The Best Lincoln Book You've Never Read? (With a Quack Medicine Twist!)

Patent/quack medicine vendors were geniuses at marketing and advertising. Among their many venues were newspapers (especially), almanacs (examples from previous posts here and here), revenue stamps (examples from previous post here), trading cards (examples coming!), and other "swag." Among the other items were books: coloring books, recipe books, history books (example from previous post here), and, well...just "books."

I've posted before on the Lincoln Proprietary Company and their products Lincoln Tea and Lincoln Sexual Pills (previous posts here and here).

The company took advantage of their namesake to publish several editions of a book entitled Humorous and Pathetic Tales of Abraham Lincoln. The book - e than 90 pages long - went through several editions. It seems to have been published as early as 1894 and as late as the 1910s (or later).

The item I have in my collection is "Fifth Edition - Second Series" but with no copyright or printing date:




















The first - and main - part of the book, about 80 pages, contains dozens of short anecdotes about Lincoln...the enticing theing is that the book bills them as "Many Heretofore Unpublished" (thus the title of this post!).
















The second part of the book - and what patent medicine swag would be without this(?!) - is advertisments and testimonials for the Lincoln Tea Company products, about 12 pages worth.































The last part of the book comprises about six woodcuts of various Lincoln-related scenes and persons.




















You can read the full text of the book at the Internet Archive

Medical Department #35 - Mosquitoes, Malaria, and Yellow Jack (Oh My!)

GENERAL GALLINIPPER
By James M. Schmidt
The Civil War News – “Medical Department” – September 2010

“It is difficult for us to realize the fact, but we all know that any soldier is in five times more danger of dying from malarious disease than of being killed in battle. What malaria is nobody knows. It may consist of organisms…too minute for even the microscope to detect or it may be some condition of the atmosphere…or it may be a gas evolved in the decay of vegetable matter. There is no doubt, however, that malaria is some mysterious poison in the atmosphere, and that it is confined strictly to certain localities." - “Advice to Our Soldiers – Malaria and its Remedies” – Scientific American - July 20, 1861


If any disease deserves its own military history, it ought to be malaria. Indeed, a British medical officer went further, declaring in 1910 that “the history of malaria in war might almost be taken to be the history of war itself.” Malaria – and its cousin, yellow fever – had significant implications during the war and - as witnessed above in the early-war quote from Scientific American - the debilitating consequences of the disease were already certain before the Civil War had started in earnest and well before its final history had been written. Also evident in the quote is the mystery that still surrounded the cause and transmission of malaria.


In his recent book, Mosquito Soldiers: Malaria, Yellow Fever, and the Course of the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2010, $29.95), Andrew M. Bell, Ph.D., has both removed the mystery and significantly increased our understanding of these two diseases, which he declares “have [been] given short shrift” in most medical histories of the war (p. 6). While seemingly short at 120 pages, in fact Mosquito Soldiers covers much ground, indeed. The title comes from Bell’s apt conclusion that the insect served as a “mercenary force, a third army” (p. 4) during the war.

The first chapter describes the science behind the diseases, their transmission by the Anopheles and Aedes mosquitoes, and the sickness and death they caused in antebellum America. Chapters 2-6 offer a military history of the diseases over the course of the war, in which he draws on the Official Records and other sources to make a good case that the insects and disease (and fear of disease) affected campaign and battle strategies. A final chapter describes the role of “biological warfare,” through acts of sabotage and terrorism (though based on a misunderstanding of the cause of malaria and yellow fever) and the effect of the Union blockade on Confederate medical supplies, especially quinine.

The book is supported by interesting appendices, including one consisting of maps of malarial incidence among Union troops year-by-year as well as a map of yellow fever outbreaks. The bibliography demonstrates Dr. Bell’s use of an array of period newspapers, letters and diaries, and medical reports as well as relevant secondary sources, all supported by excellent explanatory endnotes. The writing is clear and engaging. I recommend it highly.

He was kind enough to tell me about his interest in history and provide additional insights into the important role that malaria and yellow fever played in the Civil War.

Dr. Bell attributes his early interest in history to peer pressure. “Everyone I knew as a child was obsessed with the Civil War,” he told me, adding, “My elementary school chums played ‘Yankees and Rebels’ instead of ‘Cowboys and Indians.’” Dr. Bell went to the New Market living history event every year with his father and his grandfather told him stories about seeing Confederate veterans march down Monument Avenue in Richmond. “Growing up, I just assumed that everyone shared this obsession; when I got to college, I learned that there were people in the world who didn’t know or care much about the American Civil War. What a shock!”

Dr. Bell was inspired to embark on the book project early in his doctoral studies at George Washington. “Dr. Elizabeth Fenn (author of Pox Americana) suggested that I write a book on malaria during the Civil War. I checked the literature and realized that she was on to something: the epidemiological historiography of the war is dangerously thin and historians have shied away from writing about disease even though they know that it killed most of the soldiers who died during the Civil War.”

A self-professed “glutton for punishment,” Dr. Bell tackled a very topic. “I had to spend several months in the GWU Medical Library learning about the etiology of malaria and yellow fever before I could consult any historical sources. When it came time to write the book, I tried to focus on stories about real people rather than the technical details,” he told me. Dr. Bell compares good historians to good butchers: “they both trim the fat and give their customers the choicest cuts.”

His focus on real people is evident when Dr. Bell describes the effects of disease outbreaks and fatalities among civilians; effects that might not have otherwise happened but for the belligerent forces marching through and camping near their communities. While he acknowledges that we will never know precisely how many civilians died as a result of these outbreaks, he does conclude that the people of the South paid a heavy price in addition to the loss of sons, fathers, and husbands on the battlefield. “They also had to endure a pestilential nightmare,” he told me. “Traveling armies fouled their neighborhoods and water supplies, which aided the spread of dangerous diseases.”

Dr. Bell also spends a good amount of time on quinine, “the most potent weapon Civil War surgeons had in their fight against malaria,” (p. 6). Derived from the bark of the South American cinchona tree, the alkaloid was an effective remedy for the fever and debilitating chills caused by malaria; in fact, it was used as a remedy until the 1940s before it was replaced by other drugs. The Union enjoyed a ready supply of quinine and regimental surgeons dispensed many tons of the drug over the course of the war.

Dr. Bell also explains that the South suffered from a quinine shortage for most of the war. The federal blockade limited the availability of quinine and other drugs and what little made it through the blockade or was smuggled through enemy lines was seized by Confederate quartermasters. Dr. Bell told me of a letter he found from a woman in Summerville, South Carolina who begged her relatives in Rhode Island to send her a few ounces of quinine. “She was especially concerned for the health of her children and insisted that life in Summerville ‘depended upon quinine.’ I don’t think that her case was extraordinary.”


Civil War enthusiasts who are interested in the naval aspects of the war will be especially pleased with Mosquito Soldiers. Dr. Bell declares that “Malaria [and yellow fever]...also sickened thousands of Union and Confederate sailors who patrolled the South’s inland waterways and coastal harbors during the war,” (p. 31). He describes how the diseases affected naval campaigns and life on specific vessels (the USS Delaware and the CSS Florida are only a few of several interesting cases). As a resident of Houston, I was especially interested in his lengthy discussions of outbreaks among soldiers and civilians on the Lone Star coast, especially in Galveston where an 1864 outbreak of “yellow jack” led to hundreds of deaths.

The misunderstanding – if not ignorance – of the cause of disease by Civil War surgeons has often been the source of derision in Civil War literature. At the very beginning of Mosquito Soldiers, Dr. Bell addresses the accusations of “presentism” and “cultural smugness” that historians may face when they apply a modern lens to studying medical problems of the past. “Historical context is a useful servant, but a cruel master,” he told me. While Dr. Bell acknowledges, “we should think about the past from the point of view of our predecessors,” he also believes that “unless we’re studying history simply for its own sake, we need to make comparisons between the past and present.”

Dr. Bell happily acknowledges that authors such as Dr. Jay Bollet (Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs) and Dr. Margaret Humphreys (Intensely Human) are “pushing Civil War the medical historiography in the right direction,” as he told me, adding “I’ve never been a post-modernist. I believe that immutable scientific laws—truths which transcend time and cultural traditions—exist within the field of medicine.”

We can be happy that Dr. Bell is in good company with Drs. Bollet and Humphreys – and others – and has added to that truth in explaining the important role of malaria and yellow fever in the Civil War in Mosquito Soldiers.

Civil War Patent Medicine Almanacs from the "Schmidt Collection" - #2 - Herrick's - 1865!

Here is a look at another wartime almanac in my collection. This one is for Herrick's Pills from 1865. Unfortunately, it's missing the front and back cover pages (hey, people, remember: it's OLD!) but there are still some GREAT gems inside!

Herrick's Pills are mentioned in a wonderful letter from soldier Delavan Bates:

Delavan Bates to his father, January 29, 1865

"Battery no. 4 is right in front of our camp and during the performance the captain in command thought he would do something smart and so he threw a few solid shot from his little 12 pound smooth bore Napoleon guns down toward the river. The rebs noticed it and sent over half a dozen of those big shells and elevating their pieces a little too high for the battery, the shells all landed right around us...I saw a tree one of them hit. It was a tall hemlock about twenty-four inches through. The shell struck it about twenty feet from the ground and took it square off. Imagine such a piece of iron striking a man side of the head. Herricks pills wouldn't save him."

(Bates joined the 121st New York Volunteers, participated in the important battles of the Civil War in the east, including Gettysburg, Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg. He was regularly promoted and served as Colonel of the 30th United States Colored Troops. He earned the Medal of Honor for his heroism at the "Battle of the Crater" at Petersburg).

Letter courtesy of www.soldierstudies.org

1) Typical almanac page with sunrise/sunset/phases of the moon, etc...notice among the "Aspects, Events, Etc." they have listed some important dates relative to the Civil War.






















2) and 3) More than any other patent medicine almanac I have seen, Herrick's really marketed themselves to soldiers. Notice the advertisements for "Herrick's Army and Navy Pills" as well as the soldier testimonial from James W. Loucks!











































4) All patent medicines "oversold" their merits and a single medicine could be billed as curing a dozen (or more!) individual ailments. However - this is one of my favorites: notice that Dr. Perrin's Fumigator is good for "Minister's Sore Throat"!

Enjoy! More wartime almanacs coming soon!

JAMA Reviews "Years of Change and Suffering"!

I'm pleased to announce that JAMA - The Journal of the American Medical Association - published a very kind review of my second book (co-edited with Guy R. Hasegawa, Pharm.D.), Years of Change and Suffering: Modern Perspectives on Civil War Medicine (Edinborough Press, 2009). The review - in the August 18, 2010 issue - was penned by Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein, Ph.D., special collections librarian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. Dr. Schroeder-Lein is the author of several books, including The Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine (2008)and Confederate Hospitals on the Move: Samuel H. Stout and the Army of Tennessee (1996).

My two books - Lincoln's Labels: America's Best Known Brands and the Civil War (Edinborough Press, 2008) and Years of Change have received wonderful support in the Civil War blogosphere and from popular history publications such as America's Civil War, Civil War Times, and Civil War News, and I am so appreciative and humbled by that support. This JAMA review is also special because it is the first time one of my books has been reviewed by a professional/academic publication.

REMEMBER THAT ALL ROYALTIES FROM YEARS OF CHANGE ARE BEING DONATED TO CIVIL WAR MEDICAL HERITAGE PRESERVATION!

Excerpts:

"Whereas essay collections in honor of a noted historian or focused on aspects of a particular American Civil War battle are fairly common, a collection of essays on Civil War medicine is unusual and perhaps unique. Editors James Schmidt and Guy Hasegawa have invited six other authors, mostly physicians, to examine a rather wide range of topics in the history of Civil War medicine.

After a brief foreword by Lowry, an inveterate researcher at the National Archives, the editors provide an overview of the articles...In the first essay, Koste, archivist at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, provides a useful look at the development of that institution, with a focus on its importance for educating Southern physicians as the only Confederate medical school that remained open during the entire Civil War.

Many readers may be surprised by medical educator Bollet's suggestion that more amputations, rather than fewer, should have been performed during the Civil War. Bollet's essay is the best available concise and thorough explanation of the justification for and benefits of amputation during the war and is highly recommended as an overview for students.

Hasegawa, coeditor and pharmacist, goes beyond a simple presentation of Southern attempts to encourage, prepare, and use indigenous Southern remedies during the war and investigates what sources might have determined Confederate Surgeon General Samuel P. Moore's choice of remedies to pursue before the publication of Francis Peyre Porcher's landmark Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests in 1863.

Each of the articles has endnotes; the volume also has an overall bibliography and index. Most of the studies are based on primary sources, published as well as unpublished. The essays are reasonably balanced between Union and Confederate topics. As a whole, Years of Change and Suffering is...designed for readers interested in Civil War medical history. Such readers should find these essays informative and thought-provoking.

Thank You to JAMA and Dr. Schroeder-Lein!

Read more reviews of Years of Change here:

*Civil War News
*America's Civil War Magazine!
*Featured on "Civil War Talk Radio"
*Review by Drew Wagenhoffer at "Civil War Books and Authors"
*Review by James Durney at "TOCWOC"
*Review by Robert Redd at "Confederate Book Review"
*Reviews (here and here) by Rea Andrew Redd at "Civil War Librarian"
*Advance Praise

The hardcover and softcover are still available!

It Hits the Spot! Dr. Blosser's Catarrh Remedy!

I recently added a new item to my patent medicine collection - an (empty) box of "Dr. Blosser's Catarrh Remedy" (c. 1908-1920)...the product was originally (c. 1899-1907)0 billed as "Blosser's Catarrh Cure" but had to be re-labeled as "Remedy" due to changes in drug labeling laws.

I'm excited to add the small box (a cube, 3 to 4 inches a side) to my collection as it represents a new "method of delivery" among the therapies I've collected: teas, pills, syrups, bitters, and now: Blosser's cigarettes (100 to the box)!

Below are photos of the box and some period advertisements (one from the Atlanta Constitution, 1902, and the other from a London newspaper- Lloyd's Weekly News - 1913)



Fortunately, we know something of Dr. Blosser, as he is the subject of a biographical sketch in History of the Descendants of Christian Wenger (1903), an excerpt of which is below:

Joseph W. Blosser was born at Dayton, Rockingham Co., Va. [April 23, 1844] At the age of fourteen he moved with his parents to Upshur Co., W. Va., in 1858, and at the early age of 21 he graduated in medicine from the Physio Medical College at Cincinnati, Ohio, after which he practiced medicine, first in Elkhart Co., Ind., and then in Jasper Co., Mo. He was married to Margaret E. Stephenson, Oct. 15, 1868. From early childhood he had strong religious inclinations...In 1870 he entered the ministry and from that year until 1881 he either practiced medicine or served as a pastor of a congregation, about half of the time doing double work as physician and minister of the gospel. ...In 1895 he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and engaged in business, however giving a share of his time to the work of the ministry, until the year 1902, when he retired from business, and built a tabernacle with a seating capacity of about 800 people, and became the pastor of the congregation which he had thus gathered together. He is also the inventor of the "Dr. Blosser's Catarrh Cure," an excellent and widely known remedy for catarrh, the manufacture of which forms quite an industry, which is now superintended by his two worthy sons, who employ many helpers.

Government chemists found the cigarettes to be composed of chamomile, anise, cubeb, and pepper.

Apart from the (dubious?) medical properties of the cigarettes, Dr. Blosser endured significant troubles when he was accused of participating in a "testimonial brokers" racket - wherein various quack medicine vendors sold each other testimonial letters and mailing lists - detailed in Samuel Hopkin Adams's Great American Fraud: Articles on the Nostrum Evil and Quackery (1912). Blosser protested his innocence but Adams was able to produce a goodly number of letters.

Civil War Patent Medicine Almanacs from the "Schmidt Collection" - #1 - A.L. Scovill - 1864

Almanacs have been a part of American history almost since its colonization. Officially, they appeared in New England as early as 1639. Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's almanac was introduced in 1733.

Patent medicine vendors began to take out advertising space in almanacs in the 1820s and began producing their own in the 1840s.

By the time of the Civil War all of the major patent medicines were publishing their own almanacs and the numbers are staggering; for example, the Ayers company was printing 15,000,000 almanacs annuay and in 21 languages!

Below are scans from one of the wartime almanacs in my collection, produced by A.L. Scovill & Co. for 1864. More wartime almanacs from my collection are forthcoming. Enjoy!

1) The front cover - notice that this almanac was produced exclusively for New York and New England. See the hole punched in the top right-hand corner? It served a very important purpose: a small piece of string or hook could be attached and the almanac could be hung in the home, or more likely: the outhouse!

2) The back cover - note the variety number of medicines produced by the Scoville company! No less than nine different cures! Apparently this almanac also carried the imprint of a Stamford, CT general store.

3) A staple of the almanac from the earliest days was the inclusion of astronomical charts.

4) A new addition for many almanacs in the Civil War years was a chronology of the war up to that time.

5) The raison d'etre of the patent medicine almanac - advertisments and testimonials for their medicines! This 48-page almanc included 27 pages of advertising and testimonials...more than half the almanac!

McClellan as Viewed by the "Spirits"

I have posted before (here and here) on a growing interest of mine: Spiritualism and the Civil War. In doing some additional period newspaper research I came across a short article in an 1862 issue of the Waukesha (WI) Freeman that excerpts a longer article in the Banner of Light, the nation's premier Spiritualist newspaper.

The article was entitled "Gen McClellan - As Viewed By the Spirits" and included the following text:

"Gen. McClellan is acting in accordance with the dictates of his spirit guide, he who gives him the information spoken of. Weak mortality is not able to follow the dictates of immortality, but, so far as we are able to judge, we firmly believe that Gen. McClellan - like our beloved Washington, whose memory we still cherish - has been sent by God as a second Savior unto this oppressed nation."

It goes on, but that's enough for now!

A Blog Bicentennial! 200 (and one) Posts for "Civil War Medicine"

The most recent entry marked 200 posts for the "Civil War Medicine and Writing" blog! I started the site on May 9, 2007, and passed the 100-post mark on January 19, 2009. I'm looking forward to more posts and appreciate so much the support of the readers who stop by! Thank You!