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Pink Pills for Pale People, 1917
“Dr Williams’ pink pills for pale people” – a gloriously named pharmaceutical that sounds to me equally likely to have come from the past or some kind of Philip K Dick-style future. The Lancashire...
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Dr Ricord’s Essence of Life, 1851
“Dr Ricord’s Essence of Life” – there’s a product that promises a lot. Even going by the standard Victorian pharmaceutical predilection to claim that their medicine will cure half of the ailments in a...
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More Owbridge’s Lung Tonic
Yorkshire Telegraph, 2nd February 1905 If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this blog (well, there’s a ton of things I’ve learned, in fact, everyday is a school day here) it’s that there’s an awful...
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Seigel’s Syrup, 1902
I was rather taken by this advert for Seigel’s Syrup. It’s from 1902, but the swirling shapes and squidgy font could easily fit in with the design on a 1960s music poster. Nottingham Evening Post, 24th...
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Wake Up Your Liver Bile, 1950
Who among us can say with confidence that their liver is freely pouring out two pints of liquid bile into their bowels daily? For those in doubt (and living in 1950), there’s Carters Little Liver...
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Stale Foot Acid, 1939
It feels like there’s always something new to be body-conscious about. A new zone that hair should be entirely removed from or else some hidden part of the body that now, apparently, should be...
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Mummy Dust, 1904
At a gig in Manchester recently, watching my new favourite band, Ghost, singing their song “Mummy Dust”, I started thinking about looking up powdered mummies on the British Newspaper Archive. The...
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Phyllosan Fortifies the Over-Forties, 1946
As one of the “over-forties” myself, here’s a reminder that this age used to be considered as pretty much the start of your dotage. Special tablets were required to keep up your energy, and Phyllosan...
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Girl Goes Silly, 1923
Cannabis was made illegal in the UK in 1928 for general use, although you could grow your own marijuana plants until 1964, and doctors were still able to prescribe cannabis for medical purposes until...
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Bad Breasts, 1872
I do love an advert for a Victorian “cure-all”. Here we have Holloway’s Ointment in an advert from 1872. It claims to cure (deep breath) – coughs, colds, bronchitis, asthma, irregular action of the...
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