Shiloh's Consumption Cure - Bottle - S C Wells & Co - Leroy, New York

Description

Shiloh's Consumption Cure, S C Wells & Co., LeRoy, New York.
Circa 1880s-1900. Good condition. No cracks or chips.
Dimensions: 6.25 in high, 2 x 1.25 inches base.
This was a product of Schuyler C. Wells (1840–1897). Beginning in 1866, Wells had partnered with his brother-in-law, Dr. L.S. Hooker, to sell drugs. In 1871 he began on his own to produce a line of “Shiloh’s Family Remedies,” some of which used the name “Dr. Shiloh.” Later the business became known as S.C. Wells & Co., probably in 1882 after he sold a one-third interest to his brother George. After his death, a stock company was formed to continue the enterprise (Fike 2006, 105–106).
The firm’s products included Dr. Shiloh’s Catarrh Remedy, Shiloh’s for Coughs (its label indicating a Wells branch in Toronto), and (introduced ca. 1876) Dr. Shiloh’s System Vitalizer. The firm also very early marketed Carter’s Compound Extract of Smart Weed (produced by the Brown Medicine Co., Erie, PA) that was 68% alcohol! It was billed as “For Rheumatic Pains, Toothache, Neuralgia, Simple Sore Throat, Bruises, Sprains.” Sometime in the first quarter of the twentieth century the Wells firm acquired some old formulas which it continued to sell in bottles embossed “DR. M.M. FENNERS [sic] PEOPLES [sic] REMEDIES / FREDONIA, N.Y. / U.S.A.—1872–1898” (Fike 2006, 82, 105–106, 210).
Shiloh’s Consumption Cure was introduced about 1873. In 1907—responding to medicinal products so outrageously “misbranded”—the new Food and Drug Act required products to drop their false claims. Wells & Co. responded by renaming their product “Shiloh’s Consumption Remedy,” then changed it again, dropping the word
consumption
, to become “Shiloh’s Cure.” (Small 2
7
/
8
” aqua bottles are extant, embossed “SAMPLE SHILOHS [sic] CURE.”)
Under the vague name of Shiloh’s Cure, the product was listed by
The Journal of the American Medical Association
of May 29, 1909) as one of many patent medicines containing “habit-forming drugs”—in this instance nothing less than heroin (
Nostrums
1911, I:350)! (In some form, it appears to have been marketed as late as 1948 [
American Druggist
1948].).