Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Heroes of Patent Medicine: Volume 3

Episode Date: April 23, 2015

This week on Sawbones, in the last of their three-part series, 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)

Saw bones 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. Alright, talk to you about some books. One, two, one, two, three, four.

Oh no. It's a pretty tall taller man than me. It's a flattery, but no. Yeah, he's the dangled Downspaper. Hi everybody, welcome to Saltbone's Emerald Tour of Miss Guy and Medicine. I'm your co-host, Jeff to Macaroy. I'm a Sydney Macaroy. That's happened at every show we've done, and I can't tell if you were like,

I don't know, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I want to give the Chubby Guy a complex. The chair for his much more attractive, much smarter wife, hold on. Now, this is all I have. Hey, everybody. It's fun with me. Thank you. Yeah.

Hi, Chicago. It's easy. Just keep doing that. That works. Oh, this. Sammy Sosa. I don't know how we keep doing that. Close. Sammy Sosa. I don't know how we feel about Sammy Sosa right now. He may have been disgraced in his career.

My mom is a big Sammy Sosa friend. It's all I know about Sammy Sosa. Also Al Capone from Chicago. This is our show now. Justin names everything. I know about Chicago. Here's my favorite alcapone fact for you. I had friends growing up who went to school. He actually had friends.

He had friends growing up who went to school with young man named, not making this up, D-alcapone Jones. I was his legal name. I am happy however speaking of Alcapone that prohibition has ended because the show would be much less funny about 30 percent less funny. The blend is different every episode. And also, I'm not the sort of guy that would know where Speakeasy's are. Like, do you think I'm the sort of guy who's like, oh yeah, Justin knows the good Speakeasy's? I don't know. I mean, you're pretty cool. You might know.

Thank you. That's the most charitable thing you've ever said to me. I might know. I mean, I'd tell you, I would take it with me. But yes, hooray for prohibition ending. Yeah. You know, there were other ways to get around prohibition if you didn't like you, didn't know where to go

to the local speak easy. That would absolutely be my alley. So help me in case I'm ever in a time warp scenario. Well, tonight we're ending. We're concluding our trilogy. Yes, our three-part segment. Yes, on patent medicines. Not just patent medicines.

The heroes of patent medicine. We've talked about patent medicines before on one of our shows, and we just kind of, we barely scratched the surface. And what we wanted to get into is there were so many crazy colorful characters in this era and American history, which we're going to tell you about, who tried to sell people fake medicine, mainly by putting a lot of booze in it, but we thought we'd share those stories with you because they're really funny. All right.

Well, who do we have on the show today in this Rose gallery? Well, first of all, first of all, let's refresh what are patent medicines? Well, Sidney, let me tell you. Patent medicines are like medicine, but they're full of garbage, and they don't work. That's right. They don't have patents, because they would have to reveal the ingredients, which included,

but we're not limited to garbage and alcohol and nonsense. But the alcohol is key for this because some pad medicines would have as much as 50% alcohol. So if you're wondering why they were such a big hit especially during the prohibition era now you know. Yeah this is a great way to skirt prohibition because you could just sell them at the local pharmacy and they would literally sell some of them by the shot glass or have them on like tap but be like oh that's medicine it's cool don't worry not alcohol. So during this time period this was like the 1800s early 1900s in American history. There were tons of guys who would just make a living going around and trying to sell you

something. And they would, they'd always have like a, like a hook. They wanted something that would convince you that the medicine that they made is real and won't just get you drunk or high or whatever. Although that probably, they probably could have just told you that. It gets you drunk. This doesn't work, but it will get you so tart yeah that's that's the word right yeah you nailed it that's how you do it that you know what parents

we're still cool you know to laugh that hard I know what turned to me no I'm serious the babies asleep please don't laugh that hard. I know what turned to me. No, I'm serious. The babies are asleep. Please don't laugh that hard. My 14-year-old sister had to explain to me what turned down for what meant. And I said, so is it like asking a question like, for what should I turn down? Like that.

Like, I don't know. Anyway. So what was the hook of the folks who talked about today? So today, we're going to talk about the Kikapoo Indian medicine show. You ever heard a little labner? The Kikapoo joy-juice and little labner? Yeah. You know, little labner. Everybody's favorite. Some labner's head, little labner. Any indie cap fans? Lots of lots of awards. Let me hear you. So of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots it is actually like a shorthand that was used. I mean it didn't mean Native American then either. It was like an idealized like their version of what Indian men. So it actually helped,

it's a helpful way of distinguishing between actual Native Americans that actually were real and didn't sell people garbage and alcohol. There was this perceived notion at the time that the Native Americans or the Indians had this connection with the land that made them more in tune with what would be good in your body, what kind of herbs and what kind of roots. And so if you could convince people that the recipes you were using were originally Native American recipes, then people

were more likely to buy them. And that's exactly what the two. It's basically the Calgon play, right? One of the ancient Chinese secret, remember that ad? Like the exact same proposition. Yeah, that's pretty much it. It's not a joke, but nobody remembers the Calgon ad I'm referring to.

Myself, I only know of it because of Wayne's world, so. So. So there's two Wayne's world, right? This is two Wayne's World Records. Two Wayne's World Records. We did a show in Milwaukee last night and recited the entire Alice Cooper bit where he does a little walk in the Good Land and you hear it later.

They really dug it or pretended to. So the two guys who ran the Kick Poo Indian Medicine show, John Healey, who was, as far as I know, the only career he had before this was that he was a drummer boy in the Union Army. Did you think of a weird fact that we know? Like, I don't know if he put that on his resume. Like, I was in the military. Yeah.

Drummer Boy. I served. I served my country. As a result. I have the country. As a result, he's sometimes. He sometimes went by Colonel Healy because of that. I don't think I'm not in the military. I don't think that's the title you get. You're the drummer boy. You could be promoted though right? I was a heck of a

drama out there man. You really, I was like turn the beat around. I'm promoted to that kid. He's great. He converted that to Doc Healy, because why not? When he started as a young man, selling medicines that other people made. So one of the first medicines that he started selling was actually one, King of Pain. It was what it was called.

Who we talked about last night. Another, the Diamond King was the Pat Medicine Salesman who was selling King of Pain. And at first John Healey was like, well, I'll just start selling this stuff and see if I can get anywhere with it. It contained a ton of whiskey, so it was popular. But after a while, he really wanted to branch out

on his own, like he had the entrepreneurial spirit. He wanted to make his own fake medicine. And he found his ticket when he ran into Texas Charlie Bigelow. Was he from Texas? Who cares? Sure, okay. Probably not. Probably not. But it sounded good. He wore a big hat and boots and like he tried to sell the whole thing. A sombrero? No, like a cowboy hat. Oh, like a cowboy hat, okay. There was a guy last night who wore a big hat and boots and like he tried to sell a whole thing. A sunbarrow? No, like a cowboy hat. Oh, like a cowboy hat.

OK. There was a guy last night who wore a sunbarrow. Sorry. Yeah. No, this is Texas Charlie. Texas Charlie. A cowboy hat. This cowboy hat. Yeah.

Yeah. He was already selling so-called Indian cures to people, but he really wasn't making a big name for himself yet. It was like the magic of these two. He and Bigelow got together. They sat in a hotel room one night and said, you know what? And they were probably really drunk. We can assume. We could, we could, you know, have your skills as a drummer boy. And with my big hand. We've got something here. We're the linen mccarte of selling people garbage.

They get some drunk. They started out just trying to sell everybody like to sell liver pads. I talked about this last night too. Everybody like to sell these things that would rejuvenate your liver. And they were basically like scraps of cloth with glue and cayenne pepper on them. So they'd make your skin tingle.

And they started off with that. And they weren't having much success. So they said, you know what, we need a backstory. That's the problem. We need this whole myth that surrounds our products. So they decided that they were going to go with the Kikapoo Indian tribe, which really was, there really was a Kikapoo tribe.

Now, the Native Americans that they would eventually recruit to their show and the products they made had nothing to do with the real Kikapoo Indians, they just thought it was a catchy name. So they were like, And it is to this day. So they put together their own tribe to work for them. So they started paying Native Americans

and some of them really were. Some of them were members of the Iroquois tribe, the Mohawk, the Sioux tribes. Others were just non-Native Americans who maybe could pull it off. And then there were guys who were definitely white guys, but were like, really, I'll do whatever, I need to make some money.

And so they would hire them too and say, like, these are Indian fighters who keep them in line. You laughed, but Ironized Cody was an Italian guy. From the, you know, the ad where the Native American man is crying on the side of the road, because you threw trash. Italian guy. I'm not making that up, don't laugh. We were doing this trick in the 70s.

Like, don't get all snooty. Some of you were alive then. They really were, and they really, I think it's just a lot of people didn't know what all Native Americans necessarily look like. Like, a lot of people could pass themselves off. I'm going, no, I'm just from a different tribe. And there wasn't the internet. So you couldn't figure out they were lying. So they were really like Irish guys who were like, no, I'm totally part of the kick-a-poo.

I've been here forever. I can tell you some stories about America. So in order to start selling the medicines, Bigelow made up this whole backstory about how he once got lost in the woods, and he injured himself, and he got really sick, and he was stuck, and he was on the brink of death, and an Indian chief from the Kikapu tribe found him and gave him

this stuff that was called sagwa and this Kikapu Indian sagwa saved his life and so now he wants to sell it to you. So what's in the sagwa you might want to know. I don't have a list do you have a list? No I do. I'm gonna tell you. Oh thank good. That was a scary few seconds for me. You can't look. Okay, I wanna look. Restart. Alcohol and garbage.

And maybe Spiramin. I mean, close. There's some stuff, you know, there's some like licorice root, there's some aloe, there's some dandelion root, there's lots of roots. A big thing with pat medicines, a common thread that you'll find with pat medicine ingredients is that you wanted them to have some effect.

So like the liver pads would put the cayenne. The most common though is that they would make you poop so you would know like. So Sina, who was a laxative, was a major ingredient in kick-bondian stuff. Something's working in there, because the bad stuff is gone. I'm, something is happening to me. Something is working.

And it also had a lot of alcohol so you wouldn't care. So it's like, I've been in the mood for your birthday. And also you'd be in for a messy night. So this was their biggest seller. Which is, you think that the first time that somebody took it and they were like, no, seriously don't. I almost pooped myself to death, don't take that stuff. And I was hung over the next day.

It was the pits. But it took off. Everybody wanted some of it. And so they expanded that to other products. There was a Kikapoo buffalo, SAV. There was a Kikapoo Indian worm killer. Again, a lot of these things just contained some various roots and some oils,

and then a whole bunch of either a laxative or some alcohol. Either way, I guess you were lucky if you got the alcohol in there. Oh, that's a good one. That's the point that works for me. And initially they were selling these out of, they set up like a tent at a train station in Boston. They thought it'd be high traffic area and so they started selling them out of this tent.

And they would have all the Native Americans they hired. That was why they were so successful is because they would hang around there. And so they would go, oh, look, they're selling that stuff. And there's an Indian, it must be real. Right. And that took off, they made so much money that they decided to build what they would call

their principal wigwom. The principal wigwom was actually just this huge warehouse that they rented. And they set it up like this really insulting Native American Disney world kind of thing. Like you'd walk in, and there were TPs everywhere inside the building. And all of the other.

I want unaware of the purpose of the wigwom, right? It's not like Native American people walk into a large room and they're like, this is just too big. I feel really exposed right now. I need a smaller structure within this structure to protect me. All Native Americans are agoraphobic. You heard it here first.

That's not true, don't tell me. It's not true, don't tell you. No, it's not true. It's not true. It's not true. It's not true. The medicines, the medicines, the escalates my God before the mount. So they were, they had their teepees set up, they would have like campfires, they would have big pots where they were pretending to mix up the cures that they were making. So that you say it's kind of like well does it it is exactly like like that is percent like oh no Mexico yeah there's a margaries at every stand they cost eight dollars and there's a log flume that goes down an asset temple that's Mexico for you in

a nutshell so this was America this is is essentially the America land. And it was there a gift shop. Yeah, of course, there was a gift shop. Oh, sorry. They're having to be a place where you could buy the medicines that you were watching them brew in front of you. And then just all kinds of Native American trinkets

and knick knacks and things. And none of this was real stuff, because there were very few actual Native Americans working for them, and the ones who were probably not invested in like, oh, I really want to share my culture with you. Right. Because you're lying about who I am.

Right. I want to help you really nail the myth of my people. You're just doing this to sell people laxatives, so I'm not going to put a lot of effort into it. But they would draw more crowds because this was a place all the tourists could come. So they would draw more crowds by they would put their Native American salespeople in full dress and put them on horses and they would just ride around town. And then people would follow them, I guess.

How boring was the town? How but, oh man, that's the coolest thing I've seen all day. I am totally gonna follow that guy. I don't know where he's going, but I'm into it. It's gotta be better than what I'm doing. I'm playing that stupid stick hoop game. I'm going with that guy. Way for me.

It's gotta be more fun than I've just been pooping non-stop for the last three days. I've been drunk for two days, and pedialite won't be invented for 100 years. Does he know nothing of Gatorade? For their female customers, they had a mascot that they developed that was specifically aimed at them.

Her name was Little Bright Eyes. She was an Indian princess. Who did really sad indie music. Very moping. Nothing for iron eyes code, but bright eyes. Yeah. Love that guy. But little bright eyes had lots of pamphlets

and special medicines for your female complaints. So don't worry, ladies. She's got your back. She's got your back. Again, mainly just like with laxatives and stuff. But. It's laxatives in alcohol, but still. Feminine laxatives. They come But. It's laxatives in alcohol, but still. Feminine laxatives.

Yeah. They come in like pink boxes. Right. That's what we like. They also had all kinds of magazines they would sell. They had like children's books. And I guess at the time would have been like a coffee table book.

I don't know. It was this before coffee tables. It's a medical history show. I can't get a book with furniture too. So they had big picture books like the life and scenes among the Kikapoo Indians which was all fake. All these pictures were probably taken in the warehouse. They would sell them to people so you could have pictures of fake Indians on your coffee table or whatever table.

And they had a Kikapoo Indian dream book with like all of these mystical stories that were told by the Kikapu Indians that you could lower your children to sleep with. I bet if the real Kikapu Indian dream book was published, it would basically just be today I dreamed that that white guy died in the most horrific way imaginable, sincerely, Jebediah O'Leary. Because he's an Irish guy, pertain to being, yeah. Exactly. It was a rich fiction.

Jebediah O'Leary. Jebediah O'Leary. This, this got so big that at one point they had the number that I saw was 880 Native Americans or Native Americans in their employee. Wow. So this was huge. Hey, job creation, though, you can't knock that.

In addition to, I guess. In addition to their medicine shows, they also franchise the name because a lot of people, a lot of, and that was really common at the time period. Other patent medicine salesmen would see something taking off and want to like, well, I want to do the same thing, but I don't want to get in trouble. So they would just, like, for instance,

Saguah was spelled S-A-G-W-A and somebody would like add an H in there somewhere and say like, no, it's cool, this is mine, it's different. You know, when you start seeing cronuts, but with 5-0s, it's like all right I get it. Same thing. Those are just the same things. It's the same thing. Oh, I know. Or special. You thought that cronut I got you done

cadonna, it was the real deal but no. Crone. That's it. That was a really good one. It was really cute. Go ahead. So they franchise their names. They're like, people are going to try to rip us off anyway. We're going to make them pay up front. And it was a really small fee.

But a lot of people latched on to it. And then they were selling more of their own product anyway. So they kept getting, you know, I don't know what kind of deal they worked out if it was like a percentage of the franchise fee. Some kind of this. Some free bottles and alcohol and garbage. Say, oh, I don't know.

Anyway, so they made more money. And that actually spread not just to the US, but to Europe and Australia. There were Kicker Poo Indian medicine shows there, too, which is crazy. In addition, at the local pharmacy, they would sell all the stuff. So they would take their medicine show into a town.

And they would sell all of their goods at the pharmacy. And usually, the way they would sell all the stuff so they would take their medicine show into a town, and they would sell all of their goods at the pharmacy. And usually the way they would do that is they would go to the pharmacist and say, hey, take all that other fake stuff off the shelf, put our fake stuff on the shelf. Our real fake stuff. Yeah, and we will give you some money, and the pharmacist was like, whatever, I don't know. None of this works anyway. It's all lies. I just went into this because we can't sell alcohol right now and this is a really easy

way to have access to it. Is this even a real register? It's made of cardboard. When they did do there, because we've talked a lot about their medicine shows and I think most people, if you listen to our show, you've probably heard us talk about medicine shows before but if you haven't. So these medicine shows were really like traveling circuses or carnivals. They would come into town and it would be the huge event like it would be the biggest entertainment thing going on for for weeks. Months years sometimes. I mean they were huge events. Everybody would come you know the adults

the kids because there was entertainment for everyone. So there would be movies, which a lot of people hadn't seen movies. So there'd be a movie, and you could go see it. There would be people singing and dancing. They would do all kinds of, again, probably really insulting traditional kick

a poo Indian dances. And they would perform like wedding ceremonies for the fake Indians to get fake married. That seems like a bridge too far. Occasionally they would have one of the Native Americans who actually was some from some tribe, you know, it wasn't Irish, was actually Native American, stand up and give a speech in their native language, and then one of the white guys would interpret it for everyone, and just, of course,

make it up completely, and it would always be like, oh, and he says that the medicine will heal the wounds from the anyls of the earth. And the, yeah, I don't know if they did this. This, this, this. I bet you know they were just saying, I want to kill this white guy. Well, that was the thing is that what they wrote about, because a lot of the ways we know about this stuff is because the guys

like Helian Biglow and other people who ran the shows wrote these histories of it, of themselves. Those are kind of guys they were. And they noted that the other Native Americans would all kind of chuckle, because you know, you know that guy, that's what he was saying, was like, this white guy is an idiot. He's a complete fool.

There was one, you know there was one guy, like one super educated guy in the back of the crowd, like, what? This is an hour of my mother what? What? This is an outrage. One of the guys who worked for their medicine show, who wasn't one of their fake Kikapu Indians, but another one of their salesmen, I feel like we should, we should talk

about just for a second. His name was Nevada Ned. That could be enough right there. But Nevada Ned was already selling patent medicines, and then he got hooked up with Helian Beglo, because he liked their style. He liked their hat. He liked their poison garbage alcohol.

And his specialty was he said, you know what? I want to help you sell this stuff. And I've already kind of got my own line. I'll just, if you don't mind, I'll use some of the Kikapu name and like, we'll pretend like they were also made by Europe fake Indians. And they all have cocaine in them. So they sell really well. Super well.

Yeah. So he sold medicines just filled with cocaine. He wore it all times. I can't get any more cocaine in this wore, at all times, he wore. I can't get him more cocaine in his bottle. I've tried. Trust me. It was full of the brim. State maximum cocaine in here.

At all times, Nevada Ned would wear $3,000 worth of diamonds on his person, somewhere. He carried two gold-mounted mother of Pearl-handed revolvers. Always. Good luck. And he used $10 gold pieces as buttons. Excellent. Like a style. In his spare time, which I'm guessing he had a lot of,

because he probably did a lot of cocaine. So he didn't waste it sleeping. Not a lot of sleep, right. He wrote crime fiction. It's sleeping. Not a lot of sleep, right. He wrote crime fiction. You're not sleeping. I'm not sleeping.

You're not sleeping. Right. He wrote crime fiction. Most of it I'm assuming autobiographical. You'll never believe where I ripped off today. So Nevada Ned didn't last very long in the whole Pat medicine biz because he got really hooked on his own medicines. No, he got into, wait, cocaine's addictive.

Why don't you warn me before I do all that cocaine backstage? Not with our daughter here. So anyway. I got a little too real there for a second, guys. I'm sorry. Well, the road's tough. It's all I'm saying. We've done, gosh, it seems like three shows now

in the past three days and the road's tough. It takes it all. I just saw it backstage. They didn't have the gummy bears that requested that, look at them. I'm really wanted on our rider. We said we need as many of these little crunchies which are these little cheese puffs for babies.

We need as many as you can carry and there were none. The baby loves them and I asked them for stage two prudes. Nothing. We're kidding. They've been very nice to us all. They've been very nice. No, but one thing before we finish, you're probably wondering, you're probably wondering, did these guys ever get in trouble?

Yeah. I mean, because they were selling people, you know, alcoholic laxatives and cocaine and all of it was made up and eventually all of the patent medicine guys got in trouble because the FDA was created and they were like, listen, you can't just, this is, no, you're killing people and you're making them poop themselves today, then we've got to stop you. And there were laws and they started putting the ingredients on packaging, blah, blah, blah. But the Kikapoo guys got out of it pretty much scot-free.

They got in trouble one time. They made a Kikapoo cough syrup. This was one of the last new products they came out with. And it was around the time when they started actually, like, chemists were looking at what was in this stuff and then printing, you know, this is what you're taking in your body, stop. And it was analyzed, and then there,

like the American Medical Association looked at it and said, basically, this was their quote, it did not possess properties recognized by the medical profession as necessary for the proper treatment of the lungs in any way. So at that point, they were fine, they finally got in trouble, and they were fine $25. Now, I'll put a stop to those crooks.

Thank you so much, Chicago, for having us here, to your lovely city. It's beautiful. Thank you to E Athenium. Everyone here has been super nice. They got the right gummy bears. I was just kidding. They nailed it. They're a poster, by the way. Make sure you buy some posters because they're just for this show,

specifically for this show. Sid is there anything else you want me to say? Thank you to our daughter, Charlie. If you're listening to this in the future, for being so chill for the past three days, we really appreciate that. I hope she's still chill. I don't know.

Thank you to Harry, the bunny, and Pika Boo, and the color crew for helping keep our daughter entertained. We really appreciate that. Thank you to you, Sydney, for being so understanding and nursing our baby in a lot of weird rooms over the past few days. We appreciate that. Once again, thank you so much for the past few days. Do appreciate that. Once again, thank you so much for,

we hope you like these live shows. We know we've had some spotty quality and live shows before in terms of audio quality. Not these. We're pretty darn good. Pretty darn good. Hope you like them. We'll be back next week with another

normal episode until then, take care. And that's gonna do it for us folks. Until next time we have a medicine issue to talk about. I'm Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And it's always, don't you hold on your head. Alright. Yeah.

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