The Last Gasp Miracle

Starkey & Palen sold air to the terminally ill – it was Alsina Richards’ last hope.

She was desperate and scared.

Each breath she took felt like it was stolen, scraping up nothing but bloody phlegm from an empty chest with nothing left to give. Cough pains sizzled across her lungs that long ago had filled softly and emptied effortlessly.

With every passing day, she became weaker. The once vibrant woman who did housework, helped her husband, visited friends, and went shopping had dissolved into a fragile, feeble weakling for whom each movement took far more out of her than any benefit she got back.

As the disease set in more aggressively, it seemed to be consuming her from the inside – she was becoming emaciated and skeleton-like, the type that people across the street pointed at, whispered about, and walked away from, quickly.

Her skin became paler, as if the very lifeblood was being drained from her body. In a way, it really was: when she coughed, there was blood spatter in her handkerchief. There was nothing left about her that suggested life, certainly not a future.

Weaker, paler, thinner, sicker. She knew she was dying.

Mrs. Alsina Richards was 33 years old and terminally sick with tuberculosis.

In her day, 1880, the disease was most often called “consumption” because of the hallmark symptom of emaciation. It was, far and away, the leading killer in the 19th century and unlike most diseases that attacked children and old people, it most often struck young adults, like Alsina.

  

Infection

Alsina Richards was just about as unassuming as any other young Victorian woman in rural America. Her most distinctive feature may have been her name – no one seemed to know how to spell it – she appears in records as Elzina, Alcina, Alsina, and Alsona. She lived with her parents at their small farm until she was married. In 1877, at 30 years old, she married Alphronso Richards, three years her junior. Like her parents, he was of modest means, pouring concrete for a living. A scant four months after their wedding, Alsina gave birth to a stillborn daughter; it was the only pregnancy she would ever have.

On 16 June 1880, Alphronso and Alsina were enumerated together for the first time in their own home in East Pepperell, northern Massachusetts; Nashua, New Hampshire was just over the border. Although some neighbors were found to be afflicted with such troubles as rheumatism, measles, and dyspepsia, Alsina was not among those listed as “sick or temporarily disabled” – but she knew there was something very, very wrong with her. About six months before the census she was trying to find a cure for sickness that had come over her so quickly, out of nowhere. It wasn’t a casual concern; it was a deep-seated fear of what was taking over deep in her lungs.

 

Stamped Starkey & Palen advertising envelope, cancelled PHILADELPHIA, PA, 17 DEC [1881], 2AM; addressed to Mrs. A. [Alsina] S. Richards, East Pepperell, Mass. (author's collection)

Consolation

Alsina wrote to several women whom she had read about in promotional materials for a lung remedy. She was curious and guardedly hopeful that the women really existed and whether they truly benefited from the remedy. These questions were the common concerns shared by other sick women all over America; even the manufacturer acknowledged that many cautiously wondered about the testimonials, just like Alsina: 

… they write to know if there really is any such person ... or is it only an advertising dodge? … the simple truth about [the remedy] would be the best credentials it could have; hence we were not tempted to invent testimonials, nor to steal genuine ones, nor to romance on any.

Alsina didn’t have money or time to waste on a bogus medicine, so she was determined to find out if she could really believe the testimonials that appeared for Starkey & Palen’s Compound Oxygen, an unusual product that was grabbing a lot of attention and gaining popularity. To protect the writers’ privacy, the manufacturer rarely included their names, but told readers that “Any one, upon application, will be furnished with the exact address of any … of these cases.” So Alsina had to write to the manufacturer to get the testimonial writers’ addresses, wait for the reply, then write and send letters to the testimonial writers and wait again, hoping they would reply … all while she got sicker and weaker.

The women’s responses to Alsina, dated from 15 February 1880 to 20 November 1881, assured her that they had, indeed, written them and were not distorted or rewritten by the medicine maker. Mrs. A. G. Fourquereau of San Marcos, Texas, began her postcard response to Alsina, “I take pleasure in stating that the testimonial … with my name attached, is genuine, and was sent to [the manufacturer] without solicitation from them.” In her postcard response, Julia Barnes of Carmel, New York, wrote, “Yes, my letters … are just as I write them” and Mrs. E. L. Miller of Beecher City, Illinois, also told Alsina that her statements in the publication were true.

The correspondence of five postcards and two letters saved by Mrs. Alsina S. Richards; their dates range from 15 FEB 1880 - 20 NOV 1881. Their retention as a group implies that Alsina Richards valued them, used them as reference for her reply correspondence, and retained them for the last several years of her life due to the relationships built, even though the remedy was unsuccessful in bringing about her recovery, or perhaps she stuffed them away and forgot about them in the face of the increasingly difficult symptoms of consumption that were overwhelming her. (author's collection)

Each response Alsina received was handwritten, further making them seem very much like personal notes from good friends and all of them asked their new friend Alsina to write back. Sallie R. Fisher of Irvington, Illinois, wrote to Alsina like a dear friend and fellow sufferer, full of empathy:

Your card was received last night. I hasten to reply, I know just how you feel in regard to hearing of others being cured. I thought if I could know of one [who] had benefited as low as I was … it would revive my spirits, [emphasis added]

Sallie had written to another testimonial giver, just like Alsina had done with her; and so the correspondence read like chain mail, the women who were writing to reassure Alsina had once upon a time been in Alsina’s situation, writing to someone else who suffered from a lung disease. Alsina valued the correspondence, keeping five postcards and two letters from the women who responded to her pleas for help. The personal notes validated the printed testimonials, allowing Alsina to trust the promotional stories of the ladies’ harrowing ordeals, use of the remedy, and consequent restoration of health. Several personal descriptions of women who were suffering from consumption must have resonated with Alsina – they really did know just how she felt:

Julia Barnes told her, “I used to think last Winter, oh, if I could only stop coughing one day.” Vienna Douglas of Huntsville, Alabama, knew she had consumption; her testimonial in one of the promotional booklets must have been what triggered Alsina to write to her to verify her existence and her story:

I … was hollow-chested, with deep-seated pain in my lungs and great difficulty breathing. That dread disease, consumption, had been coming on me for more than fifteen years. [I] was so reduced [in strength] that I was unable to attend to my household duties – hardly able to go from room to room – with the expectation of myself and family and friends that I would not live many months. [emphasis in original]

Similarly, another consumption testimonial by the apparently wealthy Texan, Mrs. Anna Givhan Fourquereau, (described as the wife of a “gentleman of elegant nature” in the 1880 census), was the likely reason that Alsina wrote to her,

She had been coughing for two years, with occasional hemorrhage. .. having fever all the time, expectorating profusely, so much so that she could not sleep at night, having night sweats, and reduced so in flesh and strength that she could barely leave her bed. [emphasis in original]

What Alsina did not know was that despite endorsing Starkey & Palen’s Compound Oxygen as “the most wonderful remedy in the world for sick lungs,” Mrs. Fourquereau died at 37, just a little more than a year after responding to her. Consumption was no respecter of wealth or social status. The only protection from the disease would have to be a medical miracle.

Sensation

Alsina Richards had learned about these ladies from the promotional materials of the Starkey & Palen Company of Philadelphia, the makers of Compound Oxygen, the product that all the women she heard back from were swearing performed miracles on their medical miseries. Despite the fact that naysayers from the medical fraternity called magnetized oxygen compounds “the quintessence of bosh,” the fairly new product was in high demand by the time Alsina Richardson was in desperate need of a miracle.

Emaciated by the consumption, Sallie Fisher and Julia Barnes happily regained weight after using Compound Oxygen; Sallie went up to 172 pounds and Julia to 150; plus, she noted, the pain in her lower left lung left her after just a half hour after her first treatment with the Oxygen, “and I have not felt it since.” Vienna Douglass called the stuff her “life preserver.” By using it regularly, she was once again able to walk to and from town “and is in a great many respects vastly superior to a dead woman.” [emphasis added. Although this phrase was clearly meant to be tongue-in-cheek, it reads as one of the strangest endorsements in my forty-plus years of research on 19th century medicines!]

As was the case with many patent medicine success stories, Compound Oxygen was not the invention of those who made it a big seller. It was invented by a Dr. Harrison J. Hartwell of Philadelphia in 1867, but he transferred his entire interest in the business to George R. Starkey, A.M., M.D., in 1870. By that time, others in New York City, Chicago, and Omaha were advertising their own therapeutic products also named Compound Oxygen, but only the version sold by Dr. Starkey was successfully promoted and sold across the country.

Prior to building their oxygen empire, Starkey and Palen had been non-practicing physicians. George Rogers Starkey had been teaching in a homeopathic medicine school until poor health forced him to stop, and Gilbert Ezekiel Palen worked as a chemist in a tannery before the two men became partners in the Compound Oxygen venture. The principles of using air medicinally fit perfectly into Dr. Starkey’s homeopathic mindset; homeopathy favored only the smallest, most diluted doses of medicine until it seemed to many like there was nothing there – just like air.

Dr. Starkey considered it strategically critical for the public to believe his remedy was just full of air; even the trademark he registered adamantly insisted in big, bold letters: “NOT A DRUG”. It was only oxygen and nitrogen infused in water, he explained, “the two elements which make up common or atmospheric air, in such proportion as to render it much richer in the vital or life-giving element”; then he somehow magnetized the air then infused it in water and bottled it. When inhaled, the Compound Oxygen supposedly stimulated the nerves, “giving energy to the body.” This magnetized air was said to be so energizing that a certain clairvoyant was unable to slip into a clairvoyant trance because she was too stimulated. Like coffee and cocaine, Compound Oxygen kept its users invigorated and all aflutter.

Trademark for Starkey & Palen's Compound Oxygen and Inhaler, No. 10,449; registered 17 JUL 1883

“The cases of consumption – confirmed phthisis – which the Compound Oxygen has cured can be counted by scores,“ Starkey & Palen’s literature promised, and Alsina’s postcard friends urged her to join their pilgrimage of converts to the miraculous compound:

“I hope you will not delay …” – Sallie R. Fisher

“Hoping you will give it a fair trial” – Grace Davis

“I hope you will get it and take it.” – Julia Barnes

“I do hope you will feel safe in using it as it is the onley [sic] thing that will restore the Lungs.” – Vienna T. Douglass

Every day was getting incrementally worse than the previous day for Alsina. As she exchanged letters and postcards about Starkey & Palen’s Compound Oxygen  and studied its literature, she was trying to make the wisest, most conscientious decision possible, but like so many others in her situation, she really just hoped for a miracle.

Decision

Dr. Starkey knew there were many, like Alsina, in poor health, desperate for a miracle in his bottles, so he tried to temper their wild-eyed expectations and even admitted that sometimes his product would not work:

Do not expect a miracle to be wrought in your case. Although some cases here reported are marvelous in the rapidity with which they have marched health-ward; still many of the most satisfactory and even brilliant cases have been slower paced.

… more than eighty percent of these victims could have been well people to-day had they made TIMELY USE of the Compound Oxygen. Note the emphasis laid upon the phrase, timely use. … Not in all cases would we recommend it, with the idea of holding out a promise of cure. [emphases added]

Dr. Starkey’s pragmatism and cautious confession about his remedy’s limitations might have been the sign of an honest medicine maker, but it also gave him plausible deniability if things didn’t work for a customer, even to the point of death.

Alsina was very sick but her postcard friends urged her to try the Compound Oxygen. It’s also possible that her own doctors had told her she had a chance if she took their own prescriptions to cure consumption, but she took the leap of faith and chose Starkey & Palen’s Oxygen Compound. It was her last gasp of hope.

Sick of sickness and scared of dying, Alsina Richards made the hefty $15 investment in a two-month supply of Compound Oxygen home treatment and hoped for her own miracle, despite Dr. Starkey’s public disclaimer.

Invention

At first Dr. Starkey made the oxygen treatment available for those visiting his Philadelphia office, but soon after buying out Dr. Hartwell's business, he realized the Compound Oxygen could go national if he also sold it as a kit for home treatment.

Compound Oxygen bottle (label missing). Embossed: STARKEY & PALEN / PHILADELPHIA, PA. (courtesy of b-toast online auction; see link)

Unlike most other medicine makers, his whole business focused on lung disease and his medicinal repertoire consisted only of his two lung remedies, Compound Oxygen and Oxygenaqua (a liquid form of the magnetized oxygen compound that could be swallowed rather than inhaled). Sure, he threw in claims that the magnetized oxygen products cured other parts of the body of other things – dyspepsia (indigestion), diabetes, headaches, sometimes paralysis, rheumatism, and kidney disease, and perhaps most obscurely, spermatorrhea (involuntarily ejaculation). “We have proved that a number of diseases which … have been assigned to the category of ‘incurables’ no longer belong there,” the Starkey & Palen literature crowed, but virtually all of their advertising focused on the benefits of the magnetized oxygen for diseased lungs.

Paper-covered wooden box that held one Oxygen Compound (cobalt blue glass) and one Oxygenaqua bottle (clear glass). About 1890. (Photo courtesy of Morphy Auctions, morphyauctions.com)

Dr. Starkey saw a nation full of potential customers with corset-constricted lungs and inescapable sickness forming in the stagnant, smoky air of factories and homes. He told the consumptives, asthmatics, and victims of pneumonia, bronchitis, or other lung diseases his Compound Oxygen was a three-pronged remedy that: (1) increased oxygen in the lungs; (2) purified the blood of poisons that collected there from disease and pollution; and (3) energized the nerves and nerve centers (he liked to compare the nervous system to a galvanic battery with electricity sparking through it), bringing vitality to the person.

When someone at home received their two-month supply, they received two boxes: a larger one containing a cobalt blue bottle of Compound Oxygen and a clear glass bottle (Dr. Starkey referred to it as “the white bottle”) with Oxygenaqua. A paper cover, illustrated with the two medicine bottles and either images of Drs. Starkey and Palen or a woman using the inhaler, was glued to the wooden box. The box was hinged for the bottles’ storage and reuse.

The smaller box was constructed in the same way and contained what looked like a little laboratory. There was a clear glass inhaler bottle with a rubber stopper and two rubber corks in the top, and a set of attachments: two glass elbow straws, two nasal tubes, a tiny bottle, a vial, and a few other glass fittings. The whole lot must have made the user feel something like a pharmacist, preparing the medicine for their own cure. The label covering the box showed the inhaler bottle sitting in a tin cup filled with hot water, per the directions – tin cup not included – the customer had to get their own. This inhaler kit only needed to be purchased once since it could be used over and over, so the Compound Oxygen was sold separately.

Starkey & Palen Inhaler kit; paper label over wood; hinged cover with locking mechanism on the front. Side panels: instructions for use of the inhaler. Back panel: nasal spray instructions; top panel: nasal tube instructions. (about 1880; author's collection)

The instructions for use were pretty basic but important to be followed exactly since any misstep by the junior pharmacist could mean their own demise. Water was to be poured into the inhaler bottle up to the line embossed on the glass, then the measured dose of Compound Oxygen was added, the chosen breathing attachments inserted into the rubber stopper, and the whole unit immersed in the tin cup full of hot water “as hot as a cook can bear her finger in it”. Then the pharmacist became the patient and inhaled the vapors created by the heated mixture of water, magnetized oxygen, and nitrogen - it operated on the same principle as a hookah pipe. Inhalation treatments were done twice a day and increased in one-minute increments every other day from a starting treatment of two minutes to a maximum of six minutes after several days. Each subsequent dose would be stronger because more Compound Oxygen would be poured in to replace the liquid that had been inhaled and otherwise evaporated.

Alsina followed every step precisely and she inhaled.

Over and over.

 

Starkey & Palen Inhaler kit. The clear glass bottle sits in a tin cup (not included with the kit) per the instructions and the box illustration. During actual use, the tin cup would contain very hot water into which the bottle (partially filled with the Compound Oxygen) would be immersed. The glass of the bottle is spattered with chemical residue, indicating extensive use of the inhaler at some point in time. Embossed around the bottle's shoulder: STARKEY & PALEN / PHILADELPHIA PA. The bottle also has an embossed line around the circumference, about half way down the bottle, above which reads: WATER LINE. The kit also contains 7 attachments: 2 glass nasal tubes (in box and on table foreground with white rubber tube attached); 2 glass elbow straws (in box and in bottle); 1 straight tube, corked (in box); 1 measuring tube (in foreground); 1 small vial (in foreground); about 1880. (author's collection)

Devastation

It wasn’t working – she continued to spiral towards her death and she knew it. Panicked, she wrote to Starkey and Palen. She told them how sick she was with consumption and apparently pleaded for

Letter Starkey & Palen to Mrs. A. S. Richards, East Pepperell, Mass., 13 DEC 1881. (author's collection.)

hope – perhaps there was something she was doing wrong or something else she could do. What she received in return, twelve days before Christmas, was the hardest letter she had ever had to read:

 

Philadelphia, Pa. 12 Mo 13 1881

Mrs A. S. Richards

Dear Madam,

Yours of 12-9 is received and its contents are carefully noted. We are sorry to be obliged to say that we cannot recommend the Compound Oxygen as being able to do anything more than to make you comfortable. You have indeed been a victim to wicked charlatanry. The disease has made too great progress to be checked.

We remain

Very Respectfully,

     Starkey & Palen

 

Starkey & Palen confirmed her worst fear – she was doomed – their medicine would not cure her. What “wicked charlatanry” she had been subjected to is not clear without seeing what Alsina had written to them. Perhaps she had explained that local doctors had wasted valuable time earlier in her illness, prescribing other medicines or instructions of no remedial value. Possibly, but unlikely, the phrase might have been referring to the zealous testimonial writers she corresponded with who overpromised a cure from the Compound Oxygen that never came. The somber letter was accompanied by two gratuitous pamphlets containing more information and advice that would never help her.

There is one more piece of correspondence in the Alsina Richards collection. One year after the heartbreaking response from Starkey & Palen, she received another letter  from them in response to her request for their charity. She apparently told them that she and her husband were financially on hard times and could not afford their medicine, which she had apparently continued to take because it provided some measure of relief even as the disease continued its destruction. Starkey & Palen responded, “From your representations of pecuniary disability we will send you a 2 [month] Home Treatment for the Ten Dollars.” [emphasis added; it implies that she requested they discount the cost to ten dollars and they were agreeing to her terms. Saving five bucks may not seem like a lot today, but $15 in 1882 would be $461 in 2024 USD and $10 back then would be $307 now; when’s the last time your pharmacist agreed to a $154 discount on your medicine?] Ironically, it came with another booklet, “Unsolicited Testimonials,” but the time for striking up a correspondence with them was past.

Small, envelope-sized pamphlets included in the Starkey & Palen correspondence to Mrs. A. S. Richards; "Unsolicited Testimonials" (left) was included with the 1881 letter; the other two (center & right) were included with the 1882 letter. (author's collection)

Alsina S. Richards died 22 January 1884 of pulmonary tuberculosis (the death certificate called it phthisis); she was buried in the Pepperell Cemetery and her husband joined her in death 22 years later – he also died of “pulmonary phthisis” after being afflicted with it for just eight months.

 

Conclusion

Alsina and other users of Starkey & Palen’s Compound Oxygen died sad, shortened lives despite their desperate hopes for recovery, but ironically, the medicine enjoyed healthy sales, growth in distribution, energetic advertising, and four more decades of life.  A few years after Alsina’s death, Starkey & Palen put out a series of four trade cards featuring four people from very different corners of life with Compound Oxygen the one ingredient that tied them together. There was one card of an accomplished businessman, apparently a railroad tycoon, who was taking a break during his busy day to take his inhalation treatment of the Compound Oxygen; a second card showed an old woman relaxing at home, happily taking her Compound Oxygen treatment as well, while her cat played with a ball of yarn on the floor; both of these older people were healthy, at ease, and capably managing their health by using the Starkey & Palen products. In contrast, the third card was a close-up of an athletic, muscular young man sailing his boat while holding up a bottle of Starkey & Palen’s Oxygenaqua, implying that just a sip of the stuff was easy treatment for a man on the ocean.

The last card would likely have been the one Alsina would have stared at the longest, comparing her own decrepit health to the subject of this fourth card: the young, wasp-waisted woman was promoting the Compound Oxygen along with the inhaler bottle on the table, ready for use. She was stunningly attractive, vivaciously healthy and self-assured, dressed in daring clothing, reclining seductively, and smiling coyly – it was the perfect “painted lady” portrait, worthy of hanging over the back bar of any saloon. The unquestionably healthy young lady seemed to be taunting consumption, tightly corseted and looking like she would be more comfortable in a dance hall than a sanatorium for consumptives. Oh, to be young, healthy, and full of life – but Alsina Richards was only able to dream of such things before she died at 37 years old, miserably sick for at least her last four years, robbed of life and joy. She never had a chance; there was no miracle for Alsina.

Adverising Trade Card for Starkey & Palen's Compound Oxygen (author's collection)

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

Hair-Raising Stories: the Bear, the Coconut & the Oil Well

Part 3 of 3: THE OIL WELL

"Kennedy knew as much about medicine as a horse does about astronomy"

(- Kennedy's friend and chemist, 1882)

I’ve only lived down here in East Texas for the most recent few decades of my life, but there has never been a question about where I was. We have Arizona’s heat and the Amazon’s humidity. Some of our bugs are the size of a hand … with eight hairy fingers. Alligators lurk in some rivers and ponds like leftover dinosaurs silently waiting for their next victim. Then there are the big metal pumpjacks, or “thirsty bird” pumps, bobbing up and down in one spot, silently sucking the ground below. I’m not sure which creature unnerves me more – the alligators or the giant thirsty birds.

Finally there are the oil derricks, usually surrounded at their base by a sizeable number of life forms scurrying about in brightly colored hard hats. At nighttime glowing spotlights illuminate them – from miles away through the vast darkness of the Texas countryside, the brightness looks like a star has crashed into the earth; get closer and the derrick scene at night looks like an alien invasion. Texas is, first and foremost, Oil Country USA.

Carboline looks Texan: in a close-up of the design on its 1877 box, oil wells can be seen standing in an oilfield, with busy workers doing all the things that oil workers did. A large drum labeled “CARBOLINE” is at the center, with the derrick’s pipe shooting oil right into the drum, ready to make the next big batch of Carboline. The scene screamed Texas, but it wasn’t. Not even close.

Close-up of the oil scene on a box of Carboline.

 

DIFFERENT PLACE, DIFFERENT TIME

Texas wouldn’t have its day for a while yet – the great Texas Oil Boom wouldn’t begin until Spindletop gushed all over about its black gold in 1901. Pennsylvania was the country’s big oil play in the 1870s, not Texas.

Bottle of Carboline with contents and packaging, ca.1877.

Oil wasn’t as important in 1877 as it was in 1901. It was mostly being used in the form of kerosene to light lamps because it was a cleaner, cheaper lamp fuel than the oil from slaughtered sperm whales. Oil wells were starting to be found more easily than the constantly moving leviathans of the deep in their rapidly thinning pods.

As lamp wicks across western Pennsylvania started lighting up with the kerosene byproduct of oil, an enterprising Pittsburgher had a flash of brilliance – oil didn’t need to just go up in smoke – he was going to turn it into medicine – to grow hair.

Robert Monroe Kennedy wasn’t a petroleum engineer or a doctor, or even a chemist; he was an entrepreneur whose skills were creativity, vigor, and making money – a great mix for a businessman. In his hands, black, stinky, sticky goo from the ground was just another opportunity waiting to happen.

He got into business as a boy, peddling cheap jewelry. He made enough money at it to expand his business. In 1867, a few years after the Civil War was over, the 24-year-old went by R. Monroe Kennedy and created a network of salesmen far and wide to sell his “Mammoth Prize Stationery Packages,” as well as silverware, photographs, and what he openly called “cheap Jewelry.” The sole qualification he required of his recruits was for each to be a “LIVE man” – full of energy to do a great job – in other words, they needed to follow their leader.

In 1871, after four years in general goods sales, he changed his moniker from R. Monroe Kennedy to simply R. M. Kennedy, and undertook a new venture, proprietorship of a line of remedies he called Dr. Radcliffe’s, headlined by a Dr. Radcliffe’s Seven Seals or Golden Wonder (It was actually the flagship of a whole line he developed under the Dr. Radcliffe's name, including Elixerene or Favorite Panacea, a nervine & blood purifier; Expectoral, a cough and lung balsam; Favorite Pills, for dyspepsia and liver complaints, and Positive Cure for Catarrh, to relieve congestion. But these were all weak stepsisters to Seven Seals and were rarely advertised.). With a completely fabricated backstory as to the origin of Seven Seals, Kennedy promised the medicine had, “in cases of the most intense, excruciating and agonizing pains, aches, cramps, spasms, etc., … absolute power to subdue and extinguish pain almost instantaneously. … IT LITERALLY DEMOLISHES PAIN.”

No surprise; an analysis two years after it was introduced revealed it contained ether and chloroform (two strong and potentially lethal ingredients that were being used to knock people out before surgery) camphor and capsicum (two more pain-killing ingredients), and oil of peppermint (probably for flavor), all in a whopping 90% alcohol. Simply put, it was a powerful and dangerous brew that could “demolish pain” and potentially the patient. Kennedy advertised the Seven Seals robustly across the country for the next half dozen years, in dozens of newspapers and with many trade card designs (which he called show cards); but then he suddenly shifted his advertising to his newest creation, Carboline.

 

GREASY HANDS & HAIRY HEADS

Kennedy named his product Carboline, apparently by blending “carb-” from carbon, the stuff that makes oil black, and “-oline” the Latin suffix for oil. It seemed effective for 1877 – “carbon oil” was the common term for the black crude that was starting to change America’s financial landscape.

The story Kennedy wove for Carboline was at least as imaginative as his claim that Dr. Radcliffe’s Seven Seals was named after a British physician who was the seventh son of a seventh son (popularly believed to be the sign for having the gift of healing, possibly with psychic skills mixed in). Kennedy’s advertising copy claimed a practical chemist in Pittsburgh had become very interested in a paragraph he read in one of the city newspapers about a government officer in southern Russia who had amazing success when using petroleum on some cattle and horses that had lost their hair as the result of a cattle plague.

Carboline Trade Card. Courtesy of Done Fadely's hairraisingstories.com, a great website focusing on hair care products from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

He recollected that a former servant of his, prematurely bald, had got the habit, when trimming the lamps, of wiping his oil besmeared hands in the scanty locks which remained [on his head], and the result was a much finer head of black, glossy hair, than he ever had before.

The chemist then experimented on this claim and found that vigorously rubbing the head with a palmful of highly-refined American oil over the space of three days had the same desired results: it invigorated the scalp as well as strengthened the hair and returned it to its original dark color.

Kennedy then claimed all that remained to converting crude oil into the perfect hair-growing medicine was, oddly, the same challenge that Joseph Burnett had with his coconut-based hair oil – getting rid of the strong smell. Thinking back to the last time I put oil into my car, I am convinced that Kennedy’s deodorizing mission must have been more critical than Burnett’s.

Neutral paraffin oil, another distilled version of petroleum, was by far the main ingredient (93%) in the formula for Carboline; among other purposes, it is used today as the basis for baby oil – a very gentle moisturizer to the skin that can be helpful for the relief of dry skin and dandruff. In addition to the pint of paraffin oil, the formula called for four drams of cantharides (“Spanish Fly” or more accurately, soldier beetle, ground up and saturated in alcohol, probably used to stimulate the scalp), 20 grains of euphorbium (resin from a Moroccan cactus-like plant), and oils of rosemary, cassia, and cloves, all likely added for fragrance. Kennedy definitely accomplished his goal of deodorizing the oil, and its color (as shown in the bottle pictured above) is as mild a shade of yellow as a slice of banana cream pie.

Kennedy’s new hair-growing oil seems pretty innocent, especially compared to his earlier venture with Dr. Radcliffe’s Seven Seals. Perhaps complaints about bad results with Seven Seals or Golden Wonder was the reason for R. M. Kennedy’s quick product change to the fairly benign Carboline. The only thing bold about it was the promise, “RESTORES THE HAIR ON BALD HEADS.” From “demolishing” every pain to growing hair on bald heads, there was nothing R. M. Kennedy’s medicine couldn’t do, at least according to R. M. Kennedy. One of his ads promised in 1882,

A CHANCE FOR BALD-HEADS.

Their day of deliverance has dawned. This is the age of wonders: wonders in science, wonders in mechanism, wonders in everything. ...

THE MERCHANT PRINCE OF PITTSBURGH

R. M. Kennedy advertised the heck out Carboline, reaching almost every state in the country once again by using newspaper advertising and show cards. He ran a contest in the New York Times for children to see how many words they could make from the letters in “Carboline” and another contest for adults to write songs praising the healing properties of Carboline.

He came to be known by his friends as “Carboline Kennedy,” and "The Merchant Prince of Pittsburgh." Whether the light-yellow liquid grew hair on bald heads or not, sales were brisk and Kennedy made a lot of money. Then, just as his hair grower sales were peaking, he sold out his rights as sole agent in late 1878 to Geo. W. May & Co. of Staunton, Virginia. He still did some limited promotions of the product in a small number of newspapers over the next few years, but they weren’t the same size or frequency of what he had run in its banner year, 1878. Maybe he detected that sales were weakening, and perhaps he knew this was coinciding with an escalating number of consumer complaints that their bald heads had not, in fact, returned to luxuriant billows and waves of dark, strong hair. Whatever the reason, he suddenly took his earnings and started investing in real estate. He purchased farmland on the outskirts of Pittsburgh and transformed them into beautiful villages, erecting many cottages that he then sold. He laid out the city of Homestead, Pennsylvania, on the northeast side of Pittsburgh (complete with a glass-making factory), and it was said he had made more money in Pittsburgh real estate than any man up to the end of the century.

Medicine Revenue stamp featuring the image of R. M. (Robert Monroe) Kennedy. His advertising never claimed he personally needed to use Carboline, so the hair shown was probably all his, right down to the handlebar moustache and Van Dyke-styled soul patch. Courtesy of Randall Chett; see his excellent website, Match and Medicine.com

The prince of Pittsburgh was well-known, wealthy, and popular because he frequently helped out his friends with needed cash. His largesse, mixed with a little naivete, almost got him killed. Not a gambler himself, in 1882 he watched a poker game in a hotel room at the pleading of the friend of a friend, who was soon borrowing small amounts from him – and losing them in the game. Things escalated out of control when Kennedy was asked for $500; saying he would only fund the card player $300 and only if the man signed an IOU for repayment. He was then attacked by the crowd of gamblers and thieves at the game and severely beaten, and “he is now lying at the point of death as a consequence of the injuries inflicted by the scoundrels.”  

The 39-year-old Kennedy did recover but more tragedies followed. His young wife died in 1884 of heart disease after she retired early to her room, suffering from a severe headache. Kennedy had moved on from real estate to speculating in oil investments, and made great money again, but while on an extended trip to England he was one of several investors who was convicted of conspiring to manipulate the oil market prices and in so doing he overdrew his account by $66,059 (over $2 million in 2023 USD). His personal effects were sold by the sheriff. But his friends were convinced he would bounce back because he was R. M. Kennedy. He had some bad luck throughout his business career, but then he would “rapidly regain all he had lost,” and his devoted friends were convinced that he picked up another fortune when he returned home from Europe, although they didn’t know what it was.

R. M. Kennedy traveled and lived in both England and Pittsburgh until his death fifteen years later, in 1899. His heavy investment and push of Carboline in 1877-1878 turned out to be little more than a tryst with the hair grower, an affair he ended shortly after it had begun. It would have been heady news if his medicine really did grow hair on bald heads, but it could not and did not. In fact a friend admitted as early as 1886, “Kennedy knew as much about medicine as a horse does about astronomy.” The friend, who was probably also his chemist for the medicines, continued:

He used to get an idea that a medicine for some particular ailment would sell well, and he would come to me to get up something. I’d always do it for him, making up a medicine that would be as harmless as possible. Then Kennedy would go into the most extravagant advertising and tell the world of some remarkable discovery.

The old business associate and friend waxed philosophical in his closing remarks about patent medicines in general, “There is no business so uncertain as the patent medicine business; the shores of time are strewn with their wrecks.” Maybe so; but the patent medicine ships of R. M. Kennedy, when he was their captain, flew like Yankee Clippers, fearless and with great energy. Undaunted by life’s setbacks and the flimflam of his own swindles, he only changed course when he wanted to, and most everyone in Pittsburgh seemed to admire the cut of his jib.

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This is the last of my three-part series on hair-growing products I bought at Houston24. With installments on Bear’s Grease, Cocoaine, and Carboline, we’ve traveled through animal, vegetable, and mineral medicines for growing hair on bald heads, and I for one can now be at peace over losing my hair. It was meant to be and I’m good with the new old me.

Notice the proliferation of oil wells in the image, compared to the early image on the box; this suggests a later design, possibly 1878; it may have been a visual metaphor for the fact that Carboline sales were booming, just like the petroleum industry. Courtesy of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

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