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Vintage homepathic medicines

In the 1800s, Valentine’s Meant a Bottle of Meat Juice

An act of love in the form of a medicinal tonic.
by Stephanie Castellano via Atlas Obscura on February 10, 2022
Drawing of boy with bottle of bitters
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The Bitter Truth About Bitters

A bottle of bitters from about 1918 had significant amounts of alcohol and lead—and not a trace of the supposed active ingredient.
by Benjamin C. Torbenson, Matthew Wills, Johnathan Erlin, Michael Torbenson via JSTOR Daily on July 9, 2021
shelves full of old medicine bottles

The US Drug Industry Used to Oppose Patents – What Changed?

Patent medicine used to be associated with fraud and profiteering. What shifted the industry's positions on medical ethics and intellectual property?
by Joseph M. Gabriel via The Conversation on June 29, 2021
A collage of advertisements for lithium and lithium water.

The Truth About Lithium Might Never Come Out

Longevity enthusiasts are microdosing a 19th-century cure-all. Are they onto something?
by Shayla Love via The Atlantic on October 4, 2024
An 1890s advertising poster for Coca Cola featuring a well-to-do white woman.
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Who Took the Cocaine Out of Coca-Cola?

The medical profession saw nothing wrong with offering a cocaine-laced cola to white, middle-class consumers. Selling it to Black Americans was another matter.
by Livia Gershon, Michael Mark Cohen via JSTOR Daily on June 3, 2024
Hand facing palm up and holding three pills.

Unreasonable Terms

How American drug companies have exploited government contracts to pursue profit over public interest.
by Daniel J. Kevles via New York Review of Books on October 5, 2023
Advertisement for a gold dredging machine from a 1920's magazine.

The Huckster Ads of Early “Popular Mechanics”

Weird, revealing, and incredibly fun to read.
by Clive Thompson via Medium on August 6, 2022
Fox News host Tucker Carlson in March 2017. (Richard Drew/AP)
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Tucker Carlson’s Discussion of Testicle Red-Light Therapy is Nothing New

The long history of concerns about masculinity — and attempts to enhance it.
by Janet Golden, Elizabeth Neswald via Made By History on April 29, 2022
Woman's glowing face

“A Revolutionary Beauty Secret!”

On the rise and fall of radium in the beauty industry.
by Lucy Jane Santos via Literary Hub on July 8, 2021
Pills in a week organizer.
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Drug Companies Keep Merging. Why That’s Bad For Consumers and Innovation.

Over 30 years, dramatic consolidation has meant higher prices, fewer treatment options and less incentive to innovate.
by Robin Feldman via Made By History on April 6, 2021
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How Wrigley Chewed Its Way to Gum Greatness

William Wrigley, Jr. started selling soap and became a prodigy of consumerism.
by Erin Blakemore, Daniel Robinson via JSTOR Daily on May 11, 2017

Susan B. Anthony, Pro-Life Heroine?

Behind a quiet house museum are anti-abortion activists with a mission: to claim America’s most famous historical feminist as their own.
by Ruth Graham via Slate on May 8, 2017
Star-Herb Medicines and Teas for all Diseases, 1923.
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How Government Helped Birth the Advertising Industry

Advertising went from being an embarrassing activity to a legitimate part of every company’s business plans—despite scant evidence that it worked.
by Livia Gershon, Daniel Navon via JSTOR Daily on May 17, 2024
An illustration of a tube of cream; reads "Hakka Cream Catarrh, Hay Fever, Head Colds, etc.)

Hay Fever

The nuisance of a new season.
by Erika Mills via Circulating Now on April 5, 2024
Inventor of mifepristone Etienne-Emile Baulieu in lab

The Long and Winding History of the War on Abortion Drugs

While these pills are making headlines in the US, where a Texas judge tried to ban them, the story of their invention is often overlooked.
by Lara Bullens via France24 on April 26, 2023
Chlorodyne bottles and other medicines on display with a wooden background

Potions, Pills, and Patents: How Basic Healthcare Became Big Business in America

Basic healthcare in the 20th Century greatly impacted the way that the drug business currently operates in the United States.
by Alexander Zaitchik via Literary Hub on March 4, 2022

Vibrators Had a Long History as Medical Quackery

Before feminists rebranded them as sex toys, vibrators were just another medical device.
by Kim Adams via The Conversation on June 8, 2020
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Public Health Isn’t The Enemy of Economic Well-Being

As 19th century reformers showed, only a healthy workforce can fuel economic prosperity.
by Melanie A. Kiechle via Made By History on April 24, 2020

Madame Yale Made a Fortune With the 19th Century's Version of Goop

A century before today’s celebrity health gurus, an American businesswoman was a beauty with a brand.
by Emmeline Clein via Smithsonian on March 1, 2020

A Brief History of American Pharma: From Snake Oil to Big Money

The dark side of the medical industrial complex.
by Mike Magee via Literary Hub on September 5, 2019

The Credo Company

A shocking story about the biggest company in the US's most profitable industry.
by Steven Brill via Highline on August 1, 2019

Mange, Morphine, and Deadly Disease: Medicine and Public Health in Red Dead Redemption 2

The video game offers a realistic portrayal of illness and public health in the 19th-century American West.
by Leah Richier via Nursing Clio on March 12, 2019
The poison squad, experimenters that tried poisons and studied their effects, drawn as men in suits striking dramatic poses.

Food Used to Be a Lot More Dangerous

Before the establishment of the modern FDA, anti-regulation attitudes ruled the world of food.
by Whit Taylor, Maki Naro via The Nib on March 4, 2019

Quacks, Alternative Medicine, and the U.S. Army in the First World War

During WWI, the Surgeon General received numerous pitches for miraculous cures for sick and wounded American soldiers.
by Evan P. Sullivan via Nursing Clio on January 31, 2019

From Teddy Roosevelt to Trump: How Drug Companies Triggered an Opioid Crisis a Century Ago

Americans, warned President Teddy Roosevelt's newly appointed opium commissioner in 1908, 'have become the greatest drugs fiends in the world.'
by Nick Miroff via Retropolis on October 17, 2017

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