cocaine cough drops and other cures--9/30/26
Today's selection-- from Empire of Ink by Alex Wright. Revenue from the advertising of quack patent medicines fueled an explosion of growth in US newspapers in the late 1800s:
“The Joslyn Castle at 3902 Davenport Street in Omaha, Nebraska, stands as one of the country's great architectural curiosities. With its medieval-looking turrets and battlements springing up over the sprawling thirty-two-room mansion, the house looks nothing remotely like anything else in Omaha–or much of anywhere west of the Mississippi, for that matter (with the possible exception of the Hearst Castle–with which it shares a certain media-baron pedigree). The five-acre grounds originally featured riding stables, sprawling vegetable gardens, a year-round greenhouse for growing the poinsettias that decorated the halls–and, improbably, a small herd of cattle. Inside, the residence featured stained glass windows, grand sweeping staircases, chandeliers and wall sconces placed with twenty-four-carat gold, a bowling alley, and marble drinking fountains designed especially for the household dogs.
“The owner, George P. Joslyn, struck a similarly larger-than-life figure, with his gold-capped teeth, finely tailored clothes, and outsized personality. He lived, as historian Eugene C. Harter puts it, ‘like a corn-pone Arab sheik.’ Along with his wife Sarah–an aspiring grande dame and ardent temperance advocate who nonetheless loved to throw lavish parties–he frequently hosted visiting dignitaries, local grandees, and favored corporate customers for teas, dinners, and overnight sojourns. Guests would gather around the house's custom-fitted Aeolian pipe organ for celebrations in the winter or witness the firing of the couple's brass cannon on the Fourth ofJuly. To divert attention from his staggering wealth,Joslyn often appeared in public wearing a twenty-five-cent chewing tobacco stickpina–a clumsy attempt to retain a veneer of his humble origins even as his fortune ballooned.
“The man was also, by all accounts, utterly ruthless.
“Joslyn's career offers a revealing case study in how the rise of advertising–especially in the form of patent medicines–transformed the newspaper business from a politically driven civic enterprise into an engine of consumer capitalism. This trend would only accelerate as the industry continued to expand in the closing decades of the century.
“The Joslyn family owed its remarkable prosperity to its stewardship of the Western Newspaper Union. In 1878, a young Joslyn had taken a job as a shipping clerk for eighteen dollars a week at his uncle's printing company in Des Moines, Iowa. That company, known at the time as the Iowa Printing Company, would eventually change its name to the Western Newspaper Union (WNU) and become a competitor to Kellogg's American Newspaper Union. Joslyn, eager to prove himself, soon moved up in the company pecking order to become a salesman, then general manager, and finally president.
 |
| Clark Stanley's Snake Oil |
“A master negotiator and dealmaker, Joslyn recognized the power of newspaper advertising early on–and foresaw correctly that it would fundamentally reshape the American economy. Unlike previous readyprint outfits (like Kellogg's ANU) that relied on a combination of publisher subscriptions and advertising revenue, Joslyn pushed his company to pivot to an entirely ad-supported model, typically charging newspapers nothing whatsoever for the company's preprinted pages. The company sold national advertising (overwhelmingly patent medicine ads) across a vast network of small weeklies, then used those receipts to underwrite its preprinted ‘patent-inside’ pages. As a result, WNU could send preprinted pages to newspapers for little or nothing, while keeping the ad revenue itself Although editors had the option to buy readyprint with or without ads, about 97 percent of them chose the cheaper ad-supported version. It was, in effect, an early version of the same business model that has powered countless internet empires: creating a product that's free to consumers, funded entirely by advertisers who want to target their wares at a group of engaged readers. By 1900, the WNU was the largest news syndicate in the country, with more than fourteen thousand subscribers. By this time Joslyn was sitting atop a gusher of cash flow-the vast majority of it coming from a single category of advertising: patent medicines.
“Most of these remedies were not actually patented, nor for the most part were they particularly medicinal. But they nonetheless proved wildly popular in the late nineteenth century, nowhere more so than in the pages of the nation's small-town newspapers. They bore names like Fink's Magic Oil, Munyon's Paw Paw Pills, Dr. Samuel Collins' Great Indian Pain-Killing Remedy, Dr. Hand's Pleasant Physic, and the aptly named Panacea Ointment. The ranks of advertisers also included purveyors of that iconic patent medicine: snake oil, with numerous ads hawking the benefits of rattlesnake oil remedies for ailments as diverse as appendicitis, croup, varicose veins, and everyday aches and pains.
“Most–though not all–of these products were bunk. Some were nothing more than thinly veiled intoxicants, often involving heavy doses of alcohol (up to 40 percent in some cases) or other now-controlled substances. A French tonic wine (made popular by Pope Leo XIII) contained six milligrams of cocaine per fluid ounce (‘Fortifies and Refreshes Body and Brain!’). Dr. Bell's Anti-Pain, a remedy featuring a mix of alcohol and chloroform, promised to put customers at ease when confronted with a wide range of ailments including colic, flux, diarrhea, rheumatism, and toothaches. Opium tinctures were suggested for children's teething or ‘female complaints,’ while marijuana cures were marketed as a remedy for headaches, pain, and neuralgia. The most successful patent medicine of all, Coca-Cola, was originally marketed not as a refreshment but as a curative, containing traces of cocaine until 1903 (when it was replaced by caffeine).
“No one benefited more from the trade than Joslyn. The business was so lucrative that he eventually decided to try his hand at patent medicine himself, founding a separate company that marketed a custom-made potion named Big G (for ‘George’) that reputedly cured syphilis, among other things. Rumor has it that Joslyn won the formula in a poker game (although this tale remains open to some dispute). By all accounts many customers found that it worked as advertised and it proved enormously popular–and also, unfortunately, highly poisonous. Eventually the federal government intervened to outlaw its sale. But by that time Joslyn had already made a mint on the scuff, padding his already considerable fortune.
“While many patent medicines promised one-off cures for specific ailments, others attracted loyal repeat customers. Among the most popular was Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, an herbal ‘women's tonic’ with a wide range of uses including menstrual cramps and menopausal symptoms, as well as a host of other female complaints–even promising to dissolve and expel uterine tumors. Originally a homemade remedy concocted by the eponymous Mrs. Pinkham–a former schoolteacher from Lynn, Massachusetts–it contained a mix of unicorn root, life root, black cohosh, pleurisy root, and fenugreek seed in a solution of alcohol. The company ran advertisements in newspapers nationwide, always accompanied by a regal-looking portrait of Pinkham. The formula purported to relieve a wide range of ailments. One advertisement claimed chat it ‘revives the drooping spirits, invigorates and harmonizes the organic functions; gives elasticity and firmness to the step, restores the natural lustre of the eye, and plants on the pale cheek the beauty of fresh rose of life's spring and early summertime.’ The remedy relied on a proprietary blend of herbs and minerals, but one ingredient in particular may have contributed heavily to customer loyalty: It consisted of about 20 percent alcohol.”
COMMENTS (0)
Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool in /home/customer/www/delanceyplace.com/public_html/cmsAdmin/plugins/websiteComments/websiteComments.php on line 279