I'd try searching patent medicine collections for information. This might 
get you started:

http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/biolib/hc/nostrums/

Diane Gutenkauf
Director
Robert R. McCormick Museum
[log in to unmask]

On Mon, 11 Sep 2006 22:35:55 -0400, Lynne <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Hello,
>   I staff our small local history museum and am enrolled in a museum 
professions graduate program. I am in the middle of the internship that is 
required for the graduate program and I am in need of help with a small 
research project, please.
>   One of the objects in the collection of the museum where I am doing 
the internship is a small, ca. 1870, handwritten book of formulas for 
colognes and pharmaceuticals. One of the recipes is titled "Rail Road 
Pills" and while I don't have the ingredients in front of me, I seem to 
recall that it wouldn't help much even if I did, as they were not 
ingredients I recognized or could even read. The text below the 
ingredients mentions that one should take 2-3 pills per day for 'operation 
on the bowels' and if one has liver problems one should take only one 
pill 'until the bowels become troublesome.'
>    We Googled "Railroad Pills" in an effort to find out exactly what 
that means and we found a genealogical inquiry by someone who said her 
great-great-great grandfather was a doctor who "fell out of the medical 
profession for manufacturing 'railroad pills' and that he apparently 'made 
something and had girls selling them up and down the railroad system.' "  
>    A second hit was a strange story that seems to be from an 1847 issue 
of Scientific American. It mentions a man going into a drug store in 
Batavia NY and asking for 'percussion pills.' He is told that the store 
sells 'Lee's pills, Smith's pills, Maffat's pills, Railroad pills, High 
pressure pills, Headache pills ..." etc.
>    Those were the only two apparently-relevant hits on the item and we 
are still not sure what they are. Can anyone help us determine what 
exactly railroad pills were?
>    Thank you.
>Lynne
>

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