Trademarks: Playing Possum?

It was one of the earliest trademarks registered in the United States - Number 247 - and the very first for a business in Lynn, Massachusetts. It's hard to imagine what inspired 22-year-old George B. Thurston to come up with the design. It was a distinctive symbol, to be sure, but what exactly was it and what was its message?

Maybe that was the whole point: to make the potential buyer be curious and wonder - capture the customer's attention.

Just 15 years old in 1864, George Thurston went down to New Bern, North Carolina, with his father to help sell food, medicine, tobacco, whiskey, and other goods to the Lynn soldiers of the 8th Massachusetts Infantry. During this time, the young teenager caught a young opossum and made him his pet. For the next year, the pet possum was probably a source of curiosity and amusement for the soldiers of the 8th, many of whom weren't much older than George. They needed something to take their mind off the war and help them pass the time.

When the war was over and the Thurstons came back to Lynn, George's pet possum came with them. In 1868, George loaned his "southern critter," as they called it, to Lynn's Post 5 GAR to have the 8th's mascot on exhibition at the veteran's fair, raising funds for the widows and orphans of departed comrades.

George's possum was a local celebrity. It was probably the critter featured on his first medicine trademark three years later.

Starting out in the patent medicine business at just 22 years old, George wanted something striking and memorable to represent the worm syrup he was selling, made from his mother's recipe. The cartoonish drawing could have been a bear cub dancing in a hoop, and I originally thought it was, but now I'm convinced it represented his pet possum. The skull shape is carefully drawn, rounded and sloping down to the nose, with whitish fur and a hint of pointed teeth, a characteristic feature in a possum's wide mouth. The fingers and toes are distinctively long and humanesque, again just like a possum, and grasping the hoop with prehensile ease. The rest of the animal's coat is darker, suggesting a light gray, a frequent contrast to the light-colored head of the North American Opossum. And, if you look really close, you will make out what may be its tail, wrapped along the front of the belly and up to the chest. Perhaps George had kept his pet in a cage designed for a large bird, like a parrot or cockatoo, with a large hoop suspended in the middle, and his possum frequently climbed into it, like in the trademark.

Was George inspired with cause to use his possum as the poster-pet for his worm medicine trademark? Very possibly. Possums do get infested with worms from the foods they scavenge. Maybe young George tried his mom's worm syrup on his pet, making it a sort of guinea-pig-possum. It's even possible that George and his father were selling his mother's worm syrup to the soldiers in camp who might have made some of the same bad food choices while foraging in the North Carolina wilderness that George's possum had made.

Possibly the worm syrup customer was just supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy about the cute, playful animal on the trademark (come on, Sandra Boynton fans, you know that feeling). Maybe the playful possum had been designed for customers to convince themselves that the critter was happy and dancing because it had been cured by the medicine, subliminally prompting them to buy a bottle for their sick and lethargic child back home who was suffering with worms. Or perhaps the unofficial regimental mascot was designed to be a locally patriotic symbol, encouraging all the returned veterans and their families to support their well-known townsmen, much like the Thurstons had been there for them during the war. Buy a bottle of Mrs. Thurston's Celebrated Worm Syrup and help out your friends, the Thurstons.

Whatever the trademark was supposed to convey, it helped the medicine survive for almost four decades, which in patent medicine years is a very, very long time, and in possum years, well, it's almost forever.

While George's possum helped the time pass, Mrs. Thurston's Worm Syrup helped everything else pass, or so George's trademark would lead us to believe.

For more on the career of George Thurston & Mrs. Thurston's Syrup, see:

PROMISING CURES, Vol.3, Chapter 7: Reconstructive Surgery

& Chapter 8: Heroine Addiction

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

Learn from the Ghosts of Christmas Past ...

Friends, please accept these random flashbacks to Christmases in Lynn from times long past. Just like Christmastime for each of us, some are stressful and some sad, and hopefully many are joyous and delightful. Let generations of people from Lynn, Massachusetts tell you about their Christmas:

1863: The Civil War was affecting everyone; during the Christmas shopping season of 1869, parents were encouraged to buy their children such war-themed table games as “Conscript,” “Union,” “Rebellion,” “Fort Sumter,” and “Battlefield.” [See PROMISING CURES, Chapter 7 – Reconstructive Surgery]

1869: Baseball became especially popular after the war was over and was touted as a “healthy game” that “not only improves the health of young men, but … has a tendency to draw them away from the billiard-room, the grog-shop, and other places of questionable repute.” It was so popular, a game was gotten up on the ice at Flax Pond on Christmas day of 1869; the players wore skates and a large crowd gathered to watch the spectacle wherein “it was not at all difficult … to steal bases.” [See PROMISING CURES, Chapter 7 – Reconstructive Surgery]

1873: When the Panic of 1873 had begun to set in over Lynn, “the popular landlord of the Lynn Hotel” had gained his townsmen’s admiration for purchasing a turkey and other holiday feast groceries from the local provision store and having them delivered to a needy West Lynn family whom he had learned had nothing to eat on Christmas – it was a moment that would have brought a tear to the eye of Ebenezer Scrooge himself. [See PROMISING CURES, Chapter 8 – Heroine Addiction]

1879: Switchboard-controlled telephones were installed by 1879 in businesses like Davis Adams’ coal office on Shepard Street and Frank Lindsey’s variety store in Market Square. ­­­French’s new grocery store had successfully connected to the North Pole: “BY TELEPHONE … Santa Claus announces that he will visit our good city next Christmas Eve.” [See PROMISING CURES, Chapter 8 - Heroine Addiction]

1899: A feature column appearing in the Lynn Item in 1899 continued to put pressure on the American woman, even as its male author was trying to convey that she shouldn’t stress over preparing the Christmas dinner: 

The approaching Christmas dinner will be the first served by many an American housewife who may read this column. To her the meal is looked forward to with apprehension if not with dread. ...

Now, my young friend, let us build your Christmas dinner on simple lines, have a bill of fare that you know you are equal to preparing without too much fatigue, and let your easy grace and pleasing smile serve as a sauce. [I just love that line!] You should wish to please your guests, not to stuff them, to satisfy their appetites, not to overload their stomachs. A good soup, followed by fish, a roast and dessert is enough.

With such a dinner you may give plenty of time to a simple decoration of the table and the preparation of a few dainty salads and side dishes that will make the meal the equal of a banquet. … A handsome vase with appropriate flowers and a few sprays of vine on the cloth is enough in the flower line, for your glass and silver ware will complete the setting. …

So the well-intentioned author wanted the woman to relax and not stress, but nonetheless to decorate the table and make a lavish meal consisting of soup, fish, a roast, salad, side dishes and dessert ... Christmas dinner still sounded like a gift of stress wrapped in anxiety. [See Promising Cures, Chapter 10 – Exposing the Naked Truth]

2023: If you come to our house for Christmas, just plan on talking, laughing, and playing some table games ... and a good dessert – on paper plates.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! And may Santa Claus bring you more than just high-top shoes!

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

Trademarks: Love in a Bottle

As America moved closer to the end of the 19th century, more and more products loaded store shelves and newspaper pages. Competition for consumer dollars consequently became tougher, so manufacturers resorted to branding their products and some got their product designs and names trademarked.

It was the early years of registered trademarks in the U.S. (the first being issued in 1870), so the art and craft of creating an effective brand went in many directions - some became standards that have lasted into our lives today and many more have gone the way of the dodo - but even those have fascinating and sometimes fun stories to share with us today.

Lots of Lynn medicine makers applied for trademarks and I have featured them in Appendix B of Promising Cures. I will drop them in as blog entries from time to time, starting with this amusingly dramatic scene for Parisian Aphro Tonic:

The product name was actually an abbreviation - probably to make it reader-friendly - it was short for Parisian Aphrodisiac Tonic. The man on bended knee is assumed to depict the product's proudly French creator, Charles Francois Julien Petit de Langle (note the enhanced detailing of the man's face compared to the plainer rendering of the woman's face). Although there were proprietary medicines for every human ailment under the sun, the French doctor created one for an issue infrequently discussed: sexual desire.

ARE YOU IMPOTENT?

his newspaper advertisement asked boldly.

The physician and specialist in genitourinary diseases had immigrated from France to the U.S. with his wife, Marie, and settled in Lynn. In 1893 he set up a complete medical facility in Central Square, comprising a waiting room, a laboratory, a dispensary, and an operating room, and Marie advertised her services as a Parisian dressmaker. He also introduced his own medicine in that year – the Parisian Aphro Tonic – an aphrodisiac medicine for the marketplace; in so doing, he had a trademark created that was clearly designed to attract attention.

The trademark depicted a man, presumably de Langle himself, on bended knee before a well-endowed and over-corseted woman, almost certainly Marie in one of her Paris creations, holding a bottle of the Parisian Aphro Tonic. The image makes you wonder: is he proposing marriage, or propositioning her, or just begging for the medicine? The scene implies that he is trying to be amorous, but perhaps he was just pleading for the bottle of tonic so that he could be! Maybe an even better question would be: is the curvaceous, wasp-waisted lady refusing to give it to him?

Something seemed to be working for Charles and Marie; the couple celebrated a “joyous triple ceremony” - their tenth anniversary, a house warming, and the anniversary of the French republic on 14 July 1896, and invited hundreds of guests for the grand event at their new home on the corner of Ocean and Basset streets. The de Langles seemed very happy and very much in love - perhaps there was something to his medicine after all.

For more on the career of Charles F. J. Petit de Langle, see:

PROMISING CURES, Vol.4, Chapter 10: Exposing the Naked Truth

& Appendix B: Lynn, Massachusetts Proprietary Trademarks

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