Dear Lynn,

How fortuitous to run across your question on Railroad Pills.  It just so 
happens that a fellow researcher that works with me (particularly on 
railroad issues) for our museum just happens to be a physician from Batavia, 
NY.  He is very familiar with the pharmacies there and, with the list of 
ingredients you mentioned in your email, may be able to track down exactly 
what the "railroad pills" were used for, and possibly just how nefarious 
their effects may have been.

Please send me the information about the railroad pill recipe and the 1847 
article you mentioned and he will look into it for you!  My phone number is 
(307) 778-1413.  I hope we will be able to help.


Michael Kassel
Exhibits Manager
Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum
Cheyenne, Wyoming 82001
307-778-1413


>From: Lynne <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Museum discussion list <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Railroad pills?
>Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2006 22:35:55 -0400
>
>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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