Private John Tyler was one of those soldiers, marching past his farm and probably his sobbing 11-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son as he headed to an uncertain future.

Magnified view of a map of the Massachusetts Bay Colony showing the three Boston Post Road routes. The Middle Post Road connected Mendon to Boston, both highlighted in red. From S. Jenkins, The old Boston Post Road, (G.P. Putnam and Sons, New York and London, 1914). Public Domain; courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Private Tyler’s first tour of duty was nine days, stationed in Roxbury to prevent an advance of British troops by land into the colony from Boston. Eleven months later, Tyler had raised a company in Mendon and neighboring towns, was named its captain, and reported to Roxbury again, to join the ongoing siege of Boston. Captain Tyler and his company also spent the winter of 1777-1778 with General Washington at Valley Forge, but in March he was back in Mendon; the 47-year-old married a second time to a woman 21 years younger – she was just 11 and 13 years older, respectively, than her new stepdaughter, Anna, and stepson, John junior.

With the exception of some skirmishes in the South and the western frontier, the war was decisively concluded by the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781. At the cost of many valiant lives, the colonists’ liberties and property had been restored and their independence from Britain gained.The formal peace treaty was signed in 1783 by which time Captain Tyler’s little boy had become a young man and a student at Harvard University. At 20 years old he was one of 45 graduates in 1786, gaining his Bachelor of Arts degree.

Back home from the war, John senior was able to build the value of his estate to £1,990 – over a half-million dollars (in 2024 USD) and to enlarge his family through his second marriage. He fathered five more children between 1779 and 1788; then, just two months after his last child’s birth, the vigorous father and husband, wealthy farmer, and valiant veteran of war suddenly died. With his future seeming far more promising than when he had marched off to war 13 years earlier, he was killed in a moment of cruel irony by the falling of a large limb off a tree that he was in the process of cutting down.

From his father’s death through 1790, John the son was now being recognized by the courts as John Tyler, Gentleman of Mendon, a title typically reserved for those of high social standing, education, and wealth (usually inherited wealth). And he was single.

BUILDING BLOCKS (1791-1793)

The 57-year-old John senior didn’t anticipate his untimely accidental death, so he hadn’t prepared a will. In 1791 the court made his oldest son and namesake the administrator of his father’s estate, but even in his role as the first-born male, and the most educationally accomplished in his small family, he did nothing to pad his portion of the inheritance; he neither pushed to gain the entire estate or the double portion often accorded to the eldest son. His stepmother was given the widow’s third of the estate and the remainder was divided equally between him, his sister, and their five stepbrothers and stepsisters. The seven children of Captain John Tyler, ranging from 24 to 3 years old, each received exactly £119-3-8 (about $30,040 in 2024 USD) – equal to the penny. In another episode of brutal irony, John’s older sister Anna died while the court was in the process of distributing their father’s estate to the family; John was made the executor of her estate as well.

John’s education and ambition were steering him away from farming. A few months after his father’s estate was settled, “John Tyler, Gentleman” began showing up in records as “Dr. John Tyler,” a physician in Westborough, Massachusetts, 13 miles north of Mendon. He was listed as a physician there from August 1791 to November 1793. During that time he was awarded a courtesy (ad eundem) Master of Arts degree from Yale University in September 1792 and eight days later he received payment from Westborough for his attendance and medicines provided to one of its paupers.

Receipt for medicines and services to John Scudmore, signed by John Tayler, 1792. Tayler’s name is identified as “Dr. John Tayler on the other side of this receipt. From Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001. Courtesy of FamilySearch.org

Westborough was a small town – only 118 houses in 1791 – and there was already a popular physician named Hawes who had lived and practiced there for almost three decades, doctoring the town’s ill, making and dispensing his own medicines, and even pulling teeth. He had also become an influential leader there as its town meeting moderator, town clerk, and one of its selectmen. Money was obviously tight in the small town as Dr. Hawes often had to accept bartered goods in the absence of cash for his services – “everything from rum to pudding pans.” He also supplemented his income by hiring out horses and renting rooms in his home for lodging.

If John Tyler had real intentions to make the practice of medicine his career, Westborough seemed an unlikely location for an aspiring doctor to settle down. Clearly smart and well educated, it was incongruous for the new doctor to practice medicine in a very small town dominated for decades by a well-established physician (after all, there were only so many pudding pans a single guy needed!). Whatever his motivations were to go to Westborough, he left there with building blocks that would shape his future.

The few years John Tyler spent in Westborough were pivotal because of his association with the prominent Parkman family. Breck Parkman, a wealthy merchant, had a profound impact on the trajectory of John’s career. Three generations of the Parkman family had been tightly connected to Westborough’s Congregational Church where Breck’s father, the Reverend Ebenezer Parkman, served through much of the century as its first minister. There, on 10 November 1793, the church’s records reveal, “Doctor John Tyler[,] upon his public profession of Religion was baptized[,] it not having been done for him in his infancy.” The 27-year-old’s submersion in baptismal waters was most likely witnessed by his business mentor, Breck Parkman, and one of Breck’s children in particular – Hannah, who was just 13 when John had first arrived in town and 15 years old at the 27-year-old doctor’s baptism. In the years ahead, she would become his wife, her father would become his business partner, and John’s newfound religious faith would punctuate his path forward.

During his three years in Westborough, John Tyler’s life had undergone a personal revolution. He had arrived there as the lone surviving member of his birth family but he left Westborough with close ties to his new pseudo-family; he also gave up his career as a physician, became a merchant, was baptized a Christian, and went to Boston to start over. Like the new country around him, he was beginning life anew.

THE NEW NATION (1794-1800)

Charles Thomson's design for the Great Seal of the United States, 1782. Reports of Committees of Congress; Records of the Continental and Confederation Congresses and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789, Record Group 360; National Archives.

The fact that John Tyler could choose to live, work, and have property in Boston was the fulfillment of a nation’s dream; the 13 British colonies in North America had won the right to unite as an independent nation. The port of Boston was once again wide open to ship and receive goods with the world. The patriotic dreams of Captain Tyler had come true: his son was able to enjoy his unfettered rights to life, liberty, and property, becoming a merchant and building his life in Boston. The city that had been embattled and blockaded to choke it into subservience was now alive with ambition and freedom. Like the rest of the citizenry throughout the United States, Bostonians could proudly identify with the bald eagle, a uniquely North American species; it had been chosen in 1782 as the Great Seal of the United States, the new nation’s symbol of strength, freedom, and courage; Paul Revere had it adorn his own trade card.

John Tyler staked his claim to American success by moving to Boston in early 1794; within a few months of the doctor being baptized in Westborough he had resurfaced as a merchant in Boston. In 1796 he was listed as a retailer on Cambridge Street in the heart of the city, down the street from Samuel Chamberlin’s “Medical Cordial Store … at the sign of the Blue Bottle.” Tyler’s shop was near the wharves, the heartbeat of the city. The entire east side of Boston bristled with shipping docks like the back of an agitated porcupine.

The most dramatic protrusion into Boston Harbor was Long Wharf, jutting a half mile into the bay’s deep water, allowing the biggest ships to dock there and unload their large cargoes. It was as long historically as it was spatially. Looking through a spyglass on a clear day in 1726 at the end of Long Wharf, the body of pirate William Fly might be seen hanging in a gibbet cage in the harbor. In 1761 the Boston Gazette advertised the sale of Negro slaves “just imported from Africa” at No.19 Long Wharf. During the Revolution, the British landed at and evacuated from Long Wharf. A long line of warehouses, shipping offices, merchant shops, sailmakers, and ship chandlers were built upon the long wooden tongue of deck and pilings that stuck out far into the harbor. Businesses at No.19 and No.44 were nearer the west end that was attached to the land.

Paul Revere, "A view of part of the town of Boston in New-England and Brittish [sic] ships of war landing their troops! 1768." In the left foreground is Long Wharf, starting in the city and jutting out into the harbor. The wharf extended into the harbor a half mile at one point, but this image shows landfill and Boston's buildings already surrounding some of the wharf. The wharf is surmounted by a long row of buildings that were the merchants' warehouses, counting houses, chandleries, etc. Map, Chicago, Ill: Alfred L. Sewell, [1870]. Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, https://collections.

Newspaper advertisements were used to announce the sale of goods unloaded by recently arrived ships. Addresses were listed for the shops and warehouses on and near the wharves where the particular goods could be purchased, usually along with the names of the business owners. In 1798, however, the building at No.44 Long Wharf was ownerless and identified simply by the number; whichever ship captains had docked on the other side of the wharf from the empty building mentioned their location at Long Wharf by simply stating it was “opposite No.44.” In 1799 the location remained vacant and just a reference point from which to find other things:

FOR SALE. / The schooner POWDER-POINT, 82 tons, one year old; now lying opposite No.44, South side Long Wharf. …(23 MAY 1799)

For CHARLESTON, (s.c.) / The brig CYRUS … will sail in a few days … For FREIGHT or PASSAGE, (having good accommodations) apply to the Master on board opposite No.44, Long-Wharf … (25 JUL 1799)

    In January 1798 the editor of Boston’s Columbian Centinel newspaper noted that the empty building had what amounted to early Federalist-era graffiti scrawled across the front:

KINGS ARE NUISANCES

Although the snarky message could have been the expression of a dated opinion about England’s King George III, it’s more likely to have been referring to the sitting president John Adams, who was viewed by some of the population as despotic, or even George Washington, the concern being that the creation of the office of president just allowed another monarch to rule.

Vandalism had not been limited to the docks; other business locations in the city were being hit in 1799 and the business owners were getting fed up:

One Hundred Dollars Reward

is offered for the discovery of the infamous Villains, who on Saturday Night last defaced the Sign-Boards and Shops through Cornhill, Market Square and Union street. Whoever will bring to light the perpetrators of that work of Darkness so that they may be convicted thereof, shalt receive the above reward, on application to SAMUEL WHITWELL. N.B. The sum of near Six Hundred Dollars is subscribed, for the purpose of bringing the offenders to condign punishment. ... [emphasis added]

Perhaps the anti-royalty scrawling at No.44 Long Wharf was evidence the empty building had some elements of undesirability that kept it vacant for so long and encouraged visual vandalism; if so, the price may have been adjusted to make it attractive for the right enterprising business to make a try at the location. By at least 16 October 1800, John Tyler had set himself up at No.44 Long Wharf; there he offered for sale 25 large barrels of “Cogniac & Bourdeaux Brandy … 5 yrs old of the best flavour” and 50 barrels of “elegant white sugar.” He may have been there as early as February 1800, when someone at No.44 offered “A Few boxes of old Havannah Segars, manufactured from genuine Cuba Tobacco …” and again in April 1800 when 44 Long Wharf  advertised, “WANTED, A BRIG FROM 130 to 160 tons, to take a freight to Holland.” 

The fact that the busy city of 25,000 had other men also being identified in the newspapers as John Tyler may have been the reason that Boston’s new 35-year-old merchant sought out a legal change of name in March 1801:

John Tyler, of Boston, in the county of Suffolk, son of John Tyler, late of Mendon, in the county of Worcester, deceased, shall be allowed to take the name of John Eugene Tyler. [emphasis added]

As soon as the court approved his request, he immediately began using his new middle name and initial to single himself out to his customers. It was a simple but important change: John Tyler (no middle name) was selling goods at No.44 Long Wharf from 1800 to March 1801, but starting in April 1801, newspaper advertisements were identifying the proprietor as John E. Tyler, J. E. Tyler, and John Eugene Tyler – every possible version other than just his two birthnames. Bursting at the seams with enthusiastic determination to succeed in the new nation, the man with a new name, new business address, and new career was ready to shout it to the world.

THE NEW AMERICAN (1801-1803) 

The same exultant spirit of eagerness and patriotic nationalism floated through Boston at the dawn of the new century, especially among the docks of the merchant trade. They vividly remembered the economic suffocation of the blockade during the war and were determined to reverse the pains of the past into a future full of promise. The city-wide exuberance was reflected in Boston’s 1801 Independence Day festivities. The jubilant and patriotic celebration was marked by church bells ringing throughout the city, the red, white, and blue Stars and Stripes waving everywhere, and salutes being fired from the frigates Constitution and Boston in the harbor and Fort Independence on Castle Island. An orator exhorted a large gathering of his fellow citizens “to feel, and to be AMERICANS,” and many toasts were offered to the new nation; the American eagle finding its way into several:

May every savage beast and bird of prey that shall dare to infest this happy country, or to attempt any depredations either by sea or land, be caught and held fast in the talons of the American Eagle.

May it bring the Barbarians to a sense of their duty … and make them crouch to the American Eagle.

Boston's shop and tavern signs often echoed their owners' newfound postwar patriotism. In addition to the Golden Eagle Tavern (1784) on Brattle Street and the"Sign of the Eagle" (1798) on Fore Street where the Frigate Constitution tried to recruit its crew, there was the "Sign of the Yankey Hero" (1783) in Wing's Lane, the "Sign of the Boston Frigate" (1800) on Fish Street, and the "Sign of the Golden Ball" (1799) on Wing's Lane. While the latter doesn't speak clearly to our modern sensibilities as a sign of patriotism, the owner of the liquor business it marked explained his customers were invited:

... to the Golden Ball - where he hopes the gratification they will receive, will be as great, as was that of the gallant tars of America, when they were told what effect another AMERICAN BALL [i.e., the cannonball] which well deserves to be GOLDEN, had on a foreign insurgent [i.e., England]. [emphases as in original]

     There can be little doubt that the advertising trade card John E. Tyler commissioned (the engraver is unidentified) reflected the same patriotic fervor from the son of patriot Captain John Tyler, Harvard graduate, and doctor-turned-merchant. The pride he felt in the promise of both the new country and his new business were illustrated symbolically by the bald eagle – bold, strong, majestic, independent, and free; its broad wings stretched out into spread-eagle position, ready to soar at any moment of its choosing, yet controlled enough to display the commission merchant’s business banner. The eagle’s head is haloed by glory rays, classic symbols of a divine origin, suggesting the sacred nature of its mission. When the J. E. Tyler trade card was created in 1801, it must have felt like Heaven was in his corner.

J. E. Tyler, Commission Merchant. Advertising Trade Card, ca.1801. John Tyler did not add a middle initial to his name until 7 March 1801, therefore this card was produced sometime during J. E. Tyler’s proprietorship at No.44 Long Wharf, between 1801-1803. While the card could have been produced in 1802 or 1803, it seems highly unlikely.  His business had fallen off precipitously subsequent to its inaugural year. Commissioning the trade card’s design, engraving, and printing at the start of the business was feeding an opportunity, but doing so in 1802 or even worse, in 1803, would have made it an unwelcome expense and represented much less of an opportunity, given the depression that was beginning to descend on the American economy and commerce because of Europe's ongoing Napoleanic Wars (1803-1815). Relocation of his business in 1804 and realigning it into a partnership for much-needed support were probably in the planning stages long before the end of his tenancy in 1803. Rapoza collection.

     Palm fronds tied to the bottom of the eagle’s oval perch represented John Tyler’s new Christian resolve. The branches from the common desert tree were used to honor the Messiah's ultimate triumph over life's most severe obstacles – sin and death.  The overall card design may also have intended to subliminally project the eagle in the role of a phoenix, resurrected as Jesus had been and as John Tyler was trying to become in his new occupation and city.

It's possible but unlikely that the image on John E. Tyler's trade card was a copy of a sign over his business. The various shops and warehouses on Long Wharf during the first decade of the 1800s were identified by a street number - like John E. Tyler's No.44 Long Wharf location - and none, including Tyler, identified their location additionally as "at the Sign of ...". When Tyler was starting his business on Long Wharf, building numbers were just beginning to replace expensive building signs as business locators and trade cards were increasingly becoming the preferred means to promote the business and impress the customers.

One thing that is quite clear from 18th and early 19th century advertising trade cards is that the designs were purposeful, symbolic, and well planned out to communicate a lot and make a strong, memorable impression about the business in a small space. There was nothing haphazard and accidental in the symbolism and design of the J. E. Tyler trade card; it was left to the viewer of 1801 and 2025 to intuitively figure out what those messages were. But the bald eagle was the new symbol of America and as such would have resonated strongly in Boston at the beginning of the 19th century. Having the trade card at home or tucked in a pocket made it an ideal memory aid to find Tyler’s business for the first time or to remember where it was when standing among the clatter and clamor of people, horses, carriages, oxen, and cargo-mounded wagons on the docks in busy Boston. The back of the card was blank, as most early cards were, so that the proprietor could record notes of pending or completed sales before handing it to the customer. This example has no writing on the reverse; it remains blank

The challenge for 21st century viewers is to overlook the inaccurate, almost cartoonish rendering of the bald eagle and the palm branches. The bird’s “bald” head is depicted as little more than an eye mask; the secondary feathers are entirely missing from most of both wings; and the head seems too large for a body that is far too short. Even the palm branches were likely created from the imagination rather than a Bostonian engraver's first-hand observation of Middle Eastern palms. The engraver was not trying to reproduce museum-worthy, ornithologically and botanically accurate illustrations.

Four examples of the signature of John Tyler showing experienced ease of penmanship and occasional calligraphic flourishes. All four examples appear on legal and business documents that predate his legal name change in 1801.

What the card illustration lacked in scientific accuracy, it made up for in engraved elegance. Calligraphic flourishes and embellishments framed and highlighted the proprietor’s new name and the all-important address of his business, No.44 Long Wharf, Boston. The engraver’s linework was rendered in great detail, giving curving depth to the palm fronds, motion to the banner, scales on the feet, and finesse to the shafts and vanes of each feather. The high-quality paper stock was stiffer and smoother than the era's standard rag writing paper and, combined with the finely engraved linework printed on it by copperplate, the result intentionally conveyed the quality of the card, the new business, and the esteemed customer.

The card was almost certainly produced in a small print run, perhaps about 100 cards, and therefore strategically intended for the most preferred clients – the big-quantity and repeat-purchasing business customer. It was not a mass-produced piece of ephemera arbitrarily handed out to any man, woman, or child who happened to stroll by No.44 Long Wharf – that's what trade cards would become after the American Civil War, but John Tyler's world was long before the dramatic improvements in printing technology that allowed for much larger and cheaper print runs.

John Tyler’s own signature sometimes showed the same flair for calligraphic flourishes as those that were engraved on his trade card and he always demonstrated a refined skill and ease with a quill pen in his hand as it lightly scratched along the paper. There was no more hesitation in John E. Tyler’s command of his merchant business than he had shown in using a pen. With his name changed, his business established at No.44 Long Wharf, and his trade card printed, he aggressively engaged in the business of negotiating the receipt and sale of a seller’s goods to other businesses and sometimes the public. He did so on a commission basis, receiving a percentage fee for finding a buyer and selling the seller’s goods to the buyer. It was a business that relied on connections, establishing good business relationships, and conducting it in a good economic environment; any problem with the seller, buyer, or economy spelled trouble for the commission merchant. It was nothing like farming or doctoring, but he was boldly determined to make it work.

1801 printing services advertisement for the Columbian Centinel office in Boston, just a few blocks down the street from J. E. Tyler's business on Long Wharf. Note especially "Merchant's Address CARDS," referring to Tyler's type of card featured in this post. Years later the terminology was standardized to "advertising trade card." The printer is not listed on Tyler's card but it is interesting to note that he advertised in the Centinel in the same year as this ad; it was certainly possible that he had them print up his "Merchants' Address Cards" as well. Columbian Centinel, 12 August 1801.

He promoted his clients’ ship cargoes ambitiously in several Boston newspapers throughout 1801, his first year in the commission merchant business at No.44 Long Wharf as John E. Tyler; his advertisements served as newsprint fanfare to announce that the world was coming to Boston in ships. He sold cotton and cheese, glassware and anchors, bushels of beans and boxes of spermaceti candles; German Steel and Swedish Iron; coffee from Port au Prince and Trinidad; a bunch of sugar from Hispaniola and St. Croix, and lots of rum from Jamaica and Tobago; superfine flour from Baltimore and Philadelphia; and coarse salt from Lisbon and Liverpool. While he sold to families, shopkeepers, and country traders, his focus was selling in large lots to businesses, even trying to advance-sell cargo loads he had contracted for that were still making their way across the ocean. He sold loads by large 18th century barrel measures: hogsheads, pipes, and quintals. Some of his largest lots included 4,400 gallons of Havanna molasses, 6,000 pounds of green coffee, 12,000 pounds of cocoa from Caraccas, almost 50,000 pounds (225 quintals) of codfish, 70,000 boards of lumber, and 10 tons of Swedish iron. He sometimes took the risk on time-sensitive merchandise like a load of fish, trying to find buyers for a quick sale before the deal stank.

To be successful, there were greater risks he would take than selling fish or glassware: he sometimes extended unsecured credit to his customers, letting them pay months later for a load of coffee, sugar, or rum today, and he sometimes advanced his consigners cash on the goods they consigned to him, on the expectation that he would be able to sell the load and recover his money and still make his profit. It was risky business. In March 1802 a fire spread late at night up Long Wharf, threatening all its businesses, including J. E. Tyler’s, as well as the wharf itself. It destroyed eight buildings, Nos. 2 through 8 Long Wharf, and headed up the wharf towards No.44. Buildings 9 and 10 were partially pulled down to arrest the progress of the flames. Tyler’s building was among those spared but he was also feeling the heat from other pressures.

J. E. Tyler, No. 44 Long Wharf. Columbian Centinel, 28 October 1801. Copy at top right reads, “Has for sale, now landing,” meaning the ship was soon to dock and have the cargo unloaded, ready for purchase. While Tyler's trade card was designed as a business announcement and locator, newspaper ads had the advantage of immediacy, calling attention to fresh merchandise that could be purchased as soon as the advertisement caught the reader's eye.

Newspaper advertisements were a critical means to quickly broadcast what merchandise he was trying to flip. In 1801, his first full year of business, he ran sixteen ads (plus each ad usually ran for several issues); but his advertising frequency dropped in 1802 by more than half. In 1803 Tyler’s newspaper advertising dropped steeply again; he was running only a quarter of the ads he had placed in 1801. England and France were at war and although the U.S. tried to maintain its neutrality, both countries attacked American shipping, seizing the ships and their cargoes. To add to the uncertainty of the future, the Tylers gave birth to their first child in September 1803: Hannah Parkman Tyler. John’s business was struggling at the same time that his family was growing – he needed an ally.

WARTIME ALLIANCE (1804-1810) 

In January 1804, the records of Westborough’s Congregational church noted, “Mr. John Eugene Tyler & Hannah Breck his wife were dismissed from us & recommended to the church in Boston, commonly styled the Old South.” The Tylers were determined to live in Boston but they needed help to make it all work. By April of that year, No.44 was vacant again and in May, Breck Parkman had a nephew who was running his own commission merchant business out of the same location, while John E. Tyler showed up at No.41 Long Wharf in August, perhaps a more affordable location than his former business a few doors down the wharf. In October, John’s father-in-law intervened, either to help John fix his business, or out of concern for his daughter Hannah and his grandbaby Hannah, or perhaps genuinely to help all three. The co-partnership took second-floor rooms at 83 State Street, a few blocks away from  where Long Wharf attached to the city. The announcement stated that Breck Parkman, “the senior partner,” would continue to run his store in Westborough while Tyler and a third partner named Parker would work out of Boston, a few blocks from Long Wharf. In promotional literature for Chamberlin's Patent Bilious Cordial, the medicine’s newest agents weren’t listed as based in Boston but as “Parkman, Tyler & Parker, Westborough” – father-in-law Parkman was the company decision-maker and clearly in control, even from his home thirty miles away.

Both of the partnership’s two locations focused on “a great variety of English, India and West-India Goods, at inviting prices, by wholesale or retail.” The new partnership was broadening Tyler’s previous approach of selling large lots to substantial businesses; the new firm was now encouraging retail sales as well – selling “by the package or piece for cash or short approved credit” – especially to attract fashion-conscious female patronage.

The Napoleonic Wars continued to disrupt American shipping and trade. Engaged in a war for the control of Europe, Britain and France continued to impose trade restrictions, ship seizures and blockades. Despite the challenges, the new partnership of Parkman, Tyler & Parker was able to deliver on its promise to supply shiploads of foreign merchandise. Their seven newspaper ads over the span of two years, 1805-1806, announced a wide variety of goods from London and Liverpool including ladies’ purses, pearl buttons, and pocketbooks; opera glasses and Britannia tea pots, “bombazets, calamancos, ruffellets, and shalloons,” blue, brown, and “bottle-green broadcloths,” and a host of fashions for every season. In July 1806, during his busy efforts to make the partnership succeed, John Tyler became a father for the second time with another daughter.  

In March 1807 the partnership was dissolved and a new company was formed, substituting Parker with Breck’s oldest surviving son, Charles. The new firm was called Parkman, Tyler & Parkman: Breck was 58, John was 41, and Charles was the junior partner at 22, apparently being taught the merchant business by his father similar to how he had been mentoring his son-in-law John. Throughout the balance of the year, however, hard times for ship owners and merchants continued. In late December President Jefferson signed the Embargo Act into law, prohibiting American ships from undertaking voyages to foreign ports; the act proved devastating for the American economy, particularly for port cities like Boston, where ships lay idle at the docks.

Tyler and his business partners brought two customers to court in each of the two years preceding the embargo for nonpayment of their accounts, but in 1808, the year after the Embargo act was passed, he brought eight to court for the same offense – nonpayment of goods sold and delivered according to the terms and time frame in which they promised to pay – and he won every case. One of his delinquent customers was Samuel Chamberlain, maker of the Patent Bilious Cordial. In another law suit, the sheriff was instructed to put the two defendants in jail until their debt to Tyler’s partnership was paid off. The years of selling goods on credit were playing havoc with his balance sheets each time business conditions softened and after the Embargo Act, when Boston’s economy took a severe downturn. In 1808 John E. Tyler seemed to spend more time as a plaintiff chasing delinquent customers than as a commission merchant courting new ones.

In 1809 the law suits continued but the partnership’s newspaper advertising did not; the era of partnerships for Tyler was coming to an end. He needed to find a better solution; his business was on the decline but his family continued to increase – his third daughter was born earlier that year.  Starting in late 1810, Tyler went into business on his own at the same 83 State Street location where the Parkman, Tyler & Parkman partnership formally ended at the beginning of 1811; oh, and his fourth daughter was then born in June. More than ever, he needed to get control of his business and his balance sheet. Then in June 1812, the U.S. declared war on Great Britain.

THE LAST HOORAH (1811-1815)

During the war years, 1812-1815, John E. Tyler managed to post five newspaper ads, all of which were for goods from North and South Carolina – bushels of corn, hogsheads of hams, gallons of turpentine, varnish, and pitch, casks of rice, boxes of soap, and kegs of tobacco. This reveals he was relying on coastal trade; given the British blockade of American ports during the war, the goods he was able to sell were probably the result of smuggling, privateering, and other illicit methods of maritime skullduggery to sneak past the British ships. After a peace treaty ended the war in February 1815 and the Battle of Waterloo ended the Napoleanic Wars in June, Tyler and the other merchants of Boston were once again free to resurrect their businesses; by November, he was offering Russian iron from a ship from St. Petersburg, Russia, and “a few boxes of best Havanna Cigars”; the oceans were finally open for business.

Almost as if a symbol of celebration, in October of 1815, John E. Tyler became a father for the sixth time – to a fifth daughter; the fifth child, a son, had been born in 1813, a little less than a year after the war had been declared. Perhaps fatherhood had weighed into his decision to become a deacon in his church and the treasurer of the American Society for Educating Pious Youth for the Gospel Ministry in December 1815. John and Hannah begat two more children (eight in all) before they were done: a daughter in 1817 and finally a second son, John Eugene Tyler, in 1819, when his father and namesake was 53 years old.

TAPS (1816-1821) 

Despite the war, the blockades, the delinquent customers, and other obstacles to his career, the last five years of John E. Tyler’s life may have been the hardest on him. He had to endure the grief of losing three of his children in 1816 (14 months old), 1818 (4 years 10 months), and 1819 (16 months). His business had become quiet in the newspapers, advertising goods for sale just six times between 1816-1821, the most notable being a few hogsheads of apothecaries’ vials for sale in 1816 and a quantity of New Orleans cotton and patent silk hats from southwestern England in 1819. Similarly, he shifted his business location in Boston four times in those last five years for unknown reasons, though I suspect it amounted to reducing expenses to a bare-bones budget.

Headstone of Dea. J. E. Tyler, Pine Grove Cemetery, Westborough, MA. Note that the engraving lists him by the title of Deacon, no Doctor. Also note the birthyear is incorrect and should read 1766. Find-A-Grave. Photo courtesy of C.Kay.

John E. Tyler died on the morning of 25 January 1821 at age 55; none of the three newspapers announcing his death explained the cause. It does not appear to have been anticipated since he died intestate, but then there wasn’t much left to protect; after the creditors’ claims were resolved, his estate was declared insolvent. His wife and children moved back to her father’s house in Westborough and even their pews in Boston’s Park Street Church  were sold off to help pay off the creditors. To punctuate his story with a final sadness, his 15-year-old daughter died in Westborough before the year was over.

Having contemplated his entire life, I feel that his trade card reflects the high point of his life – at least the business portion of it. Newly married, moved into Boston, and ready to do business with the world, he commissioned the card – probably the only artwork he ever commissioned – to reflect his optimism, ambition, and excitement as a new Boston merchant in the new United States. It was a bold, proud, and free expression of his dream. His subsequent life does not seem to have lived up to this apex frozen in time, but we see it now, 224 years later, and are humbled at the thought that this country we enjoy so much was built on the backs of people who weren’t afraid to dream.

 

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

Long, Long Before Iron Man's Arc Reactor: R. P. Hall's Galvano-Electric Plaster

UPDATE: July 2025 - A very rare, unusual galvanic battery was listed this month on eBay, and I secured the kind permission of the seller to show the item on this blog post. Definitely worth a look - SEE THE STARTLING IMAGE NEAR THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST! It has a fascinating mixture of cosmic symbolism: the sun and a crescent moon, two hearts, and a pair of all-seeing eyes, all framed by a horseshoe and divided by a Christian cross. A potent combination of talismanic protection from illness, bad luck, and evil - talk about a defense and cure-all for anything evil that might approach!

It doesn’t happen often.

After 40 years of collecting Victorian advertising, it has to be something truly special to catch my eye. It must be so different that it makes me do a double-take. My finger slips off the mouse button, and my head leans forward, bringing my face close to the screen. My eyes go into microscopic-focus mode to ensure I’m not imagining things. My brain kicks into overdrive, checking my virtual collection to confirm I don’t already own one. It studies the subject for possible subliminal messages, cultural significance, and historical relevance. I soak in the richness of the colors, the allure of the graphics, and the brilliance of the design.

On those rare occasions when the image exceeds my wildest expectations, the little boy in me pronounces the official response of my experienced, high-level analysis:

“Cooooool!”

Click. Somewhere out there, I’ve made a seller happy. Okay, calm down, adrenaline; it’s mine.

The Discovery of Hall’s Galvano-Electric Plaster

I recently had such an experience, and I’d like to share it with you. About a month ago, I saw the Hall’s Galvano-Electric Plaster trade card for the first time ever. I’ve spent so much time examining this card and researching the backstory of the product and its advertising that it has taken me until now to be ready to report my findings. I discovered far more about the product and the man behind it than I had expected. This has left me in a quandary about how to present it in a blog post.

I’ve decided to approach it differently: this post will focus exclusively on this one advertising trade card, while the next post will delve into the whole story—the inventor of this product, his life, how he created this particular medical item, and what happened to both him and his invention.

So for today, let’s focus on the curious medical device that bamboozled both the patient and the inventor alike: Hall’s Galvano-Electric Plaster.

Mustard and Frogs’ Legs

The inventor of this device was Reuben P. Hall, a former peddler with no formal medical education. However, what he lacked in knowledge, he made up for with a vivid imagination, meticulous ingenuity, and keen perception. He saw two medical treatments—ancient plasters and modern electricity—being used for the same aches, pains, and diseases. In 1874, he figured out a way to bring these two methods together into one new and improved solution.

For centuries, wives and mothers made a home remedy called plasters from ingredients they had on hand. Mustard plasters were the most common form, made by mixing mustard powder, flour, and water into a paste. This gloopy mess was spread on one side of a piece of fabric and applied wherever on the body it was needed, such as on the chest for colds and congestion or on the back for arthritis, muscle pain, and backache. The mixture provided penetrating warmth to the area beneath. Today’s more modern-sounding and medicinally improved “pain relief patches” are the evolved descendants of this time-honored practice.

In 1874, electricity was still more mystery than science when Reuben claimed he had harnessed it in his plaster. Almost a century earlier, the Italian physician Luigi Galvani applied an electrical spark to a dead frog, causing its legs to twitch with animation. This result led many to believe that if electricity could bring life to part of a dead frog, it could help revive and restore humans’ pained and diseased bodies. Consequently, all sorts of medical devices promising rejuvenation emerged, often referred to as magnetic or galvanic electricity. People bought hand-cranked magneto-electric units to cure ailing family members at home, sometimes combining low-voltage shocks with steam cabinets and baths. Others purchased belts lined with various configurations of metal discs or cylinders to be worn under their clothing, next to the skin, to generate an electric current through the body. Often, men’s belts included a scrotal sack feature hanging below to bring some zip-a-dee back to the doo-dah.

Patented Magic

In his patent application, Reuben Hall provided a detailed review of the ever-expanding array of electrical appliances being foisted on the public. He also pointed out their shortcomings, the worst of which was the lack of traditional medicine being passed into the body. Unlike the age-old mustard plasters, electricity was the only medicine served up by the new medical shock equipment:

Electric currents have long been used by the medical profession in the treatment of many diseases. They have been applied in many ways. Currents from batteries, induction apparatus, or frictional apparatus have been used, by means of wires and electrodes placed on designated parts of the body. In other cases, they have been applied through the medium of baths, and in still others, by Voltaic belts, to be worn upon the body, the current being there both generated and applied. Their use has not been as extensive as it might have been, for the reason that while they were used, the ordinary exterior local applications of medicine could not be used, as was often desirable.

In electric baths, this has been remedied to some extent by enclosing the bath and supplying medicated air or vapor to the patient while under treatment. This involves a cumbersome and expensive apparatus, and can be used only for limited periods and at intervals.

Reuben then presented the patent examiners with his alternative—a unique invention in the medical electricity marketplace: a medicinal plaster with electrical components embedded in the fabric. On his detailed illustration below, two “electrically dissimilar galvanic elements” (like copper and zinc), labeled “P” and “N,” were heart-shaped metal plates connected by a wire underneath. Human perspiration completed the electrical circuit started by the two hearts and wire, producing a current. The latent electrical energy in the human body was thus triggered into action, much like the frog legs.

The key difference between Reuben’s invention and all the other electrical devices then in existence was the combination of electricity generation and simultaneous medicinal application. Yet ironically, his patent drawing downplayed what medicine should be used:

E is any suitable base or fabric, upon which is spread any suitable medical compound, A. To the composition of this compound, I make no claim as it may be varied to suit various conditions or diagnoses.

Customers or their pharmacists could apply whatever medication they chose to the plaster. It wasn’t so much that Reuben was ambivalent about the medicine; he was focused on developing the next generation of electrical medicine. That, apparently, was where the real money was.

Miracle Born in the Storm Clouds

I’ve only seen this one advertising trade card for his product—I doubt there were any more. This trade card design captured the curative magic of Hall’s Galvano-Electric Plasters, showing the dramatic transformation from sickness to health. Under decorative arches, the archetypal before-and-after combination of a sick man and his healthy counterpart clearly displayed the benefit of the plasters. There could be nothing better than the visual of a man tossing his crutches and doing a jig to demonstrate the miracle of Hall’s plaster. Before-and-after visuals were a popular and often-used convention for medical advertising; Parker’s Ginger Tonic and Buckingham’s Dye for Whiskers were two such products with several equally effective variations on the theme. Tossing one’s crutches and doing a silly dance was a powerful way of showcasing the cure’s effectiveness and the joy it brought.

To keep the customer focused on the product even longer, a poem followed the illustration. Written in contrived quatrains of butchered iambic pentameter, the point was not to present a timeless sonnet but to amuse and vividly praise Hall’s plaster for capturing the power of the gods: lightning –

Deep in the storm cloud’s womb I have my birth,

Thence flashed by Angel’s wings from Heaven to Earth,

Under the magic of my touch, old Pain

Wages his fiercest warfare all in vain

What Heaven-borne power slays disease’s demons in an hour?

… the mighty master –

… Hall’s Galvano-electric plaster!

The card displayed first-rate creativity but second-rate execution. The artwork was nice but not refined, the color palette was minimal, and the poetry was hackneyed. However, the message was crystal clear: Hall’s Galvano-Electric Plaster cured the hopeless and miserable. An 1878 advertisement in the Boston Globe stated, “STOP PAIN AS IF BY MAGIC. THEY REALLY PERFORM MIRACLES.”

The trade card’s reverse side has a few variants. The version shown here is the trademark registered in January 1877 (see the evolution of the trademark design further below). The advertisement describes the “Galvanic Battery” embedded in the plaster that produces “a constant but mild current of Electricity, which is most exhilarating” when the electrical circuit is completed by being put in contact with the body. Twenty-five medical miseries, ranging from weak eyes and constipation to lung and heart disease, would be speedily cured by the electricity, “those subtle and mysterious elements of nature,” produced by Hall’s plaster. The last promotional line summarizes the benefits illustrated on the card front, once again promising nothing short of miracles: “They cause the Lame to leap with joy and the Halt to take up their beds and walk,” subliminally reminding the reader of the same miracle performed by none other than Jesus himself. (John 5:8-9; also see Isaiah 35:6)

Professor of Nothing

It wasn’t just lightning that was in the clouds; doom was in the air as well.

Hall’s plaster advertising ran across nine states in 1874, but the number of states kept diminishing each year thereafter. Just a few short years into the sales of Hall’s Galvano Electric Plaster, a lightning storm of new-fangled electrical medical devices made their appearance across the land—and on people’s upper chests.

These devices were also described as galvano-electrical batteries but lacked any medicinal plaster component. They were distinctly designed to be stylish, even fashionable jewelry-like medical devices: small and shiny, suspended most often by a silk band, worn at the top of the cleavage. Although the instructions generally recommended wearing them “as close to the heart as possible,” they were pretty items, with a pleasing arrangement of disks made from different metals like bronze, copper, nickel, and zinc, arranged in a circular pattern around a central object. This central object could be a flower, hexagon, cross, heart, or other design, each created by a different manufacturer. Most were enclosed in a circular band of bronze or white metal; one was edged in a horseshoe pattern, and Scott’s Galvanic Generator was extra-fancy, with a sculpted winged cherub holding bundles of lightning bolts on one side while the reverse side had a zinc fist similarly clutching lightning bolts, all embedded in a copper shield. Hall’s Galvanic-Electric Plaster was expected to be hidden under clothing; Boyd’s Battery, Scott's Galvanic Generator, and the rest of the batteries produced from 1878-1886 were designed to be the center of attention and in the public eye.

London Galvanic Generator, Pall Mall Electric Association, ca. 1881. (left) front side - winged cherub sculpted in Lionite, holding bunches of lightning bolts; (right) reverse side - copper plate with embedded zinc in the shape of a fist holding lightning bolts. Rapoza collection.

While their public exposure surely increased their popularity, it also brought them condemnation from critics who insisted they weren’t providing any medical benefit at all. Calling electric batteries “toys,” the faultfinders guffawed that “a wooden button worn upon the breast would be quite as effective as the so-called ‘batteries’ which have hitherto been sold as curative to an over-credulous public.” They even claimed that wearing a slice from an ear of corn would do as much good (and look pretty much like) as one of the batteries. To the critics, the popular belief in the curative power of electric batteries fell into the same realm of superstition as those “otherwise intelligent persons [who] believe that carrying a Horse Chestnut in the pocket will keep off rheumatism.”

The detractors also targeted the “before-and-after” illustrations that Hall’s plaster and other electric battery companies used to promise amazing results. The critic’s sarcasm was as vicious as it was humorous:

There is a picture of a man without any battery, labelled “Before Using,” and another picture of a man with a battery, labelled “After Using.” Now if these pictures are accurate representations of the man before and after, we protest against its use. One has only to wear one of these things, and his own mother would not know him. A rogue has hereafter no need to go to Canada to escape justice. All he has to do is to wear one of these batteries, and if these pictures are true, he becomes another man altogether.

Electrical batteries like Hall’s and all the rest faced stiff headwinds at the same time they were being warmly received by the public. They didn’t last long, likely due to a combination of significant critical opinion and the fact that they simply didn’t work.

There is no more development of electrical action between these bits of metal than there is between the coins in one’s pocket—and we pronounce the thing to be an UTTER BARE-FACED FRAUD.

People still suffered from weak eyes, constipation, and heart disease even though electrical batteries dangled from their necks or Hall’s Galvano-Electric Plaster stuck to their backs. If there was any improvement, it was more likely the result of time and nature providing their own remedy or, in the case of constipation, time and nature might be aided by a heaping plate of beans.

During an intense courtroom cross-examination in 1882, one of the leading electric battery manufacturers, Professor John C. Boyd, was asked, “Professor of what?” Responding under oath, his telling reply was, “Professor of nothing.” His credentials, like his product, were a ruse, good for nothing. The only thing shocking about Hall’s plaster and the subsequent wearable electrical batteries was that they didn’t work; they didn’t generate electricity, and they didn’t cure or remedy disease. They do make great patent medicine antiques, though!

Just like Iron Man's Arc Reactor, Hall's Galvano-Electric Plaster and all the small body batteries that followed should have stayed in the world of fiction; maybe they can be included in the next Iron Man movie!

(left) Lowder's Magneto-Electric Battery (center design: two circles within a hexagon), ~1886 (courtesy of the Wellcome Collection; public domain); (right) Richardson's Magneto-Galvanic Battery (center design: heart), Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN, 25 MAR 1881).*

"Extremely Rare Galvanic Battery Medical Cure-All Medal, Token." Listed on eBay in July 2025. This is a very large and heavy battery; 2.75 inches x 2.28 inches (70x58 mm) and 1.59 ounces. The back is stamped "Made in Germany," but the eBay seller stated it was not; that was often stamped on items during the late 19th century as a sign of quality. (Courtesy of eBay seller thbco. This image is not linked to the eBay page because it has already been sold.)

(left) J. R. Flanigan Medal Battery, 1880; (center) John M. Lewis, 1880; (right) Boyd's Battery, 1878. (from patent drawings and other public domain files)

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