Looking a little green lately? Constant headache? Feeling weak? You may be suffering from Green Sickness, according to a page-four ad in a 1901 edition of the Rogue River Courier.
Coincidentally, the ad ran three days after New Year’s Eve and listed symptoms similar to a hangover, but blamed impoverished blood and nerves. A cure in the form of a 50-cent packet of Hudyan’s Remedy thickens watery blood and puts the bloom back in your cheeks, the ad promised.
Before the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, newspaper ads promoted dozens of sure-cures. Doctor E.C. West’s guaranteed remedy cured a brain disorder causing hysteria, convulsions, depression, impotence, and old age brought on by over-exertion. Chamberlains’ Tablets, Liver Salts and Peptona cured indigestion, while Foley Kidney Pills took care of backaches, swollen ankles, and that general feeling of biliousness.
Gold Medal Haarlem Oil Capsules, based on a 200-year-old Dutch remedy, promised to heal rheumatism and lumbago by driving deadly uric acid out of the body.
After passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, such remedies were exposed as mostly alcohol, morphine, opium or cannabis, but the Act provided only modest penalties for selling bogus cures.
Sources: "Green Sickness Advertisement." Rogue River Courier 3 Jan. 1901 [Grants Pass OR] : 4. Historic Oregon Newspapers: 8 July 2016. http://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn96088281/1901-01-03/ed-1/seq-4/#date1=1846&index=17&date2=2016&words=jaded&searchType=advanced&sequence=0&lccn=sn96088281&proxdistance=5&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=&; "History." U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA, 23 Mar. 2015. Web. 8 July 2016.
