Brave Little State is Vermont Public’s listener-powered journalism podcast. Every episode begins with a question. Today:
“What's the story behind the old medicine bottles buried in my backyard?
Local historian and independent reporter Kelby Greene dives into the archives to unravel the snake oil sensation that swept the Green Mountain State.
Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from Vermont Humanities, in partnership with the Vermont 250 Commission and JAM, Junction Arts and Media. For more, check out Kelby Greene’s podcast series, Roadside Vermont.
Note: Our show is made for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript below. Transcripts are generated using a combination of robots and human transcribers, and they may contain errors.
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Buried treasure
Josh Crane: From Vermont Public and the NPR Network, this is Brave Little State. I’m Josh Crane. And I’m here with local historian and independent reporter Kelby Greene who lives in Norwich. Hi, Kelby.
Kelby Greene: Hi, Josh.
Josh Crane: So, Kelby, you are the host and creator of a show called Roadside Vermont, where you drive around the state stopping at roadside markers and monuments and explaining their backstories, basically?
Kelby Greene: Pretty much. My record mileage is 750 miles in the state of Vermont in one week.
Josh Crane: That is extremely impressive. And we’re very happy to have you here today, because normally on the show, people submit questions about Vermont to us. But in this case, someone brought their Vermont question to you, and you set out to find an answer.
So, take us back — where did this all start?
Kelby Greene: It all started with this family in White River Junction that I babysit for. A couple years back, John Haffner, the dad, was digging around the yard building this retaining wall. And he was tearing up sod and digging in the dirt. And then, all of a sudden, his shovel hit something hard.
John Haffner: I kept hitting what initially I thought were rocks. But then continued to just keep digging up pieces of glass bottles.
Kelby Greene: And it wasn’t just one glass bottle.
Josh Crane: OK.
Kelby Greene: It was tons of them. They were all over the yard.
John Haffner: I had no idea what they were, and was confused as to why they just seemed to be littered throughout the yard and buried and in numerous different places.
Kelby Greene: These weren’t just your average glass bottles. They looked really old, kind of like old liquor bottles. And they all had these strange names embossed, or, like, stamped right onto the surface of the glass.
John Haffner: The bottles all had something like “remedy” or “tonic,” “quick cure,” I think, or something like that.
Josh Crane: Yeah, this is some old-timey pharmacy stuff. These are things that I guess existed? But they sound sort of fake.
Kelby Greene: Like snake oil.
Josh Crane: 100%. And wait — so, why did John come to you with questions about these bottles?
Kelby Greene: Well, he knew about this story I’ve been working on for my podcast, Roadside Vermont. Basically, in the late 1800s, there was a ton of DIY medicine-making happening all over the place, but especially right here in Vermont. Everyone was going crazy for it.
Up in Enosburg Falls, there used to be a company run by Dr. B.J. Kendall. He was this sort of charismatic doctor who claimed to have found the best cures for everything. They’ve found bottles of his stuff in California, western Canada, and even Australia. Some are now at the Smithsonian, actually. His company was a big deal — which isn’t to say the medicine was good for you. A lot of these cures had very high levels of alcohol and opium.
Josh Crane: (Laughter) Yikes, that is heavy stuff. But if his medicine is significant enough to be in the Smithsonian, maybe the bottle John found buried in his backyard is, too?
Kelby Greene: Maybe so. I actually brought one of the bottles he found with me to the studio today.
Josh Crane: Let’s see.
Kelby Greene: So, it’s this, like, five- or six-inch tall bottle. It’s kind of like, clear, aqua color with little bubbles in it.
(Tapping glass)
Josh Crane: Definitely glass. It’s sort of narrow, too. Like, it really would fit in your back pocket or, like, in your nightstand or something.
Kelby Greene: Absolutely, absolutely.
Josh Crane: And it’s also surprisingly clean for a bottle that’s been just buried underneath the earth for who knows how long.
Kelby Greene: There’s like a tiny chip in it, and that’s about it. And it has this name on it: “D.W. Bancroft’s Liniment or Instant Relief.”
Josh Crane: Liniment or instant relief?
Kelby: Yeah.
Josh: That does seem like a pretty good promise.
Kelby Greene: Exactly. I want some instant relief.
And then it has a place on here: Marshfield, Vermont.
Kelby Greene: So, John gave me this bottle, which is clearly related in some way to this DIY medicine craze that swept Vermont in the 1800s. And he wanted me to find out:
John Haffner: Like, why are there so many medicine bottles in our yard?
Kelby Greene: And what’s the story behind this D.W. Bancroft?
John Haffner: And what was in the medicine?
Kelby Greene: And, you know, is it worth anything?
Josh Crane: And so you have come today with some answers. And we’re gonna turn it over to you, right after this break.
_
An afternoon with the Yankee Bottle Club
Kelby Greene: Every fall, there’s a convention for bottle collectors in Keene, New Hampshire, 30 minutes east of the Vermont border.
Of course, I had to attend. And I brought the bottle John gave me to try and get some answers
Tables and tables full of antique glass bottles are all crowded into a high school gymnasium.
One table is covered in rows of locally made glass in every color of the rainbow. Another is full of glass trinkets — animal figurines, nativity scene-type pieces. On one table is a dark brown whiskey flask from the 1700s. It’s worth upwards of $1,400.
And behind every table is a very proud glass collector, showing off their best finds.
Like Michael Stefano. He has a number of old medicine bottles on his table — bottles that look a little bit like the one question-asker John Haffner gave me. And Michael knows a bit about the time period when this medicine was produced.
Michael Stefano: So, people experienced so much pain and debilitating sickness in the 19th century. They didn't have access to good healthcare, the quality of the food was bad, generally speaking. So they, you know, marketed all kinds of remedies. So, you know, liniments and cures like this were quite common.
Kelby Greene: By the way, a “liniment” is like a topical oil or ointment you’d rub on sore muscles. Think Bengay or Icy Hot. But back then, it described pretty much any sort of medicine.
Michael Stefano: And back then there were no regulations. So you could claim that this would cure cancer, you could claim anything you wanted — and perfectly legal at that point in time.
Kelby Greene: Charismatic entrepreneurs all over Vermont concocted their own products and gave them lots of memorable names: “Dr. Rowell’s Invigorating Tonic” in Franklin. “N.K. Brown’s Teething Cordial” in Montpelier. “Dr. Ingram’s Nervine Pain Extractor” in Vergennes.
“D.W. Bancroft’s Liniment or Instant Relief” in Marshfield.
Jim Charuhas: Definitely a Vermont bottle. Marshfield.
Kelby Greene: Jim Charuhas, of Bellows Falls, is the president of the Yankee Bottle Club, which hosts the convention. I give him the bottle from John’s backyard to inspect. He holds it up, one hand on either end, and twists it around to get a closer look.
Jim Charuhas: It's, you know, aqua, square. I would say 1880s, 1890s by the, uh, lip treatment. The line up the seam of the glass isn't– doesn't go up to the lip or through the lip, so indicating it's a blown bottle. Yes, it's a beautiful hand-blown bottle.
Michael George: It is a pretty interesting bottle because it has the name of the doctor on it.
Kelby Greene: The next collector I talk to is another Michael: Michael George. Michael’s like, John’s bottle is pretty interesting. But not that interesting. It’s not as old as the most sought-after bottles.
Also:
Michael George: This is an aqua, so this is a much more common color. But it's still a nice early bottle and, uh, would look great in somebody's window.
Kelby Greene: “It would look great in somebody’s window.” Yikes.
It's starting to seem like this bottle might not be the hottest item at the convention. A collector named Don Pelletier throws some more cold water on our bottle in question.
Don Pelletier: It’s not really that special. Um, you'll probably see 'em here for $20 or less usually.
Kelby Greene: Then I meet a collector named Lane. He’s into bottle hunting. His uncle taught him where to find old, old bottles, buried in the ground.
Lane: My rule is within 10 feet of anywhere in this place there’s a dump.
Kelby Greene: Littering didn’t mean what it does today. People were pretty carefree about getting rid of their trash wherever it was convenient. Like, say, an empty lot. Or the woods behind their house.
Lane says anywhere in New England, there’s probably an old dumping ground nearby.
Lane: So you walk 10 steps and you're gonna find a dump. Right over the creek, there's probably a dump that people threw away milk bottles or soda bottles and medicine bottles.
Kelby Greene: And those bottles are more likely to survive underground because they don’t rust like metal or decompose like wood and paper.
Lane: And so you can get all these very rare and exotic bottles free if you dig them.
Kelby Greene: So, John Haffner’s backyard was probably an old 1800s trash heap. And all that remains today are the medicine bottles — which, according to my new friends at the convention, aren’t going to turn John into an Antiques Roadshow millionaire.
But, I still want to learn more about our bottles’ namesake doctor, D.W. Bancroft. That’s when we come back.
'Heroic medicine'
Josh Crane: Welcome back to Brave Little State. Josh here, and I’m back in the studio with Kelby. Hi, Kelby.
Kelby Greene: Hey, Josh.
Josh Crane: So, you got back from the bottle convention with some pretty good clarity about the bottles John Haffner found in his backyard. But not so much about the guy whose name is on the glass, D.W. Bancroft. So, what did you do next?
Kelby Greene: Well, I decided to put my history degree to work.
I started by searching D.W. Bancroft's name in a newspaper archive. So, the earliest mention I could find was in this publication called the Green Mountain Freeman. Apparently, in like 1854 he won an award. I've got a clip for you, Josh, you can look at.
Josh Crane: OK, let's see. It says, “... at the Washington County Fair in the Vegetables & Fruit category, he won second place for Best Pears.” Well done, Mr. Bancroft — Dr. Bancroft.
Kelby Greene: No, he's not a doctor.
Josh Crane: He's not a doctor. (Laughter)
Kelby Greene: He’s not a doctor.
Josh Crane: Well done, Mr. Bancroft. Although apparently they weren't as good as L.M. Scott's pears.
Kelby Greene: I, like, I don't want second-place pears.
Josh Crane: (Laughter) OK, what else did you find?
Kelby Greene: So then in an 1868 edition of the Argus & Patriot, Bancroft started advertising his very own invention.
Josh Crane: OK, let's see. It says here, “Green Mountain Washer.” Is that a washing machine?
Kelby Greene: “The best ever invented,” is what it says.
Josh Crane: It must be true!
Kelby Greene: Now, I can't personally attest to the effectiveness of his washing machine, but it doesn't seem like it was a huge commercial success.
Josh Crane: It was the best ever invented. How is that possible?
Kelby Greene: Well, about a year later, the ads disappear altogether.
Josh Crane: OK. So then, so, he's been through pears, and then he was in his washing machine era. And then where did he go next?
Kelby Greene: Well, he went to medicine. In late 1869, Bancroft started advertising a vegetable liniment to cure pains and other ailments.
Josh Crane: Sort of like the bottle that started this whole thing?
Kelby Greene: A little bit.
Josh Crane: OK. So did this venture fare better than his failed washing machine venture?
Kelby Greene: I think this venture really took off. Over the next 10 years, he advertised more and more across the state in a bunch of different newspapers, but he also launched a ton of new products, like a liver syrup for “purifying the blood and liver,” a lung syrup, a powder for horses and livestock, a worm elixir.
Josh, could you read that newspaper ad?
Josh Crane: Yeah, so this says, “Bancroft's Worm Elixir — will destroy them. Try it. D.W. Bancroft, Marshfield, Vermont.” He will destroy the worms.
Kelby Greene: Exactly. So, then, business was going so well for Bancroft, he bought a printing press to print his own ads. He moved to a bigger shop. But then, things ended just as quickly as they'd begun. His ads disappear entirely in the 1880s. And it might have something to do with an article in the Daily Journal.
Josh Crane: OK, so you've pulled this up here, and this is 1886 and it says, “D.W. Bancroft of Marshfield” — and a bunch of other people — “are convicted for selling, furnishing and giving away intoxicating liquors contrary to law.”
Kelby Greene: Basically, he was illegally selling liquor when there was statewide prohibition.
More from Brave Little State: What role did Vermont play during Prohibition?
Josh Crane: And was he selling them in his medicine?
Kelby Greene: I think so. After that, there are no more ads for any of Bancroft's medicines.
Josh Crane: Wow. So it really was a very particular type of instant relief.
Kelby Greene: Yeah, pretty strong stuff. And then in 1887 he rents out his shop to a saddle maker, and his business is done.
So here's what we know for sure: D.W. Bancroft was this tinkerer in Marshfield, Vermont who just sort of found his way into the medicine trade — which, it turns out, was actually a pretty common story in Vermont back in the day.
_
Amanda Gustin, director of collections and access at the Vermont Historical Society, refers to this period of the late 1800s as the era of heroic medicine — the heroes being people like Bancroft, inventors of supposed miracle cures.
Amanda Gustin: Today, I don't necessarily think about the singular person who discovered a medicine or or formulated a drug. I think about, like, the teams of scientists who did the trials and did all the experiments leading up to it. And this is more an era where it was one guy at his bench and he figured it out.
Kelby Greene: When Bancroft made his cures, he likely did so without any formal training. Tons of enterprising druggists and tinkerers across the country marketed similar cures. They would file a patent for their concoctions, earning them the name “patent medicines.” Amanda shows me an advertisement for a Vermont-made “Lung Curl” — and that’s C-U-R-L.
Amanda Gustin: Curl Medicine Company. So, I’m gonna describe it since we’re on audio. So, this is an outline pug — very lavishly painted little pug — who has a tag attached to his collar that said, “I am a cure-o dog you see. I neither bark nor bite. If you use Lung Curl, you will not bark all night.” So it's an anti-coughing, um, but it's kind of ridiculously charming.
Kelby Greene: The ingredients that make up these unregulated medicines varied widely. One drug Amanda shows me seems pretty harmless.
Amanda Gustin: “Witch hazel, arnica, rosemary, hemlock, cedarwood, camphor, castile soap and ammonia water.” Like, some of those you'd see in a natural foods, uh, section today.
Kelby Greene: But others, they were chock full of opium, alcohol and even poisons. In an old recipe notebook, Amanda pulls out the ingredient list for a drug made in Norwich, Vermont. It was called “Newton’s Hair Pills.”
Amanda Greene: “Socotrine aloe, scumminy, colocynthine” — his handwriting is not great — calomel. That one I know is a medication that contains high degrees of mercury. Uh, yep.
Kelby Greene: The historical society also has our bottle in its collection: D.W. Bancroft’s Liniment or Instant Relief. Sadly, there isn’t a full ingredient list — though Amanda says that most of these cures did have alcohol in them.
With the benefit of hindsight, these 19th-century cures — wild, unregulated medicines — seem really risky, like obvious scams. I mean, today, we have a whole establishment that regulates and tests medicines before they can even be given to humans. We have doctors and pharmacists who are certified as professionals. Back then, any individual could cook up a cure and promise the most. It’s the definition of snake oil.
But Amanda says there’s another, more generous way to consider this history.
Amanda Gustin: We have such a 20th, 21st-century worldview. We’re so used to like, oh, the scientific method, and it's proven and everything like that. And if we didn't know any of that, if we weren't even like at the base level, scientifically literate — if, like, almost no one was — and imagine you were very, very sick, you would want to feel better. Imagine if, like, the horse that you depended on for your livelihood was lame, and if you did not fix that lameness, you were not gonna get the crop in and your family might starve. Imagine one of your children had asthma a hundred years ago. Um, it's a terrifying disease now, and we have modern steroids and other medicines. It’s absolutely understandable.
Kelby Greene: Yeah, that's a really good point. It's not like they all had a primary care physician and they decided to go with this. No. Yeah. Random, unestablished medicine like this was, in some ways, the establishment, right?
Amanda Gustin: Absolutely. Some of these are pre- even accreditation of medical schools and things like that. I generally have a great deal of sympathy for people who, for people who are involved in all of this.
Kelby Greene: We don’t know what was in D.W. Bancroft’s heart as he concocted his Liniment or Instant Relief, his liver syrup, or even his worm elixir.
It’s easy to speculate — maybe he was a fraudster and mixed up so-called medicine to make a quick buck. Or maybe it’s more complicated, and he was actually doing his best to help people but lacked any formal training.
And all that’s left are these glass bottles, pieces of garbage, that survived more than a century buried underground, in what is now John Haffner’s backyard. In the future, at least they’ll look nice in his window.
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Credits
Thanks to John Haffner of White River Junction for the great question.
This episode was reported by Kelby Greene and produced by Josh Crane. Editing and additional production from the rest of the BLS team: Sabine Poux and Burgess Brown. Our executive producer is Angela Evancie. Theme music by Ty Gibbons; other music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to Catherine Hurley, Shirley Duso and Creighton Hall.
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