- Andrew Rapoza
- Dec 16, 2024
- 10 min read
Updated: May 16
Long, long before Iron Man's Arc Reactor, R. P. Hall's Galvano-Electric Plaster was made to recharge worn-out bodies
It doesn’t happen often.
After 40 years of collecting Victorian advertising, it has to be something really special to catch my eye; something so different that it makes me do a double-take, causes my finger to slip off the mouse button, my head to lean forward so my face gets really close to the screen, and my eyes to go into microscopic-focus mode to make sure I’m not seeing things. My brain goes into overdrive, checking the virtual collection in my mind to make sure I don’t already have one; it studies the subject for possible subliminal messages, cultural vividness, and historical significance; it soaks in the richness of the colors, the allure of the graphics, the brilliance of the design. On those rare occasions that the image before me 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.
I recently had such an experience and I’d like to share it with you. It actually happened about a month ago, when 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, it has taken me until now to be ready to report my findings. In fact, I found out far more about the product and the man behind it than I had expected to learn, so I’ve been in a quandary about how to present it in a blog post. I’ve decided to do it a different way: this post will be exclusively about this one advertising trade card, but the next post will be the whole story – the inventor of this product, his life story, how he came to make this particular medical item, and what happened to both of them – the man and his invention.
So for today, let’s focus on the curious medical device that bamboozled 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, but 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, and in 1874 he figured out a way for the two methods to be brought together into one new and improved solution.
For centuries, wives and mothers were making a home remedy called plasters from ingredients they had in the house. Mustard plasters were the most common form, made by mixing mustard powder, flour, and water into a paste, then spreading the gloopy mess on one side of a piece of fabric and applying it 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 gave a 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 the stuff 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. That result was widely interpreted by lay people to mean that if electricity could bring life to part of a dead frog, then it could help revive and restore humans’ pained and diseased bodies. Hence, all sorts of medical devices promising to rejuvenate an anxious public were created on the basis of shock-producing electricity; it was usually 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 bought 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 and 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 being 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 other[s], 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 inclosing 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. [emphases added]
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 to each other by a wire underneath. Human perspiration then 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.
Figures 1 and 2 were the standard plaster; Figures 3 and 4 were alternative forms that inventor Hall proposed, with two three multiples metallic disks. Figure 5 was another variation that allowed for charges to be set on opposite sides of the body, like wrapping over the shoulder.
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. [emphasis added]
Customers or their pharmacists could apply whatever medication to the plaster they chose. It wasn’t so much that Reuben was ambivalent about the medicine, but he wasn’t trying to create a new old-fashioned plaster – 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 showing off 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, but the message was crystal clear: Hall’s Galvano-Electric Plaster cured the hopeless and miserable. An 1878 advertisement in the Boston Globe said in words what the trade card said in pictures: “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 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.
They were also described as galvano-electrical batteries but without any medicinal plaster component. These 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, even though the instructions generally recommended they be worn “as close to the heart as possible.” They were pretty items, with a pleasing arrangement of disks of different metals, like bronze, copper, nickel, and zinc, arranged in a circular pattern around a central object, which could be a flower, hexagon, cross, heart, or other design, each the creation of a different manufacturer. Most were enclosed in a circular band of bronze or white metal; one was edged in a horseshoe pattern, and the 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 the clothing; Boyd’s Battery, Scott's Galvanic Generator, and the rest of the batteries put out 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. (collection of author.)
While their public exposure surely increased their popularity, it also brought them into condemnation by critics who insisted they weren’t giving 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”; 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 came after 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, and this is 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. [emphases added]
Electrical batteries like Hall’s and all the rest were facing stiff headwinds at the same time as they were being warmly received by the public. They didn’t last long, probably from a combination of significant critical opinion as well as the fact that they just 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 neck 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 credential, like his product, was 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).
(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
- Andrew Rapoza
- Nov 24, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: May 16
So there I was, in a remote antique shop way out in the countryside, months after the last Brimfield extravaganza had people swarming all over it like fire ants on a feeding frenzy. I figured the last thing I was going to find was some precious treasure that the ravenous swarm had missed. … But they did.
It was a magazine from Mars. Yeah, that Mars – the Red Planet.
Ephemera doesn’t get cooler than this!
The Mars Gazette
The publication was called The Mars Gazette, or at least that’s what we were told on the next page; the cover was written in the alien Martian characters (although separating and rotating certain symbols become remarkably like the English equivalent). Emerging from behind the title page is the Red Planet, covered in its many canals, rising in the night sky like the Empire’s Death Star – very mysterious, very foreboding. Turn the page, earthling, if you dare. …
Everything about this booklet is strange and unlike any other Victorian ephemera I have seen in forty-plus years of collecting. The illustrations are fabulously imaginative and early examples of science fiction. The pages are rough, uneven, and edged in charred black. We learn inside that it is a translated facsimile of the original Mars Gazette and was partially burned as an earthling’s spaceship returned to Earth, passing “through an electric storm of terrific intensity.” What a lucky break for us that it survived as well as it did!
Most of the publication tells the story of a space traveler from Earth who brought an urgently needed cure to the Martians. While the Martians were enjoying their 936th festival in the Big-Dipper Grove, the picnickers saw a “fearful and wonderful” spacecraft overhead. Some of them fled in fear (whirling away, head-over-heels, was their method of running), but others watched with fascination as “a singular being, God or devil, the inhabitant of another world” emerged from the “oblong phenomenon.” The Mars Gazette shared with fascination his strange looks, noting that he was significantly taller than they, spoke a different language, and “hair grew under his nose as well as upon the top of his head”; plus "he held in his cavernous mouth a large brown stick which was actually on fire, emitting at intervals clouds of dense smoke.”
He was brought to the planet’s leader, “His Most Malignant Martian Majesty, King Flammarion, the Supreme and Mighty Ruler of the Red Planet.” The space traveler introduced himself: “I am a physician from a far-away world. C. B. Hustler, M.D., is my name” and, to ensure the Martians that he was friendly, he told them that after business hours he would introduce them “to the festive Manhattan cocktail, the jovial gin rickey," and other mixed drinks. Yup, a real friendly guy.
But his most important beverage recommendation, and the purpose for his mission, was to provide the Martians with Liquid Peptonoids made by his employer, The Arlington Medicine Company of Yonkers, New York, U.S.A., Earth.
Medical ephemera from outer space? Found by a medical ephemera collector, no less – what are the odds? I felt like I was living a childhood dream: “Andy Rapoza and the Martian Medical Manuscript.” Eat your heart out, Indiana Jones!
Liquid Peptonoids were said to contain “the stimulating and nutritive elements of beef, milk, and wheat, in concentrated, partially digested form.” Bottom line: they gave weak stomachs the nutrition and strength of those ingredients without making the stomach work hard. Good thing he brought a bunch to Mars.
Toad Eyes with Truffles
King Flammarion put a Martian feast before the hungry space traveler: “sea-water soup, toads-eyes with truffles, snails-eggs with bile-water sauce, bee stingers rolled in sawdust and other epicurean delicacies.” The doctor from earth “sighed and sadly shook his head,” then pulled out a bottle of Liquid Peptonoids from his coat pocket. Lucky doctor.
Now it was time for him to see if he could help these poor, sick Martians.
They placed one of their own on an operating table and by means of X-rays they showed him the operations of the Martian digestive system: it revealed that they suffered from malnutrition, pulmonary, gastric, and intestinal disorders (all of which could be cured by Dr. Hustler’s medicine). Looking at how much the Martian's neck extended, the doctor was surprised that sore throat wasn't one of their ailments. Then standing before another X-ray machine revealed the Martian’s pocketbook, jewelry, and spare change – revealing his financial ability to pay for the Liquid Peptonoids cure.
Dr. Hustler was reassuring:
Many years ago, before Liquid Peptonoids were discovered, my people, too, were dyspeptic and ill-nourished, for they were too busy to masticate their food, and lunched on rubber-soled sandwiches and railroad pie. Then the pains of hell got hold of them. All the prescriptions of the doctors were of no avail, and though eating much, they wasted away from lack of nutrition [then Liquid Peptonoids fixed all of that.]
Earth had been cured – now it was Mars’ turn.
The Martians brought their sickest to the doctor from Earth, “those whom rigor mortis had well nigh laid hold upon,” but even they recovered and were able to whirl back to their homes. King Flammarion celebrated with another feast of Martian delicacies, but this time, Liquid Peptonoids was the dessert and antidote; Dr. Hustler, the new planetary hero, was appointed physician to the king and given carte blanche to draw upon the royal treasury at will. Sweeeeet.
The back two pages of the curious publication were covered in classified advertisements like those found in Earth’s newspapers, but obviously with a Martian flavor, like the business notice of Doctor Likonsiko who promised to “administer powdered electricity and the pickled-ozone cure in his glass vaults each day at sunrise during sewer week.” Sorta made Liquid Peptonoids sound better and better.
Thank goodness Dr. Hustler made it back to earth with the charred remains of this incredible, once-in-a-lifetime Mars Gazette.
Back on Earth, Peptonoids were manufactured and sold by several companies at the dawn of the 20th century. Pretty much gone were the backwoods medicines with names like Swamp-Root and Indian Panacea. Proprietary medicines like Liquid Peptonoids tried to blend in with scientific advances rather than the old days of folk medicine mysticism. The promises of predigested proteins still grabbed as many curative promises as the patent medicines of the past, though; in this case including diabetes, cholera infantum, vomiting in pregnancy, all types of digestive and intestinal disorders, and tuberculosis. The Arlington Chemical Company also made their product available to suit all tastes: Liquid Peptonoids was available in powder and liquid forms and with creosote for sore throats, or with cocaine for that wallop of instant energy.
They also had a penchant for wrapping Peptonoid advertising in the style or actual words of popular authors like Charles Dickens and Miguel de Cervantes, and in this case, they were clearly mimicking the science fiction creativity of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and without question, the French astronomer and author … wait for it … Camille Flammarion.
Peptonoids in your Potato Chips?
And, boys and girls, lest we feel too modern and superior to be suckered in by late-Victorian concepts of predigested food, we eat them all the time. Today, predigested foods are called “ultra-processed food” (UPF). Just like predigested food, UPFs are those that have been processed to make them easier to digest; everything from noodles, pizza crust, and breakfast cereals, to potato chips, ice cream, and processed meats have had starch, protein and fiber extracted, then replaced with sugar, salt, fat, artificial coloring and flavor to make the final product. They are designed to be convenient and have a long shelf life, but steady consumption of such foods (and almost everybody’s guilty of this) can cause spikes in blood sugar and insulin levels, causing diabetes, obesity, and other health problems.
If the Martians have figured out that Dr. Hustler left them not a cure but a time bomb, I hope they aren’t going to take it out on Earth. ...
Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine
- Andrew Rapoza
- Oct 14, 2024
- 10 min read
Updated: May 16
THE PROSPECTORS:
Dr. Edgar Mason & Dr. Abiathar Pollard **
Once upon a time, these two star-crossed doctors left their homes in Missouri and New York to find their fortunes in the great California Gold Rush. In their hometowns, their medical professions had raised their value and brought them respect. But among a swarm of other men in the wilderness equally infected by gold fever, they were just two more miners in a mind-swirling, body-aching race for gold.
The gold hunters came from Europe, Central and South America, China, and all over the United States. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor; rich man poor man, beggar man, thief – they all collided along quiet stream beds, river shores, and pond edges to pan and sluice for gold. But few of the gold bugs found a rich vein; sometimes it seemed like the only ones having success finding veins were mosquitoes.
For Drs. Mason and Pollard, fortune apparently stayed in the river, so they fell back on their medical skills to make some money, perhaps to recoup some of their expenses. The two doctors stumbled upon each other in Marysville, California, the first sign of significant civilization when they emerged from the disappointing wilderness after their gold hunting misadventures in 1852.
Marysville was named after Mary Murphy, one of the few survivors of the ill-fated Donner Party which became synonymous with the insatiable human hunger for survival. Two years later and not far from Donner Pass, the rugged wilderness at the base of California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range to the east continued to make survival more difficult than finding gold.
At first a trading post in the wilderness, Marysville had become a major miners’ supply depot during the gold rush. Early in 1850, its population grew from 300 to 1,500 in less than a month; for a brief time in 1852, it was California’s third largest city, behind only San Francisco and Sacramento. Thousands of men swarmed through it to get to the gold fields to the east; it was the last city before those stream beds, shorelines, and caves allegedly teeming with gold and the first city when they came out. It was a beehive of commotion.
The singular evidence of the two doctors’ collaboration was a medicine product that bore both of their names, Mason & Pollard’s Anti-Malaria Pills; it was first advertised in 1854 and in those early days, the few newspapers that listed it seemed to be getting mixed messages from its owners, sometimes listing the pills as “Mason & Pollard’s” and other times “Pollard’s & Mason’s.” What the two doctors agreed on was the region’s medical need for such a medicine – malaria was on a rampage; at certain times of year as many as twenty people a day in California’s gold region were dying from the disease. The earliest newspaper mention of the medicine reported,
“These gentlemen have been practicing their profession for several years in Marysville, and from a long familiarity with those diseases most prevalent in the Sacramento and Feather River Valleys, have been enabled, after numerous experiments, to present to the public a pill peculiarly efficacious in those diseases resulting from the malaria universally prevailing in all the lowlands of California.”
But from the outset, the malaria pills, by any name, did not become their next attempt to stake a new claim for gold – a Marysville medicine distributor took over making and selling the medicine, while Drs. Mason and Pollard, like a disgruntled couple, went their separate ways. Five years after they had sold off their medicine to the local distributor, the Marysville newspaper was still trying to remind Dr. Pollard that he had letters at the post office that needed to be picked up.
Dr. Mason had moved on to the northwestern corner of California in Crescent City, where he spent the rest of his life with his family. Dr. Pollard stayed for a while longer in the gold region east of Marysville, listed once again as a doctor instead of a miner in 1857 and then as a doctor and surgeon surrounded by goldminers in the 1860 U.S. census. In the same census year back in Mooers, New York (the northeast corner of the state, next to the Canadian border), his wife and two children waited for his return; by 1863 he was back on the New York tax rolls and he was listed with his wife and children in the next (1870) federal census; he then stayed in New York for the rest of his life. In 1881 and for the next several years, his enthusiastic testimonial for what was Dr. J. A. Sherman’s Rupture Curative Mixture ran in the immensely influential New York Times, but only small, unimpressive efforts were being made to advertise Mason & Pollard’s Anti-Malaria Pills in papers like the Yonkers Statesman and the Poughkeepsie Eagle News. That medicine affair from the old days was probably as much of a distant, unpleasant memory for Dr. Pollard as it was for Dr. Mason. Their medical tryst in Marysville had given birth to a single offspring that carried both their names, occasionally popping up as if to haunt them for the remainder of their lives.
FOOL'S GOLD
Seven generations of medicine distributors over a span of 30 years had handled the manufacture, advertising, and selling of Mason & Pollard’s Anti-Malaria Pills, but none of their hearts – or wallets – seemed to be in it. Most of the distributors had made little to no effort to promote the medicine. The Reddington Company of San Francisco had been its sole agent for the longest period, from 1869 until all advertising ceased in1884, but during those last 15 years, their efforts to advertise it were lackluster at best: while promotion of the pills was fairly strong in California, it appeared in Oregon, New York, and New Jersey newspapers less frequently than a gold nugget in a miner’s pan.
Back in 1862, an earlier distributor had tried to draw attention to the anti-malaria pills by claiming its new packaging was “to guard against Counterfeits”; the pills were
“now put up in a new and permanent style, in oval wooden boxes secured by a strap, printed in red type so as to read continuously, the directions folded around and the whole in a wrapper of Enameled paper, with the name of the Pills in red type on the top, and the names 'Mason & Pollard,' one on either end of the package.”
Eight years after the two doctors had parted ways over the medicine, they were still as far apart as possible; not only were they living at opposite ends of the country, but their individual names even appeared on opposite ends of the box.
As the years passed and patent medicine advertising tried to evolve alongside scientific advancements and promotional sophistication, new promises were added on to the same old Mason & Pollard Anti-Malaria Pills. In 1871 the public was assured that the pills were “exclusively vegetable,” meaning there was no mercury or other minerals or chemicals in them; they assisted digestion and “add flesh and muscle to the frame”; and they were also promised to be good for all ages and both sexes. Ten years later, advertising for the pills dropped the promises of muscle mass and weight gain, focusing instead on their laxative properties and their usefulness to families: “As a Family Medicine in a bilious climate, they cure in three-fourths of the diseases incidental to a family … They may be given to the youngest child.”
Broadening the medicine’s promised curative properties seemed to be a conscious attempt to make it be thought of in the public’s mind as more than just a medicine for those suffering with malaria, which though a terrible and dangerous illness, was largely limited to hot, wet, humid areas of the country, like the gold fields of California. The entire Gulf Coast region, from Texas to Georgia, renowned for heat and humidity, would therefore also have been a great area in which to advertise, but they never did (unless it was done by local drugstores and businesses that carried the product and promoted it on their own). Mason & Pollard’s Anti-Malaria Pills were test-advertised in California by its several timid owner-distributors and when the Redington Company added a partner named Coffin in New York City, the advertisements for the pills cropped up occasionally in New York. The anti-malaria medicine was promoted almost entirely in California and New York, where it’s distribution outlets were based and, ironically, where its two creators, Drs. Mason and Pollard, resided; the doctors and their medicine were living out the remainder of their days alienated but together.
NERVOUS LAUGHTER
Truth be told, as I always try to do, Mason & Pollard’s Anti-Malaria Pills are little more than a footnote in the history of 19th century patent medicines and a dreary, uninspiring footnote at that. This whole story may never have come to be, if not for three bursts of color that were brought in at its end of days, perhaps as a long-shot effort to bring the dying brand back to life. Three advertising trade cards were commissioned by the Reddington Company to tell the story of Mason & Pollard’s Anti-Malaria Pills with pictures in a way that words alone just could not do.
The stories these three cards tell are stunning and fascinating, brightening up the brand in such colorful ways that, if the pill product had any pulse left, its boxes on drugstore shelves should have revived and danced a jig. From a mishandled, under-promoted, blandly advertised medicine product that failed to attract a large customer base during the dying days of the California Gold Rush, these three pieces of advertising are some of the finest, most brilliantly designed examples of medicine advertising trade cards to emerge among 19th century patent medicines. They share three timeless stories that reveal ancient fears and faith still being held onto by our ancestors in the late 19th century … and perhaps by us today.
The prominent New York chromolithographer, Mayer, Merkel & Ottmann, was chosen to design three advertising trade cards to convince customers that Mason & Pollard’s Anti-Malaria Pills was more than just another medicine – it was the very picture of supreme power and vitality. One look at the product package pictured on each card easily explains why the chromolithographers decided on very colorful cards and action scenes. The earlier oval brown boxes wrapped in red-printed enamel paper had devolved into a plain and somber gray box bereft of ornamentation – it was as lifeless as could be – looking very much like the pills were entombed in wet cardboard. Color and commotion on the card could do nothing but help distract the consumer from the lifeless box they were being encouraged to buy.
The first card below depicts the personification of miasma: creatures of the swamp – gaseous entities that floated over the dank, rotting vegetation of the wetlands. Malaria holds up a snake, another creature of the wetlands; Biliousness holds up his club, threatening another brutal blow to the stomach, and Chills wafts past some swamp water. The foreboding woods in the background have lost most of their vegetation, just like trees do on their way to ruin in swampy regions.
The men throw objects at the evil entities from behind the protection of a box of Mason & Pollards Anti-Malaria Pills. A close look at the weapons they’ve piled in front of them and are throwing at the fleeing fiends prove to be not black or brown stones, but the only thing that would really set disease on the run: the white projectiles they’re using are the anti-malaria pills. It’s interesting that the most surreal player on this stage is the stoic Stonehenge-like monolith, larger than the men and obviously larger than life.
A generation or two before the Victorians who were taking in the subliminal messages of the miasma card, their Colonial grandparents would have easily comprehended the scene on the next Mason & Pollard’s trade card.
As I’ve shown you in a previous post (4 May 2024: “Devils, Demons & Disease”) the belief that witches, demons, and devils cursed people with sickness was a very serious and pervasive fear. The scene on this card brings us into the recesses of Hell itself, with a hint of fire and darkness in the background, bats and an owl (both creatures of the night) overhead, a human skull and bones on some type of table, along with empty bottles of failed medicines that contributed to disease victims becoming just skeletal remains.
But the grim world of “the Enemies of Mankind” is being upended by the prize fighter. Hell knows no fury like a box of Mason & Pollard’s. Powerful enough to beat devils but gentle enough for children.
Both cards were designed to send a light-hearted and reassuring message about the anti-malaria pills. Children and adults could safely look and laugh at the scenes unfolding and subconsciously feel a little peace that the medicine defeats the notions of illness that had been handed down in their families for many generations. They provoked a nervous laughter – they were funny if they were right.
