Osgood's India Cholagogue

[UnderMiner]

Excavated this neat little tooled-blob patent medicine bottle today as the sun was going down. It's called Osgood's India Cholagogue (Pronounced Kah-la-gog).

Dr. Charles Osgood introduced his India Cholagogue in 1830, including with each bottle a 16 page booklet titled The Causes, Treatment, and Cure of Fever and Ague, and other Diseases of Bilious Climates. The medicine was meant to promote an increased flow of bile. Undoubtedly this was from back when the Humoral Theory of medicine was still widely believed (before Germ Theory).

An advertisement for the product from a newspaper from 1842:

Here is a recipe published by Fenner's Twentieth Century Formulary for an imitation Ague Mixture of Osgood's Cholagogue. Notice Fowler's Solution of Arsenic as one of the listed ingredients:

 

[klaatu]

Very nice bottle. Looks like it is in excellent condition.

 

[webe992]

Is it pontiled?

 

[CanadianBottles]

Excellent find! Not one I remember seeing before. I'm surprised to see that it has a tooled lip, apart from that it looks like a much earlier bottle. I guess they didn't change the form of their bottles for a while.

 

[nhpharm]

Neat bottle! They definitely kept the bottle style the same for a long time...I dug one in a circa 1907 dump in Texas that was the same exact shape as a pontiled one I have...just no pontil and a tooled rather than applied lip.

 

[UnderMiner]

Is it pontiled?

No, not pontil, but hand finished lip, not machined.