This Old Paper

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‘Dr. C. McClane’s Liver Pills and Vermifuge’.  A lovely card with some flowers (pansies?) on the front, and two letters of testimony on the reverse.  This card has a bit of staining on the front and has a pencil marking on the reverse.

Before I get knee-deep in the deets on this one, just wanted to comment about method.  There is some controversy about google books.  It’s an interesting thing to think about.  The issue is how the books are tagged and catalogued, and whether the errors in the system are forgivable or something that google should be more accountable to the world of scholarship, or something.  There is a critique here by linguist Geoffrey Nunberg on the blog Language Log including a response in the comments by Jon Orwant from google books. The article and comments make for great reading.

There is a larger legal dispute which looms as well, regarding publishing rights, compensation for authors, etc. Digitizing all of the world’s books is a big deal.

Just wanted to say that google books is a resource that makes (at least my half of) the site possible.  The scans of old pharmaceutical trade journals and patent registries and medicinal adverts in other periodicals are an invaluable resource in looking this type of stuff up.

As a city-dweller without a car, holding down multiple jobs, and no longer able to access digital academic libraries (sad face), google books searches are about the only way that I can approach this subject without turning it into a huge time-consuming project.  There are ‘classic resources’ for this type of stuff (e.g. James Harvey Young’s The Toadstool Millionaires) which I own, but often a search will turn up specific stuff about a specific product or company, instantly.  Wired writer Alexis Madrigal makes a similar point about research for his upcoming book.

I’m certainly not claiming that this site is ‘real historical research’ but that’s kind of the point.  Google books, among lots of other things, empowers people (some of whom may not have access to the same resources or library-time that a scholar enjoys) to do a little bit of sleuthing, for themselves or to share, about something in history that they are interested in.  Whether an item I find via search is tagged or dated correctly isn’t that big of a concern.  It’s my responsibility to look at the cover page and check the publishing date.

In this case, poking around in ‘the library’ turned up a lot of interesting reading…

First up, the original formulator of the medicine, a Dr. Charles McLane.  Genealogical and Personal History of the Upper Monongahela Valley, West Virginia, vol. 3, by James Morton Callahan 1912:

Dr. Charles McLane, the pioneer ancestor, was born in Tyrone, Ireland, in 1790, died in Morgantown, West Virginia, in 1898. He emigrated to this country in the year 1805, locating first in New York City. He studied for his profession of physician with Dr. Luther at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and later practiced at Connellsville, same state. In 1823 he located in Morgantown, West Virginia, where he practiced medicine successfully for half a century, enjoying the patronage of the best families in that city and vicinity.

A reference to McLane’s residence in Connellsville appears in the Centennial History of the borough of Connellsville, Pennsylvania, 1806-1906 by John Carter McClenathan: “The spring most drawn upon…was one time called McClane’s spring from the fact that Dr. Charles McClane at one time lived nearby.”

When McLane moved to Morgantown in 1823, it was still quite small – a road to Pittsburgh had just opened in the 1790s, Morgantown’s first bank was opened in 1814, the town officially incorporated in 1838 and as of 1876 had about 700 residents.

Within ten years or so, McLane was making liver pills:

One of the early physicians of Morgantown was Dr. Charles McLane who came from Pennsylvania in 1823.  Early in his practice he began to prepare and distribute Dr. C. McLane’s Liver Pills and it is said that eventually they were sold in every civilized country in the world.  The large iron mortar is the one used by Dr. McLane in making the pill mass for his Liver Pills.  Mr. Frank M. Dent of McVicker’s Drug Store, Morgantown, presented it to the Museum.

(from the website of the Cook-Hayman Pharmacy Museum of West Virginia University)

My poking around did not turn up a recipe for these pills, but it’s possible to conjecture a bit about it.

It’s unlikely that his pills contained metallic salts or highly acidic ingredients as those would have required a porcelain mortar.

And it would have made sense that his pills were botanical, for a few further reasons.  First, patent medicine makers were capitalizing on the dissatisfaction with mineral remedies, especially calomel (mercury) which was poisonous.  Second, ‘vegetable pills’ loaded with herbal purgatives (those that soften and ease elimination) and cathartics (those that hasten elimination) would have an obvious effect (ie, ‘hey this medicine is doing something’).  Advertising could claim that the medicines were clearing the blood and/or liver of impurities and sweeping them out through the bowels.  Dr. McLane’s actual recipe remains unknown to me, though it would not be surprising if it contained senna, gambooge, colocynth, or aloe, as contemporary ‘vegetable pills’ and liver medicines were known to contain these herbs.

(Even today, in health food stores, laxative herbs like cascara sagrada and senna are very popular, especially for people who want to feel ‘clean’ or ‘do a detox’, as if detoxifying your body can be achieved merely via pooping your food out more quickly.  Weird.)

Such ‘universal pills’ or vegetable pills were also the types of medicines which could be easily carried into the frontiers of the West, where spoilage was a concern and there would be little access to a doctor.  Indeed this sentiment was invoked in advertising for McLane’s pills:

The great prevalence of Liver Complaint and Bilious Diseases of all kinds throughoot the United States and peculiarly In the West and South where, in the majority of cases, the patient is not within the reach of a regular physician, required that some remedy should be provided that would not in the least impair the constitution and yet be safe and effectual.  

(from advertisements in The Tribune Almanac and Political Register of 1871 )

Dr. McLane sold the rights to his medicines to Jonathan Kidd (DBA ‘Jonathan Kidd & Co.’) of Pennsylvania in 1844, and thereafter continued about the business of raising his offspring to also be doctors and tending to the medical needs of the people of Morgantown WV.  If the genealogical record cited above is to be trusted, he lived 108 years.  It is not known whether this longetivity is associated with the consumption of his own meds.

Kidd died in 1853 and his partner John Fleming joined up with Cochran Fleming and renamed the enterprise ‘Fleming Brothers’.

A fascinating window into the world of wholesale druggists in the Pittsburgh area during this time is provided by Allegheny County’s Hundred Years by George H. Thurston, 1888.  The wholesale drug business grew both in volume and number of firms through the first half of the 19th century, followed by a period where sales volume increased but the number of total firms decreased.  Sales for 1886, around the time our McClane’s card was printed, were about $2,500,000 among the five remaining drug wholesalers.  Throughout the same period, the number of items in a given firm’s inventory increased as more and more proprietary medicines entered the market, wholesalers started to ship products in eaches (instead of the previously customary case lots), and profitability generally decreased.

The Fleming Brothers seemed to have been different from the other Pittsburgh wholesalers in that they sold only their own proprietary medicines, a decision they published in Tilden & Co.’s Journal of Materia Medica, 1858, announcing they would focus their business on McLane’s liver pills and vermifuge.  They did, however, include a few other products to their line-up at one time or another.  Among the nine Fleming Bros. trade cards that are viewable at Miami University’s Victorian Trade Card Collection, we have ‘Dr. McLane’s Celebrated Liver Pills’, ‘Dr. McLane’s Celebrated Vermifuge’, ‘Kidd’s Cough Syrup’, ‘Ivory Polish for the Teeth’, ‘Fleming’s Mikado Cologne’, and ‘Fleming’s Crudoform Liniment’.  (I don’t know what ‘crudoform’ means although ‘crudiform’ shows up in a Midland Druggist price list from 1901–it was listed under patented ingredients and went for $1.75 for a dozen, whatever that means.)

From The Southern Business Directory, 1854 — John D. Park of Cincinnati, a wholesale druggist, listed ‘McLane’s Vermifuge’, ‘McLane’s Volcanic Liniment’, and ‘McLane’s Liver Pills’ among his available products, although whoever wrote the ad may have confused McLane’s brand with McLean’s, as it was actually J.H. McLean who made the Volcanic Oil Liniment (more on that in a minute).  Likewise from the Galena City Directory, 1854 — Dodge and Bentz, wholesale druggists, listed McLane’s liver pills and vermifuge among their stock.

One of the reasons for decreased profitability among drug wholesalers in the second half of the 19th century had to do with increased competition, including less-than-scrupulous competition.  In fact, someone in St. Louis with a name quite similar to Dr. McLane’s had been selling ‘Universal Pills’ in packaging that was suspiciously similar to its counterpart in Pittsburgh.  Considering that St. Louis was the gateway city to the west, the coveted ‘Oregon Trail’ market discussed above was perhaps getting bitten into rather badly by this other medicine man:

From the year 1847 the pills were put up in boxes sealed on the top with a red seal, bearing the words ” McLane’s Liver Pills,” and enclosed in a wrapper containing, among other things, the words ” Dr. C. McLane’s Celebrated Liver Pills.” Other changes, not material here to be considered, were subsequently made. In 1851, James H. McLean began, at St. Louis, Missouri, to make and sell pills under the name of ” Dr. McLean’s ” or ” Dr. J. H. McLean’s Universal Pills,” and placed them in boxes sealed similarly to the plaintiff’s, and in wrappers of color and appearance similar to his. In 1872, McLean changed his wrappers, on complaint of Fleming, and adopted new ones, which did not infringe on the label of the latter.

(A Treatise on the Law of Trade-marks and Analogous Subjects by William Henry Browne, 1885)

The Reports of the Supreme Court of the United States (vol. 96, 1877) has even more hairy details about the case, including detailed descriptions of the product packaging.  It makes sense then that the trade card under consideration emphasizes that “the only genuine McLane’s Pills are the Dr. C. McLane’s Liver Pills, prepared by Fleming Bros., Pittsburgh, Pa.”  This card states more bluntly that “Counterfeits are made in St. Louis.”  Another card warns of counterfeits being made in both St. Louis and Wheeling, although there are no specifics on the latter case that have turned up yet.

An appeal to buy only the genuine product was common with patent medicine advertising, as we will see with upcoming cards (stay tuned), and medicine manufacturers employed various tricks to make sure their customers could discern the genuine article, among them:

• Proprietary tax stamps, mostly in use from the early 1860s to the early 1880s.  These remain highly collectible.  Scans of Fleming brothers tax stamps and related ephemera can be found here and (from the same excellent site) J. H. McLean’s tax stamps are here.
• Distinctive bottle shapes.
• Distinctive colors and patterns on labels and wrappers
• Foil wraps on packaging
• Sealing wax
• Watermarked paper
• Publicizing descriptions of authentic packaging in print advertisements

What about this other doctor, Dr. McLean, the man who counterfeited McLane’s liver pills?

Two main sources, The Commonwealth of Missouri; A Centennial Record 1877 and Saint Louis, the Future Great City of the World by L. U. Reavis 1878 provide the framework of McLean’s life, and other ephemera, advertisements, and court records fill out the picture.

McLean was born in Ayrshire, Scotland in 1829 and brought as an infant to Nova Scotia, where his father was a geologist and oversaw a mine owned by the Albion Mining Company.  Already inclined to medicine as a child, McLean was further inspired by hanging out with the physician of the mining company.  His father gave him some money to pursue a career, which he promptly used on an adventure to Bermuda. Upon returning to the United States, he hopped around cities and jobs, taking a single course of lectures at the University of Pennsylvania.

McLean arrived in St. Louis in 1849, profited from a land deal on his first day, despite the fact that St. Louis was experiencing “a season of business depression and stagnation, owing to the cholera epidemic which was devastating the city.”  He then partnered up with Dr. Addison Gardner Bragg (his bio here), whose ‘Mexican Mustang Liniment’ was already quite popular and also marketed for use on both farm animals and humans.  Bragg’s success perhaps owed in part to a huge mural on the side of his store depicting an erupting volcano and fleeing Mexican troops, including the much-despised General Santa Anna.  Though it was claimed to be made from “oil from the burning mountains of Mexico”, the liniment was likely made of some combination of petroleum or mineral oil, turpentine, herbal extracts, and essential oils (possible recipes for this product can be found here or here).  McLean split with Bragg after a year, and soon went on to market his own ‘Volcanic Oil Liniment’ which was very likely the same ‘Mexican Mustang Liniment’ formula under his own brand name, as well as several other remedies, including of course the copycat liver pills of Dr. McLane.

No doubt McClean’s operations were impressive, even if a current view would question his originality and scruple.  At the full swing of his business he published four million small pamphlets each year along with “annually nine million almanacs, in eight different languages; a monthly paper The Spirit of the Times…and a floral book, of which are issued nine million annually.”

He sold his nostrums not only via mail order but also maintained “fifteen to twenty men with wagons” along with field supervisors who traveled via rail, and even distributed his medicines via steamboat.  His laboratory and headquarters in downtown St. Louis employed some 35.  He had gone from a $50 land deal in 1849 to a business with $400,000 annual sales as of 1878.  The injunction to change the packaging of his liver pills in 1872 did not seem to cripple his business.  In 1883 his laboratory burned down and he rebuilt it the next year.

Not content with a small medicinal empire, J.H. McLean turned to the problem of war.  He wrote a wild little treatise about it called Ukase: We Command all Nations to Keep the Peace. You can read the full book including illustrations here, or read a concise and hilarious summary here.

His idea was to make weapons so powerful, deadly and horrible that nations would no longer be inclined to engage in war.  He offered up a bunch of cool inventions, including floating iron fortresses, huge cannons, rapidfire guns, and magnetic torpedoes.  My personal favorite are the modular iron sheets that can be assembled in different ways to make forts, feeding areas for animals, etc.  The illustrations are awesome.  Throughout the small book he does not neglect to trumpet his own brilliance.

In a creepy way, though, the medicine plagiarist was prescient.  The nuclear era wasn’t to happen until much later though, with some pretty horrific mechanical violence (WWI, Russo-Japanese war, etc) in between times.

Dr. J.H. McLean’s Volcanic Oil Liniment is still made and sold — you can buy it here or watch this video about it:

But back to the card at hand.  C. W. Koons, druggist, is listed on the front of the card.  It is interesting that his name is actually printed, not just stamped as we saw with Armstrong’s Diphtheria and Quinsy drops.  Viewing other Fleming Brothers cards on the internet, it seems as though this firm arranged to have sets of cards printed including a specific druggist’s name and address.  There is even an example of a card with the same front as this one, except made for ‘WM. H. GILL’ of Palestine TX.

So what about C. W. Koons of Canton Ohio?

He apparently did not write a book about the future of warfare.  But his existence is attested in a special edition of The Druggist in 1884 and the Proceedings of the Ohio State Pharmaceutical Association in 1901.  Further information supplied by the Catalogue of the Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity, 1910.  C. W. is for Charles Whatefield. He was a ‘deke’.

Assuming that the address names and numbers in Canton OH haven’t changed, we can see that his shop was right in the middle of East Canton, a lil’ area east of downtown.

front:

C. W. KOONS,
DRUGGIST
AND DEALER IN
Dr. C. McLane’s
Liver Pills and Vermifuge,
185 S. Market St., CANTON, O.

reverse:

TENISTIGO, CANADAWEST, ONT., Oct. 30, 1882.
MESSRS. FLEMING BROS.,

Sirs: Your pills came all right, and I can say they are a good bilious pill.  I have used a great many pills, but I can say Dr. C. McLane’s Pills, manufactured by Fleming Bros., are genuine.  And, gentlemen, you have my thanks in sending.  I gave some of these pills to my neighbors for a trial.  One of my neighbors got three pills.  He said they did help him.  He felt the next day like a new man.  He wishes me to send for fifty cents’ worth for him.  So gentlemen, I will do all I can to introduce Dr. C. McLane’s Liver Pills, manufactured by Fleming Brothers.  You will find enclosed one dollar for more of your good pills.  I wish you could send me a sample of your Vermifuge by mail.  I think it will take well here.
Yours, with respect,
Please send soon.  WM. H. DUGAN.

WEST SANDLAKE. N. Y., October 30, 1882.
FLEMING BROS., — Dear Sirs: — Enclosed you will find one dollar, for which you will please send me more of your Dr. C. McLane’s Liver Pills.  I trust you have received the pay for the last two boxes I ordered and received.  I would only say, that they have done me more good than I could express.  I feel much better now than I have for two years past.  Send them soon.  More hereafter.
Yours truly,
REV. PHIL. SPAETH, West Sandlake, N. Y.

THE ONLY GENUINE
MCLANE’S PILLS,
Are the Dr. C. McLane’s Liver Pills,
– PREPARED BY –
Fleming Bros., Pittsburgh, Pa.