George Fulford and Victorian Patent Medicine Men

George Fulford and Victorian
Patent Medicine Men: Quack
Mercenaries or Smilesian
Entrepreneurs?
LORILOEB
Abstract. In the early twen tieth cen tury, a time when pa tent medicine men were
stereotyped as evil and dishonest, G. T. Fulford of Brockville, Ontario made his
forhme from an iron pill called Dr. Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People. Once successful, Fulford remained in Brockville where he served on the town council and
gave generously to charities. In 1900 he was appointed by Laurier to the Senate.
When he died in 1905 he was remembered as a kind and ethical man. His story,
like that of several other prominent patent medicine men, conforms more with the
ideals of Samuel Smiles than with the popular image of disrepute.
Resume. Au debut du xx e siecle, cl une epoque ou les vendeurs de remedes
patentes etaient vu, de maniere caricaturale, comme des suppots du mal et des
gens malhonnetes, G. T. Fulford de Brockville en Ontario a fait fortune avec une
simple pilule extraite du fer appelee Dr. Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People,
Une fois rendu celebre, Fulford demeura tout de meme cl Brockville OU il a
oeuvre au sein de I'Hotel de Ville et OU il participa activement a des oeuvres de
chari~e. En 1900 il fut nomme au Senat par le Premier Ministre Sir Wilfrid Laurier. A son deces, en 1905, le souvenir qU'illaissa fut celui d'un homme bon, cl
I'ethique irreprochable. Son histoire, comme celle de plusieurs autres hommes
de sa profession est plus conforme aux ideaux de Samuel Smiles qu'cl I'image
populaire que lui faisait une mauvaise reputation.
In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the period in
which George T. Fulford made his fortune from Dr. Williams' Pink Pills
for Pale People and was appointed to the Canadian Senate, patent medicine men 1 were widely seen as scurrilous characters who sold useless
Lori Loeb, Department of History, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S lA 1.
CBMH/BCHM / Volume 16: 1999/ p. 125-45
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LORILOEB
or dangerous remedies at inflated prices to an unsuspecting public. Like
the patent medicine trade itself, the stereotype was an international one.
In literature patent medicine men were derided for profiting from the
"bright enterprise of selling slightly injurious rubbish at ... two [shillings] and nine [pence] a bottle."2 In medical journals doctors wrote vituperatively of those who propagated a "Carthage of quackery" which
impaired the health of the innocent and retarded the aspirations of the
profession. The composite impression suggested a sea of hucksters with
travelling road shows or stalls in village markets, an image once quite
representative (and enduring in rural areas), but becoming out-of-date
in an age of mass production.
By the turn of the century, a significant number of patent medicine
men on both sides of the Atlantic had metamorphosed into businessmen of considerable sophistication. Frequently, they began their businesses in smaller centres such as Brockville, Schenectady, or Lincoln.
Typically, they achieved fame and fortune by employing innovative
selling and marketing techniques to promote products that often had
some genuine efficacy. Once having scaled the heights of society, they
confirmed their respectability with acts of philanthropy and community service. While many members of the Victorian intelligentsia and
the middle class, broadly defined, had difficulty reconciling trade and
morality? several prominent patent medicine men, including George T.
Fulford, in fact exemplified Victorian ideals of entrepreneurship and the
self-made man. 4 The distance between the real careers of patent medicine men and the popular mythology of duplicity and disrepute, I will
show, reflects the clash of professional and consumerist ideals, especially the reluctance of intellectual elites to embrace late nineteenthcentury commodity culture.
II
In Upper Canada the first patent medicine was sold in 1809 when
Clavendon Younger offered an iron ointment and sold Stoughton's Bitters and Lees Pills imported from London. By the 1840s there were ads
for proprietary medicines in most newspapers in the province.5 The
medicines originated partly in the self-medication tradition, derived
from folk medicine, which persisted in family recipes and home medicine chests within the context of conventional medicine. 6 During the
second stage of the consumer revolution/ which witnessed the rise of
department stores, multiple retailing, and illustrated advertising, the
number of patent medicines (and appliances such as electropathic
belts 8) mushroomed at an exponential rate and in mass-produced form.
Although some inventors of new products assumed authoritative titles
such as professor or doctor which suggested an affinity with the medi-
George Fulford and Victorian Patent Medicine Men
127
cal professions, many makers who advertised in the Ontario press in the
late nineteenth century flaunted their antipathy to the medical establishment, or at least aligned themselves with alternative medicine. 9
Lydia Pinkham, for example, advertised in the Toronto Globe under the
sensational headline "Why Physicians Fail."lO The secrecy of patent
medicine formulae underscored their divergence from orthodox medicine, for composition was hidden not only from patients, but from medical professionals and other dealers. The name patent medicine was in
fact a misnomer; few were actually patented. More properly they were
proprietary medicines whose manufacturers were unwilling to reveal
their ingredients to competitors through the patenting process. l l Ethical
codes were supposed to prevent doctors from prescribing medicines
whose contents were unknown. 12 The CMA Code of Ethics (1867) explained that
if [a] nostrum be of real efficacy, any concealment regarding it is inconsistent
with beneficence and professional liberality and if mystery alone give it value
and importance, such craft implies either disgraceful ignorance or fraudulent
avarice.!3
Hence patent medicines, by their very definition, if not through the posture of their creators or sellers, were set apart from, and often in opposition to, orthodox medicine.
Medicines were priced to sell. Typically, there was a starter size for
pills priced at 25 to 50 cents, and a larger, economy size priced at $1.25
to $1.50. They could be purchased in a variety of retail outlets, from
grocers to stationery shops. Only about 20% of the dealers of patent
medicines were chemists. The most popular points of purchase were
department stores, favored by manufacturers because the likelihood of
substitution was low, and by consumers because economies of scale
permitted optimally low prices. 14 Accordingly, the T. Eaton Co. boasted
that its patent medicine department, begun in 1857, was the most popular in the store. An Eaton's advertisement in the Toronto Telegram in
1892 proclaimed, "business is unusually good, especially in the department devoted to patent medicine. People hear about it through other
channels and are glad to save the difference between our prices and
some others."15 Attractive pricing and ready accessibility were complemented by a variety of marketing techniques, especially mastery of the
new field of print advertising. Patent medicine advertisements were
marked by hyperbolic text and lavish illustrations in which, for example, hysterical women fainted before distressed husbands and consumptive invalids rose from their beds. Advertisements particularly
employed themes that might resonate with women. 16
Sales were considerable. Canada Lancet noted: "The manufacture and
sale of proprietary medicines have become one of the most prominent
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institutions and established industries of the civilized world. Millions
are engaged directly or indirectly."I? Canadians played no small role in
this burgeoning commercial enterprise. As the London correspondent
to the Journal of the American Medical Association put it in 1907: "although
America can lay claim to the proud position of easily leading the world,
both in the manufacture and consumption of nostrums, Great Britain
has no rival for second place, unless it be Canada."IS
III
As the patent medicine industry prospered on both sides of the Atlantic,
prominent Victorian literary figures presented a far-from-flattering image of the successful patent medicine maker. George Eliot, in Felix Holt
(1866), likened those who place "gulling ads" for "absurd" medicines
to pickpocketers. 19 Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his Medical Essays (1892),
nicknamed their proprietors "the mushroom, say rather, the toadstool
millionaires."2o Conrad, in The Secret Agent (1907), characterized their
inventors as "moral nihilis[ts]" who "live on the vices, the follies or the
baser fears of mankind."21 Perhaps most famously, H. G. Wells, in Tono
Bungay (1908), portrayed the supposedly quintessential patent medicine man, Edward Ponderevo, who markets an out-of-date remedy
through "alluring, buttonholing" advertisements and a variable formula which might or might not include a "kick" of strychnine. 22 Ponderevo is a confident trickster who dopes and deludes with promises of
easy cures and elusive health. Fleshed out most completely by Wells
and sometimes rooted in ideological criticisms of the capitalist system,23
the patent medicine maker in literature seems the very opposite of the
Victorian prototype of the rational, scientific man.
Such literary portraits were reinforced by the negative opinion of
medical professionals, even if that criticism was often qualified. Chemists, for example, found it tricky to attack patent medicines wholeheartedly.24 Many chemists put up their own brands to serve a local market.
But even those who did not, believed, as one chemist put it, that "prudence [urges] that it would be bad policy to teach customers to go to
some other class of shop when they want medicine of any kind."25 Indeed no Canadian drug-store owner could afford not to sell patent
medicines: the Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal in 1880 estimated that
sales at Ontario drug stores were typically composed of 30% patent
medicines, 30% toilet articles, 35% drugs, and 5% other. 26 But while he
might carry them, the chemist did not have to recommend them. As a
letter from a Canadian chemist to the Journal of the American Medical Association explained: "When anyone comes in and asks for a bottle of
these swindles, I always give them what they ask for, but usually with
my opinion of the fraud thrown in."2? The chemist also might try to
George Fulford and Victorian Patent Medicine Men
129
switch the customer to his own unbranded version, a practice which
patent medicine manufacturers referred to as the "vice of substitution.,,2s The opposition of chemists to patent medicines had to be tempered by business concerns.
Doctors found it easier to condemn patent medicines, although they,
too, had to acknowledge some complicity in the trade since medical
journals carried ads for patent medicines long after their crusade
against patent medicines was underway.29 Nonetheless, as has been
well chronicled for Britain by Bartrip and for America by Young, many
orthodox practitioners in the medical press and in public addresses contended that patent medicines were dangerous: they were addictive or
potentially lethal, they masked symptoms, they delayed vital professional treatment, they offered false cures. The Ontario Board of Health
emphasized the particular dangers patent medicines posed to women
and children. 3D By the turn of the century medical rhetoric against
"quackery" (a term used with increasing frequency but little precision),
reached a feverish pitch. 31 To doctors who aspired to gentility and the
professional ideal, commercialism was becoming anathema. 32 The commercial success of patent medicines made them an economic and cultural threat to physicians. Patent medicines constituted an incursion on
professional incomes and scientific authority.33 Professionalism as a
process of occupational closure was implicitly concerned with limited
access to that wealth, position, and reputation. 34 If professionalism was
not to be supplanted with commercialism, doctors had, with increasing
fervor, to emphasize the superiority of their own cultural capital over
the economic capital of patent medicine makers. The interlopers, according to doctors, had no privileged knowledge and ethical understanding, which in the late nineteenth century were celebrated as
among the defining characteristics of professionalism. The patent medicine men, Canada Lancet despaired, has "usurped the throne of professional ethics."35 Driving them away was a matter of public service.
The principle weapon in a transnational professional assault against
patent medicines was the publication of the formulae of popular
branded remedies in the British Medical Journal (January 1907 to April
1912); the Journal of the American Medical Association (June 1900 to March
1907); in the reports of the Australian Royal Commission on Drugs and
Food in 1907 and the British Select Committee on Patent Medicines in
1914; and in the popular exposes: Secret Remedies and More Secret Remedies, published by the British Medical Association in 1908 and 1910;
and Nostrums and Quackery published on behalf on the American Medical Association beginning in 1911.36 The findings did not entirely support the alarmist tone of professional opposition.
130
LORILOEB
Though some medicines turned out to contain harmful ingredients,
many were revealed as benign. Popular obesity cures, for example,
were mostly citric acid in waterY The dangers of a minority of medicines, especially soothing syrups, which contained laudanum and chlorodynes should not be minimized, but many medicines were not only
benign, but even appropriate for common ailments. Indigestion
remedies were largely bicarbonate of soda. Rhubarb pills were good
laxatives. Iron in female pills indeed would act as a pick-me-up for
many anaemic girls and women. Even the alcohol in popular tonics, acting as a sedative, probably did "sooth the nerves." Morphine, a common ingredient in medicines for chest ailments, had dangers related to
dosing and addiction, but it was effective as a cough suppressant. Many
remedies, in short, did work-at least to some degree-and did not justify the professional rhetoric of pervasive toxicity.
The profession also had contended that patent medicine men flouted
the laws pertaining to fraud. Fraud, in legal terms, connoted a deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain.
Doctors claimed that patent medicines, which were already relatively
unrestricted by specific statutes,38 were not even controlled by laws pertaining to fraud because they were impossible to prosecute. Patent medicine companies, doctors complained, always could produce witnesses
who would say in court that the medicine had been beneficial to them.
Moreover, as Charles Williams put it in an article in 1907 for the Journal
of the American Medical Association, explaining a legal principle also applicable to Canada:
liability in ... cases [of death or injury 1... is greatly limited by the extreme difficulties of proving that the injury is the natural result of the administration of the
remedy, uninfluenced by other causes, that the prescribed dose was taken and
all directions were followed.
Further, it was said, few consumers had sufficient resources to pursue a
claim against a large corporation. Doctors assumed that the "real inequality in the power of the respective litigants to carry on a lawsuit to a
successful termination" meant that patent medicine firms could violate
the laws with impunity.39 But this allegation, too, needs serious qualification. Three major legal cases-the Bile Beans Case, the Carbolic Smoke
Ball Case, and the Medical Battery Case-demonstrated that patent medicine advertisers could not operate deceptively with impunity.
The famous Carbolic Smoke Ball Case, for example, demonstrated
that the courts could force patent medicine makers to honor their
claims. 4o The Carbolic Smoke Ball was an inhalant patented in 1887
which promised to "positively cure" a wide range of ailments including
asthma, influenza, snoring, deafness, neuralgia, and hayfever. Alleged
to have achieved fame "among ... catarrh-sodden aristocrats," its mak-
George Fulford and Victorian Patent Medicine Men
131
ers claimed that it sold at a rate of 300 per month in the summer of 1890
at a price of SOd. In November 1891 the company advertised in the Pall
Mall Gazette that it would pay £100 to anyone who contracted the flu after using the Smoke Ball, according to directions, two to three times per
day for two weeks. Mrs. Carlill inhaled it according to directions, inducing 25 violent sneezes per application. Over two weeks she used it 42
times, sneezing more than 1,000 times-and still got the flu. Her husband complained and offered a doctor's letter as corroboration for his
wife's illness. The company refused to pay her because, it conjectured,
she must have used the ball improperly. The Carlills took the Carbolic
Smoke Ball Company to court for breach of contract. They won and
were awarded £100 plus costS.41 The Carbolic Smoke Ball Case did
make it clear, as Janice Dickin McGinnis has shown, that consumers
could use the courts to make patent medicine makers honor at least
some promises.
Similarly, the courts would refund the money of a customer who
bought a product which did not work. In 1892 a sensational legal case
(Medical Battery Company v. D. Jeffery) revealed that a Mr. Jeffery, a cashier at the Union Bank, who had suffered from a hernia, had purchased
an electropathic belt for five guineas from the Medical Battery Company. (The Medical Battery Company, founded in 1885, sold electropathic belts from an Oxford Street emporium in London.) Jeffery paid
£2 as a down payment, but refused to pay the balance when he
discovered that the belt had not cured his hernia but made it worse.
Cornelius Bennett Harness, the owner of the Medical Battery Company,
pursued him in court for non-payment of the outstanding debt. Harness lost. In a spectacular turnaround, Jeffery countersued for fraud and
won, principally on the basis of scientific testimony which corroborated
the empirical finding of Jeffery and other customers that the belt did not
work. Harness was ordered to pay costS.42 The case focused press attention on the Medical Battery Company. By 1895 it was bankrupt. The
case proved that the makers of truly bogus items could be brought
down through legal action.
Even a fictitious invention story could get a patent medicine man into
legal difficulty, as the Bile Beans Case of 1905 demonstrated. In the late
1890s Bile Beans, a popular liver and digestive remedy, was marketed
around the world through offices in Sydney, Leeds, and Toronto and
Far Eastern subsidiaries. AdvertiSing literature claimed that the explorer Captain Cook had discovered a vegetable remedy which kept the
natives free from "disease or any bodily complaint." Subsequently, advertisements proclaimed,
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Charles Forde, an eminent scientist, thoroughly investigated the healing extracts and essences of Australian roots and herbs and after long research he
found himself the discoverer of a natural vegetable substance which ... was beyond all doubt the finest remedy yet discovered 43
That remedy, the advertisements said, was Bile Beans. The story was
completely invented. The truth was exposed in 1905 when the maker
went to court in Edinburgh to sue a man who was selling imitations of
Bile Beans illegally. The case (Bile Beans vs. Davidson), revealed the phoney invention claims. There was no such person as Charles Forde; the
maker was no scientist; he never did any research; he never investigated
healing extracts; and the medicine had no Australian connection. 44 In
the end the legitimate case against the imitator was dismissed because
the Bile Beans Company was "engage[edl in perpetrating a deliberate
fraud upon the public in describing and selling an article as being what
it is not."45 The case showed that the courts would not protect the business interests of those manufacturers who practised duplicitously. In a
commercial world fraught with imitators (Beecham's was in court, for
example, almost continuously to protect itself from imitators), the Bile
Beans Case was an important cautionary tale. The Bile Beans case, like
the Harness and Carbolic Smoke Ball Cases, revealed limitations on
fraudulent practice which problematized, if not contradicted, the allegations of doctors.
Nonetheless professionals painted patent medicine men as Machiavellian predators. This was as true in Canada as it was in Britain or
America. The Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal satirized them as "princely potentates of quackery."46 Its manufacturers were "human sharks"
who had for too long been" allowed to gorge themselves upon their innocent and gullible victims."47 They were "unscrupulous,"48 "quack
mercenaries,"49 even "monsters."50 Canada Lancet characterized patent
medicine men as "grasping charlatans," akin to common criminals:
The foot-pad who beats a person to death with a loaded stick or sandbag and
then robs him is hanged. The so-called respectable patent medicine vendor who
lures money out of the pocket of an unfortunate, sickly working girl, a youth, or
father of a family, and often prevents them receiving reasonable treatment at a
time when it would be of some avail, although in the eyes of God equally gUilty
with the brutal highwayman, is yet allowed by law to go absolutely free. It is
difficult to conceive which is the more cold-blooded of the twO. 51
The popular press sensationalized the ugly portrait drawn by literary
and professional critics52 in exposes in Ladies' Home Journal (1903),53 in
Collier's in 1905,54 and in Vanity Fair in 1910,55 all available to Canadian
readers. Articles asked them to "Fancy a man whose imagination could
conceive of the existence of a great business which makes its owners
rich by actually and literally creating human distress and suffering and
George Fulford and Victorian Patent Medicine Men
133
possibly disease where none existed before."56 Practitioners of "willfully diabolical methods"S7 directed mostly against trusting women, 58
patent medicine men were "cynical knave[sl,"S9 "cold-hearted,"60 at
best, "flitting fakers," "scavengers,"61 and" eminent all-around liars,"62
at worst "murderers"63 and "thugs" who could be "compared to the
petty shore thieves who furtively strip the bodies of the drowned."64
Frederick Paul, editor of Saturday Night, echoed the popular characterization in an address before the Ontario Medical Association in 1917,
entitled "The Trail of the Medical Vampire. "65
The widespread image, cultivated by professional and journalistic exposes, was that the patent medicine trade was a disreputable business led
by unsavory charlatans. But it was not only some chemical formulae and
notable court cases that challenged the stereotype. The lives of prominent
patent medicine men contradicted their unflattering characterization. The
case of George Fulford, the Canadian proprietor of Or. Williams' Pink
Pills for Pale People66 dramatically illustrates a relatively neglected aspect
of the disparity between the popular portrait and the commercial reality.
IV
George Taylor Fulford was born in 1852 in Brockville, Ontario. 67 He
studied business at Albert College in Belleville and at 22 he apprenticed
in a Brockville drug store owned by brother, William. Intermittently, he
worked as a railway and steamship ticket agent (as Brockville was then
emerging as a major shipping centre on the Great Lakes) and a wholesale jobber of coal, oil, and imported goods. 68 In 1879, when his brother
decided to move to Chicago, George Fulford took over his drug store.
The business throve in the 1880s, partly through the sale of patent medicines. So successful were the patent medicines that Fulford decided to
market his own branded remedies. In January 1887 he swore out a deposition before the Leeds County Registrar announcing his intention to
"carry on Trade and Business as a manufacturer and vendor of Patent
Medicines ... under the name ... of Fulford and CO."69
In the late 1880s a potentially very popular patent medicine came to
his attention. This was Or. Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People, a general
fatigue remedy. It had been patented in 1886 by Or. William Frederick
Jackson, a McGill-trained doctor who practised in Brockville?O By 1890
Or. Jackson had either lost interest in marketing or had realized that the
Canadian Medical Association Code of Ethics (1867) considered it "derogatory to professional character" to sell "a secret nostrum, whether it be
the composition or exclusive property of himself or of others" or even "to
give certificates attesting the efficacy of patent or secret medicines, or in
any way to promote the use of them."71 Jackson sold his patent to George
Fulford on 4 June 1890 for $53.01 and the government transfer fee?2
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LORILOEB
C" T rulf rd, n.d . Reproduc db perml sion of lh
Ontario Archlv ,A
,55 9 3.
Fulford t ... bout mark tmg Dr. Wiluams' Pink PilI f r Pal P opl
with v n I n e, aid d by the fortuitous coincidence of an influenza
pid ml m I 1-92. As s le of Pink Pills mount d, ulford employed
Will' Tr
Ila on, a h neclady-based patent medicme man to market them m th U .n and John Morgan Richards to market them m Britain ?· In 1893 h opened a Paris office with Eugene Meiffre as manager.
The op ration quickly e panded to include offic s in Holland, Belgium,
George Fulford and Victorian Patent Medicine Men
135
Italy, and Greece. His nephew, Charles Fulford, was sent to Cape town
and later to Australia to open an agency; a Singapore agency opened in
1903, followed by one in Shanghai in 1908. 75
His success, Fulford believed, was no accident. In 1893, when he
introduced the pills in England he said that "three things are essential
[to sell a patent medicine): first, you must have a good thing; secondly,
you must advertise it cleverly; thirdly you must have lots of money to
back it up with."76 Certainly the composition of Pink Pills was innocuous, perhaps even beneficial. While the Collier's expose, widely referenced at the time and since by historians,?7 cited Or. Williams' Pink Pills
for Pale People as a "compound of green vitriol, starch and sugar on
which purchasers waste their money and indeed may delay proper
treatment until it is too late," chemical analyses conducted by several
external bodies scarcely sympathetic to patent medicines, including the
British journal, Science Siftings in 1895, the Australian Pharmaceutical
Board in 1905, and the British Medical Association in 1908, came to different conclusions. All found that the "principal ingredient" was iron?S
The pills contained ferrous sulphate, potassium carbonate, magnesia,
powdered licorice, and sugar. 79 The Australian Royal Commission editorialized that" All of these are extreme ly cheap drugs and only req uire
to be worked up with an equally cheap excipient (soap, glycerine,
honey or any like substance) to form a paste."so While the pharmaCists
on the Commission may have thought the pills were overpriced, Pink
Pills were doubtless effective in treating many anaemic girls and
women. Iron pills were, after all, a common, although not exclusive,
method for treating both anaemia and chlorosis.s 1
Fulford practised what he preached in terms of capital investment in
advertising. Early on in Brockville, Fulford purchased up to three years
of advertising space to publicize his new product rather than relying on
short-term contracts. S2 He spent $9,000 per month on advertiSing, paying newspapers promptly to ensure a good reputation. He hired John
Alexander Mackenzie, owner of the Prescott Telegraph and former editor of the Brockville Recorder, to write advertising copy.83 Using voting
lists, he distributed thousands of pamphlets. In 1893 he told British and
Colonial Druggist that he was spending £3,000 a month in Britain and
£6,000 a month in the US on advertising alone. 84 In Britain he employed
eight bicyclists to deliver advertising literature to capture the rural market and employed 70 women to address approximately 1,000 envelopes
a day, whom he paid 2 s. 6 d. per thousand. By 1900, Pink Pills were so
successful that Fulford was spending £200,000 per annum in Britain
alone on advertising. He seemed, to Chemist and Druggist, "the largest
buyer of printers' ink on earth.,,85
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LORILOEB
Print ads were vital to Fulford's marketing formula. Ads tried to distance Pink Pills from the reputation of patent medicines as quack cures.
Fulford emphasized that Pink Pills "are a scientific preparation of a
physician who has used them in his daily practice for years of unvarying success."86 Pink Pills were as "an unequalled remedy for all diseases
arising from an impure and vitiated, or watery condition of the blood,"
ideal for difficult stages of a woman's life, the "weakness which in
many cases follows childbirth" or "middle life ... [that) time of great
trial,"87 as well as for those amorphous female problems, such as "too
much anxiety," "nerves," or lack of sleep.s8 They could, in short, "restor [e) lost vigour."89 While all of this sounds hyperbolic, the symptoms
detailed did relate to iron deficiency.
Pink Pill ads favored testimonials from satisfied customers typically
in the confidential format. One representative headline read: "A Woman's Confidence: Words of Hope from a Sufferer."9o Testimonials were
submitted by customers, sometimes solicited through advertisements.
One ad asked customers:
When you have found benefit from the use of these Pills, you will gratify us if
you will let us know it, and tell us of what disorders they have relieved you.
Your experience will not only give us pleasure in learning that our pills have
done good, but will also guide us in giving advice to other sufferers. 91
Other testimonials, Fulford claimed, came to his attention through chemists (who normally opposed patent medicines). In 1893 he told British and
Colonial Druggist that in such cases he normally asked the leading newspaper in the locality to investigate the accuracy of the testimonia1. 91 Once
verified, Fulford printed the testimonial. Fulford's British agent, John
Morgan Richards, reported, "There is really no difficulty in getting them,
and what are published are ... but a small number out of the many that
are being constantly received."93 The stories were compelling. Typically
one ad offered four vignettes: of "excruciating pains," "the result of la
Grippe," "helpless for months," and "Incipient Consumption." The text
described the sufferers pain, but were essentially "Messages of Health
From Some of Those who have been Cured by the Use of Dr. Williams'
Pink pillS."94 And testimonials seemed trustworthy because they came
from ordinary people. These testimonials, ads proclaimed, "are the
words of Canadian people, some of them no doubt your neighbours,
whose story of renewed health may be easily verified."95
Pills sold in Canada for 50 cents a box or six boxes for $2.5096; in Britain they sold for 2s. 9d. for a box of 30 pills. "Spurious imitations" were
rooted out and prosecuted. Indeed, in 1897 Fulford issued a poster offering a "reward of $50 to any person who will furnish us with such information, as will lead to the conviction of any person or persons who
offer an imitation of our medicine, claiming that it is Dr. Williams' Pink
George Fulford and Victorian Patent Medicine Men
137
pillS."97 Substitutions were a vexing problem. Fulford wrote to his
nephew Charles, who was then heading up the Australian Pink Pills
operation, in 1898:
You seem to be having about as many substitutes and imitations to deal with as
we have always had in England. We have gone after so many in England and
given such Strong publicity in the [illegible] Journal of favourable decisions,
apologies and under-takings that the number who try and trade on our advertising is gradually getting less. 98
Fulford's efforts paid off. By the early twentieth century he estimated
that he sold about one million boxes a year in Canada. 99 In Britain, Pink
Pills were among the first branded remedies to become acceptable in society circles. Chemist and Druggist reported
quite a Society boom just now in Pink Pills for Pale People ... people in good
society who ten years ago, or even one year ago, would not have dreamed of using any advertised medicine have recently become quite fond of the pills which
Mr. Fulford brought over from Canada seven years ago. The reason for this, it is
said, is that the fact has leaked out that a certain foreign Royal Family has to be
ranked amongst the pale people whose countenances have been improved by
the pink ovoids. lOO
Soon known as "The Great Canadian Medicine," Pink Pills came to enjoy a positive reputation "in all parts of the world."lol
As his business prospered, Fulford chose to remain in Brockville and
to became an active and prominent member of his community. He
served for 12 years on the town council and for 10 of these years he was
Chairman of the Finance Committee. He also served as Water Commissioner.1°2 He sat on the boards of a number of corporations including
the Toronto General Trust Co., Ogilvie Flour Mills, Frost and Wood Co.,
and the James Smart Manufacturing CO.103 He gave generously to charities. To the Wall Street Methodist Church he gave a "magnificent pulpit
and altar." He contributed to the YMCA, the Brockville Rowing Club,
the 41st Militia Regiment, and the Brockville General Hospital. More
privately, he reportedly gave to needy children; he especially liked to
pay for the education of a bright boy or girl who came to his attention. 104
On 29 January 1900 he was appointed to the Canadian Senate by
Prime Minister Laurier. There he brought his expertise in international
business to committees examining competition in the butter industry, the
reduction of import duties, as well as shipping and railway regulations. lo5
In just 10 years Fulford had risen from being an obscure drug-store owner
to become an international magnate with a seat in the Senate.
Unexpectedly, he died in a motor accident in 1905 in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He had been on a trip with his wife,
Mary, and his business manager, W. T. Hanson, and his wife. Their car
138
LORILOEB
collided with a streetcar. Fulford was injured. He endured three operations, but died a week after the accident, on 13 October, at age 53. 106 His
funeral and graveside ceremony were attended by Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
The firm, Dr. Williams' Medicine Company, carried on, managed by
W. T. Hanson. It would not go into receivership until 1989. 107 In his will,
Fulford left $4,750,000, much of it in what Chemist and Druggist dubbed
"gilt-edged securities"108 and some in an endowment to establish and
run a home for Protestant indigent women. 109
v
Fulford embodied many of the qualities of the Victorian prototype of
the ethical self-made man, famously described by Samuel Smiles. In
Self-Help (1859), Smiles had written that "Indefatigable men" often
"[sprang] from the ranks of the common people," but through their
industry became an example to others. llo "Strenuous individual application," "diligent hand and head alone" created wealth in "selfculture ... wisdom and business."lll Cheerful, humble, honest, the man
of business would rise through his energy, hard work, determination,
and attention to detail. ll2 It was a description which fitted Fulford very
well. Fulford, his contemporaries claimed, was "an ordinary druggist
with no more likelihood of becoming a millionaire than ... any retail
chemist"ll3 who, even at the "height of his success ... never forgot that
he had been a retail druggist."ll4 While "Napoleonic in endeavour," he
was a man noted also for his" general bonhomie and frank kindliness"
which were not "calculated" but "natural features of a personality singularly kind, candid and wisely benevolent." He was "singularly undemonstrative, with a quiet, easy manner." He cared neither for "subtlety" nor "subterfuge."ll5 Indeed, Chemist and Druggist remembered
him as being "the exact reverse of the ideal hustler."ll6
Fulford's combination of success and decency in a patent medicine
man was not an aberration. In Britain, for example, the lives and careers
of Francis Jonathon Clarke (1832-88), the proprietor of Clarke's Blood
Mixture, James Crossley Eno (1820-1915) of Eno's Fruit Salt, and
Thomas Holloway (1800-83) of Holloway's Pills presented remarkably
similar narratives. All had humble beginnings-Clarke in Lincoln, Eno
in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Holloway near the London docks. Each
worked remarkably hard. ll7 Each risked his security on a heavy investment in advertising.I 18 Each marketed a remedy with some genuine
efficacy. 119 Having achieved financial success, each became a noted philanthropist and active member of his community. Clarke became mayor
of Lincoln four times. So popular was he that "crowds lined the streets
when he was buried in a vault of his own design in Bracebridge churchyard."120 Eno's charitable contributions were well known. He endowed
George Fulford and Victorian Patent Medicine Men
139
the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Guy's Hospital, the Central Committee of
Discharged Prisoners Society, and Dr. Bamardo's Homes.l2l Holloway
was noted for his kindness to his employees, whom he paid daily to
minimize financial anxiety for them. In maturity, he also undertook
spectacular endowments, including the construction, on the advice of
Lord Shaftesbury, of a hospital for the mentally afflicted of the lower
middle-class,122 and the building and endowment of Royal Holloway
College for women, in memory of his wife, which was characterized in
the press as an "exceptionally generous gift for the public."123 The
Graphic praised his "judicious and unselfish liberality,"124 and Prime
Minister William Gladstone received him to discuss his philanthropic
projects. 125
It is hard to see how men like Fulford conform with the scurrilous
stereotype. They were entrepreneurs who marketed health as a commodity at a time when professionalism demanded that doctors retreat
from the commercial arena. The unease of professionals with the commodification of health was expressed in vitriolic ridicule for patent
medicines and their makers. The hyperbolic advertisements of the patent medicine men made them easy targets for doctors, aspirants to an
ideal of gentility, who imagined an artificially large gulf between professionalism and trade, an image further entrenched by the fashionable
attribution of ethics and altruism to professionals alone. This polarization of medicine and trade made Fulford and others like him unacceptable to the medical professionals.
But Fulford's success cannot be attributed to fraud and an addictive
or useless formula. Like many of his contemporaries, Fulford marketed
a relatively harmless, even beneficial, product with which many customers were satisfied. He advanced it with large amounts of capital and
risked his entire investment with huge expenditures on advertising in
the latest style, replete with illustrations, testimonials and local connections. He established branch plants around the world and travelled extensively to establish his product's markets and to secure his business.
He prosecuted illegal imitators vigorously. His acumen earned him a
fortune, yet he could still be remembered for his "kindliness" and
straightforward manner.
Like other patent medicine men, Fulford contributed significantly to
his community through such wholesome venues as his church and the
YMCA. He was elected repeatedly to the Brockville town council; those
who elected him clearly had no moral qualms about Fulford's business
and the way it reflected on his character. His appointment to the Senate
was presumably acceptable to the Liberal Party and community at
large. Despite his premature death, he left a business which throve until
the late twentieth century and a significant charitable legacy.
140
LORILOEB
Ultimately, the Fulford narrative points to the deficiencies of reading
the professional critique in isolation, even in its journalistic interpretation. While there were undoubtedly fly-by-night operators in the nostrum field, those who made their fortunes often did so through the
legitimate commodification of health. Senator Fulford and his contemporaries were no "scavengers" or "flitting fakers," but rather seekers of
a variant of the Smilesian ideal.
NOTES
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
The use of the masculine nOlm is not coincidental. Most manufacturers were men.
Exceptions, such as Lydia Pinkham, were well known, but even the Pinkham business, established 1876, was managed by her sons, Don and William. Don died in 1880;
William died in 1881; Pinkham herself lived only until 1883, leaving little time for her
to manage the business on her own, despite her famous identification with the product. See Sarah Stage,Female Complaints (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), p. 33.
H. G. Wells, Tono Bungay (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909), p. 20.
For a discussion of this dilemma see G. R. Searle, Morality and the Market in Victorian
Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).
I am indebted to Heather MacDougall of the History Department at the University of
Waterloo for helpful conversations about Fulford and her research for Ontario Research Associates Ine. I am also grateful to Dena Doroszenko of the Ontario Heritage
Foundation for her assistance with the Fulford Archives.
Charles Godfrey, Medicine for Ontario: A History (Belleville, Ont.: Mika Publishing,
1979), p. 199.
See the discussion of these chests in J. K. Crellin, "Pharmaceutical History and Its
Sources in the Wellcome Collections: The Growth of Professionalism in NineteenthCentury British Pharmacy," Medical History, 11 (1967): 226; and J. K. Crellin, "Domestic Medicine Chests: Microcosms of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Medical
Practice," Pharmacy in History, 32, 3 (1979): 122-31. See also Jim Cameron, Good for
What Ails You: Self Help Remedies from Nineteenth-Century Canada (Burnstown, Ont.:
General Store Publishing, 1995).
See John Benson, The Rise of a Consumer Society in Britain 1880-1980 (London: Longman, 1994); Neil McKendrik, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, Birth of a Consumer Society (London: Europa Publications, 1982); Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the
Spirit of Modem Consumerism (London: Basil Blackwell, 1979); and Peter Steams,
"Stages of Consumerism: Recent Work on the Issues of Periodization," Journal of
Modem History, 69 (1997): 102-17.
See J. Connor and Felicity Pope, "A Shocking Business: The Technology and Practice
of Electrotherapeutics in Canada, 18405 to 19405," Material History Review, 49 (Spring
1999): 60-70.
See J. K. Crellin, R. R. Anderson, and J. T. H. Connor, Alternative Health Care in Canada: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Perspectives (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press,
1997); John Crellin, Home Medicine: The Newfoundland Experience (Montreal: McGillQueen's University Press, 1994); and James Connor, "Minority Medicine in Ontario,
1795 to 1903: A Study in Medical Pluralism and Its Decline," PhD thesis, University
of Waterloo, 1989. On the often-porous boundary between professional medical practices and" quackery," see Connor and Pope, "A Shocking Business."
Globe (Toronto), 5 July 1902.
There is no comprehensive history of nineteenth-century patent medicines in Canada. For the United States, see James Harvey Young, Toadstool Millionaires (Prince ton:
Princeton University Press, 1961); and T. Jackson Lears' highly influential Fables of
Abundance (New York: Basic Books, 1994). For Britain, Roy Porter, Health for Sale
George Fulford and Victorian Patent Medicine Men
141
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), masterfully covers the eighteenth
century. Terry Parssinen's compelling Secret Passions, Secret Remedies (Philadelphia:
Institute for Human Issues, 1983) treats narcotic remedies especially, as does Virginia
Berridge's Opium and the People (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981); for the relationship of patent medicines to the capitalist system, see Thomas Richards, Commodity
Culture of Victorian England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).
12 On the growth of professionalism in Ontario see R. D. Gidney and W. P. J. Millar, Professional Gentlemen: The Professions in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1994).
13 CMA, Code of Ethics, 1867, Article I, Section 4.
14 Proprietary Articles Trade Associations were founded by retailers of patent medicines to protect the standardized pricing of commercial patent medicines by limiting
retailers to a profit of 20% or less. They were set up in the US in 1881, in Canada in
1896, and in Britain in 1897. On the actions of the PATA in Canada see the Canadian
Pharmaceutical Journal, 31 (1898): 34.
15 "The Sale of Pa tent Medicines in Dry Goods Stores," Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal,
September 1892, p. 16-17.
16 See for example the advertisement for Milbum's Heart and Nerve Pills, Telegraph
(Toronto), 4 December 1900. For the wider context of the medical profession's relationship with Canadian women see Wendy Mitchinson, The Nature of Their Bodies:
Women and Their Doctors in Victorian Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1991), and for the prevalence of self-medication see p. 238 f.
17 "Secret Proprietary Medicines," Canada Lancet, July 1886, p. 343.
18 "Patent Medicines in Great Britain," Journal of the American Medical Association (hereafter JAMA), 16 February 1907, p. 622.
19 George Eliot, Fe/ix Holt, the Radical (1866; Oxford: Clarendon Press, reprint, 1980),
p.55.
20 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Medical Essays, 1842-1882 (Boston, 1892), p. 186.
21 Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (1907; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, reprint, 1953),
p.25.
22 Wells, Tono Bungay, p. 120-24.
23 For example, H. G. Wells' critique in Tono Bungay relates to his dissatisfaction with
capitalism and his frequent, but not consistent affiliation, with the Fabian socialists.
His son, Anthony West, writes of Tono Bungay: "What my father intended his allegory to demonstrate was the ineVitability of the progression from the mildly harmful
to the exploitation of the wholly lethal that had to follow on the general acceptance of
the principle doctrine of market place capital that profit justified all things" (see H. G.
Wells: Aspects of a Life [New York: Random House, 1984), p. 327-28).
24 On professionalism in pharmacy see J. K. Crellin, "The Growth of Professionalism in
Nineteenth-Century British Pharmacy," Medical History, 11 (1967): 215-27.
25 "The Patent Medicine Trade," Chemist and Druggist, 5 January 1889, p. 17.
26 Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal, 13 (1880): 238. See R. J. Clark, "Professional Aspirations and the Limits of Occupational Autonomy: The Case of Pharmacy in Nineteenth-Century Ontario," Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 8 (1991): 43-63.
27 See" Apothecaries and Patent Medicines," JAMA, 45 (1905): 1748.
28 For a debate about the ethics of substitution see "Is a DruggistJustified in Diverting a
Sale of a Proprietary Medicine?" Canadian Journal of Medicine and Surgery, 10 (1901):
214-16.
29 See Peter Bartrip, "Secret Remedies, Medical Ethics and the Finances of the British
Medical Journal," in Robert Baker, ed., The Codification of Medical Morality (Boston:
Kiuwer, 1995), p. 191-204.
30 George Nasmith, "Patent Medicines and Drug Foods," Report of the Provincial Board
of Health , Ontario Sessional Papers, Vo!. 3, No. 9, Paper 36,1904, p. 114.
31 For the difficulties of using the term quackery see Porter, Health for Sale.
142
LORILOEB
32 On professionalization, see Eliot Freidson, Profession of Medicine: A Study in the Sociology of Applied Knowledge (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1988);T. J. Johnson, Professions and
Power (New York: Macrnillan, 1972); M. Sarfatti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A
Sociological Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); and M. Burrage
and R. Torstendahl, Professions in Theory and History (London: Sage, 1990). On the rise
of the medical profession in Canada, see H. E. MacDermott, History of the Canadian
Medical Association 1867-1920 (Toronto: Murray, 1935); Ronald Hamowy, Canadian
Medicine: A Study in Restricted Entry (Vancouver: Fraser Institute, 1984); Mary Jane
Price, "The Profession of Medicine in Ontario during the Nineteenth Century," MA
thesis, McMaster University, 1977; and Geoffrey Bilson, "Public Health and the Medical Profession in Nineteenth-Century Canada," Disease, MediCine and Empire (London: Routiedge, 1988).
33 See S. E. D. Shortt, "Physicians, Science and Status: Issues in the Professionalization
of Anglo-American Medicine in the Nineteenth Century," Medical History, 27 (1983):
51-68.
34 Some historians have emphasized expertise as the vital ingredient of professionalism. For this approach see Thomas J. Haskell, The Emergence of Professional Social
Science (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977). Others have emphasized selfaggrandizement. For this approach see William G. Rothstein, American Physicians in
the Nineteenth Century: From Sects to Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1972). Still others emphasize professions as interest groups who acquire power
and influence and thereby shape the character of the modern state. For the United
States see Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1982). For
Canada see David Naylor, Private Practice, Public Payment: Canadian Medicine the Politics of Health Insurance 1911-1966 (Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1986).
For a discussion of these strands see Colin Howell, "Medical Professionalizationand
the Social Transformation of the Maritimes 1850-1950," Journal of Canadian Studies, 27
(Spring 1992): 5-20.
35 John Hunter, "Nostrums and Proprietary Medicines," Canada Lancet, 39 (1906): 1059.
36 British Medical Association, Secret Remedies (London: BMA Press, 1908), and More Secret Remedies (London: BMA Press, 1910); American Medical Association, Nostrums
and Quackery, 3 vols. (New York; American Medical Association Press, 1911, 1921,
1936); and Australia, Secret Drugs, Cures and Foods. Report of the Royal Commission
(Sydney: W. A. Gullick, 1907), PRO HO/4510497 /226278.
37 For an analysis of the content of patent medicines see J. Worth Estes, "The Pharmacology of Nineteenth-Century Patent Medicines," Pharmacy in History, 30 (1988):
3-18. See also J. Worth Estes, A Dictionary of Protopharmacology: Therapeutic Practices
1750-1850 (Canton, Mass.: Science History Publications, 1990).
38 Specific laws governing patent medicines pertained mostly to their composition. In
Ontario a 1895 amendment to the Pharmacy Act empowered the Provincial Board of
Health to analyze all medicines where there was "reason to apprehend that any such
medicine contains any poison mentioned in the schedules to the said Act that renders
its use in the doses recommended dangerous to life or health" (see Ontario Statues,
58 Vict. Chapter 29, An Act to Amend the Pharmacy Act, 1895). A 1908 Patent Medicine
Act required annual registration of patent medicines, prohibited the use of cocaine
and limited the use of alcohol in patent medicines. This was to be enforced by random government analysis, but the small staff of the Department of Inland Revenue
made enforcement less than adequate. See Canada Statutes 7-8 Edward VII cap. 56,
An Act Respecting Proprietary or Patent Medicines, 1908. For actions culminating in the
1908 legislation see National Archives of Canada, M6281343, Vo!. 2, File 2, and National Archives, CMA MG 281343, Vo!. 2, File 1. See also "The Patent Medicine Act,"
Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal, 41 (1908): 399. For discussions of drug use in Canada
see Daniel Malleck, "Its Baneful Influences Are Too Well-Known," Canadian Bulletin
for Medical History, 14 (1997): 263-88.
George Fulford and Victorian Patent Medicine Men
143
39 See "Some Legal Phases of the Patent Medicine Questions," JAMA, 9 March 1907,
p.852-55.
40 "A Novel Breach of Contract," The Spectator, 9 July 1892, p. 62-63. For a discussion of
the legal aspects of the case and the context of the influenza epidemic see Janice
Dickin McGinnis, "Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Co.: Influence, Quackery and the
Unilateral Contract," Canadian Bul/etin of Medical History, 5 (1988): 121-41.
41 "International Pharmacy," Chemist and Druggist, 7 March 1891, p. 33.
42 "Electric Belt Quackery Exposed," Science Siftings, 6 August 1892, p. 216-17.
43 See "Bile Beans Litigation," Chemist and Druggist, 15 July 1905, p. 82-85.
44 Ironically, the maker was Charles Fulford, George Fulford's nephew, with whom he
had severed contact after Charles Fulford and his partner, Ernest Gilbert, began to
market Bile Beans in Australia.
45 See Secret Drugs, Cures and Foods; and "Bile Beans Litigation," p. 82-85.
46 Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal, 7 (1874): 366-70.
47 "The Press and Quackery," JAMA, 36 (1901): 386.
48 "Protest against Proprietary Products," JAMA, 18 June 1904, p. 1651.
49 "Quack Advertisements in Religious Papers," JAMA, 1902, p. 702.
50 "Physicians' Responsibilities in the Crusade Against Patent Medicines," JAMA, 45
(1905): 1659.
51 C. J. Fagan, "Patent Medicines," Canada Lancet, 38 (1905):412-13.
52 This fact contradicted the professional allegation that the popular press was reluctant
to tell the truth about patent medicines for fear of dissuading potential advertisers.
For this sort of professional allegation see, for example, "Quack Doctors, Quack Medicines and a Lay Journal," JAMA, 35 (1900): 502.
53 Ads for Ladies' Home Journal in Saturday Night in September 1898 testify to the availability of the American publication to Canadian women.
54 For the collected articles see Samuel Hopkins Adams, ed., The Great American Fraud
(Chicago: American Medical Association Press, 1905).
55 The professional and the journalistic attacks were often intertwined. While the
Collier's article~ were written by Samuel Hopkins Adams, a popular journalist, the
Vanity Fair articles were written by Henry Sewill, a member of the British Medical Association, although the articles do not identity his professional associations or interests. Other magazines joined the crusade, including the Saturday Review and Science
Siftings. Nonetheless, Collier's, Vanity Fair, and Ladies Home Journal were the most
prominent popular critiques.
56 "A Diabolical Patent Medicine Story," Ladies' Home Journal, 5 April 1905, p. 20.
57 "The Patent Medicine Curse," Ladies' Home Journal, 21 May 1904, p. 18.
58 "Women as Easy Marks," Ladies' Home Journal, 27 June 1910, p. 6.
59 Henry Sewill, "Quackery," Vanity Fair, 19 May 1910, p. 628.
60 Sewill, "Quackery," p. 628.
61 Adams, Great American Fraud, p. Ill.
62 Adams, Great American Fraud, p. 77.
63 Collier's, 5 January 1907.
64 Adams, Great American Fraud, p. l1l.
65 John Ferguson, History of the Ontario Medical Association (Toronto: Murray, 1930), p. 69.
66 The company prospectus for Cicfa, a successful indigestion remedy marketed in the
1920s holds up Pink Pills and George Fulford as models in the industry. See PRO
BT3112665/101565.
67 His family had been Loyalist farmers who came to Canada in 1783 ("Deaths: Fulford," Chemist and Druggist, 21 October 1905, p. 658).
68 Fulford Place, Ruth Fulford Papers, Box 1, File 17.
69 Archives of Ontario, RG 55, Companies Branch, Partnerships, Box 71, Declarations
No. 448 and 519.
70 Canada, Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Canada Trademarks, Register 12, Folio 2743.
71 CMA, Code of Ethics, 1867, Article 1, Section 4.
144
LORILOEB
72 Canada, Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Canada Trademarks, 23 June 1890, 17282.
73 Presumably the medicines were marketed so well in the US that the impression was
created that they were an American remedy. Certainly James Harvey Young, in the
Toadstool Millionaires, like turn-of-the-century American investigators, does not distinguish them as a Canadian product (see p. 97). Holcombe's suggestion that Fulford
registered his US trademark in 1882 is presumably a typographical error since the
pills began to be marketed in the US precisely 10 years later. See Henry W. Holcombe,
Patent Medicine Tax Stamps (Lawrence, Mass.: Quarterman Publications, 1979), p. 562.
74 Morgan had introduced Plantation Bitters and Virginia Tobacco to the British in the
1870s and 1880s. He also represented Perry Davis's Pain Killer, Hirnrod's Asthma
Cure, and Sozodent. He agreed in 1892 to market Pink Pills in Britain for 25% of the
profits. See John Morgan Richards, With John Bull and Jonathan: Reminiscences of Sixty
Years of an American's Life in England (London: T. W. Laurie, 1905), p. 182.
75 Fulford Place Archives, Wise mss., p. 14.
76 "Millions from Medicine," Chemist and Druggist, 13 April 1907, p. 344-45.
77 E.g., Holcombe,Patent Medicine Tax Stamps, p. 564.
78 "Or. Williarns' Pink Pills," Science Siftings, 18 May 1895, p. 7l.
79 British Medical Association, Secret Remedies, p. 174-75.
80 Australia, Secret Drugs, Cures and Foods, p. 199-209. The Commission alleged that arsenic was present in minute quantities in the pills. An tIDsuccessful lawsuit had
claimed similar findings in 1898 (see "Pink Pills in Victoria," Chemist and Druggist,
16 April 1898, p. 610). But no other chemical analysis found arsenic. Nor was arsenic
ever claimed to be present in pills marketed to Canada or Britain.
81 For the debate about whether chlorosis was biologically or socially created, see Keith
Wailoo,Drawing Blood (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 17-45.
82 Letter to Mary Fulford from G. T. Fulford, December 1890, Fulford Place Archives,
Ruth Fulford Papers, Box 1, File 18.
83 Augustus Bridle, "Senator Fulford, Advertising King," The Business Magazine, 11
(November 1905): 9.
84 "Advertising Up to Date: A Chat with the Manager of Dr. Williams' Medicine Company," British and Colonial Druggist, 27 October 1893, p. 432-33. His agent, John Morgan Richards, reported that it was more expensive to advertise in America than in
Britain. In America he estimated that newspaper advertising rates were 30% higher,
yet newspapers did not have the circulations of the major British dailies (see "The
American Patent Medicine Trade in England," Chemist and Druggist, 15 May 1885,
p.256-59).
85 "Mr. Fulford's Tragic Death," Chemist and Druggist, 28 October 1905, p. 687.
86 Advertisement circa 1890, Archives of Ontario, MU 7105, #3.
87 "A Man Who Can Dance" booklet, Wellcome Institute Collection.
88 "Nerves and Their Needs," booklet, Bodleian Library, John Johnson Collection.
89 "Nerves and Their Needs."
90 "A Man Who Can Dance."
91 "The Way to Be Well," booklet, 1899, Fulford Place Archives, File 15, Document 1.
92 "Advertising Up to Date," p. 432-33.
93 "The American Patent Medicine Trade in England," p. 258.
94 Berlin News-Record, 30 October 1897.
95 Booklet, "Words of Wisdom," 1902, Fulford Place Archives, File 16, Document l.
96 "Words of Wisdom."
97 "Health, Strength and Happiness," Berlin-News Record, 6 November 1897.
98 Fulford Place Archives, Ruth Fulford Papers, Box 1, File 21.
99 Fulford Place Archives, File 16, Document 1.
100 "A Pink Pill Boom," Chemist and Druggist, 20 April 1901, p. 649.
101 "The Way to Be Well."
102 John Cooper, ed., Men of Canada (Toronto: Canadian Historical, 1901-2), p. 39.
103 Cooper,ed.,Men of Canada, p.39.
George Fulford and Victorian Patent Medicine Men
145
104 "Deaths: Fulford," p. 659. At the time of his death he was contemplating "many
schemes for the public benefit" including public baths, a new YMCA building and
the establishment of a 400-600 model farm. See Charles G. D. Roberts and Arthur L.
Tunnell, A Standard Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Vo!. 1 (Toronto: Trans Canada,
1934), p. 204-5.
105 See Minutes of the Proceedings of the Senate (Canada), 1900, p. 1148; 1902, p. 380; and
1903,p.641,436,512,445,715,527,392,826,865,874,885,912,951,989,714.
106 "The Death of Senator Fulford," Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal, 1905, p. 164.
107 The original Fulford block in Brockville was destroyed in a fire in 1916, which included most of the company papers, but the company continued acquiring the rights
to such well-known late twentieth-century products as Doan's Kidney Pills and
Dodd's Kidney Pills in 1965 and the Love Cosmetics line in 1969. In 1989 the Canadian operation finally went into receivership after trying to expand into the US market. In 1991 Fulford Place was acquired by the Ontario Heritage Foundation (Ontario
Research Associates, FIl/ford Place: An Historical Perspective, Ontario Heritage Foundation Report, p. 31).
108 For example, Dominion of Canada and Province of Ontario bonds and Bell Telephone
and G.E. stocks ("Millions from Medicine," p. 344-45. See AO, RG22, Series 179,
Item 3849, Estate FileofG. T. Fulford, deceased October 1905).
109 "Recent Wills: Fulford," Chemist and Druggist, 18 November 1905, p. 806. The home
would be built after World War I across from Fulford Place.
110 Samuel Smiles, Self-Help (1859; London: Butler and Tanner, reprint, 1958), p. 111.
111 Smiles, Self-Help, p. 50-58.
112 Smiles,Se/f-Help, p. 262ff
113 "Millions from Medicine," p. 837.
114 Chemist and Druggist, 21 October 1905, p. 659.
115 "Mr. Fulford's Tragic Death," p. 687.
116 "Mr. Fulford's Tragic Death," p. 687.
117 Holloway told the story that in his early years he frequently worked from 4 a.m. to
10 p.m. in a small shop in the Strand (see Virginia Water, The Story of Thomas HolIoway
1800-1883 [Glasgow: The University Press, 1933), p. 10}.
118 Clarke said that in the first three months of his business he spent £500 on advertising
and for the rest of that first year spent £1,000 per month. For the next 10 years he invested more than £20,000 per anum on advertising alone. See Roy Morgan, "A
Bloody Con," Finders Keepers, 2 (March 1982). Holloway spent even more. In 1842 he
spent £5,000 on advertising; 40 years later he was spending £45,000 on advertising.
Chemist and Druggist would later credit his success to ingenious advertising (see "Mr.
Thomas Holloway," Chemist and Druggist, 15 January 1884, p. 10). Eno, too, became
an "original genius" in advertising, among the first to use full-page ads in the illustrated papers and to use both national events and quotations from the famous in his
ads (see "Fruit Salt," Chemist and Druggist, 27 June 1938, p. 738-39).
119 Clarke's Blood Mixture was an iron concoction which would indeed fortify those
weakened by anaemia. Eno's Fruit Salt was a bicarbonate soda mixture that could
certainly settle an upset stomach. Holloway's Pills contained aloes and rhubarb and
by acting as a laxative did combat lethargy. See Secret Remedies and More Secret
Remedies.
120 "Mansion of Envy," Lincolnshire Echo, 12 December 1878.
121 He gave £8,500 in 1889 and £1,000 in 1908 to the Newcastle Infirmary and £100 a year
from 1889 to 1895 to Guy's Hospital. In his will, he contributed £50,000 to Guy's and
£10,000 to Dr. Bernardo's Homes and the Central Committee of Discharged Prisoners
Society ("Mr. Can," Beecham's Journal, Beecham's Archives, St. Helen's).
122 "Holloway," Illustrated London News, 5 January 1884, p. 24.
123 "Opening of Royal HollowayCollege," Graphic, 10 July 1886, p. 30.
124 Graphic, 4 January 1884, p. 6.
125 John Morley, Life of Gladstone (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1903), Vo!. 2, p. 459.