• Shock of the old: 10 scandalous vintage medicines – from asthma cigarettes to cocaine wine

    Shock of the old: 10 scandalous vintage medicines – from asthma cigarettes to cocaine wine
    Cure any ailment! Never known to fail! Early medicine adverts made grand claims but they look alarming todayThe confusion with patent medicines starts with the name, since they were rarely ever patented; manufacturers just thought it sounded cool. Bamboozling was always part of the package: from the 17th century, concoctions of water, alcohol and herbs were sold with wild claims and exotic origin stories. In the 1630s, Anderson’s Pills were hyped with dubious claims that the recipe came fr

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