Antique Medicine Bottles Dr Cannon's Medicine Chest

ANOTHER "PATENT MEDICINE ARTICLE" FROM THE PAGES OF

ANTIQUE BOTTLE AND GLASS COLLECTOR MAGAZINE

THE MAGAZINE OF THE ANTIQUE BOTTLE COLLECTING HOBBY

antique bottles THE MEDICINE CHEST --- BY DR. RICHARD CANNON old bottles

I’m better with faces than names, particularly when the names are similar. Fortunately, Wishart’s and Wistar’s bottles also seem easier to me than the

two names.

Wishart’s Pine Tree Tar Cordial bottles, 10 3/8 and 7 7/8 inches tall.Wistar’s Balsam of Wild Cherry, IB. blowpipe pontil.

I have two green square bottles, one embossed L.Q.C. Wishart’s // // Pine Tree / Tar Cordial / Phila. // Trade / Motif of Tree / Mark, 7 3/8 inches tall, and one embossed L.Q.C. Wishart’s // Pine Tree / Tar Cordial / Phila. // Patent / Motif of Tree / 1859 // //, 7 7/8 inches tall. Cordials are closely related to the elixirs but the higher alcoholic concentrations and are pleasantly flavored for internal use. Elixirs are aromatic sweetened alcoholic preparations used as flavors and adjuvants in prescriptions and sometimes containing active agents. My bottles have smooth bases, but rare bare iron pontiled, square variants 7 1/2 inches tall in amber and yellow-olive embossed L.Q.C. Wishart’s // Pine Tree / Tar Cordial / Phila. // Motif of Tree, also exist. So do amber smooth based ones in the two sizes.

My eight sided aqua bottle embossed Dr. Wistar’s // Balsam Of // Wild Cherry // Philada. // // IB., has a blowpipe pontil and is 6 1/2 inches tall. Balsams are resinous substances which contain benzoic or cinnamic acids or their esters. Holst lists 7 other eight sided aqua in the 6 to 6 1/2 inch tall range with either blowpipe or bare iron pontils, one with Wistar’s spelled Wister’s. IB stands for Isaac Butts. S & P on the shoulder of a Philada. bottle, Sanford & Park, Cincinnati O., John D. Park, Cincinnati and W.M.S. are also embossed on the variants. The W.M.S. has a blowpipe pontil, Philada. embossed and is probably indicative of the Williams & Company of Philadelphia, who advertised the product in 1841. Smooth based bottles are known embossed with IB. 6 3/8, 5 and 4 1/4 inches tall, Seth W. Fowle & Sons, Boston 3 1/2 inches tall and John D. Park, Cincinnati, O., 6 3/8 inches tall.

Dr. L.Q.C. Wishart at No. 10 South Second Street, Philadelphia, compounded Pine Tree Tar Cordial and introduced it to the public in 1859. He soon moved to larger facilities at No. 232 North Second Street. About 1861, he placed Dr. Wishart’s Great American Dyspepsia Pills on the market and in 1865, Dr. Wishart’s Worm Sugar Drops. The latter was advertised in 1875 in Harper’s Weekly. I am not aware of embossed bottles. Wishart’s son Henry R. inherited the Pine Tree Tar Cordial about 1870, and soon sold it to Philadelphia druggists Harry C. Campion and his son John W. John’s brother Franklin joined them, and the firm was called the Campion Brothers until 1897, when Franklin retired. J.W. Campion and Co. was still selling Pine Tree Tar Cordial into the nineteen hundreds. It was for "Consumption of the Lungs, Cough, Sore Throat and Breast, Bronchitis, Liver Complaint, Blind and Bleeding Piles, Asthma, Whooping Cough and Diphtheria, & c.".
Caspar Wistar compounded the original Balsam of Wild Cherry. Isaac Butts, and apothecary near Canterbury, Conn., used the formula in the 1830s, and an 1841 ad indicates that Williams and Company of Philadelphia, prepared it. Isaac Butts, now at 25 Fulton St., New York, had become the sole owner, according to an ad dated December 21, 1843. By the mid 1840s, Benjamin Sanford and John D. Park of Cincinnati, had become agents for at least part of the country. After 1850, the listing was only John D. Park, dealer in patent medicines. His role as an agent for Wistar’s Balsam of Wild Cherry may have ended due to a financial strain, because by 1856, the medicine had come under control of Seth Fowle of Boston; this lasted into the 1880s. Since there are many later bottles with IB. embossed, Fowle probably had IB. bottles produced long after the original relationship with Isaac Butts had ended. Dr. Wistar’s Balsam of Wild Cherry was advertised as the "Great Remedy for Coughs, Colds, Whooping Cough, Bronchitis, Difficulty of Breathing, Asthma, Hoarseness, Sore Throat, Croup and every affection of the Throat, Lungs and Chest, including even Consumption".
A well known fact is that if children didn’t get colds and coughs so frequently, many more general pediatricians would be unemployed. Upper respiratory tract infections and their complications have been the "bread and butter" for Drs. Wishart, Wistar and Cannon all of these years.....

References:
1. Baldwin, J.K.: Patent and Proprietary Medicine Bottles of the Nineteenth Century, 1973.
2. Blasi, B.: A Bit About Balsams, 1974.
3. Holcombe, H.W.: Weekly Philatelic Gossip, October 15, 1938.
4. Holst, J.: Pontiled Medicine Price Guide, 1998.
5. Richardson, L.C. and C.G.: The Pill Rollers, 1992.
6. Wilson, B. and B.: Nineteenth Century Medicine in Glass, 1971.

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