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.

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

Price Gouging in the Republic of Texas

How much was too much for a new life?

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

To the best of my knowledge, there is only one bottle from the era of the Republic of Texas (1836-1845) that actually has the name of that short-lived country embossed on it. PeachridgeGlass.com 

states that only three examples still exist, and I have recently had the privilege of holding one of those three treasures in my hands. I thought I could make a worthwhile contribution to history and the bottle-collecting hobby by researching and writing about Price’s Patent Texas Tonic. The results? A web of patent medicine connections between a war hero, governors and ministers, slaves and  plantations, Mormons at Nauvoo, Transylvania University, and the infertility of a U.S. president. I came to realize that probably only three examples of this old glass bottle still exist because the others burst at the seams with the explosive story they tried to hold inside.

Opportunity Knocks

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

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

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

The Merchant Prince

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

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

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

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

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

Father Knows Best

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making Money in Galveston

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A New Thing Under the Sun”

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

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

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

Barrenness.

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

If husband’s ashamed, a servant can buy;

In three weeks or so! perhaps not so soon,

Gaze with delight on the beautiful moon;

Your eyes become bright – a heart filled with joy,

Good prospects in view – a Girl or Boy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a Deal I've Got for You!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preparing for the End of Days

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

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

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

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

The persons who manufacture it should do it very privately.

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

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

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

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

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

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