Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Heroes of Patent Medicine: Volume 1

Episode Date: April 8, 2015

This week on Sawbones, Dr. Sydnee and Justin introduce you to some of the craziest operators in the patent medicine game. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books! One, two, one, two, three, four! We came across a pharmacy with the door and that's what's it out. We saw through the broken glass and had our heads hung like a rock, some medicines, some medicines that are still in the crop for the mouth!

Hello everybody Welcome to solvones, I'm Eril Turoviz, guided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy Justin. Yes, Sydney. We have 30 minutes without the baby. That's true. Hey, what do you? What do you want to do? What do what are on the do? What do you want to do? 30 30 minutes 30 minutes. 30 minutes. No, but other Minutes? No baby. For other concisters who are watching the baby. They're watching the baby. Yeah. What do you want to do? Oh, we'll sit in what I want to do is take a nap. Pfft. Is there anything else you might want to do?

Well, we got to do the podcast. They came to see. We have 30 minutes and you want to do a podcast? Well, we have to do the podcast. So we have to do it now. It's the time on the tickets. No, wait. I mean, it's the time. I don't think the wait for want to do a podcast? Well, we have to do the podcast, so we have to do it now. It's the time on the tickets. So wait, I mean, it's the time. I don't think the wait for us to do that.

Seriously. What about it, guys? Are you ready for this podcast? Should I turn it to some sort of weird performance art? Yeah. Yeah. Shut up, you'll wake the baby. I swear to God.

She's right back there. OK, thanks. All right, you're right, you're right. You know what, later, maybe I'll just like slip or a little bit of adrenaline or something? What? You're a physician. So just a little bit.

You're a doctor. I mean, it could be worse. I saw that in grown-ups too. Are you taking parenting tips from grown-ups too? Is that wrong? It's the worst idea of all time. I mean, it could be worse. It could be like soothing syrup.

That was way worse. Back when they used to use that, that had like opium and they gave it to babies. No, I don't okay. That's a weird opinion. What's the reason to that? Somebody said yeah babies slow that development. Now I don't know soothing syrup.

You remember we talked about it we talked about patent medicines and we talked about like when we gave opium to babies, and there were all kinds of crazy medicines that we used in the 1800s. Yes. They were fake, except they got you high or drunk, or something, so everybody was like, yay. Yeah.

These are great. The baby's been asleep for 18 hours. This is one of the few topics because of our previous episode, on which I'm not a total dullard, which is nice. So for once, so we're gonna do a three-part saw bone series about the heroes of patent medicine. It's kicking off here tonight in Minneapolis. Woo-hoo!

I swear to God, she's a light sleeper. I will come down there. No! Uh, Minneapolis? And don't give your baby's manageral. That was just a joke. That's just a joke, that's a bit. Is there any lawyers in the house?

We don't do that, don't do that. So Sid, who are we talking about tonight? Tonight, I thought we would talk about a really great character from the Patent Medicine era. His name was Kuzin Dudley Leblanc. Ooh! You saw his relatives are here tonight? Dudley's got some fans. What's up all you Leblanc heads?

And I think Cousin was like, it was like cousin, but he was from Nalans. Nalans. Cousin, I don't know. No, I'm not kidding. I don't know. Cousin. I don't know. I'm not a Cajun thing. Anyway, so he was born in 1894 and he had kind of some like failures first. He wanted to make medicine, but not real medicine because that's no fun. Let's make medicine that makes people happy. So he made a cough syrup

and not much came of that. He made a happy day headache powder, which sounds great. Now we should mention, said, can you, before we get too deep into Kusom, in my saying that, right? Are you Nolan's residents out there? Is Harry Comet Jr. here? Could he tell me critique my singing and also tell me if I'm saying Kusom, right?

What are patent medicines? Can you, can you? Okay, so patent medicines. It's a misleading name. Exactly. They were not patented. They were medicines, because if they had been patented, they would have had to say what was in them.

And specifically, they didn't want to tell you what was in them. Because it was garbage. Yes. You were drinking garbage. Nothing in them that would actually cure anything. But they did have fun stuff, like I said, like opium or marijuana or alcohol, a lot of them had a lot of alcohol.

A lot of alcohol. Cocaine, cocaine was a popular ingredient. A lot of cocaeds in the audience, cool? I guess. Okay. So they were really well-marketed. Love that stuff. Yeah, not enough cocaine shout outs lately.

What's up? Sorry. And then really, the story of patent medicines is why we have the FDA. Because everybody was like, this cures everything and then finally the government said, maybe we should make some laws about that. Like you can't just sell stuff with cocaine

that says, hey, this will fix your heart attack. No, it seems like, no, city, I know you pulled that out of thin air. It seems like there would be some pretty easy demonstrable evidence fairly piling up, fairly quickly. People fell for this stuff for a long time. Yeah, but if you say this cures my heart attack, I think, wait a minute, a dick will I, who's gonna sue them? So, now we know Pat medicines are,

that are by definition not patented. Not patented. The patented refers to what? The patented refers to the origin of pat medicines was actually over in Europe, like 200 years before they came here. And you would get like a king or a duke or an Earl or somebody important, somebody royal

to endorse your medicine. And so it was like, it was a king's patent. This is patented by the duke of like, Dirk. There are all of sand with it. So you had like a piece of paper that said like, this Duke thinks my medicine rocks, and that was your patent.

So like our cat food is Dick Van Patten's natural balance. That's a Dick Van Patten patent, which is a joke I just wrote for you. She, I swear, The podcast will be over. We will hear a crying baby and she will walk off his stage. Sorry, I said. You want to hear about Dudley? Tell me that Kuzon Dudley Leblanc.

Okay, so he initially worked as a pants presser, like I said, and then he wanted to make some medicine. So he was like, I'm gonna start making this medicine. He wasn't really successful. So he went into politics instead, because that's what you do, right? If you can't do anything else, go into politics. Why not?

So he served in both houses of the legislature. No, okay. He ran for governor. Then he wanted, he wanted a distinguished career after that and decided to make patent medicines. And he wasn't doing very well, so he finally, he sold, he had an insurance business, he sold that business, and he said, you know, I'm just, I'm not getting anywhere, I got to find some way to make a ton of money by swindling people.

And he was already in government, so you think he would have figured it out by then. And he, whoa, this took a weird libertarian turn all of a sudden. Sorry. It's not usually like this. I was. But what was really holding him back is that he was sick. Of what?

He didn't feel well. Oh, he was sick. What, what he actually, you know, he was sick. What he actually had, what we know now is that he had Barry, Barry, he had thiamine deficiency. OK. Vitamin B1. And so he went to his doctor and he was, he told him all the symptoms and he was like, I don't

feel good. And the doctor was like, take this shot of stuff that I made up. This is a great shot. I give it to all my patients, they love it. I'm going to give you a shot of it. So he gave him a shot and after several treatments with this, he started feeling a lot better, which made sense because it was a shot of a bunch of B vitamins. So the doctor was actually fixing him, but Dudley didn't know that.

He just thought, whatever's in that shot, I got to sell it to people and make a lot of money. So what actually happened, he kept asking the doctor, give me a recipe man, let's make a ton of money. I can really make you rich and me. If you tell me and the doctor wouldn't tell him. So at one point he like tricked the nurse who gave him the shot. He like sweet talkter and she wasn't looking and anyway he grabbed the bottle and he had it like anna lot. How do you have it analyzed? Anyway he figured out what was in it and he made that

formula, B vitamins and said I'm going to start selling this to people and he really did believe. I will say this. He really did believe it was true believer. Yes. He believed it would cure anything. So he got the formula and he said I need a name for it. And like I said, he'd already started selling this happy day headache powder. So we like this happy day thing. He thought that sounded good. Yeah. I feel better, aren't I? That's what you want to, when you have a medicine, you want it to be happy day. Yeah. Happy day cholesterol lowering. Medication. It sounds like a Japanese imported medicine. So he had the happy day company. And then his last name was Leblanc. So he had had a co-had a call is what the medicine. Had a call.

Had a call. Happy day company. It sounds real. I mean, when you say it, try to get that right now to yourself, had a call. It sounds like a real medicine. When you asked him later in later years, why did you call it that?

He would say, well, I had to call it something. I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like,

I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like,

I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I thought you'd like that. I'm gonna put the hold on one second. You're gonna tuck that one in the old pocket for me. Fence in his dad jacket now. Put that in my dad jacket. So do you want to know what was in it? Yeah. Really in it. Okay, really what was in it in Hadacol was a couple of items, B1, 2, 6, 5. Nias and Iron, Manganese, Kouseyam, Huni, Citric acid, Hydrochloric acid,

but most importantly, it was 12% alcohol. All right. So there you go. And the amount of alcohol in an eight ounce bottle, which is what they usually sold was about like two cocktails, which isn't like a ton, I mean, it's medicine. So I guess that's a lot for medicine.

But like generally, that's not a ton of alcohol, but the hydrochloric acid in it actually made you absorb it a lot faster. Perfect. So. They should start adding that to regular alcohol. As a busy dad on the go. I can appreciate being able to absorb my alcohol faster

than just following it as a time. Drink a whole bottle of radical? What am I made of time? I've got kids to put to bed. And... And what was she laughing? Because it hits a little close to home. And what was it marketed for?

Well, everything. Everything. Of course, every... Carol and Carol's cure nothing. Nothing. Yeah, nothing. So basically anything. Blood pressure, ulcer, strokes, asmr, arthritis, diabetes, epilepsy, anemia, cancer, hay fever, whatever you got.

I am. I hope there was some that way on the bottle. Anemia, cancer, hay fever, OK. That should can't sure. Hey fever. OK. That should have been earlier, but that's fine. The dose you take, one tablespoon, you put it in a half glass water, you take it four times a day. And it was sold in two sizes.

Like I said, there was the eight ounce size. And then there was also the 24-ounce size or the family size. What? Little sum for everybody in the Hattacol Bowl? You got a share. It's called the dad size. In some dry counties, it was actually sold by the shot glass in pharmacies.

Like, you go to the pharmacy and be like, give me a shot at Hattacol. I'm feeling my hay fever is acting up. I'm feeling real enemic here. There were some places where you could only buy it in liquor stores. Good sign, good sign. And the great thing about had a call was the marketing.

Now, Dudley would go on to spend way more on advertising than pretty much any of the patent medicine people. At one point, he was the second largest, like, spender of advertising dollars in the country, the first being Coca-Cola. Yeah. The thing you got to know about patent medicine is it was almost exclusively a marketing play.

I mean, for a time, newspapers in America were able to function because of patented manufacturers. They made up like 35-something percent of advertising in the nation. Exactly, so they weren't patented, but they were trademarked and branded out the wazoo. And Dudley was the king. So he said, you know, it's one thing to sell to adults

with your usual ads. Like there was one ad that even had a picture of Santa Claus saying like, I use how to call too. Well, like, at the end of you laugh, 364 days a year, that's fine. What's he got to do? Like, can you cut him some slack? He works one night a year.

But, Dudley liked the idea that he could enlist, like, young users of had a call. Like, I need kids to use this stuff. So he started marketing directly to children. First of all, by inventing a comic book character, Captain Hatta Call. Yeah. Coming this summer from Marvel Studios, you've all seen John Hamm in the trailer. He looks great this suit.

And that was good for kids. And teenagers were already getting on board, because they got it. They were like, well, I might live in a dry county. I need some hadakal, mom. It really helps. It really helps. Do you need to stay home from school sweetheart?

Nope, nope. I don't feel like that kind. I feel like the kind where I need to add a call. So you could. And his big thing, in addition to marketing to kids, he also had testimonials because the thing with the testimonial is that you're not saying it. And there were some rules as to, like,

if you're selling a medicine, you can't say this curious cancer. You can say use for the treatment of, but you couldn't say it cured it. But if you were a patient who took it, you could say whatever you wanted. So you could say, I took a hat of call and it cured whatever, you know, it cured my pneumonia. It cured my tuberculosis. You could say that. So that was his big thing was, let's just get people who will come and say they use my product

and that it worked on whatever they had. And he would even take pictures of them signing the testimonials so that he could show him, like if he was ever, if the authorities ever showed up, like, look, there they are, they signed it. It's cool. Some of them are really outlandish. One of my favorite was, two months ago,

I could not read or write. I took four bottles of hadakall, and now I'm teaching school. I'm not going to be a fan of that. I have two questions. Just one. Is he sure he took had a call? Because there's really no way for him to prove it. Because he can't read. We guys aren't into a literacy.

We got cocaine fans that don't like a literacy jokes. Great, cool crowd. Twinsetties. And whenever the FDA would step in and say, hey, look, what you're saying is crossing the line, you know, that's a little too much. I don't think you can back that up. He'd just make it more vague.

At one point, the slogan for hada call was, hada call is good for what ails you. If what ails you is what hada call was good for. That's amazing. That's a great... It's a pretty, it's like the nobody doesn't like Sarah Lee of his time. And it was working. He was making, by 1949, he was making $24 million a year on Hattacall. Selling Hatt, one thing, selling Hattacall.

But he was also spending a million a year on advertising. So like I said, I mean, he was a king. And he continued this whole thing about like, well, we've already got this Captain Hadacall comic book character. We really need to get the kid market. Walk it down. We really need to get more kids into Hadacall.

So he started with like Hadacall dolls, like squirt guns. They were like, This isn't even Blasah Hadacall right here. Kids, time to get your had a cold extreme. With the super drunker blasted. You could get, of course, had a called t-shirts, had a call lipstick. There were cowboy holsters that said had a call on him. You put your had a call skirt, guys.

Quick draw. Quick drunk. I got a call on him. And you put your head-to-call screw, guys. What? Aaaaaah! Um, quick draw! Quick drunk. He was a... What was this time, Buryon? Right, like, 1949, 1950s. Can you ever fit... Sometimes you might look around and think, like,

man, I'm living in the coolest time period ever. Can you believe we have teleportation sort of, we have jet packs, we have virtual reality. There was a time period in this nation where you could walk down the street and see kids with, you could see drunk kids with holsters full of mord alcohol. Like, can you imagine going about your business

and you see a kid looking like, hey, what's up? Pfft! I'm turned! You're eight! You're not turned? That was a cool time period. Let me live back then.

Mad Men didn't go back far enough. I want to see Don Draper with a cocktail sitting next to a seven-year-old with like a big cowboy head on. What's up? A tough day, huh? Just blasting some more coal. There was actually, I was thinking about this when I was putting this together. There was actually an episode of Mad Men.

Do you remember that when they got all, they all got shots of something and they all kind of went nuts? Yeah. I bet it was something like this. Yeah. It would not have had a call but something in that, just on a side note. Just thinking about that. Anyway.

Yeah. So with the kids, like I said, he really wanted to get kids involved because who doesn't? So key. He's not thinking about the kids. I believe it's children are a future. So he would give kids free hat-a-call gift cards. Like, take this to your pharmacy,

and you can get one free bottle of hat-a-call. And he knew, like, kids don't want a free bottle of hat-a-call. So what they would do is he actually would convince the kids to sell the hadacle. Well yeah, teenagers would just drink it, but little kids would go get their free bottle of hadacle and then try to sell it to their neighbors. How much better would that be instead of them showing up with like, do you want some magazines? Do you want to buy? I don't know, whatever. Are you going to sponsor me in the

walk for whatever? No, I said the kid shows up. He's like, do you? Do you want to buy? I don't know, whatever. Are you cool? You must sponsor me in the walk for whatever. No, I said the kid shows up. He's like, do you party? I had a call. You cool? So he had a whole child army of salesmen selling his alcohol like had a call. And you could also, you could get had a call box tops.

And to what, what, what, what is good for? You could trade those in for things like roller skates and air rifles. So, so then the kids are like going to mom and dad like, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, get me some had a call for the box top. I'm still working my way through the last few bottles. Get out of here, Rusty.

That was also, and I think we've mentioned this before, this was also the time where there were medicine shows. So there were these like traveling carnivals that would go all over the country. And they would, the whole purpose was to sell you something. So in this, at this time, had a call. But they would also have like movies

and theatrical performances and songs and like strong men and all kinds of crazy things. But at the end of the day, all they were really trying to do was convince you like, buy this stuff. The admission to any of his medicine shows were two box tops from had a call. Self-perpetuating cycle, I'm into that. Exactly.

And he would create these huge radio promos anywhere that his medicine show would go. That was the big thing is he knew it was going to hit a town. And ahead of time, there were a few steps to it. First of all, he would run a radio giveaway for bottles of had a call. So people could come to the show where in places where they weren't selling hada-call yet.

So they would say, we're going to have a show here, but your pharmacist isn't selling hada-call. But we'll give you a free bottle of hada-call, but you got to get it from your pharmacist. How are we going to get around that? So basically, what would happen is all these winners would have these gift certificates for free bottles of hada-call and they'd go running into their drug stores

and say, get this stuff on the shelves. You gotta get it now. I have a free thing. I don't know what it is, but I want it, because it's free. So if I give me a bottle, I'm starting to so burrow. I need you to get more hada call. He would actually pay housewives specifically.

If he could find women, he would say, what I want you to do, I'll give you whatever, five bucks, go to your pharmacy and beg the drugist for had a call. And so these poor pharmacies would just be overwhelmed with people begging for had a call. And so finally, they would start calling him and saying, like, listen, man, how much I got to get this stuff. Everybody wants it. So sell it to me. And so then that way he would sell more Hattacall,

which is pretty ingenious. Yeah, it's pretty smart. Mm-hmm. Makes you want to get in that game. And then of course he'd bring his medicine show to town, and he'd sell tons of Hattacall and everybody loved it. And the medicine shows got huge. For the time, the celebrities they got were crazy. Like who? Okay, so some of the celebrities that were in the Hattacall medicine shows got huge. For the time, the celebrities they got were crazy. Like who?

OK, so some of the celebrities that were in the had a call medicine shows, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Mickey Rooney, Cesar Romero, Carmen Miranda, Jimmy Duranty, Rudy Valley, Hank Williams, all in the had a call medicine show. Well, Cesar Romero in the Joker outfit at the time? Because I would be deeply disturbed. If I had just drunk a bunch of had a call

and then Caesar Romero popped up without weird mustache below the makeup, oh, just, just shave it Caesar. Was the music had a call themed? It was. There was a song written the had a call buggy that was a really popular song at the time. And then Hank Williams would close out every show with a song about had a call as well that he wrote personally

about had a call and how much he loved it, because all the alcohol. But eventually, like all Pat medicines, the good days ended when the American Medical Association. Oh, these guys. I know. Buzzkill. Thanks, Obama, indeed, sir.

He ruined everything. Just trying to get some drunk kids out there. The AMA came out and basically said, we hope no doctor ever tells anyone to take this for anything ever. Time magazine reviewed it and said, it's basically a murky brown liquid that tastes something like bilge water and smells worse,

which kind of hurt its popularity. Schoeners. And then, of course, the FDA stepped in and said, okay, I don't care what your testimonials are. I don't care what you're doing. These are all lies. This is not fixing anything. You've got to stop.

Even that though, that wasn't the reason they went under. It was really just money. He was spending so much on advertising, which is crazy considering how much they were making, that the company eventually just collapsed. Because of how much money he was spending trying to sell people more had a call. Had a call.

They tried to bring it back in both 1987 and 1997, which doesn't seem that long. Oh my gosh. Yeah. There were people who tried to revive it and sell had a call again. And by then, I guess we're just informed enough to know, no, that's just booze, I can buy. I can buy beer. I got beer. I can buy beer, I don't need that.

You laugh, but you almost certainly have a patent medicine in your medicine cabinet home right now. Sid, what are some patent medicines that are still for sale? Lootans, cough drops, those are. An original Angoster of Bitterage was originally a patent medicine. Yep. So you might have that.

Goody's headache powder, right? Goody's headache powder was, yeah. A lot of them. Folks, thank you so much for being so kind to us here in Minneapolis. Thank you to the cedar for having us here. This is a beautiful place we've had the most fun. Everybody's been super, super nice.

They filled our whole hospitality rider, which we are free booze. So thank you. Great, which we are free booze. So thank you. Great, great. I love this beer. Thank you very much. Thank you guys.

We just to let you all know there are posters for sale. Travis told me where they are and I forget. They're over there. They're over there. The audience knows. The audience knows where they're from. By one, they're specific to this show. So this is the only place that you can get these.

They say, I mean, there's other ones that look like them that were selling on this tour, but they say the name of Minneapolis on the bottom. Which is Minneapolis. Which is Minneapolis. That is the name of Minneapolis. I'm assuming right now look around you. This is Minneapolis. You've made it.

Thank you, the taxpayers, for you let us use their song, The Medicines. Thank you to you, Sydney, for coming with me and letting us bring the baby. Thank you to the baby for apparently sleeping through the show. Yeah. Shut up.

And I think that's the best way apparently sleeping through the show. Yeah. Shut up. And I think that's gonna do for us, right? Starting to interrupt past Justin and past Sydney. It's present Justin and Sydney. We want to tell you first off, good luck with that fly home, because woof, it's a doozy. That's gonna do for us until next time that we get to see all your smiling faces. Again, I'm Justin McAroy. I'm just a macarole.

I'm Sydney Mac a talk with you.