Category:
Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil

Vapo Path

Creosote and naphthalene! My favorite medicines!








Posted By: Paul - Fri May 21, 2021 - Comments (2)
Category: Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, 1930s, 1940s

The Stimulator

The Stimulator, which sold for $79, promised to cure headaches, allergies, swollen joints, backaches, and more. It did this by delivering low-voltage electrical shocks to whatever body part was hurting.

However, the FDA shut down its manufacturer in 1997 noting that the device was actually a modified gas-grill igniter which cost about $2 to make.

More info: Museum of Quackery

Yoga Journal - Dec 1995



Greenville News - Jan 21, 1997

Posted By: Alex - Fri Apr 23, 2021 - Comments (2)
Category: Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, 1990s

Hair Popping

Hair popping was developed as a claimed cure for baldness around the 1950s. It involved pulling on the scalp until it made a popping sound. And yes, it was apparently quite painful.

Some details from Baldness: A Social History by Kerry Segrave.

Trained dietician and cosmetologist Rita Hartinger was the foremost practitioner of the "hair popping" technique of hair preservation and regrowth; she was working out of New York City in 1968. Eight years earlier she had learned the trade from its originator, hairdresser Marsha Lewis, since retired. Hartinger called herself a "professional hair popper," believing her method of scalp stimulation helped her customers keep whatever hair they had and perhaps sprout a new crop. "I make the hairs healthy.... When you lift up the scalp from the bone structure by popping, it stimulates circulation and nourishes the tissue. Then the hair is strengthened, and it is less likely to fall out," she said. A journalist who watched Rita in action reported that each tug on the scalp did indeed produce a "pop," and he described the sound further by writing it was "as if a kernel of popcorn had exploded on his head."

Hair popping, as a cure for baldness, fell out of fashion. But recently it's re-emerged as a fad on TikTok. Though it's now being called 'scalp popping'.

Posted By: Alex - Wed Apr 21, 2021 - Comments (2)
Category: Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, Hair and Hairstyling

Cow-Tongue Baldness Cure

Several sources have independently reported that the way to cure baldness is to have a cow lick your head.

Regina Leader-Post - Mar 8, 1984



Colombian hairdresser says he can lick baldness
November 29, 2000

PEREIRA, Colombia -- Want to lick hair loss? A Colombian hairdresser says he has found a way to lick baldness -- literally. His offbeat scalp treatment involves a special tonic and massage -- with a cow's tongue. "I feel more manly, more attractive to women," says customer Henry Gomez. "My friends even say 'What are you doing? You have more hair. You look younger.'"

Posted By: Alex - Sat Apr 10, 2021 - Comments (2)
Category: Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, Cows, Hair and Hairstyling

Follies of the Madmen #504

I have never seen laxatives touted as a daily dose, rather than just as needed.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Mar 31, 2021 - Comments (1)
Category: Advertising, Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, Excrement, 1950s

Hair tonic salesman sues wig company

1941: Carl Hutzmann, hair tonic salesman, sued a wig supplier on account of late delivery of a wig. "Hutzmann said that he had to appear before his prospective customers with a receding hair line, so the wig was of no use to him later."

Brooklyn Daily Eagle - Mar 27, 1941

Posted By: Alex - Thu Dec 03, 2020 - Comments (0)
Category: Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, 1940s, Hair and Hairstyling

Chlorine gas cures colds

During the 1920s, chlorine gas (the same stuff used as a chemical weapon in World War I) briefly became popular as a cure for the common cold.

The Rushville Daily Republican - Mar 26, 1926



Jennifer Ackerman explains what was going on in her book Ah-Choo! The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold:

The use of chlorine gas to cure the common cold was suggested by observations that men who worked in chlorine plants to manufacture the noxious gas during the war were remarkably free of colds and flu. The same was true of soldiers on the front lines exposed to the pungent, biting fumes of chlorine, compared with those in the rear. A hundred years earlier, physicians had noted that people who worked and lived in the vicinity of bleaching establishments had fewer respiratory infections than others.

Chlorine was thought to act as a kind of thorn-in-the-flesh therapy. Vedder (dubbed "the chemical warrior" by Time magazine) proposed that "the irritant action of chlorine stimulates the flow of secretion and cleanses the mucous surfaces," resulting in "productive coughing and blowing of the nose." Through its oxidizing action, the gas was also thought to rid the body of toxins and fuel the activity of white blood cells useful in the attack against offending microbes.

Practically overnight, chlorine therapy became a popular treatment for victims of colds, bronchitis, and whooping cough... For the general public, there was Chlorine Respirine, 50 treatments for $0.50 in a handy collapsible tube, each dose purported to "knock a cold in three hours."

Controlled experiments eventually debunked the idea that chlorine gas had any curative value. Though I'm not sure how to explain why people exposed to chlorine didn't seem to catch colds as often. Perhaps it was just mistaken, anecdotal evidence. Or perhaps the chlorine gas was sterilizing surfaces, helping to prevent the transmission of germs.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Nov 20, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Health, Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, Cures for the common cold, 1920s

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Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

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Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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