Ear: Quackery

The likelihood that many would overindulge on Thanksgiving dinner inspired a lot of patent medicine advertising in the 1880s, especially for relief from constipation and “torpid” liver.

One such bit of quackery was a purgative called Dr. Sanford’s Liver Invigorator, advertised regularly in The Daily Morning Astorian.

The recipe has (fortunately) been lost to history, but newspaper ads, such as one in an 1857 edition of the Illinois State Journal, regale the concoction as being “the most invigorating, life giving balsam we have ever known, and we are happy in telling all of its curative properties and in recommending them when troubled with any derangement of the liver to try this unfailing remedy.”

After a bit of research, “derangement of the liver” seemed to cover a lot of territory — everything from liver malfunction, to biliousness (gastric indigestion), to gallbladder issues, to constipation.

Dr. Lipscomb, in the “Medical and Surgical Reporter,” probably had a more realistic view. He noted that Sanford’s tonic “produced, after moderate purgation (diarrhea), symptoms similar to collapse in cholera,” and opined that it was loaded with atropine (a poisonous alkaloid derived from belladonna, aka deadly nightshade) or belladonna itself. Constipation would surely have been preferable.