IMO, the stories behind ads are very often more interesting than the bare image. Disclaimer: did my best with this, but the thread is thin.
The ad’s Mrs. Anderson promises info on curing one’s husband of drinking. She’ll tell you for free! But it doesn’t disclose her remedy, unless you write in. We don’t know anything more from the ad image alone.
I found a mention of this ad in “The Medical World” (TMW), Volume 25, from 1906. Enter the intrepid 1906 investigators! TMW was a legit med journal, to the extent of that era’s knowledge.
TMW discovered that Mrs A. indeed doesn’t sell anything, but she is a front for a quack med company in Chicago. Mrs A. sends you a letter about how “Alcola” from said quacks cured her own husband of alcoholism. The reader should do this too! See? Mrs. A. sells nothing! She only wants to help.
What was Alcola? Buried amongst modern references to cities named that, etc, I found a listing selling the pamphlet below. The text is half obscured, but has bold sections about giving it secretly. Just drug your family members without their knowledge or consent! Use coffee or soup to mask the flavor, because mixed in water, they would notice.
Seems our Mrs A. was fronting a quack cure containing who knows what, which you can slip secretly into a soup.
Dug up a tiny bit more info. “The Library Company of Philadelphia” has one of Mrs Anderson’s letters, circa 1905, addressed to a presumed writer-in named May Tiedt. Only the first sentence is available online, but it gives a flavor of the false trust being established, using a form letter pretending to be a personal correspondence.
Dear Friend: I think it unnecessary to offer an apology for addressing this personal letter to you since it is written in your interest, with a sincere hope that it will prove helpful to you.
Edited to fix link.
With strychnine and tartar emetic husband should just keeping with the booze.
Nicely found!
I didn’t immediately spot a human LD50 for strychnine in wikipedia, but they give a “minimum lethal oral dose” for human adults as 30-120 mg, with a whole spectrum of nonfatal symptoms possible at sub-lethal doses.
That’s what I thought it was; poison.
Dead husbands don’t drink
“For rats.”
Very cool find! Thanks for researching this!
YW.
It’s amazing how what would have only been available on microfiche at a major library 30 years ago is at our fingertips today. Granted less reliable provenance, but much easier to access.
This one weird trick!
Try not to SCREAM when you see #3!!!
Was it opium?
Then, once you’re safely removed from the alcohol addiction, you simply take a short course of morphine to assist with the opium habit and you’re good to go.
If you have any trouble with the morphine, send away for our heroin cure which is guaranteed to be effective.
I do love old medical ‘remedies’.
‘There’s ghosts in your blood. You should do cocaine about it.’
And if that doesn’t work, we will release gorillas to take care of the heroin
That’s fine right up until some wiseacre gives warm coats to the gorillas.
Stands to reason someone is making money off of it. She could print the letter for the cost of advertising. The math doesn’t math unless someone is making money.
My guess is that either Mrs Anderson never existed (she was a fiction of the company), or she did exist and was paid under the table by the company.
