MEDICINE BOTTLES
As glass manufacturing expanded after the Civil War, so did the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmacology became a more exact science than it ever had been, and its practitioners dispensed their compound medicines in glass bottles that for the first time were available in precisely graduated sizes and a variety of shapes often tailored to suit specific products. Early post-war bottles were usually made in the aquamarine of “green” glass that had become traditional for apothecaries’ wares, but use of clear lime glass spread until by the end of the century most pharmacy bottles, like most of those from the Middleton Place privy, were made of clear glass.
Figure 17. Pharmacy bottles. A. French square shape, c. 1860s-1920s. B. Ball neck panel, c. 1860s-1920s. C. Philadelphia oval shape, c. 1867-1903. Embossed C. F. PANKNIN APOTHECARY CHARLESTON, S. C. D. Blue Whitall Tatum poison bottle, c. 1872-1920. E. Wide-mouthed prescription bottle, possibly for morphine, c. 1860s-1920s.
One of the first of the new shapes was the “French square,” a tall bottle with beveled corners introduced in the early 1860s ([Fig. 17]). The French square was followed by more elaborate rectangular, round, and oval shapes, many of them adapted with one or more flat sides to accommodate the paper labels or plate-molded lettering with which pharmacists usually marked their wares. The “Philadelphia oval” shown in [Figure 17]C, plate-molded with the name of an 1867-1902 Charleston pharmacy, was a favorite shape.
Despite such advances as Louis Pasteur’s bacteriological discoveries, ideas of medical treatment in the nineteenth century remained primitive by modern standards. Without many of the vaccines and antibiotics now available, people dosed themselves with a wide range of substances which most twentieth century invalids would hold in dim regard. For instance, pharmacists distributed morphine in small bottles such as that shown in [Figure 17]E. Vegetable extracts that would not now be in anybody’s pharmacopoeia were often sold in panel bottles ([Fig. 17]B).
One of the few restrictions placed on the more dangerous medicaments was packaging. In 1872 the American Medical Association, concerned over accidental poisoning, issued a recommendation that potentially harmful substances be bottled in distinctively colored containers that were also recognizable by touch. One result of this directive was blue quilted poison bottles ([Fig. 17]D). A specialty of Whitall, Tatum & Co., a major manufacturer of pharmaceutical wares, these bottles were manufactured until about 1920. Other companies continued to produce poison bottles until the 1930s, when it was decided that the bright colors and fanciful shapes were more an attraction than a deterrent to children exploring the medicine cabinet.
Figure 18. Patent medicine bottles. A. Maltine bottle, double Philadelphia shape. Embossed THE MALTINE MF’G CO. CHEMISTS NEW YORK, a company name used from 1875 to 1898. B. Bromo-Caffeine bottle, c. 1881-1920s. Embossed KEASBEY & MATTISON CO. AMBLER, PA. C. Horsfords Acid Phosphate bottle, eight-sided. Embossed RUMFORD CHEMICAL WORKS and on base, PATENTED MARCH 10, 1868, c. 1868-1890.
A better-known but less savory branch of nineteenth century medicine was the patent medicine industry, which exploded into notoriety with its extravagant use of the new late nineteenth century advertising techniques. While most patent remedies were alcohol- or narcotic-based frauds, the term patent medicine meant simply any medicine sold without a prescription and included a number of legitimate and effective over-the-counter remedies. The 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and subsequent acts of Congress were intended to control dangerous substances and put an end to spurious advertising claims, and resulted in the alteration or removal from the market of many patent medicines. Others, such as Bromo-Seltzer, survived the legislation and continued to be sold for years.
Most patent medicines were in fact not patented, for that would have meant revealing the formula to competitors and consumers alike. Nevertheless, the nature of many of the more potent over-the-counter remedies was not entirely unknown. Hostetter’s Bitters, for example, was regulated by the South Carolina Dispensary along with whiskey and beer.
Only three patent medicine bottles were recovered from the Middleton Place privy deposit, and all appear to have been rather tame digestive remedies of the sort that might be sold today. The amber bottle on the left ([Fig. 18]A) contained Maltine, probably a digestive and nutritional supplement rather than a cure. The blue bottle ([Fig. 18]B), the same shape that was later used for Bromo-Seltzer, probably contained Bromo-Caffeine, an antacid and laxative whose main ingredient was magnesia. Bromo-Caffeine was the principal product of the Keasbey & Mattison Co., which operated in Philadelphia from 1873 to 1882, and in Ambler, Pennsylvania, from 1882 to 1962. The blue-green bottle ([Fig. 18]E) contained Horsford’s Acid Phosphate of Lime, a phosphate-based preparation sold by the Rumford Chemical Works of Providence, Rhode Island, from 1868 until at least the turn of the century. On later bottles, however, the company name reads from top to bottom rather than from bottom to top.
The predecessor to these sturdy containers was a thin-walled cylindrical bottle used by the apothecaries and pharmacists of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries ([Fig. 19]). All free-blown or dip-molded, these bottles were used as late as the 1850s, and because of the Civil War, perhaps even later in some parts of the South. The two bottle bases at right are turned up to show the blow-pipe pontil scar made by holding the bottle with a blow-pipe while its neck and lip were formed. The long neck on the right is probably not from a cylindrical bottle but from a globular flask that was used in larger sizes for wine and other beverages, and in smaller sizes for medicines and essences. The style of its collar dates this bottle to after about 1820.
Figure 19. Apothecary’s vials, 18th or early 19th century. The neck and base fragments are not all from the same bottles.
