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.
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.
Wonderful write-up with a great Satan prelude leading up to the medicines.