Medicine sure has come a long way, most everything we need is over the counter and relatively safe if taken properly. But what about back in the day when our relatives got sick? They relied on a lot of herbal remedies, and they also had dodgy quack medicine!
from snake oil to …snake oil
Traveling salesmen with their cure all tonics, snake oil salesmen offering to cure everything from pain to baldness to the vapors with their miracle elixirs. To cash in on the money that was being spent in the “medical” industry in the mid 1800s companies started developing and distributing their own products through your friendly local apothecary! . If it came from a doctor or a druggist then it must be SAFE? It must be RELIABLE? It must be CONSISTENT? RIGHT?? Well…
help or harm?
Imagine Great grandma had pneumonia, someone could pop on down to the pharmacy and their local druggist could whip them up a concoction that could help them forget they were even sick (and effectively contributing to a national drug epidemic at the turn of the century.) Im guessing a lot of people spent cold and flu season high or asleep.
By the turn of the century the government was noticing that we had a problem on our hands as a country. People were becoming addicted to the ingredients, and as early as 1910 they noted that people were becoming immune to the effects, needing more and stronger dosing. (which was a problem in and of itself). Thankfully as medicine and technology progressed, standards and various drug regulations were enacted, laws were made and passed on the labeling and claims of most of these drugs. Thanks to the FDA and various medical acts enacted by congress, most of these were banned by the time prohibition rolled around.
ACTUAL PRODUCTS USED!!
here is a look at 16 ACTUAL vintage pharmacy products people could get in the 1800s and up to about 1930.
Heroin in a bottle. You could get this cold/cough/lung OTC until 1913! 
They loved their morphine… 
need Opium? This helped induce sweating, and was used overseas up through the 1950s! 
one size fits all remedy made with strychnine and belladonna. . Constipation, sore throat, asthma, fatigue and headache, flu, nerves and more. 
questionable ingredients and alcohol… No wonder women had so many “female issues” 
alcohol. cannabis and morphine were common through the 1930s in cough syrups 
cocaine AND wine?? Yep, available until 1920!!
listed as a powerful recuperative tonic, this contained the poison Strychnine. 
another cannabis, morphine and chloroform cough syrup.
Aren’t we lucky to live in a time with such great medical advances. Although some might argue we need to bring these back, especially after the year 2020 has been!! 🙂
Anyone have old bottles from the medicine cabinets of your ancestors? I would love to see them!
Happy Hunting!!
