Several 1890's-1910's Quack Medicine Bottles Found Today

UnderMiner

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Went to a favorite old spot today to dig for bottles. On my way there it looked like a zombie apocalypse had happened as the highway was littered with abandoned cars that had floated off during the flood last night. The highway was pretty much dry but the cars were still abandoned where they had been yesterday, I saw one with the back window smashed out, I assume someone escaped through there. Sorry I didn't take any pics, you can see lots of these same images on the NYC news websites though.

Anyway the flood waters did a great job of uncovering my dig site and I found alot of keepers. The best are depicted below.

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The first is a hand-tooled-top 'Hale's Honey of Horehound and Tar' a quack cure from the turn of the century. Note: the anaerobic conditions of the site I dig in are so good that the cork was preserved and some of the Horehound Tar syrup is still perfectly preserved inside. I stabilized the exposed part of the cork with alcohol, mineral oil, and petroleum jelly so it will stay preserved for display. I didn't open the bottle as I like the idea of the air and contents being preserved in there without contamination from our modern world. And heck maybe one day a 120 year-old bottle of Honey of Horehound and Tar will come in handy for something.

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The next is a machine-made cork-top bottle of 'California Fig Syrup Co. - CALIFIG' a quack cure from the 1910's.

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The little blue bottle is a poison bottle with 7 vertical indentations, a common poison bottle variety with no embossing of particular interest (no skull or crossbones or the word 'poison') likely once had a paper labele.

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I also found a particularly interesting quack medicine bottle called 'Mayr's Wonderful Remedy' which has a massive factory defect in its construction (as you can see something dented it while it was still cooling and gave it a bizarre shape). Unfortunately this bottle had a big hairline crack in it that split the bottle in two peices when I got it home, I will fix it for display tomorrow. I originally thought the bottle may have been deformed by fire as part of its disposal but upon close inspection it is clearly not the case and there are no other fire-damaged bottles in the dump I'm currently digging in. I imagine someone probably got this one for a discount at a pharmacy. Imagine seeing a bottle this askew on a store shelf.

Also found intact ceramic bowls, glass test tubes (maybe alcohol tubes I read about from prohibition-era), also newspapers - couldn't find the date but maybe reading some of it will give us a clue to the year.
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UnderMiner

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The newspaper fragment makes mention of '[Ru]ssian Turkestan' as the location of the deaths of several Uzbeckian students from Khiva (as a result of attack by tribesmen). Russian Turkestan only exited between 1867 - 1917, so assuming the journalist was up to snuff on the report, it appears based on the newspaper fragment and bottle designs from the same hole we are in the age bracket I figured, 1890's-1910's, WWI-era at latest.

Russian Turkestan would become the Kazakh Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic soon after the 1917 October Revolution and then in 1936 it became the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic until the fall of communism in 1991.
 

JamieD

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Could this be the attack on students the article mentioned?

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3879827

Some of the details seem to match up, they set off from Khiva in August so an attack in September fits but it took place in 1924 so it would no longer have been Russian Turkestan. As you say though, maybe the journalist was a little out of date.

Jamie
 

Lenrac2

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I love old bottles! Nice ones!!
 

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Could this be the attack on students the article mentioned?

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3879827

Some of the details seem to match up, they set off from Khiva in August so an attack in September fits but it took place in 1924 so it would no longer have been Russian Turkestan. As you say though, maybe the journalist was a little out of date.

Jamie

Yes! This seems much more likely! August 1924 is a date that has appeared in another part of this dump when I was digging it last year, so this is from September a slightly later date. The journalist was still referring to the location with the outdated name, he was not up to snuff aparently. This means alot more things then I thought are actually from the summer of 1924 in there. Great research!
 

crashbandicoot

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That,s just cool,especially the news papers to help date your finds.This jogged my memory about a couple of dumps I found while squirrel hunting.I,m going back there once it cools off and the no shoulders hibernate and see what I can find.Hope it,s as good as yours!:icon_thumright:
 

Plumbata

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Great finds! Regarding Mayr's Wonderful bottle, I'm almost certain that the damage/distortion is from having been melted in a fire which was a common way to reduce the volume of rubbish in dumps back before people cared about emissions. I bet the flooding helped uncover tons of goodies out there so good luck scouting and hunting!
 

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UnderMiner

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Great finds! Regarding Mayr's Wonderful bottle, I'm almost certain that the damage/distortion is from having been melted in a fire which was a common way to reduce the volume of rubbish in dumps back before people cared about emissions. I bet the flooding helped uncover tons of goodies out there so good luck scouting and hunting!

Yeah, you're probably right about it being warped in a fire, would explain its comparative fragility to the other bottles, though I have seen some pretty wonky factory fresh bottles from this time period.
 

ArfieBoy

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Great finds! Thanks for sharing with us. Congratulations on all your finds. Thanks for sharing your bottle knowledge, also!
 

Blak bart

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Great day out and some beautiful bottles. Love the quack meds...congrats !!
 

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