Let’s revisit ‘discredited’ medicine show tonics and remedies of the late 19th, early 20th centuries — they may reveal some potent herbal formulas that would otherwise be lost to history

by Ken Winston Caine

You’ve seen cartoon-like caricatures of traveling medicine show docs hawking magical remedies from the backs of wagons.

You’ve seen reproductions of the antique classified and display ads of patent “cures” sold by mail order in that same era.

Both types of medicines and tonics were ridiculed mostly into oblivion by the evangelists of early scientific medicine that took root in the 1920s and ’30s.

They were dismissed as snake oil. As nothing but 30 percent alcohol.

Or 40 percent alcohol.

Or 70 percent alcohol.

“No wonder they make people feel good,” snorted the white-coated crusaders for modern medicine.

Good for a self-righteous laugh, but it hides the truth about herbal medicine

I was thinking of that the other day while preparing an especially strong extract of sage and yucca in cheap vodka.

That’s how liquid herbal extracts traditionally are made.

(I use vodka nowadays because grain alcohol is more difficult to get in New Mexico — requires a permit process that I haven’t bothered with.)

Manufacturers who mass produce herbal remedies now often substitute vegetable glycerin for alcohol as the extractive medium. But that practice wasn’t widespread until sometime in the late 1980s. Prior to that, herbs were extracted in grain alcohol or simply in vodka or other high-alcohol-content liquor.

After 22 years of studying herbal med and making extracts, it dawned on me…

My goodness, if a close-minded “scientific medicine” crusader of the bygone days were to chemically analyze any of my herbal extracts, he could declare them nothing but 70 percent alcohol. Or 80 percent.

And he’d be right.

And he’d be wrong.

Wrong, because the implication and claim is that the only effect delivered by the extracts is an alcohol high.

This presumes that people gulp herbal medicines a pintful at a time.

You don’t ‘drink’ herbal extracts

During Prohibition, perhaps some people did.

But I suspect most did not.

Herbal extracts are taken by the dropperful. Or teaspoonful or tablespoonful. One to four times a day, in most cases.

Not enough alcohol in a dose to even register on a Breathalyzer test.

Yet, a teaspoonful can be a potent dose of herbal medicine.

People aren’t prone to abuse herbal meds because most aren’t particularly delightful tasting.

Some are bitter.

Some are tongue puckering.

Some burn and tingle.

Some are sweet and flowery.

I’ve yet to find one flavored at all like a barroom drink.

The assignment, if your herbal school chooses to accept it

It may well be that some of what was hawked from the backs of wagons by itinerant salesman and what was sold by mail through magazine and newspaper ads was snake oil.

But dismissing alcohol extracted herbal medicine combinations as worthless because they are “nothing but 40 percent alcohol” is as absurd as dismissing the vanilla extract in your kitchen cabinet as worthless because it is nothing but 40 percent alcohol.

Do you think it would be a helpful herbal medicine archive project to revisit the patents of late 19th and early 20th century remedies and review the ingredient lists and combinations and claims for them?

Isn’t it possible that some of these extinct medicines had very real and useful cleansing, balancing and curative properties?

Wouldn’t this be a fascinating research project? It could keep students busy for several years.

The herbal school that takes this one on and eventually publishes the findings is going to produce, at the least, a very cool coffee table book.

Flip through the pages with me

Photos of the blue, green, brown and red bottles in there variety of elegant shapes. And there hand-set type labels.

Photos of the ads and the effusive claims. All public domain by now.

Photos of medicine show acts and carny-like barkers. Maybe news clippings about some of them. (Which also would be public domain material.)

Modern analysis of the formulas and what is known about the effects of the component herbs and combinations.

Republishing some of the ignorant and rabid rants of Morris Fishbein, M.D., head of the American Medical Association and editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association from 1924 to 1949.

Someone do the book. I’ll buy a copy.