Patent medicines, packaged drugs with incompletely disclosed contents, were plentiful and profitable in the United States from the period directly following the Civil War through the early twentieth century.
Before the first Pure Food and Drug Laws were passed, the manufacturers and promoters of patent medicines made millions of dollars from a credulous public eager for cures for a variety of ailments, and from many who were unable to afford the regular care of a doctor.
One of the most popular patent medicines of this period was called “Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People” even though there never was a “Dr. Williams” involved with them. But early on there was a certain Canadian physician, Dr. William Jackson, who was. In 1890 he sold the rights to his Pink Pills for Pale People, an alleged “fatigue remedy,” to entrepreneur George Taylor Fulford, also a Canadian. Soon after, this patent medicine would be manufactured, distributed, and marketed in part by Willis T. Hanson of Schenectady.
Willis Tracy Hanson (1858-1933) lived at 821 Union Street in Schenectady and also maintained a country estate in Niskayuna at “The Knolls,” where the General Electric Global Research Center and the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory are presently located. Hanson was prominent in Schenectady’s business circles, as well as in civic affairs.
In addition to operating a pharmacy at the corner of State Street and Broadway, Hanson also served as the first president of the Union National Bank, was president of the Board of Managers of Ellis Hospital and of Schenectady’s Board of Trade, and was a trustee of Union College. In 1892, Hanson secured the sole distribution rights for Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People in the United States.
Hanson was at the center of three separate but seemingly connected companies: the W.T. Hanson Company, the Hanson-Fulford Company, and Dr. Williams’ Medicine Company. The executive office, advertising department, factory, and shipping department of all three companies were located at 147 Centre Street (now Broadway).
A number of prominent area men, including Edwin Conde of Schenectady and Dr. Alexander Duncan Langmuir of Albany, served on the Dr. Williams’ Medicine Company’s board of directors. Conde also served for a time as the publicity promoter for the company. At the turn of the century, the business of the Dr. Williams’ Medicine Company was booming.
A 1901 Omaha Daily News article recounting a visit to the advertising department of Hanson’s companies heralds the business as “an example of what can be accomplished by young men in this twentieth century of keen business rivalry and ceaseless competition.” It describes mail being sent out “in drays” from the office, as a “score of young women are kept busy addressing and mailing advertising matter. In another room, over 400 publications are on file and a force of experienced clerks is engaged in checking the Pink Pill advertisements.”
Conde, the advertising manager, is described as being like “a general, moving his troops across a battlefield.” Advertisements for Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People could be found in newspapers from across the United States, as well as in the West Indies and in Central and South America.
The advertisements for Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People, like those for other patent medicines of the period, offered miraculous personal testimonies, crediting the Pink Pills with rescuing themselves or their children from the brink of death. Statements such as “I tried them and firmly believe that if I had not I should be in my grave right now” and “That Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills saved my life is beyond doubt,” were common.
In one advertisement, the Pink Pills were even credited with completely curing paralysis after a child took the pills for four months. The packaging included with the Pink Pills claimed to cure a variety of physical and emotional ailments, including “lack of ambition,” memory loss, chorea, heart problems, influenza, “pale and sallow complexions,” impotence, dizziness, hysteria, rheumatism, neuralgia, St. Vitus’ Dance, sciatica, “depression of spirits,” and “all forms of Female Weakness.”
In addition to newspaper advertisements, Dr. Williams’ Medicine Company also created advertising novelties to stimulate sales. One that dates from 1896 was a black and pink “welcome harp.” The strings were stretched across the harp in front of a sounding board, and on strings suspended by wires from the top of the harp were pink balls meant to represent the Pink Pills. The harps were to be distributed to drugstores, where each would be affixed inside the front door of the business. When a customer opened or shut the door, the “pills” would chime on the strings. Written across the length of the harp were the words “The Welcome Harp. It says, use Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People.”
As the twentieth century dawned, patent medicines came under increased scrutiny. In an article in Collier’s entitled “The Great American Fraud,” Samuel Hopkins Adams took on the patent medicine industry. Adams listed Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People in a group of nostrums he referred to as “the most conspicuous of this kind now being foisted on the public,” and noted the composition of the pills as “green vitriol, starch and sugar.” Adams’ articles led to the passage of the first Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. The Act required more accurate labeling of medicines, and curbed some of the most misleading, overstated, or fraudulent claims that appeared on the labels of patent medicines.
In 1912, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station conducted an analysis of Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People. The author of a subsequent report could not resist commenting: “in using the pills the patient is directed first to purge the bowels, then take the pills, bathe frequently, keep the bowels regular, and partake of a nutritious diet. The thought occurs that perhaps the desired result might well be secured by following all of this treatment except the taking of the pills.”
Dr. Pincus Rothberg, a chemist with the Bureau of Chemistry at the Port of New York, also analyzed the pills and found the composition of the pills to be more than 37 percent sugar, 13 percent iron sulphate, 11 percent potassium carbonate, 15 percent starch, and 17 percent vegetable substance, with traces of talc and a small quantity of strychnine. Rothberg’s analysis was published in The Composition of Certain Patent and Proprietary Medicines in 1917.
The examination of the Pink Pills led to a court battle, and in 1917, the Dr. Williams’ Medicine Company was found guilty of mis-branding its product.
Although the Dr. Williams’ Medicine Company continued to exist in Schenectady through the late 1920s, it was surely in its decline as the tide turned away from the patent medicine era. In 1922, popular rhyming syndicated columnist Walt Mason singled out Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People in two different columns disparaging patent medicines.
“And then at last we’re ailing and getting worse each day, and pink pills, unavailing, seem made to throw away,” he wrote in one, and “I take pink pills to cure my ills, my gout and flu and tetter; I swallow ten, and now and then I think I’m feeling better” in another.
The terminology of the patent medicines began to be used as references to touted would-be panaceas that have little actual benefit; in 1926, a congressman derided a bill before the House of Representatives as being “pink pills for pale people.” As early as the 1930s, patent medicines, including Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People, were being exhibited as artifacts of a bygone era, a far cry from being promoted as a cure-all less than 30 years prior.
Willis T. Hanson died in 1933 at age 75 and is buried in Vale Cemetery in Schenectady. Appropriately, his headstone is a very lovely shade of pink.
Illustrations, from above: Pink Pills for Pale People advertisement; portrait of Willis Tracy Hanson; and Advertisement ca. 1912 with drawing by Schenectady artist Margaret Curran-Smith.
Melissa Tacke wrote this essay for the Schenectady County Historical Society Newsletter, Volume 57. Become a member of the Society online at schenectadyhistorical.org.
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