A Bottle By Any Other Name ...

I have been collecting bottles for a long, long time, and I've seen and read about many types of collections: based on a certain manufacturer, time period, location, etc.; most bottle collectors collect for color. For example, a collector may want to have every possible shade of brown that a certain bitters bottle comes in: brown, sand, wheat, amber, honey-amber, chocolate-brown, chocolate chip, etc. (okay, I made up the last one). Now I admit that it's a pretty sight to see one size and shape bottle displayed in a window in a progressive rainbow of hues, but here's what I don't get: a bottle label is often considered a deterrence to collectability. Huh?

That rationale is basically that you can't appreciate the pretty colors and age of the glass if there's this old label pasted over a part of the bottle. I understand what such collectors are saying, but I just don't feel that way at all, myself.

The label is HISTORY! It gives the bottle it's identity and often its character! MOST bottles did not have unusual shapes, colors, or embossing; all the proprietor could afford was the label. But those labels told the story! Whether it was a liquor bottle, a medicine, a cleaning solution, a flavoring extract, shoe gloss, or whatever, it gave the bottle its reason to exist! Labels tell who made the product, what it was, what it was for, where it was made, often clues to when, and much more. When it came to medicine bottles (obviously my favorite kind), it also listed what the medicine would cure. It was identification, instructions, and advertisement all in one!

Take this image for Dr. Abbott's Blood Purifying Sarsaparilla, made during the 1880s in Lynn, Massachusetts. The bottle is a common shape and the common aqua color (the brown you see is the dried residue of its contents). There is no embossing to tell any story. If the label wasn't on there, it would be considered a "junk" bottle by virtually every collector out there. Heck, even I wouldn't care about it. But the a-m-a-z-i-n-g label tells a story - WOW, what a story!

DR. ABBOTT'S

BLOOD-PURIFYING SARSAPARILLA

After years spent in the treatment of diseases, careful study and experiment, I am enabled to give to the world a medicine which I consider has no equal. Its composition is purely vegetable, and is designed to work chiefly upon the organs of digestion, assimilation, Liver, and Kidneys. It has also a specific action upon the heart. It increases the activity, and power of the Digestive organs, thus assisting nature in the digestion, assimilation, or transformation of our nourishment into a pure and vital fluid (the blood), which carries Vitality, Strength, and Vigor to every tissue. It has a cleansing and tonic effect upon the liver, by which bile is removed from the circulation. It produces an active and healthy condition of the kidneys, thus assisting in the removal of all wastes, and poisonous elements from the system. It also gives tonicity, force, and regularity to the tissues of the heart. There are also combined those principals which tends to overcome Constipation, Nervous Prostration, and to the extermination of Scrofulous, and Cancerous Humors, and is an excellent remedy for the cure of Dyspepsia, Sickheadached, Bronchitis, Catarrh, Rheumatism, Neuralgia, Jaundice, Dropsy, etc., diseases tending to Consumption, and of the Urinary, and Reproductive Organs, Female Weakness, Skin Affections, and all diseases arising from an impure state of the blood. Many valuable testimonials might be added, but a trial of the remedy is the only convincing proof of its true merit.

DIRECTIONS.

For an Adult, one Dessert Spoonful after meals, or sufficient quantity to gently relax the bowels; for Children, from five drops upward, according to age.

PREPARED SOLELY BY

C.S. ABBOTT, M.D., Lynn, Mass.

Can be procured of any Druggist, or direct from Manufacturer.

Price, $1.00 per Bottle, or six for $5.00

Now here's what some of you probably don't know: a small number of the extreme collect-for-color bottle collectors will remove the label so the light can show through the glass; I have been told this by one or two collectors who do so. That just stuns me. What a waste; what a tragedy. if they like colored glass so much, why don't they just collect colored lamp shades or learn to make stained-glass windows! Good grief. Thank goodness that such a collector would have no motivation to take the label off Dr. Abbott's Sarsaparilla - the bottle is boring glass - thank goodness. I've tried to imagine it in some bright, eye-popping color, but it just doesn't work for me. Dr. Abbott, your quack medicine bottle is plain and homely ... and one of the most treasured in my collection.

Reading the Fine Print of Quackery

In the 1870s, druggist Warren Toppan of Lynn, Massachusetts made and sold Calcutta Cholera Mixture.

It must have been somekinda powerful: the bottle is only 3.75" (9.525 cm) tall from base to the top of the lip and held only 3.25 teaspoons of cure. That's okay, huge medical breakthroughs often come in small packages, right? Penicillin: big-time disease cure, small petri dish; aspirin: whopping headache cure, small pill; Calcutta Cholera Mixture: breakthrough cholera cure, small bottle.

Umm, not really.

You've probably never heard of this quack cure. Its maker did not become rich or famous and he did next to nothing to advertise this medicine. This may seem to be extraordinary modesty given that he was claiming to have invented a cure for cholera.

Well, that's what he claimed ... sort of. You have to read (and understand) the small print (admittedly, ALL the print on this tiny bottle is small). Under the name of the medicine we read, "For the Cure of Cholera Morbus, Dysentery, Diarrhoea, Colic, and all Inflammation of the Stomach and Bowels." Cholera and Cholera Morbus are not the same thing; cholera is the epidemic variety and cholera morbus was a term used to describe the non-epidemic family of gastrointestinal diseases whose symptoms resembled cholera. So he wasn't really talking about curing the epidemic type of cholera that people associated with the 1832 global pandemic that originated among the impoverished people in the Bengal region of India. He was only promising relief for the spectrum of gastrointestinal complaints that hit Lynn during late summer through the fall of each year. Yet he purposely called it the Calcutta Cholera Mixture. And he couched his promises in caveats of even tinier type size:

If given in the forming stages of Cholera, it will arrest the progress of the disease.

In other words, if you're too far gone, Toppan's cure can't be blamed. And if you're not too far gone, it really only promises to stop the disease's progress, not knock it out of your system. So at best, the stuff won't let you get worse, unless you are already worse, then tough luck, Charlie. It's what small print was invented for.

Americans watched warily after the first (and worst) cholera pandemic hit the U.S. in 1832 and other scares in 1849 and 1866. But in 1849 John Snow of England demonstrated that cholera was spread through fouled water and many U.S. communities began to tap cleaner water sources and setting up water filtration systems. Lynn had a water pumping and filtering system by 1870, so why was there a need for a medicinal cure in Lynn in the mid-1870s?

Like many cities in the U.S., Lynn, Massachusetts was getting crowded. Its shoe factories required many workers; tenements stacked next to each other, forming three-story urban jungles. Poor immigrants filled the housing and were condescendingly regarded by the upper classes as a necessary evil. Delicate white bejeweled fingers pointed disdainfully at the poor as the source of filth, squalor, and disease. Toppan's Calcutta Cholera Mixture was not just a promised cure of the choleric symptoms that came from contagious gastrointestinal diseases, but also was an implied cure from the filth of the slums spilling over into upscale lives. It was bad enough if you got dysentery or cholera morbus, but even worse that you got their diseases, making you no better than them.

Warren Toppan's Calcutta Cholera Mixture was a cure for physical illness and social downfall. Small bottle, big attitude.

Yes, Virginia, there really is a Mrs. Dinsmore

For over twenty years I have collected the medicine bottles, advertising, and promotional items associated with a 19th century proprietary medicine called Mrs. Dinsmore's Cough and Croup Balsam, made in Lynn, Massachusetts. The advertising (and a few of the bottle labels) have the stern image of Mrs. Dinsmore. Products like Aunt Jemima Syrup, the Betty Crocker Cookbook, and even Chicken of the Sea Tuna became HUGE commercial successes using images of women that never existed and it set me to wondering, was there really a Mrs. Dinsmore and if so, who was she? I mean, gee whiz, if she was real, why couldn't they use a friendlier image of her, maybe one that is at least smiling?? I realize she's not as cute as Betty Crocker or Aunt Jemima, so would her medicine have sold better with a more fetching image? Hmmmm - Chicken of the Sea Cough and Croup Balsam - umm, maybe not.

Well, through a combination of collecting, research, and pretty nifty detective work, I was able to determine that there really was a Mrs. Dinsmore, there was a reason she wasn't smiling, and her remedy sales were pretty terrific for decades, even though she didn't have blonde hair and a fishtail. You can check out the whole story by looking at an article I published a few years ago: The Man Behind the Woman's Face (just click on that title under the sidebar heading, "MORE FASCINATING QUACKERY" in the melon-colored sidebar on the right).

Every time I look over that article, my thoughts wander to the years of research, hundreds of miles travelled, and many dollars spent in my quest for the truth about Mrs. Dinsmore. I found out she existed, as well as about her parentage and siblings, and her husband and children; I followed them, figuratively and literally, as they travelled from China to St. John's, New Brunswick, Canada, then to Pittsfield, Maine, then to Lynn, Mass. - and why they made each move. I found out why their house smelled and I met their descendents who live in a wonderful house. And I found out that I was able to buy my first house because of her medicine. There's so much of a story behind the story of Mrs. Dinsmore. I thought it would make a great follow-up article to the first, but it still remains to be done. Maybe I'll do a blog entry in the future about Finding Mrs. Dinsmore. But right now, it's supper and I'm hoping that Aunt Jemima, Betty Crocker, or the mermaid have something waiting for me in the kitchen.

What WAS Momma feedin' this kid??

In honor of my friend, Donna, from Maine, I am focusing today's entry on one of the best and rarest trade cards in my collection: Dr. John F. True's Pin Worm Elixir, made originally in Auburn, Maine. Boy, is this a story waiting to be told!

In the 19th century, people worried a good deal about getting worms. Some of the concern was warranted and some of their fear was drilled into them by ads and notices of itinerants who claimed their medicines had successfully extracted worms of gigantic proportions. I just read one such itinerant's claim in a Lynn, Massachusetts newspaper from 1875 of a patient who had been relieved of a worm 147 feet long! More likely, the only big thing that had been "passing through" was the itinerant himself once he had a sufficient dose of his patients' money.

Adults and children were equally susceptible to getting worms by eating food containing tapeworm segments and eggs or pinworm eggs. Yum.

Dr. John F. True's Pin Worm Elixir was one of the best-selling anthelmintics (dewormers) in the 19th century. Bottle diggers in New England find his bottles all the time. Skinny little bottle, big fat claims. In the attached trade card (circa early 1870s), the Lincolnesque doctor tells you with a straight face,

Being a mild and gentle laxative, it is a corrective of the greatest value. ... It has also expelled several lizards, one eight inches in length, is spotted, belongs to the water species, and looks like a veritable young aligator.

There were lots of medicines back then promising to remove worms, but as far as I know, only True's promised to remove lizards and alligators. No wonder there are so many of those bottles being found now.

By the way, the world is still full of tapeworms and pinworms today. Well look at that - it's almost lunchtime!

The Blue Lydia

There are millions of Lydia E. Pinkham Vegetable Compound bottles out there because the medicine was just so darned popular. And because it was purchased by millions of women, bottle diggers and bottle collectors could care less about them. The bottle itself is pretty ho-hum to begin with. Not a fancy shape or color and the most basic embossing. Not pontiled either.

Now if you come across a labeled version on the internet or in an antique shop or yard sale, odds are verrrrrrrrrry high that the color of the label will be somewhere between aged tan to rotted pumpkin (keep your jack-o-lantern until December to see what I mean). That was the color range for about 70 years. The label's text and design changed from fancy Victorian promises to government-issue boring, but what almost nobody knows is that the very first Lydia Pinkham bottle had a blue label. Yes, boys and girls, it is the ultra-rare, fabulously valuable, and hauntingly beautiful Blue Lydia.

I know of only three in existence after almost 30 years of collecting and researching. The best and earliest example is at the Lynn Museum and Historical Society in Lynn, Massachusetts. The second best example is in a private collection a few miles from my home; and the third is also in a private collection but has all of the blue leached out so that the label is just aged tan.

I do not have one; I am not yet worthy. But I have been allowed to hold and photograph all three and now I put an image of the best one into your virtual collection. You're welcome.