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Tue, 12 Sep 2006 11:13:25 -0400 |
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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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