Another day before the mast: NewsBreak in the morning, where I had to talk about a sex offender named Willie Johnson (known alias, Whizzer O’Dongle) with a straight face. Then meetings about the Top Secret Thing. A full day followed by a full night ahead, it being column night – and tomorrow’s the same damned thing all over again.
But.
I did have some time at the office to scan some stuff. There are two volumes of the 1899 edition of one of the paper’s predecessors, and the pages crumble to the touch. They’re beyond saving, unfortunately. Someone opened the front cover, gripped 20 pages, turned – and they ripped in half. Once the page is torn, it seems to lose all molecular cohesion; try to turn it as gently as you can, and it flakes away to nothingness. The only way to save what’s left is to destroy it carefully. Working from the back, I took out six pages and carefully, carefully scanned them. They’re not from this century. They’re not from the previous century. They’re from the century before that. The century before these ads ran, the Revolutionary War was fought. All that potent history sitting on a shelf for years, forgotten. Well. Nevermind the stories; I was interested in the ads. There’s a cool kicker to this one, so stay with me.
They didn’t use many illustrations, so this one stood out. (I’ve adjusted the images to make them look white again; the pages are horribly yellowed.)
Well, now, it’s not like that. Really:
Beware of Poisonous Minerals when dealing with Deranged Bowels!
Men wanted:
Trust Mexican Mustang Liniment to cure Swinney! This ran eight times across the bottom of the page:
And now, the amazing part. On a page crammed with ads, I chose this one. I really don’t know why.
On a lark I googled the name, thinking he might pop up in some obscure compendium of 19th century fakirs – and was rather amazed to find him pop up in the New York Times a few months after this appearance.
It’s an obituary. Mr. Bishop died shortly after this performance – under mysterious circumstances, the New York Times reports. “The Mind Reader’s Last Trick Ends Fatally. While entertaining the Lambs’ club He is Seized with Cataleptic Fits an Dies in the Clubhouse.” Sory here. (reg. req) The article notes that he was famous for his marital infelicities, had once been placed in a mad house, escaped to Honolulu.
As it turns out, he’d suffered the fits before – and here’s where the Times story gave me a little chill, as thought the hand of Washington Irving Bishop had reached out and guided me to that tiny ad. Which it didn’t, of course. But:
What a tale – told today for no reason other than I had some time to kill while I ate lunch, and decided to look at the back of a book I’d passed every day for years.
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That’s it for now – Curious Lucre around noon, and Lance Lawson Giant-size Sunday Fun editions right now at buzz.mn. See you soon.
Pass it along, if you wish
39 Responses to Thursday, June 04: Jenks’ Dream
Host with the Most
Alias John Thomas Frankfurter, a local Elks, um, Member(you can just hear Eric Idle’s Noel Coward imitation in the background, can’t you? “Uh, thenkyooveddymuch.”).
“So whaddaya wanna call the band?”
“Howzabout ‘Mexican Mustang Liniment’?”
“I like it, but it’s too long.”
“‘Death to Swinney’?”
“I don’t know what the hell that means, but it’ll work.”
“I still like ‘The Beatles’.”
“Shut up, Ringo.”
….Years ago we were cleaning out my grandmother’s home in Cleveland, OH, when we found a book called “The Common Sense Medical Advisor”, which was apparently written by the same Dr. Pierce. There were lots of pics of people recovering from various ailments at the good doctor’s Buffalo sanitarium, and all kinds of testimonials as to how effective his products were. It pushed all his pills pretty heavily (we got the biggest laugh out of his Pleasant Pills) and to this day is still one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. On the other hand, since the active ingredient in those pills was probably opium, it would have been damned hard not to be pleasant.
Mike Kozlowski
Columbia, SC
I love this line: “The news of his death spread rapidly, and many persons who knew Bishop pooh-poohed the idea that he was dead, declaring that the tit or trance was only part of his trick. One man insisted that he had seen the mind reader apparently dead at least twenty times.”
“Apparently dead” – it’s like a Monty Python sketch.
Craig
Does anybody else hear a certain Rolling Stones song or Ray Stevens song while reading the ad for the sugar pills?
I looked up Swinney in my copy of Navin’s Explanatory Horse Doctor Swinney is a strain of the outside muscle of the shoulder and is best treated by application of the following liniment
2oz each, oil of spike, oil of origanum, aqua ammonia, spirits of turpentine, sweet oil, alcohol.
The book was published in 1864 before anyone knew that Mustang Liniment was the way to go when dealing with Swinney.
James, have you read Jack Finney’s wonderful novel, ‘Time and Again’? It hinges on a mystery found in a century-old newspaper clipping and is one of my top ten books ever. There are lots of period photos included–plausibly–with one that blew my mind when I first read it years ago: the arm of the Statue of Liberty, standing alone on a street corner in NYC. I had no idea.
In 2099 will they look back on the medicine of this era and be similarly amused? “Look honey, they actually had drugs to combat impotence! and the called it ‘Male Enhancement!’ Ha!”
“strongly cathartic” = best euphemism for “may cause bowel voiding detectable as a seismic event within a 500 mile radius.”
“carried back to the hotel rigid”
Hmmm…Hotel Rigid, where check-out times are strictly enforced.
No, the band name to use would be The Cataleptic Fits!
I could swear I have heard the story of Baxter somewhere else, perhaps in a fictionalized form. Does it ring any bells for anyone else?
All those cures, and still no treatment for Irritable Bear Syndrome.
@ Andrew: No Baxter bells but my ears are ringing. Perhaps Dr. Pierce has a Tincture for Tingling of Tender Ears.
Wikipedia comes up blank with Swinney and Wind Galls, though both of these may be what that poor bobbysoxer was suffering from in the out of context ad, and mom was bringing out for her Mexican Mustang Liniment
Andrew Says:
June 4th, 2009 at 9:05 am
I could swear I have heard the story of Baxter somewhere else, perhaps in a fictionalized form. Does it ring any bells for anyone else?
Paul Harvey.
Good day.
Should I assume that the Mexican Mustang Liniment be taken in conjunction with a Mexican jumping bean? The results could be startling, if not entertaining.
I doubt the makers of Mexican Mustang Liniment had much success; somehow I just don’t think there were that many Mexican mustangs with sore muscles in Minneapolis in those days.
Patent medicines and psychics, there is a seeker born every minute.
I am highly entertained by the image of a guy with a bag over his head driving a horse-drawn carriage down the street. You just don’t see that sort of thing any more.
James – would it be possible to place a piece of that clear plastic sticky sheeting over the page before removing it? It could possibly even scan well. Just a thought…
The only way to save what’s left is to destroy it carefully.
James, you can turn a phrase. Nicely done
Mexican Mustang Liniment is known by another name, Viagra.
you mistakenly appear to be in deep weeds from the starting line today. standing “before the mast” means that you have been called to account for your misdeeds at morning Captain’s Mast, the shipboard Kangaroo court.
since everything else appears normal, the likelihood is a mild case of Mistaken Simile Poisoning. I can relate. “another day at the oars,” is perhaps closer to the mark.
if there’s an angry, chained gorilla on the drum, it’s indeed a nasty day of work.
an Irritable Bear walking the aisle with a whip would really make it sukc (take that, nasty-word trapper!)
standing “before the mast” means that you have been called to account for your misdeeds at morning Captain’s Mast
I think you’re going to have trouble supporting that one. On-line references indicate that the phrase means “a common sailor,” because sailors slept in a forward area of the ship, i.e., before the mast. Certainly, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., in his famous Two Years Before the Mast, meant that he was at sea for two years, not that he was facing disciplinary action for a two year period. It may also mean what you say, but I haven’t seen that definition in my cursory search–only the meaning of being at sea.
James, thank you for the tidbit on Bishop. I have found articles on him dating back to 1882, at least. It seems that folks never quite knew what to make of him. His story reminds me of a psychic version of Tesla, whose mental strain would wipe him out occasionally. Very curious…
He was carried back to the Hotel Rigid.
I stayed at the Hotel Rigid once. Man, the place was dead!
Why scan the pages? Sometimes a shot from a digital camera (especially with a tripod) will do nicely. Those nineteenth century papers disintegrate rapidly from the acid content of the paper. Maybe scanning/photographing the whole thing is the only way to save them.
Something I have seen done: since the the item being scanned has more value that the scanner, another solution is place the scanner on the document rather than the reverse.
A smaller scanner can easily be man-handled and flipped around.
…purhaps the day could be unsukced if said peramblating, whip totin’ upset ursine was wearing a black leather peek-a-boo bra…….I’ll sign off now and whip myself for delightful pennance.
Irritable Tranny Bears? geez, now we’ve got to deal with discrimination complaints if we argue about that.
Irritable Bear charges extra for that.
@Mike, RE: Jack Finney. Glad someone brought up Finney’s great book. Are you aware that he wrote a sequel to “Time and Again” where the protagonist has to (try to) stop the Titanic from hitting the iceberg? Finney also wrote several other time-travel and alternate history fictions. There’s a good anthology of his short stories called “The Woodrow Wilson Dime” after one of his short stories. (Finney was also the author of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, the original movie of which really gave me the creeps). Finney also wrote a book that contained two true items from the newspapers of the 1880′s, a missing ship and a murder mystery, that he uncovered while researching for “Time and Again.”
“IrritableBear Says:
Irritable Bear charges extra for that.”
Well, of course you do; walking on deck in those stilettos is exhausting. Especially for a bear.
Shaving Irritable Bear’s legs was the true challenge, until Irritable Bear developed Irritable Bear Nair™. Not surprisingly, it’s main ingredient is Mexican Mustang Liniment. Unfortunately, Pierce’s Pleasantly Purgative Pellets have no effect on the resulting Piercing Pain, which irritates Irritable Bear even further.
…peek-a-boos, stilettos, Bear Nair!!!! Ooooh, what have I done – what HAVE i done!!
Jenks is the 1890s Harvey Pekar
Horse geek weighing in! Sweeney shoulder is an injury to a horse’s suprascapular nerve, which can be caused by an ill-fitting collar or a traumatic injury such as a kick or collision. Once the nerve is damaged, the shoulder muscles start to atrophy. Wind galls: fluid in the leg joints caused by injury, making the legs puff up. They’re relatively harmless in and of themselves but are usually a good sign that your mustang needs some rest and possibly some therapeutic shoeing or to be worked on softer ground.
There are so many things which can go wrong with horses which are even merely subject to modern, recreational riding and driving that I sometimes think it’s a miracle that humans managed to get so much work done with them in the past.
After reading “a sex offender named Willie Johnson (known alias, Whizzer O’Dongle)” I thought that the rest of the blog could only go downhill after that.
I was wrong.
Wind galls…is that gas?