Now who is this Dr. Chase? In the nineteenth-century manner, Chase earned his fame and fortune with equal parts of hard work and self-promotion. Born in New York State in 1817, Alvin Chase came to Ann Arbor in 1856 to pursue a medical degree after a career as a traveling peddler of groceries and...
Dan Bruce, our Curator, bought this little booklet to complement our patent medicine collection. It doesn’t have a publication date but there’s a rudimentary ‘Baby Book’ with a place for a picture and some birth statistics. Written in pencil is the notation that Our Baby was born March 19th,...
This medication was first manufactured by Hazeltine & Co in 1864 apparently started out labeled as a remedy for consumption although it was really only ever a cough remedy and the jury is still out on that. One source says “Piso’s was essentially a pretty good cough and cold syrup” and...
Leonard Ear Oil is the first patent medicine in the collection that I found that was condemned as useless by a medical authority. In 1925, DR. ARTHUR J.CRAMP (Director of the Bureau of Investigation, American Medical Association) condemned Leonard Ear Oil and eardrum as useless quackery and...