Sitcoms
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Appreciate the further research - I didn't even know about these. Old medicine has to be one of the most interesting topics - both for the approaches and sometimes archaic practices. From what I've found it does certainly seem that he had at least an inkling of medical knowledge, though who knows what this product specifically had. Certainly an interesting bottle and person behind it!I believe the "lung inhaler" was a device, not a patent medicine. $15 sounds like way too much for even the most expensive patent medicines of the era, I don't remember seeing many which were sold for more than $2. It was probably something along the lines of this:
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Dr. Wolfe sounds like he lived quite the life! I wonder if his patent medicines had any actual benefit, since it sounds like he was a real scientist they may not have been totally fraudulent, at least by the standards of what was considered good medical practice at that time. I'm guessing it was some sort of eucalyptol or camphor-based product. Also a good example of how "remedy" doesn't exclusively show up on 20th century bottles, it became much more popular after the Pure Food and Drug Act banned the word "cure" but it was definitely in use before then.