Author Archives: Kim Connor

Lash’s Kidney and Liver Bitters

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Lots of bottle fragments in our collection have bits of writing on them, but how do you go from a partial inscription to figuring out what they mean? Transcribing embossed marks (words on a bottle that were formed through machine molding) requires three skills: archival research, imagination, and curiosity. This example (one of Alana’s favorites) had the letters “…THARTIC” and “PURIFIER”. With a bit of guesswork, we could tell that it probably had originally said “CATHARTIC” and “BLOOD PURIFIER”. With this information we could either try a Google search or turn to our trusty copy of The Bottle Book by Richard Fike which catalogs most 19th century American medicine bottles. Sure enough, that showed us that our bottle matched Lash’s Kidney and Liver Bitters: the Best Cathartic and Blood Purifier. 

image of two mending fragments of amber glass reading "THARTIC" "PURIFIER" in embossed text. Scales below and above.

Of all the hundreds of different patent medicine products, Lash’s is one of the few which we know quite a bit about. Three articles (see below) by Michael Torbenson, Jonathan Erlen et al. lay out the history of the company, its advertising strategy, and the contents of Lash’s Bitters which was produced under several different names between 1884 and the 1960s. 

newspaper clipping describing the medical benefits of Lash's Kidney and Liver Bitters

Ventura Weekly Democrat, Volume XI, Number 22, 12 January 1894. Courtesy of the California Digital Newspaper Collection, Center for Bibliographic Studies and Research, University of California, Riverside, http://cdnc.ucr.edu

Bitters, an alcohol product infused with bitter plants, were first sold as medicines. As you can tell from the name, Lash’s Kidney and Liver Bitters was a laxative specifically aimed at treating illnesses of the kidneys and liver but also promised relief from “Biliousness, Malaria, Dyspepsia, Indigestion, Chills and Fever, Sick Headache, Sour Stomach, Neuralgia, Pain in Back” (Torbenson et al. 2000: 59). Over time, however, Torbenson et al. (2001) have shown that the advertising changed to focus on the product’s alcohol content and began to market it primarily to men drinking in saloons, probably as a reaction to changes in regulation. 

Advertisement for Lash's bittters. Left side shows man drinking with the words "The Man's Regulator for thirty years. Lash's Bitters for constipation drink it straight. At all hotels & bars." The right hand page says "Revised rules for all Card Games Especially for Onlookers. Published by Lash's Bitters Co."

Notice how the advertising has shifted away from medicine and towards men’s social drinking. Public domain, courtesy of the National Library of Medicine resource.nlm.nih.gov/101702454.

 

By testing the contents of a sealed bottle of Lash’s Bitters from around 1918, Torbenson et al. (2000) found that it had a high alcohol content (19.2% ethanol, similar to fortified wine, as well as methanol), no evidence of the advertised laxative ingredient, and toxic amounts of lead. That helps to explain why greater regulation of patent medicines was needed! 

Our fragments of a bitters bottle, and another, slightly later whole bottle, point to the popularity of Lash’s bitters and similar products for self-medicating at a time when visiting a doctor was expensive and not necessarily much more helpful. In the Market Street Chinatown, inhabitants combined Traditional Chinese Medicine with patent medicines and compounded medicines from pharmacies to treat themselves. 

More information:

Torbenson, B.C., J. Erlen & M.S. Torbenson. 2001. Lash’s Bitters: From the Bathroom to the Barroom. Pharmacy in History 43. American Institute of the History of Pharmacy: 14–22.

Torbenson, M. & J. Erlen. 2003. A Case Study of the Lash’s Bitters Company—Advertising Changes after the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906 and the Sherley Amendment of 1912. Pharmacy in History 45. American Institute of the History of Pharmacy: 139–49.

Torbenson, M., R.H. Kelly, J. Erlen, L. Cropcho, M. Moraca, B. Beiler, K.N. Rao & M. Virji. 2000. Lash’s: A bitter medicine: Biochemical analysis of an historical proprietary medicine. Historical Archaeology 34: 56–64. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03374313.

Wills, M. 2021. The Bitter Truth About Bitters. JSTOR Daily. July 9. https://daily.jstor.org/the-bitter-truth-about-bitters/.

Preserves in the Past

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I’ve been busily digging through the glass again after coming back from the winter break and, as a keen preserver and jam-maker, I was intrigued by two fragments in particular. 

Wax Seal Glass Jars 

The first one looks like this: 

A blue gloved hand holds a piece of aqua glass which is curved and has a deep grove in the middle

It’s part of the rim of an aqua canning jar with what’s called a groove ring wax seal finish. The finish is the part around the opening of a glass vessel and particular types of finish are associated with particular types of closures. An external thread finish, for example, is commonly used today on jars which have screw on metal or plastic lids.

Since finishes can be quite distinctive, it is sometimes possible to use them to infer the date or contents of a glass bottle or jar. In this case, we know that wide-mouthed vessels with a groove ring wax seal finish are canning jars, sold either for home preserving or sometimes with contents inside them.  

The groove ring wax seal finish was closed by putting melted wax in the groove and then placing a metal or glass lid over the top of the jar and pushing it into the wax to create a seal. To see some whole examples, take a look at the canning jars section of the SHA Bottle Identification Website. 

This type of jar was in use for much of the nineteenth-century and even into the twentieth century, but they were most popular from the 1850s to the 1870s which means there is a good chance that this jar was used by someone living at the Chinatown. 

Packer’s Tumblers

When I was little I remember visiting friends’ houses and being fascinated by plain drinking glasses decorated with colorful cartoon characters. Their lives as drinking glasses was actually a reincarnation; the jars were sold originally for their contents. Filled with jam or peanut butter or other spreads, the jars were designed to be attractive enough for pocket-conscious consumers to repurpose as tumblers. It’s not hard to imagine kids trying to finish off the last of the grape jelly to be able to collect the next character in the lineup! 

The earliest ‘packer’s tumblers’, as they’re known by archaeologists, were more utilitarian in design with no decoration or maybe simple flutes or a few lines of fine vertical ridges beneath the rim.  These vertical lines are a sign that the jar used a particular type of lid called an Anchor Cap closure which was introduced in the 20th century. 

In the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project collection, I’ve just found our first packer’s tumbler which is a little bit unusual with five lines of these vertical ridges (1-3 lines is more common). Probably in use between 1908 and the 1960s, this jar reminds us of the site’s history after the catastrophic fire in the Chinatown and points to a gradual shift from home-preserving to purchasing packaged food products. 

 

a picture of a broken glass jar on a laboratory table with a sorting tray beside it. The jar has five rows of small vertical lines which start about 1.5 cm below the rim.
a gloved hand holds the packer tumbler on an angle so that the lines of ridges are more easily seen. This also reveals that the glass has some patination, so there is a kind of rainbow reflection on the surface of the glass.

For more information and other examples of this type of jar, check out this post on the MSU Campus Archaeology Program’s blog called Not Ready for this Jelly Juice Glass or the examples of packer’s tumblers from the Diagnostic Artifacts in Maryland site.