Antique Medicines, Urinals, and Chewing Gum

I have been a collector of antique medicines since I was a student in the wilds of West Virginia. One day in 1972, when I was traveling between Philippi and Elkins, WV, I stopped at a little store in the town of Bellington (Population: Me and the guy who ran the store). I went into the Golden Rule Company, an old "company store" once owned by one of the coal companies. During the Great Depression many stores closed, but not the Golden Rule Company.

The first thing that I noticed on the candy shelf was a pack of Baby Ruth Chewing Gum (Circa 1925). It was five cents. Next to the gum was a bottle of Glyco-Heroin cough syrup for 27 cents. Heroin? Unbelievable. Sitting on this shelf in West Virginia was a bottle of cough medicine that apparently contained heroin!

Fascinated, I asked him the cost of the gum and cough medicine. Adding quickly, "That'll be 33 cents," he said.

"That cough medicine is really old," I told him.

"Still good. It has the cork in it. And, you can still chew that gum. Okay, you can have them both for a quarter."

I wasn't really bargaining, but I gave him a quarter. A few years later, I wrote the Curtis Candy Company and they were absolutely thrilled to hear about their gum still being sold, nearly fifty years after the gum factory in Chicago had burned to the ground.

As a very poor student at that time, I asked him if he had any other interesting stuff. I followed him up the steps and he opened the door to a cluttered room full of treasure. There were boxes of chaps, bamboo rug-beaters, and boxes and boxes of old medicines.

If I had the money I should have bought EVERYTHING, but I was only interested in the old medicines. I still have the bill of sale for $33.45 of old medicines, one of everything I could find. That was the beginning of my very bizarre collection and fascination with the bygone age of traveling medicine shows and patent medicines.

In the next year, I perused as many antique stores that I could find. Outside of Clarksburg, WV, I met a dear old woman who owned another interesting store. She proudly showed me some of her old medical items, including a shelf of tattered medical books, a few bottles, and something that immediately caugh my collector's eye.

She had two hand-blown glass urinals (male and female) in a display case. I begged her relentlessly to sell them to me. She adamantly refused. A year later, she gave me all of the books for free, since I was the only one she ever met who wanted them. She again refused to part with those urinals.

Nearly ten years after I had moved to California, I was visiting family in Pennsylvania. I decided to drive several hundred miles back to this little store again to see if I could get her to sell those urinals. I now had money. When I arrived at the store, it was boarded up and abandoned.

As I was peering through the dirty and broken windows, a fellow called out to me from a house across the street. He told me that the woman that owned the store was his mother and that she had died five years ago. Nearly everything in the store was sold at auction.

He had no idea about those two urinals and was sort of surprised that I asked. He opened the old store for me. Dust and cob webs were everywhere. There were broken pieces of furniture scattered all about; a few bookshelves with items no one would want.

No urinals. Just junk.

As I shook his hand, something made me open the door of a dusty cabinet. Sitting proudly on the shelf were those two urinals. I couldn't believe my eyes! "How much?" I asked, as I held them for the first time. "I think my Mom must have left those urinals for you. They're yours. No charge."

In a cabinet behind my desk, I have an unopened box of Mrs. Summer's Womb, Ovarian and Kidney Tonic, Train and Sea Sickness pills, Dr. Kilmer's Female Remedy, Dr. William's Pink Pills for Pale People, and about a thousand more. I have cures for diseases such as torpid liver, gleet, and sallowness.

In my garage, I have various quack devices like the Violetta Ray wand with special attachments for any bodily orifice that you can imagine, electric belts, and some unidentifiable things that I am afraid to plug in. My hidden passion is now revealed to you on my Blog.

Late this summer, I will be present for the grand opening of the Gold Country Medical Museum in Auburn, Calif. If you are ever in the area, you will find various antique medical devices, patent medicines, and other quackery items from the "Moser Collection".

I am keeping the Baby Ruth gum. It has four sticks left. Twenty-five years ago, my son, then two years old, chewed a stick, much to my horror. He survived to become an RN.

In 2025, the year my Baby Ruth chewing gum turns 100, I am going to celebrate by chewing one of those sticks myself.

My precious urinals sit proudly on an uncluttered bookshelf in my bedroom. I suspect I will need those, too. Someday.

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