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Treatment during the Civil War made addicts of many because pain relievers then were few but deadly—morphine, opium, laudanum, those to numb the awfulness of treating wounds and amputations. Many soldiers carried their addiction home and often changed the lives of those around them, too. Sanitariums, clinics sprang up where treatments were sometimes as bad as the pain itself ... Being strapped to the walls by chains to keep them in check. Physicians of those times were not always trained adequately, reading books alone or studying with an experienced doctor instead of going to medical school. Germs and bacteria weren’t recognized until the last hundred or hundred fifty years and then with suspicion. Pain relief was taken care of at home. All tribes of native Americans had their own names for the medicines they created from the trees and plants around them for aches and pain relievers ... Willow and birches among them. Leaves, stems, roots were boiled in various ways to treat sore eyes. The “tea” used by the Dakota restored them both physically and mentally. Remember the frequent stories we read and heard throughout the period of earthquakes in California about twenty years ago? Some of them concerned animals who came to the house chewing twigs from the backyard willow tree. Someone then announced that, of course, it was a pain reliever because it contained acetylsalicylic acid, the main ingredient of aspirin. Animals had the instinct for knowing what helped them The native Americans didn’t know that specific part but through trial and error found that it worked. Other wild plants they discovered helped them in many ways were the purple cone flower, compass plant, bee balm morning glory bush, evening primrose and the wild rose. They were knowledgeably burned for the powder, boiled, macerated, chewed and so forth to make pills, pastes, poultices, fluids to treat rheumatism and arthritis and all kinds of things: fevers, hernias, hemorrhoids, rashes, on and on. The Willow was boon to the Indian ... Baskets, mats, fox and fish traps, tee pees, dyes besides the medicines. Willow had been used extensively in Europe also and knowledge of it brought to the New World especially into the Appalachians by the Scots, Irish, English who adjusted the “recipes” with that of the nearby Indians and other cultures. Migration spread the formula across the wide, wide nation. The Prairie Willow’s scientific name is Salix humilis, Salix the Latin word for willow and humilis the species designation for low growing or dwarf. Willows are of the Salicaceae, a nearly familiar word with acetylsalicylic acid. Willow bark had been used by the ancient Greeks so the words come from a long way away.
It was separated to be manufactured in the “New World” in 1838 from the wintergreen shrub but until 1874 was obtained commercially from the white birch. By the 1890’s it was manufactured on a large scale by methods discovered by H. Kolbe to be used as a preservative for non-food items, certain skin diseases and to soften hard surfaces such as corns, warts, calluses. In 1899 it was first sold as an OTC drug in tablet form. It had been introduced into medicine six years earlier by Hermann Dreser as an antipyretic (fever reducer) and an analgesic (pain reducer). Millions of pounds of aspirin are produced every year worldwide in both the enteric sort (coated to reduce stomach irritation) and the uncoated type. Of course, there’s a story of how Aspirin got its trade name. A stands for acetylsalicylic acid, SPIR is for one of its sources, spireal and IN for a common suffix a century ago for naming medicines. ASPIRIN! It was about time an ache and pain reliever arrived after centuries and centuries of home remedies that may not have worked. This one was in the “Inglenook Cookbook,” a publication of the Church of the Brethren, the recipes sent in by congregations throughout the United States ... There were two headache relief suggestions the one being “Apply a cold cloth to the head and put a hot water bottle at the feet.” Some denominations such as the Shakers sold medicines door-to-door and perhaps, the Amish among themselves for caring and sharing. Patent medicines were a lucrative business if one followed the formula printed here someone interested in marketing his own secret recipe for a pain reliever patent medicine and this before the Pure Food and Drug act went into effect ... “By calculating the number of stores in the U.S. that sold an average twenty-five bottles of patent medicine a day, would mean that sixty-five million bottles were sold per annum,” this according to an article in the book, One for a Man, Two for a Horse, by Gerald Carson. He emphasizes that the patent medicine businesses were run by businessmen, who read the bottom line, not philanthropists. Mostly they stressed the advertising department, telling labels, posters, etc. It was reported that in 1905 only 292 people were said to have died from imbibing-er—taking patent medicines, but how accurate could that number have been when no law demanded cause of death be reported? Patent medicine people became expert in the popular psychology of the times.
A list was published in 1902 naming the 3,045 most wealthy men in America, one them being the owner of the very popular “Hotstetter’s Bitters” the formula of which contained 44.3% alcohol/spirits. No wonder it was sought everywhere. During the Civil War it was promoted that “a half a wine glass the evening before an engagement would calm the nerves,” etc., etc. An experiment using Hostetter’s Bitters used a drop of it on the burner/mantel of an oil lamp and the “breath of it burned for four full minutes! It’s easy to see why Col. Hostetter was said to have made $18,000,000. A sketch of an early factory of Hostetter’s is seen here. Patent meds slowly faded from the scene as physicians became better trained and laws prohibited just anyone making/selling alcoholic or opiates in medicines. Aspirin became the champion pain and ache reliever over the counter and remained so well over fifty years until in 1955 acetaminophen was introduced by prescription only, then in 1960 over the counter. It wasn’t marketed widely until the 1970’s when a link was found between aspirin and Reyes’ Syndrome, a serious illness. Products such as Tylenol then were recommended for children and to reduce fever. It could be used by children and adults with hemophilia, unlike aspirin. Other specific diagnoses are made. Ibuprofen, an ingredient for pain relief, too, came on the market by prescription in 1974, becoming OTC in 1984. Like aspirin it is a non-inflammatory but causes no stomach upset. It became useful for premenstrual cramps, childbirth and after dental surgery. It slowly came to be used for rheumatism/arthritis. The third competitor of aspirin is Naproxen, related to ibuprofen but shouldn’t be used by children under twelve or adults over 65 because of possible kidney damage. It was introduced in 1976 by prescription. What with all the ache and pain relievers today we shouldn’t have a single pain or ache, should we? Millions of experiments have been made in the centuries past. Would one of the “old” ones work today...? Say the one advertised here by W.R. Smart and Sons, Dodgeville, Wisconsin, a company that had medicine for sale with a lot of exotic ingredients ... Its paste used anywhere on the body by anyone, the first being
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