Who Really Made the Real ‘Daffy’s Elixir’ and What Was Really In It?
Daffy's Elixir was one of the most popular patent medicines in Britain -- and it sold for nearly 300 years, which is amazing considering these types of products were often a flash in a pan. But what m...
25 Juni 202426min
What Happened When – and After -- Dr. S. Andral Kilmer Founded His Laboratory and Remedy Company
According to the Vermont State Pharmacy Association in 1921, quote: "Dr. Kilmer's SWAMP-ROOT Kidney, Liver and Bladder Medicine … is a medicine of genuine merit. Thousands of letters we have received ...
18 Juni 202426min
Herbert E. Bucklen, Patent Medicine and 'Axle Grease Salesman'
Herbert Elijah Bucklen made himself one of the wealthiest businessmen in both Elkhart, Indiana, and Chicago, Illinois, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And his patent medicine business, The ...
11 Juni 202428min
Patent Medicine Evolution: No Beer? ‘Let Them Drink Sarsaparilla’
Many patent medicines may have done more harm than good -- or at the very least, nothing at all -- and we’ve been talking about a good many of them so far this season. Ingredients in patent medicines ...
4 Juni 202427min
‘EAT! EAT! EAT!’ Fat ‘Banished’ With Tapeworm Diet
Getting yourself a parasitic buddy will help you lose weight; the idea here is that the tapeworm lives in your intestines and eats whatever you’re eating, meaning you can go for seconds or thirds with...
28 Maj 202427min
‘A Niagara of Curls’: The Story of the Seven Sutherland Sisters
“It’s the Hair – not the Hat That Makes a Woman Attractive,” read one ad for the Seven Sutherland Sisters’ scalp cleaner. Sisters Sarah, Victoria, Isabella, Grace, Naomi, Dora, and Mary Sutherland wer...
21 Maj 202431min
Asthma and Smoking: When Cigarettes Were Medicine
In 1946, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company launched an ad campaign with the slogan, “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” Long before Camel cigarettes became the doctor-approved cigarette ...
14 Maj 202426min
That Time Perry Davis Trademarked ‘Pain Killer’ and Then Took It Global
By the time he was in his 40s, Perry Davis was an entrepreneur who had tried, unsuccessfully, to start multiple businesses; and those failures had left him $4,500 in debt – roughly more than $160,000 ...
7 Maj 202438min
