Several years ago, I went to the illustrious Baltimore Bottle Show. Traveling from Texas to Maryland for a long weekend cost me several hundred dollars but, although the show was fabulous, I only purchased one little bottle – and I mean little. It measures just 3½ inches (8.89 cm). It only cost $30 USD, but adding in all the trip expenses it took to get the bottle, I claim this pipsqueak cost me almost a thousand dollars.
I surveyed the show with the diligence of a revenuer hunting for contraband. This little, labeled bottle was unveiled early on in my reconnaissance, but I kept coming back to it, even when I had wandered hundreds of bottles away. It was the sad, tired face on the label that kept calling out to me.
It had all the elements I look for in a bottle: a great label that hints at an interesting story, a historical connection to Lynn, Mass., no cracks in the glass, and a price I can afford. This bottle of Haynes’ Arabian Balsam might have held only a thimbleful of medicine, but it checked off all my boxes … and that face looked so lonely!
I have seen this medicine advertised many times in my research, but really didn’t know anything about it, other than it was made in Providence, Rhode Island, and had that exotic name, accompanied by the haggard, haunting face. Why was it called Arabian Balsam, not Providence Balsam, and for heaven’s sake, instead of using an image of a genie on a flying carpet or a sultry harem girl , why was the illustration THAT FACE? Here’s what I found out.
Haynes’ Arabian Balsam was the creation of Aaron Haynes, while living in South Braintree, Mass. (a little south of Boston). He was born in Vermont and after attending 30 weeks of classes at the Vermont Academy of Medicine, he graduated in 1830. He then married and got busy having children. As late as August 1850 he was still living in Vermont not as a physician, but as a Baptist clergyman, suggesting he wasn’t fully committed to medicine as a career at that point.
Over the next few years the Haynes family moved to South Braintree and Aaron was focusing on his knowledge of medicine to make the balsam that bore his name. It was a remarkable remedy, some might say miraculous, since it possessed qualities fit for internal and external use, and for man or beast. In 1855 he produced a brochure that claimed it brought relief in “all cases of pain and inflammation,” such as burns, bruises, sprains, gunshot and other wounds, earache, deafness, piles, sore lips and throat, lost motion of the limbs and much more; from poisoning to hiccups, this was the answer.
The brochure included testimonials from grateful South Braintree neighbors, dated December 1854, and notably, the stories of the balsam’s successful use focused on its external application.
One wrote of a daughter who sat immobilized for five days because of “pain like a dagger piercing through her hip”; after one day using the amazing Arabian Balsam, “she was almost entirely free of pain” and within three weeks she was “perfectly well.”
Another told of a year-old toddler who spilled a teacupful of boiling hot tea on herself; “she was in such agony.” Her parents stripped off her clothes and found her skin “as red as a blaze all over her neck, bosom and bowels.” The Arabian Balsam was applied over the entirety and within ten minutes the baby had relief.
A third story told of a visiting mother who had no use of her right arm for two years, but the visiting Dr. Haynes prescribed his Arabian Balsam, telling her that “you thought it would cure it.” When the doctor visited her five or six weeks later, he found her “sewing with her right hand as tho’ it was perfectly well.” The endorsement also revealed that the doctor’s visit had occurred over four years earlier, showing that he was practicing medicine in South Braintree just a few months after he was censused as a preacher in Vermont.
Dr. Haynes was cautiously optimistic about the successes of his medicine – cautious because he didn’t want others to copy his success, and optimistic because he wanted to brand his medicine and have it sold in stores – so in 1859 he sought trademark protection of his product name, Haynes’ Arabian Balsam, and he added his face to prove that it was the genuine article. According to his advertising, 40,000 bottles sold over 1856-1857. Maybe one or two zeroes had been added, but his success had attracted the attention of a fellow named Jesse Miller. Known as both a physician and a peddler, he lived in Wrentham, Mass., about 25 miles away, on the way to Providence, Rhode Island.
Miller had a wife and two young sons, but not much else. It’s hard to imagine how he was able to negotiate a deal with Dr. Haynes to purchase the formula and the rights to take over the Arabian Balsam business, but he did, in 1859. He named his business J. Miller & Sons, but with his two boys being only 15 and 10, fame and fortune would be largely his own responsibility for a while.
There were at least two parts to Miller’s plan to grow his new business. He added his own concoction, which he dubbed, Dr. J. Miller’s Vegetable Expectorant, and he advertised both medicines in Connecticut and Maine newspapers, hoping to expand their market. When Lydia Pinkham’s son, Daniel, had his grocery store, he stocked Haynes’ Arabian Balsam; I get a kick out of imagining all those little tiny faces somberly staring out from his shelf.
As hard as it may be for us to imagine today, medicines named Arabian Balsam and Vegetable Expectorant were anything but original: there were many others using these designations, much like we use the terms “toothpaste” and “cough syrup” today, differentiating them by the brand or maker. Lady Perrott’s Arabian Balsam was being sold in 1821 and Cheeseman’s, Prince’s, and Bennet’s peppered Arabian balsam advertising over the next several decades, and many others were added to the competition throughout the century. Store advertising frequently referred to Arabian balsam generically rather than specifying exactly which brands they were selling.
Arabian balsam gets its name from Flavius Josephus, an ancient historian who claimed that among the spices that the queen of Sheba presented to King Solomon (1 Kings 10:2) “was some of the real Arabian Balsam ….” It was an aromatic gum from the bark of a balsam tree – more of a shrub - found in Arabia and, he wrote, it was one in the same as the Balm of Gilead. It wasn’t just tree sap – it was the stuff miracles are made of, and it seemed to be the miracle cure of the 19th century – at least that’s what Jesse Miller was praying for. But his formula wasn’t made from the aromatic resin of a rare Arabian shrub; it’s principal ingredient was turpentine, the pungent – and toxic – oil of the pine tree. Now we know it can cause kidney failure, blood in the urine, low blood pressure, vision loss, chest pain, vomiting, severe coughing, hemorrhaging, and even death. But Victorians swallowed and slathered on the Arabian balsam to kill a universe of pains. It was even a trusted cure for pets and farm animals:
A cat will catch cold, sneeze, and have all the symptoms of influenza … if she has a sore throat wrap it with flannel wet with Arabian Balsam and keep her away from the children. (1889)
Where fowls [chickens] have swellings on heads and feet bathe the affected parts with Arabian Balsam …. (1897)
Jesse Miller gave the business everything he had, trying to raise up his three young sons in the business and leave them a legacy of riches. His legacy turned out to be one of loss. He lost a daughter, a grandson, his wife, and one of three sons to various sicknesses over the next twenty years. Then he lost the business. The costs of the company had exceeded his profits and resources, so he mortgaged his business and kept making the products to sell through one of his sons in Boston. But the creditors, a company named E. Morgan & Sons, claimed sole right, not only to the goods and materials, but to the trademark. The court ruling found in favor of Morgan’s company, so Miller’s new attempt at a trademarked label (shown below) was not allowed to launch the business in Boston.
Jesse Miller was left with nothing but broken dreams. The bad news was eagerly broadcasted through newspapers across the country:
The Proprietor of the Arabian Balsam Buried From an Insane Asylum.
Franklin, Mass., August 27 [1885]. – Jesse Miller, celebrated as the proprietor of the Arabian Balsam, the manufacture of which he carried on at Sheldonville and later at Providence, was buried at Sheldonville yesterday. He died in the Taunton Insane Asylum, where he has been confined for several years. He suffered extended litigation with the originator of the balsam and other interested parties. He had accumulated a large property only to lose it again. These troubles, with a hereditary tendency to brain trouble, unsettled his mind.
Various members of the Morgan family kept making Haynes' Arabian Balsam deep into the 20th century. Government prosecution meant court cases, fines, reduced promises and claims, and less-offensive ingredients, but the Arabian Balsam continued being sold until 1961, over a century after Dr. Aaron Haynes started healing his patients with his version of the ancient, biblically inspired remedy. His face now poses as a silent witness to a long and storied history and to the many, many wounded and sick people, cats, chickens and other creatures that were thankful for that little bottle of medicine. Seems like that should make the doctor's face smile at least a little bit.
Fascinating read. I found it particularly interesting when you explained that names like Arabian Balsam were as common as "toothpaste" or "cough syrup" for us today. I never would have guessed!