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.
[Illustration: 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 17C, 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 17E. Vegetable extracts that would not now be in anybody’s
pharmacopoeia were often sold in panel bottles (Fig. 17B).
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. 17D). 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.
[Illustration: 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. 18A) contained Maltine, probably a digestive and nutritional
supplement rather than a cure. The blue bottle (Fig. 18B), 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.
18E) 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.
[Illustration: Figure 19. Apothecary’s vials, 18th or early 19th
century. The neck and base fragments are not all from the same
bottles.]
[Illustration: Base fragments.]