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.

Weaponized Witch Bottles

Fighting Witches & Demons with bottles and other things ever since the 1600s

The year is 1644. You left your home in a bustling town in England and now find yourself living in a small house – not much more than a cabin – in the woods of the Massachusetts Bay Colony not far from Salem. All you can see beyond the land you’ve cleared is woods – on all sides. Your nearest European neighbor is a quarter mile away, but you and your family catch glimpses of the people you call Indians in the shadows of the trees, or even brazenly coming out in the open, walking up to one of your farm animals, or looking in a window, or even an open door. You sometimes refer to them as “savages” because their clothes, language, homes, and lifestyles are so different from yours; your minister has preached that they are servants of the Devil.

There’s much more to fear in the wilds of original Lynn, like bears, cougars, bobcats, moose, rattlesnakes, and wolves. Any day can become a nightmare. But nighttime makes it still worse.

Your house provides some safety from the wild animals and Indians at night, but evil can still find its way inside. In spirit form, witches and their familiars (animals like cats, rats, squirrels, and mice) can get into the house through the smallest openings: under the door, a hole in the wall, or even the keyhole, and most easily, down the chimney (Figure 1). Then nothing can stop them from cursing your child or spouse with sickness, pain, and even death.

Figure 1. Witch Attack. A witch in spirit form preparing to fly through an opening into the house. Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus: Or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions (1681)

The Bible Told Me So

Colonists had no doubt that witches and the devil were real because the Bible told them so. Exodus 22:18 reads, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” It was a clear statement that witches existed. And the Bible also stated many times that the Devil was very real and dangerous: “Be sober; be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walketh about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” 1 Peter 5:8

When a sickness seemed unusual or didn’t yield to available medicines, it was called “unnatural” and suspected to have been caused by a witch’s curse. The doctor who authored this book (Figure 2) had no doubt about the source of several unusual and uncommon sicknesses and diseases; they couldn’t be explained or cured and thus, he stated without any doubt, they were the work of witchcraft.

Figure 2. Diseases Caused by Witchcraft. “Unnatural” illnesses that were unknown and/or incurable by doctors must therefore have been caused by witchcraft. William Drage, Daimonomageia: A Small Treatise of Sickness and Diseases from Witchcraft (1665)

The fear of witchcraft was not simply a phenomenon of 1692 – it was widespread throughout New England and the limited existing records document over 200 cases starting as early as 1647 and there are 33 known executions (of which Salem accounts for only 19). The records for the fate of 69 others have not yet been found, so those put to death could be a higher number. 59 confessed to being witches, largely the result of fear, interrogation techniques, and the miseries of incarceration.

Their ministers preached that faith, obedience, and prayer were the proper defense against witchcraft, but terrible, unexplainable things were still happening to the faithful and some felt the need to do more than just pray. You might pray that a fox wouldn’t attack your chickens, but you were still going to get your gun and shoot, if it tried. So how could they better defend their loved ones? And how could they protect their families at bedtime, When the candles were all blown out?

One option was turn to the Bible for God’s clues for protection. The Bible was considered to be full of symbolic messages like the power of certain numbers:

• For example: 3 for the Holy Trinity (the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost), 5 for the wounds of Christ, 12 for the apostles, and more.

• Bushes of mountain ash were often planted around the outside of the house because the 5-pointed pentagram pattern on each berry was believed to be a sign that God would protect the house against evil.

• A braid of 12 garlic bulbs hung behind an outside door was hoped to ward off witches and thieves.

Colonists also turned to the secret practices of family and friends. Some used methods of ritualized protection to keep their family and farm animals safe. When they had lived in Great Britain, they and their relatives and friends had folklore traditions for generations – of carving or drawing special protection symbols and hiding ritual objects in their homes and barns – all to keep their families and animals safe from witches. The protective marks and objects were designed to either trap or repel evil spirits. 

But ministers like Increase and Cotton Mather called it counter-magic and white magic. They warned that using white magic to fight a witch’s black magic was playing into the Devil’s hands because ALL magic was of the Devil  … but the fearful were desperate.

Figure 3. Two Hexafoils. It was a solar symbol, believed to invoke the light of the sun in the dark spirit world, thus keeping witches and other evil demons (who thrived in darkness) away from the house. Photograph by author.

Ritual Protection Marks

The hexafoil is just one example of protective marks that have been found in homes still standing in what was Massachusetts Bay Colony (Figure 3). Also known as the “daisy wheel,” it is a solar symbol that has been traced back to Roman antiquity (the petals representing the sun's rays) [Hexafoil stems from the German word hexen, which means witches.]

Protective marks like the hexafoil were placed near doors, windows, and around fireplaces, the openings where evil could easily enter the home. Protective objects were hidden behind walls and under floors, the fireplace hearth, or the threshold of doors.  

  Protecting one’s home or barn from witches required no expense or special skills. The marks were easily made with the sharp point of a knife, scissors, compass, or nail, and ritual objects were items around the house and barn that were being repurposed instead of discarded. It was believed that these simple marks and ordinary objects magically transformed in the spirit world into weapons and traps to catch, repel, and even kill witches.          

The early colonists believed broken items in this world were whole in the spirit world; weak things became strong; what was dark here was light there; “dead” (or nonfunctioning) here became “alive” in the world of spirits, just like the crucified Jesus Christ was resurrected from death and became alive again. Thus, a hexafoil solar symbol carved into the wall around your fireplace was glowing like the sun in the spirit world, keeping witches and other demons (Satan’s minions loved darkness but hated light) away from the house and your family.

The protective marks are rarely dated but the protective objects often can be. Many ritual protection marks been found in the few 17th century New England homes still standing, but objects have been found in them that date as late as the 1890s. Other New England homes built after the 1720s have also been found to have ritual protection marks and objects. After 1692, the church and the law backed away from accusing and convicting suspected witches. Without the church and the courts protecting them, some people continued to protect themselves from evil and “bad luck” throughout the 1700s and 1800s, and even into the early 20th century. Here are a few examples.

In 1846 the Salem Register described supernatural events occurring in the 1600s very near the Corning family’s home in Beverly.

• One story was of a large number of black cats that tormented a man with their caterwauling “for some deed of darkness he had done”; he was only able to pacify them by psalm singing.  When the man died, “these supposed agents of the other world … completely covered his coffin; and upon being disturbed, all made their exit up the chimney, bearing, as was supposed, the spirit of their victim with them”  [an example of evil using the chimney as an entrance and exit from the house].

• Another “eccentric” individual on the same street was also described; he practiced “witchcraft and superstition .… Among other things, he kept by him the hand taken from the corpse of a first-born male child, in which he contended he could place a light of the most brilliant character and carry it anywhere, unperceived by anyone except himself” [another example of light in the dark spirit world.]

Ritual Protection Objects: Weaponized Bottles

Bottles had a key role in ritual protection from witches and evil. The first bottles the colonists used were the ones they carried with them from Europe – sturdy salt-glazed stoneware that contained beer or wine, or sometimes mercury. Once empty, the bottles were repurposed, just like the colonist's other few possessions in this new world.

Figure 4. Bartmann Bottle with “Angry” face, 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. Collection of author.

Figure 5. Close-up of a Bartmann Bottle with "Fear" face, about 1650. Collection of author.

These old bottles were called Bartmann (meaning “bearded man”) in the area of Cologne, Germany, where they were made, and Bellarmine in Great Britain and the colonies, where over 100,000 were used. Bartmann’s were anthropomorphic, with its face on the neck and bulbous belly, and there was something else that made them perfect for the task: those produced in the mid-17th century most often had either an angry or fearful expression. I believe the sinister facial expressions were a graphic reflection of the public’s terror during the intensive persecution and eradication of suspected witches from among family members and friends during those decades (over 2,000 were burned at the stake as witches in the area of Cologne, which had a population of just 40,000; so about 5 of every 100 people were executed for witchcraft), as well as showing anger towards their enemies whom they suspected were witches. The early Bartmanns (made in the 1500s) were crafted with faces that were either expressionless or were jolly and smiling; however, by the mid-1600s, during Germany's witchcraft persecutions, the expression had changed to angry (Figure 4) or fearful (Figure 5).

A household in the American colonies that was troubled by witchcraft would repurpose the bottle by adding the urine of the sick person and sometimes their hair, nail clippings, and a piece of fabric cut into the shape of a heart. The bottle thus filled with body parts and fluids of the family member who was believed to be bewitched with some unnatural illness was designed to trick the spirit of the witch into attacking the decoy bottle instead of the actual person. The iron nails and pins (usually in multiples of three) it contained would then impale the witch’s spirit that had dove into the bottle, causing the actual witch pain, either killing her or getting her to stop her bewitchment of the sick family member. X-rays have shown such bottles found that have been with contents that included nails, hair, and pins floating in liquid that was subsequently analyzed to be urine (Figures 6 & 7).      

Figure 6. Bartmann X-ray, showing nails and finernails floating in a liquid. Photo: Alan Massey / R. J. Bostock

Continued Use of Witch Bottles: 19th-21st Centuries

The idea of putting counter-curses or charms in bottles has continued ever since the days when people had intense fear of witches and their demons. They’re still being found buried and hidden in old buildings and washing up on beaches. Just a few examples are included here from Virginia, Louisiana, and Texas.

Figure 8 shows an aqua squat soda embossed CHAS GROVE / COLA PA that was found near an old brick hearth at the site of an old fort ("Redoubt 9") in York County, Virginia. Archeologists have dated the find to 1862-1863 and the bottle was "full of broken nails"; its contents and location near the old hearth made them speculate that it was used to repel evil - a possible Civil War era witch bottle.

Figure 7. Bartmann bottle with dry contents removed, including 9 nails, 1 pin, and a fabric heart. (c) Museum of London,

Figure 8. Civil War era Witch Bottle; Virginia, ca.1862-1863. Blog post, "Possible Civil War witch bottle found in Virginia," The History Blog, 24 JAN 2020.

Suspected of being an instrument of voodoo, the bottle in Figure 9 may have been constructed to fight evil or to cast a spell. It was found in a house site dated to the mid-1800s at Algiers Point in New Orleans, Louisiana. A news report explained, "[It] may have beenused as a protection spell for the property. It also may have been used in voodoo to cast a different spell. ... [It was] said to have been found in an area formerly populated by a Catholic church, Afro-caribbean voodoo practies, and 'witchy-type fortune teller people.' " Its contents included an unknown (and not yet analyzed) liquid, hair, a tooth, and an earwig. Public reaction to the possible voodoo find has been to put the unsettling bottle back where it was found, apparently to avoid the possibility of bad mojo. (Are we really so different from our superstitious colonial ancestors?)

Figure 9. Mid-19th Century Voodoo (?) Bottle; found in New Orleans, Louisiana. Article, "Eerie 'witch bottle' dug up on west bank. Worried observers tell finder to 'Put it back!' " Doug MacCash, Times Picayune, 10 JUL 2020

The final witch bottle shown in this article was found rolling in with the waves onto a Texas beach (Figure 10). It is a mid- to late 20th

century light aqua whiskey bottle covered in barnacles and mollusks that have attached to the surface, but inside is a lot of unidentified plant matter and liquid, deliberately placed and sealed. Multiple bottles have been found on beaches from North Padre Island to Matagorda Island. The Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi believe these bottles that have been washing ashore likely originated in the Caribbean or South America. The plant matter and liquids have not yet been analyzed by the university. A mysterious message from another place.

WHAT DID YOU FIND??

I would like to document all possible finds of witch bottles in the United States and my bottle hunting friends are in the best position to find such bottles. If you find a bottle with any combination of liquid, nails, pins, hair, teeth, bones, thorns, hear shapes, and finger or toenail clippings inside, please let me know about your find! What was found, where, by whom, and when. Was it found behind a wall or under where a fireplace, door, or window was located? Maybe YOU have found America’s next “witch bottle”!! I will post all finds here on promisingcures.com!

Figure 10. Ocean Witch Bottle; Texas coast. Mid-late 20th century. Article, “Eerie “witch bottles’ found along Gulf of Mexico, and even researchers are creeped out,” Christina Coulter, Fox News, 26 NOV 2023.

Write to me at promising.cures@gmail.com and send me pictures of your possible witch bottle find!

One final point of interest: the first U.S. souvenir spoon ever made was the Salem spoon in 1891. It features a witch with just her broom – no cat, crescent moon, or bats – She seems agitated, aggressively pointing either to the name Salem or  further down the stem to three round-headed pins. 2 centuries had passed since the Salem Witch Trials, but those who designed the spoon still remembered that the pins were put in bottles to fight witches – perhaps it was a little reminder, just in case Salem had another witch scare!

Figure 11. Witch Bottle Reminder. The country’s first souvenir spoon was created two centuries after their famous witch trials and executions; a tribute to Salem, Massachusetts, it showed a witch pointing to three pins that were symbolic of those that had been put in “witch bottles” to destroy her or at least force her to remove her curse of an afflicted family member. Collection of the author.

Advertising trade card, ca. 1895. The witch door knocker is to the left: the witch is frozen into iron while carrying her demonic familiar on her back. To the right is the Lincoln Imp door knocker, based on the stone carving of it is found in the Lincoln Cathedral, England. The imp was sent by the devil to cause havoc in the church but was soon turned into stone by an angel, or so the story goes. Knock on that for a minute. Collection of the author.

Postscript

While the silversmith in the U.S. was perpetuating the symbolism of ritual protection against witches in his spoon design, another entrepeneur in Great Britain had designed a "Witch Door Knocker," complete with the devil riding on the back of the witch whom he controlled to do his bidding against people. Perhaps the symbolic message of the homeowner was meant to be, "We know who you are; you can knock but you can't come in!"

Fear of evil in the form of witches and devils continues on today, mixed into our psyche, making us still nervous about things that go bump in the night. ... Uh-oh, I've gotta go: I think I just heard a strange sound in that dark corner over there ...

Until next time, this is Promising Cures and I'm you're host --Andy Rapoza

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

Devils, Demons, & Disease

Long, long ago, when I was just a little tyke, my mom put a big weight on my shoulders: she told me I had a good angel sitting on my right shoulder and a bad angel on my left shoulder. It was important that I listen to the good angel and not the bad angel, she counseled. I struggled with tinnitus in both ears even in those early years and I think that’s why I had a hard time knowing which voice I was listening to; at least that’s my excuse for my youth. And at 69, my tinnitus is worse than ever, so forgive me for everything.

Figuring out how to deal with Heaven and stay out of Hell has been a struggle throughout human history, mainly because it’s just so darned hard to walk the straight and narrow path that it would seem leads back to Heaven.

The earliest European colonists in North America were certain that they were actors on a great stage controlled by its writer, director, and producer: God. And as certain as they were that their lives were blessed and buffeted by Him, they also knew that Satan was real, with an army of demons that he unleashed to destroy the weakest among mankind. If the wary Christian didn't faithfully and rigidly follow God's commandments, they would be attacked, consumed, and controlled by the Devil and his minions, doomed to eternal pain and torment in the underworld of fire and brimstone, as an angry and vengeful God looked the other way.

“Job Tormented by Demons and Abused by His Wife” Lucas Emil Vorsterman after Sir Peter Paul Rubens, 17th century. Public Domain; courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The Bible, the great word of God, told them it was so. It contained spine-tingling stories of devils that had taken possession of the bodies of people and beasts. "Be sober, be vigilant" the Bible read, "because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 8, told of seven evil spirits who had been in the body of Mary Magdalene. Mark, Chapter 9, recited how the disciples had been unable to heal a boy who was possessed by a spirit that made him deaf and mute. It often hurled the boy “into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him.” Whenever it seized him, “he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away." And in the fifth chapter of Mark there was the man who lived in a tomb, the very symbol of death, whom no chains could subdue; when Jesus asked the impure spirit his name, the chilling reply was "My name is Legion: for we are many."

As colonists read these accounts, their skin crawled with the thought that they might have their own demons inside themselves, proven by the wicked thoughts that inevitably seeped into their minds and the sins they secretly and frequently committed. The good part of them didn't want to, but the devil made them do it.

During 1692-93 over 200 people in Salem, Massachusetts, were accused of witchcraft and conspiring with their demonic animal familiars to do the bidding of the Devil. Eventually these dark, terrifying charges proved to be a combination of malicious falsehoods and tragic delusions by the accusers, clergy, lawmen, and judges who had prosecuted innocent people, executing twenty of them.

The Salem trials tragically occurred at the tail end of centuries of mankind viewing itself as merely dust being kicked up in the battle between an all-powerful, vengeful God and his nemesis, the Devil, the evil incarnate. As history moved forward through the end of the 17th and all of the 18th century, American life focused on material gain and to a lesser degree on attaining an eternal reward.

In the 19th century, newspaper accounts of Jack the Ripper and Lizzy Borden were eagerly followed by a public luridly curious about the evil extremes to which people would go, whether crazed or criminal masterminds, but the Devil got little credit for causing or directing their mayhem. The pursuit of reason, enlightenment, technology, and scientific advancement didn’t kill belief in the Devil, however; it only made him more bearable by defusing his power and danger. A refined empirical process of more scientific and rational investigation had made witchcraft accusations wither away; witches faded into folklore characters who scared little children at Halloween, and demons became the metaphors for the evils and illnesses that caused suffering and even death.

Devils became an advertising trope. Armies of horned, leathery-winged, pointy-tailed devils were now graphic Victorian metaphors emblazoned with the names of diseases and bodily evils on their wings and torsos, always defenseless, scared, and running or flying away from their all-powerful vanquisher – not God, but the advertised 19th century medicine.

Parker’s Ginger Tonic made such exorcisms look easy. The seated gentleman was very relaxed as he confidently held up a box of the product to put the threatened attack of child-sized demons into total disarray. Their childish, even cartoonish depiction suggested they were easy targets that never had a chance against such a grown-up, sophisticated medicine.

In another image for Parker’s, a larger army of devils attacked a small family, causing some fear among the mother and daughter, who clung to Father. Good choice: he stood heroically tall, holding up a bottle of Parker’s Ginger Tonic with stoic resolve. Like a masculine Statue of Liberty, the bottle scared away the demons of cramps, dyspepsia coughs, and diarrhoea (and unspecified ills surely carried by the other devils, subliminally implying that the tonic cured even more illness than its label and testimonials promised).

A box of Mason & Pollard’s Anti-Malaria Pills was even more aggressive, anthropomorphically sprouting legs and muscular arms and wearing boxing gloves, punching the lights out of malaria and the rest of the devilish lot who can be seen had a long history of accomplishing their hellish deeds. A long table behind the main event is littered with human bones and empty bottles of other products that had failed to stop their diseased evils. This battle royale is apparently occurring in Hades itself, which has bats (creatures from the underworld) and an owl (creature of the night) flying above, and fire (and perhaps a bit of brimstone below), the heat of which may have hinted at the cause of all the devils being shown in their traditional, red-skinned hues.

The confident hand of a professional in control of the situation (implied by the suit jacket and cufflinked shirt sleeve) emerges from the top right of the image pointing with his index finger (think Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel masterpiece), to the name on the bottle of Girondin Deodorizer & Disinfectant that he is pouring, to the great alarm and destruction of the many misshapen demons of “diphtheria, scarlet, typhoid fevers, and all other zymotic diseases ….” A winged angel and little cherubs hover on the heavenward side of the bottle, peacefully watching the destruction of hell below. Good and Evil are on opposite sides of the main character, each appropriately affected by the right choice being made with Girondin: early roots of my mother’s counsel, perhaps?

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a long-running advertising campaign for Raid insecticide showed all types of bugs being sent into a panic because they knew the product was their unavoidable destroyer in the same way that Parker’s Ginger Tonic, Mason & Pollard’s Anti-Malaria Pills, and Girondin Deodorizer & Disinfectant had stampeded the disease-carrying devils. Today, devils and demons are seldom mentioned in advertisements, no longer even deserving credit for causing sickness and pain; at best, they’ve been reduced from devils of disease to disgusting bugs. Polls about theology claim most Americans are moving on with their lives, increasingly dismissive of the Devil, like he doesn’t even exist. If they’re wrong, the future might start heating up.

“The Devil Offering Poison to a Knight” by Hans Schäufelein, 1517. Public Domain; courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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