The Big Green Bottle, Full of Miracles & Tragedy

In the early 1880s, Jacob Welch had accomplished having the biggest furniture store in Lynn, Massachusetts, and he felt he could achieve the same success running a medicine business, just like his friend Charles Pinkham was doing. Brimming with money, Welch just needed to find some medicine in which to invest.

For many decades, Robert W. Lougee, alias Dr. Lougee, had been making and selling his three medicines: Dr. Lougee’s Vitalizing Compound, the Juniper Kidney Cure, and Clover Cure “for female weakness,” and he was happy to share an enthralling backstory of how they came to be.

He told his tale of being a “bright and active boy” of thirteen, “unusually intelligent and observing for his years,” and having been the assistant of an Indian doctor “in the wilds of the Granite State” (New Hampshire), tasked with gathering roots and herbs for his medicines, “the potent arcana of the forest that formed his dwelling-place.” But at 70 years old, after a long career of making and selling the medicines on his own, he was ready to sell his secret recipes and his name. In Jacob Welch he had found the prize – an enthusiastic investor. Welch sold his share of the furniture business for $25,000 in 1885, and with those funds, started the Lougee Medicine Company in Lynn.

The formulas that Lougee turned over to Welch were full of the botanical ingredients he had learned about as a youthful assistant to that Indian doctor; they ranged from pumpkin seeds in the Clover Cure to juniper berries in the kidney cure. The Vitalizing Compound was an especially involved mixture of ten ingredients steeped in whiskey: one pound each of wormwood, mandrake, and burdock root; two pounds each of wintergreen, buchu, sarsaparilla, black cherry bark, blood root, and Peruvian bark; and one quart of burnt sugar, all to stand in a barrel of whiskey for about ten days. Now the furniture mogul and the old backwoods healer would work together at making this medicine business a success, just like the Pinkhams had been doing less than a mile away.

Welch took what Lougee had started and redesigned it around a compelling new Lynn testimonial that he hoped would be symbolic of his medicines’ efficacy and profitability:

Lynn, Mass., April 12, 1887. Eight years ago our daughter, Lena, then eight years of age, had a severe attack of Diphtheria, resulting in blood-poisoning, which developed into Scrofula. A malignant ulcer appeared upon her throat, eating away the flesh, and exposing the cords and muscles of the neck, till there was danger of some of the arteries being severed, and she would bleed to death. Another equally virulent ulcer attacked the right leg at the knee, seriously affecting the entire limb. The flesh under the knee was completely eaten away, laying bare the cords and tendons, presenting as did also the throat, a most repulsive and sickening sight. She was completely prostrated; her sufferings were most intense, and her condition in every sense was truly pitiable. … Five years ago last March an experienced and skillful Lynn physician was called, and by his advice she was taken to the country. There she received treatment for three months, after which time, unimproved, she was brought back to Lynn. Another skilled physician of this city then took the case, and at the expiration of two weeks advised her removal to the Massachusetts General Hospital, with the remark, “It is a critical case.”

Five doctors at the hospital told the family to just make Lena as comfortable as possible because that was all that could be done for her at that point. The most recent Lynn physician they had consulted was a Boston surgeon specializing in scrofula, but his efforts didn’t help either, so the parents then took their daughter to a lady physician who treated her for 15 months. While she relieved Lena’s suffering somewhat, no cure was accomplished.

Then we resorted to patent medicines. She took nearly two hundred bottles of one remedy in fifteen months, and followed this with forty bottles of another. As she continued to fail … Dr. R. W. Lougee was sent to us. … Upon taking Dr. Lougee’s Vitalizing Compound she began at once to improve, and our pardonable skepticism as to its great virtues was speedily removed. Soon the ulcers began to heal and the cavities to fill with new and healthy tissue, built up by this truly wonderful remedy. To-day nothing remains to indicate the frightful condition of which we have spoken … Her recovery is looked upon … as little short of a miracle, and our gratitude to Dr. Lougee for his agency in that blessed consummation is unspeakable. We hope the knowledge of his great specific, rightly named the Vitalizing Compound, may be spread far and wide. … Our residence is 677 Boston street. We will be pleased to answer all inquiries.

                                                              Mr. R. C. Judkins.

                                                              Mrs. R. C. Judkins.

Label on the bottle's back side.

To keep this miracle in the minds of every shopper, the big green bottle of Vitalizing Compound was adorned with an equally large label featuring a striking image of a healthy, vibrant Lena Judkins preparing to place a floral crown on the head of the venerable, seated doctor. In equally dramatic and varied Victorian type styles the message surrounding the trademarked image read,

Dr. Lougee Your Vitalizing Compound Saved My Life.

Lena’s parents had twice suffered the devastating loss of their other two children within the first two years of life; they were frantic to keep their teenage daughter Lena alive, and by their observations, it seemed that Lougee's Vitalizing Compound succeeded where all others had failed – Lena had healed! Their glowing testimonial of gratitude concluded with the final praise, “Is it not eminently fitting that our daughter, whose life he has thus saved, should crown the aged physician with an immortal wreath of honor?” Lena and Dr. Lougee would live on forever in the drawing on the label.

Unfortunately, from the outset, the Welch’s new medicine business sputtered, despite the miracles it performed upon Lena. Sales and cures came in fits and spurts, while expenses, especially from advertising, oozed steadily like a festering wound. There were occasional customers that said they received some benefit from the medicines, but more letters came in  from those who did not and were looking for their money back. The money was returned to a semi-literate man from Ossippee, New Hampshire, who had written,

I baut this bottle full of your Medicine and they gave me one trial bottle down to rochester on the fair ground[. I] carred it home and took it acording to Derections the man that sold it to me Booked my name and residence and all and thare was a soap man with him[.] they both told me to take it and if it did not do me any good they would return the money if I sent them the bottle to Dr Lougee Lynn Mass. I took both bottles and I want [wasn’t] so well as I ws when I begun to take … .

Similarly, another dissatisfied customer from Claremont, New Hampshire, wrote, “Sins [since] your Medicine has no effect on me I shall expect the dollar by return mail. the medicine does not help me at all.”  Like the others who bought with hope, a man from Concord, New Hampshire, wrote to “Dr Lougee” as submissively as a patient consulting in person with his doctor, even though he was very worried about his situation:

I comence to take your Medicine having Been troble with Schofler [probably scrofula] for a Number of years very Bad. Having a Soure [sore] on my side that had not been heald for 8 years. I have taken 2 Bot[tles] of your Vitalizing Compond and the out side of my Bodie came out all coverd with humor and it Itched all the time. Please Inform me if this is the way the Medicin work on Schofler [scrofula] it is almost a week Since it came out so. I can not see any thing that done it But the Medicin. … .

Label on the bottle's front side.

By August 1888, Welch had used up all $25,000 of his money to build up the business but had poor results – only about $7,000 in sales. He spent far more than he should have on advertising, not to mention his contractual obligation to bankroll old doctor Lougee twelve dollars weekly. There were also the medicine production costs and the expenses and salaries of his traveling salesmen that all kept cutting into dwindling capital. His medicine company had quickly become an open wound, hemorrhaging money. Panicking, he then made matters even worse for himself, trying to staunch the bleeding by lending the business his own money - what he had saved to take care of himself and his family.

Disillusioned and despondent, Welch arranged with Charles Pinkham to take over the manufacture of his medicines at the Pinkham laboratory. The Lougee Company formulas and business records were turned over to Charles and all of its stock and fixtures were loaded into the Pinkham laboratory; then Welch went to New Hampshire where a few weeks later, in a final act of utter desperation, he committed suicide by cutting his throat. He had left his wife and two children with almost nothing on which to live; their future lay in Charles Pinkham’s hands and stacked up on his laboratory floor.

In honor of his friend’s memory and for the sake of Welch’s wife and children, Charles tried to make the Lougee products work, but he was careful not to invest Pinkham company money in the risky Lougee business and aggressive advertising. At Charles’ recommendation, Welch’s family turned over the company to the advertising agency in less than two years. Pinkham’s medicine business soared into history but Lougee’s disappeared into oblivion.

The only known memorial to Dr. Lougee or Jacob Welch are the scarce bottles of Dr. Lougee’s Vitalizing Compound. It is an unusually large and heavy medicine bottle; standing at nine inches tall and weighing in at a chunky 1 lb 8-plus ounces (without liquid contents), it was a commanding presence on store shelves and in a shopper’s hands. It just wasn’t good enough to cure customers or to keep Jacob Welch alive. 

For more on Dr. Lougee and Jacob Welch, see:

PROMISING CURES, Vol.3,

Chapter 9: Heroine Addiction