A fun read.
Lotions, Potions, and Deadly Elixirs
Frontier Medicine in the American West
Description
Powder papers, booty balls, and sugar tits— Lotions, Potions, and Deadly Elixirs has a cure for whatever ails! These quaint names were given to popular medicinal forms during America's frontier era that were said to cure everything from fallen arches to a broken windmill. Grandmas, mommas, and even certified physicians treated the sick, lame, and unlucky with what was available: barbed wire and horseshoe nails, cactus, pokeweed, buckeyes, you name it. Ironically, a lot of these homespun treatments actually worked. In Lotions, Potions, and Deadly Elixirs, a practicing pharmacist takes a light-hearted look at the most popular medicines from the frontier days and how they were intended to work. An authoritative "Frontier Materia Medica" lists common drugs, the dates they were in use, customary doses, and idiosyncrasies. The author's outstanding collection of bottle labels, advertising art, and rare photographs of "medicine shows" rounds out this colorful survey of America's medicinal past.
Reviews
This book is educational and entertaining, thanks to Bethard's light-hearted touch.
This tongue-in-cheek account of early-day medicines and medical practitioners makes for a fun read but also makes us glad for modern-day medicine. In the old days, the treatment stood a good chance of killing you before the ailment did.
Lotions, Potions, and Deadly Elixirs should be of value to any writer or researcher of the history of medicine or of the progress of science in the past two to three centuries. Of special use to fiction writers is a timeline of dates associated with major discoveries in the arts and sciences. This book is the American frontier.
