Miracle
cures, health tonics, super foods—these sorts of cure-alls have always
proved irresistible to Americans. Eager to adopt the next lifesaving physic,
we’ve downed countless potions, brews, tonics and tablets in pursuit of
longevity, fitness, beauty, happiness—or, preferably, all of the above.
Some were relatively harmless and maybe even beneficial; others were downright
dangerous. Here are some of the most fascinating—and terrifying—miracle
remedies Americans have embraced.
Meat juice. (Really.)
“Dear Sir: I
have been using your 'Meat Juice' on different cases in this Hospital. It has
more than answered my expectations,” wrote Dr. Walter Reed to Mann S. Valentine
on April 16, 1872. “I find that patients improve rapidly in appetite and
strength under its administration. Of all the various preparations of Meat that
I have met with and used, I consider yours by far the most serviceable.”
“It is par
excellence the medicine food of the age,” agreed Dr. W.M. Brodie some months
later, in February of 1873. “One lady has used a dozen bottles, and does not
tire of it.”
For a time,
Valentine’s Meat Juice, a patented bottled extract created by Mann S.
Valentine, was the cure-all miracle tonic of the day.
Valentine
originally created it in 1870 for his sick wife, who lay ill and unable to eat
for weeks. Obsessed with the thought that he could cure her if only he could
create the perfect restorative drink, he devised a method to extract “the rich
treasure stored and locked up in the body of the flesh” of raw meat and fed the
resultant brew to his wife. She recovered, and Valentine decided to
patent and bottle his creation.
With help
from the testimony of doctors and some high-profile fans like President
Garfield, it wasn’t long before scores of Americans—and plenty abroad as
well—were swearing by its life-giving properties.
Valentine’s
famous Meat Juice was successful enough that Valentine made his fortune from it
and became a prominent art and artifact collector, paving the way for a
museum in his home of Richmond, Virginia. The concoction fell somewhat out of
favor after it was associated with a famous murder case, when Florence Maybrick
used it to conceal arsenic to murder her husband in 1889 (though the Valentine
Meat Juice Company itself remained in business until 1986). Which brings
us to our next “remedy”:
Arsenic
Taking
arsenic topically and internally was reportedly great for the
complexion—possibly because it constricted capillaries and killed red blood
cells. Marketed under several brand names, arsenic products were touted as
perfectly safe if taken in small amounts, although its popularity as a health
strengthener didn’t last long, for obvious reasons.
Rattlesnake oil
Chinese
immigrants to the US in the late 1800s brought with them oil of the
Chinese watersnake, full of omega-3s, which they would rub on joints to help
with inflammation. That, of course, gave
Americans the brilliant idea to start making and selling their own so-called
rattlesnake oil (since Chinese water snakes are hard to come by on this
continent) to unsuspecting consumers. When the most famous of these was
discovered to contain nothing even related to a snake, the term became
shorthand for a sham cure.
Lentil flour
A dry powder
meant to be mixed with water or milk and marketed as a cure-all health food,
the maker of Ervalenta asserted that “This agreeable, nutritious, farinaceous
food radically cures habitual constipation, indigestion, piles, and all diseases
originating in a disordered state of the bowels and digestive organs, which it
speedily restores to their natural vigour and action, without the aid of
medicine, or any other artificial means.”
Too bad it
was basically a little cornstarch mixed with lentil flour. (The latter
might make one mean protein-packed pasta, but it's not a miracle worker!)
Cocaine
After
discovering natives of South America chewing coca leaves for their stimulant effect,
Americans quickly began synthesizing coca extracts for medicinal use. Widely
touted as a tonic for the nerves and a cure for all sorts of ailments like
aches and pains, indigestion, hay fever, fatigue, and melancholy, it was added
to wine, toothache drops, lozenges and other medicines, and, of course, Coca-Cola’s
original recipe. It began to fall out of favor when addiction surged in the
early 1900s.
Radioactive water
When
radiation was discovered, radioactive water became all the rage—marketed
as safe, of course, because slightly radioactive water naturally occurs in
many hot springs around the world. It fell out of favor when Eben
Byers, a prominent industrialist and socialite at the time, died from radiation
sickness after a 3 bottle-a-day habit of a popular brand, Radithor. He
reportedly had to be buried in a lead-lined coffin.
No comments:
Post a Comment