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Doctor Williams Pink Pills for Pale People were marketed as a remedy for lots of things, as we'll see. But one of those things was how it promised to cure anemia, specifically the symptoms of iron deficiency anemia and chlorosis. Chlorosis is actually a type of iron deficiency anemia, and its
hallmark is a greenish tint to your skin. Anemia was commonly diagnosed in adolescent girls and women in the nineteenth century, and common symptoms include pale skin, weakness, fatigue, dizziness, heart palpitations, and sort of a general malaise. The pink in the name, by the way, that was a nod to the rosy complexion of all the cured patients who'd use the product. And here's the thing, ballot, these pink pills, they may have actually worked, maybe a little bit. Welcome to Criminalia.
I'm Maria Tremarky and I'm Holly Frye. Doctor Williams. Pink pills for Pale People were advertised as a cure all here's what they actually were coated in a pink colored jacket of sugar, and analysis of the pills conducted in nineteen oh nine for the British Medical Association revealed that the pills were a combination of an iron compound and magnesium sulfate and some sugar and a pinch of powdered licorice.
You might know magnesium sulfate as epsom salt. It's a chemical compound made up of magnesium, sulfur and oxygen, and today it's used for potential health benefits like relieving muscle pain. The iron component is the star here. We've seen the included iron listed in different forms on different pink pill labels, in related pamphlets, and even in the results of government chemical analysis. Iron oxide, citrated iron chloride, sulfate of iron,
and ferrous fumerate are all the potential forms. These forms of iron are, by the way, everywhere. You'll find them used as a colorant in cosmetics, food, personal care products, ink, paint, and plastics, even sometimes concrete. Some sunscreens contain it for its photoprotective properties, and you will also find it in the pharmaceutical industry, including as treatment for iron deficiency anemia. Basically, the pills were an iron supplement, which theoretically could have
benefited people with iron deficiency anemia. Though the iron content we're talking about here was notably pretty low. Because approximately one third of the iron in the pills had oxidized in the samples that chemists used during the nineteen oh nine analysis, they concluded that the pills had been quote very carelessly prepared. The formula went through several changes over the years, and one late in the game version included ALO for its laxative properties. Like the health benefits of
an iron supplement for someone with anemia, This isn't bunk information. Today, alo is used as a stimulant laxative.
When we talk about patent medicines, it's easy to lump them all together under an umbrella of substances that contained dangerous ingredients. There were mostly two types of ingredients lists for these unregulated drugs in their heyday. Some were simply a combination of flavoring, coloring, and aromatics, and while they didn't work, they weren't harmful. But others contained dangerous opiates alcohol or strychnine, for instance, and those could be lethal
if the dosage was too high. The so called remedy was often worse than the disease in those cases. But those products that didn't injure or kill you, like the Pink pills, were problematic in a different way, and that's how they were advertised. Often patent medicine manufacturers did not follow through on their health promises, and that's ultimately it. That is what got a lot of people in trouble, those big promises with no delivery.
Originally produced and patented in eighteen sixty six by doctor William Frederick Jackson, who was a real physician in Ontario, Canada, the Pink pills were promoted and marketed as a cure for digestive problems, malaria, wound healing, and general poor mental health. The remedy picked up more healing promises over the years and was advertised in the Ventura Free Press in eighteen ninety six as a tonic that would also cure quote the blood and nerves to treat anemia, lack of energy, depression,
and poor appetite. By the end of the decade, advertisements for the pills began to claim they had a lot more benefit. They were claimed to be a restorative for partial paralysis, sciatica, neuralgia, rheumatism, tension, headaches, influenza, heart palpitations, pale and sallow complexions, all forms of weakness, either in male or female, and all diseases resulting from the quote
pitiated humors in the blood. And that transformation of the Pink Pills into a cu ale is due to a man named George Fulford.
George Taylor Fulford of Brockville, Ontario, Canada bought the patent for the pills in eighteen ninety and turned them into an international brand and a sensation. Fulford had attended business school before apprenticing at his brother William's drug store. He took over that business when he was twenty two years old. Five years later, he was elected to the first of what would be twelve terms as an Alderman. He didn't enter the patent medicine trade until he was in his
mid thirties, and he certainly made an entrance. The international success of the Pink Pills is due to the marketing prowess of this Canadian politician, Senator George Fulford. Fulford formed G. T. Fulford and Company in eighteen eighty seven to manufacture and distribute patent medicines. Three years after opening, that company acquired the rights to Doctor Williams Pink Pills for Pale People, allegedly paying fifty three dollars and one cent to doctor
William Jackson for the recipe. Fulford was listed in the Chemist and Druggist Journal as the owner of the Doctor Williams Medicine Company, having purchased the patent. In fact, he marketed the Pink Pills through the Doctor Williams Medicine Company, which he had turned into the trading arm of G. T. Fulford and Company, and he made a fortune within five years. He expanded the Doctor Williams Medicine Company not only throughout North America, but into Europe, including the United Kingdom and
all across the British Empire and all. He advertised the Pink Pills and all of their healing glory in more than eighty countries from Canada to Australia.
We're going to take a break for a word from our sponsors. When we're back, we'll be sharing examples of marketing and advertising copy for the Pink Pills and how first hand testimonials were plentiful and super important in these campaigns.
Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about how the marketing and advertising of Doctor Williams pink pills worked.
Beginning in the early eighteen nineties, the publicity for the pink pills was written by one guy, John Mackenzie, a Canadian businessman who also had journalism experience. In eighteen ninety two he was made manager of the medicine company and held the position until his retirement in nineteen twenty nine. When it comes to the pink pills, he may as well have been the chemist. His copy and campaigns were of most importance to the bottom line under his and
Fulford's watch. An early advertisement in The Venturer of Free Press went like this. It described two men walking down the street. One quote has a vigorous, firm, elastic step, his head well up, his eyes bright, while the other appeared to be a man quote broken in health who had to quote whip himself to every task. Claim to the ad, the first man had healthy nerves because they were quote stimulated by feeding them with Doctor Williams pink pills.
It would be remiss to not mention that Fulford launch date huge marketing campaign for the pink pills and spent upwards of two hundred thousand pounds on advertising in the year nineteen hundred alone, and that is just in Britain. The tale of this patent medicine company is less about the ingredients of the product being a problem. It was that over the top marketing and advertising campaign of lies that finally caught the attention of federal authorities. And of course we have examples.
So another advertisement for the pills comes from the Maryborough Chronicle, which recommended they be taken as a blood and energy restorative for flu sufferers. Quote the blood is the most dependable weapon in the fight against disease, and when the enemy is as violent as influenza, there is no better
blood builder than Doctor William's pink pills. It was a perfect time to market the pills as a cure against flu, as the global flu pandemic of nineteen eighteen to nineteen twenty, also known by the common misnomer Spanish flu, was raging and deadly. While it made for great marketing campaigns, the pills sure didn't cure the flu.
Advertisements were carefully crafted to invey all sorts of important information to the consumer, from what these things could cure to how to get some for yourself. One such example is as follows quote doctor Williams Pink Pills for Pale People have cured countless men and women of anemia, indigestion, ezema, rheumatism, sciatica, Saint Vitus's Dance now known as Sydenham's qorea, neuralgia, nervous disorders,
paralysis and locomotive at taxi sold at shops. But avoid substitutes and take care that the full name doctor Williams Pink Pills for Pale People is on every package sold by all chemists and druggists. An interesting illustrated pamphlet describing many cures will be sent post free on application. Yes, you could get a whole pamphlet outlining the alleged benefits of the pink pills.
Advertisements also claimed the pills purified the blood by well by making new blood, and this happened, it was explained by quote, enriching the existing weak or anemic blood supply. The pills would the copy promised quote, tone up the nerves and increase the patient's power of using the food he takes.
Fulford and Mackenzie's advertisement campaigns also began to target women specifically and claimed that the pills were a remedy for many quote female ailments. One stated that men seek quote wholesome looking women with rosy cheeks and good health as their future wives. The advertisement warned that without help, a woman's quote regular monthly uterine action could result in a quote pale and sallow complexion and a feeling of exhaustion.
This ad also claimed that continued use of the pills would quote fortify the system against the ravages of the symptoms attending menopause.
Claims of these exaggerated benefits were almost constantly in the face of consumers, whether seen in newspapers or other print media, or promoted by salesmen and even sometimes physicians. Another advertisement focused on women, for instance, read quote many thin, anemic girls and women have been wonderfully transformed by doctor Williams
brand pink pills. Instead of being weak, flat chested, pale and lacking in charm, they are now bright and bonni, with sparkling eyes, rosy cheeks, and a graceful, well proportioned form, full of life and vitality. They are now the envy and admiration of their friends. These happy results are easily explained. Doctor Williams Pink pills contain the necessary vital elements that create new, rich red blood. So lose no time, improve
your health and regain your lost weight. By taking a course of Doctor Williams Pink pills, you too can gain a graceful figure.
Fulford and Mackenzie relied quote heavily on testimonials submitted by customers of Miraculous Recoveries printed in newspapers in such a way that it was different dificult to differentiate news articles from the advertisements. They kind of were early forebears of
the advertorial. For instance, Reverend Enoch Hill of the First United Methodist Church of Grand Junction, Iowa, endorsed the product in many nineteen hundreds advertisements, claiming that the pink pills boosted his energy and cured his chronic headaches.
Another printed testimonial, this one in a British paper, read as quote said missus Hatch, I was sickly, pale and anemic when I was approaching the age of twenty. In spite of all treatment, I could get no real relief. My sister insisted I tried Doctor Williams Pink pills for pale people, and at last I did it. Took several boxes of these pills before I obtained any real relief. Then I was encouraged by signs of improvement, and as
I continued the pills, all signs of anemia vanished. The rheumatic pains left me, and my strength was gradually built up. I felt younger and was in sound health. Today, I am free from all pain, with no fears of illness.
Inside and outside the United States, marketing materials were very boasty, and not just from satisfied customers who picked up some pills at the local druggists. Testimonial from doctor Giuseppe Laponi, who was chief physician to Pope Leo the thirteenth, was held up as an example of a medical professional using doctor Williams's pink pills in his practice with quote good results.
The pink pills, it was also claimed, were a quote miracle cure for consumption which we now know as tuberculosis. A British advertising pamphlet for the pills, called The Queen's Gift, published in nineteen hundred and give or take a year, there was aimed at British colonists around the world. The pamphlet claimed that because of quote an inspiring entrepreneurial environment, doctor Williams was a to develop his pink pills a
miracle of modern medicine. The pamphlet also provided several testimonials, of course, from grateful patients cured by the pills. Among them was a mister Rogers, the quote first Englishman to be cured of tubercular consumption. Knowing the ingredients those pink pills were not likely what cured him, but potential customers didn't know that.
We're going to take a break here for a word from our sponsors, and when we return, we'll talk more about the big promises that patent medicine companies made and why the pink pills may have may have worked a little bit, possibly, but only if you had anemia.
Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about what happened when the pink pill's product went up against the United States Pure Food and Drug Act. It's probably not a spoiler that the company lost, but maybe not for reasons you might think.
Fulford became a wealthy man selling patent medicine around the world, but he's sometimes remembered for quite a different and very tragic story. Rather than hawking harmless pills. At the age of fifty three in nineteen oh five, Fulford's vehicle was hit by a street car and he was ejected from the automobile on Walnut Street in Newton, Massachusetts. Fulford was fatally injured, and he became the first Canadian known to
have died in an auto accident. After his death, Fulford's son, also named George, became involved in the business.
Shortly after Fulford's death. The Pure Food and Drug Act of nineteen oh six, also known as Wiley's Law, was signed by United States President Theodore Roosevelt, and, as we've seen happen in other stories of snake oil sales this season, its very existence dimmed the popularity of many patent medicines in the United States, including the pink pills, or it
made the so called medicines impossible to purchase. The Act's purpose was to prevent the quote, manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deletorious food, drugs, medications, and liquors, with patent medicines coming under increasing scrutiny in the early twentieth century. The law also required that active ingredients be displayed on labels and a standard of purity levels for ingredients to be set by the United States
Pharmacopeia or the National Formulary. If they didn't get you for problematic ingredients, they could and would bring you down for false or fraudulent advertising. And it was also a truth in labeling law, and misbranding was a very big deal.
The label on one still remained package of Doctor Williams Pink Pills for pale people reads as a mail order ad and it read quote safe and effective tonic for the blood and nerves anemic conditions, diseases caused by or dependent on thin, impoverished blood, and for nervous disorders resulting from malnutrition. Useful wherever a nerving or digestive tonic is required. These pills are guaranteed to contain no opiates or narcotics contents.
Forty pills price fifty cents, six boxes for two fifty The Doctor Williams Medical Company Sconnectedy, New York and Brockville, Ontario, WT. Hansen Company Sconnectedy, New York, US distributors. Directions inside in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian. The pink pills were also sold in small numbers and over the counter, and that helped increase both Fulford's profits, and it made the pills available to poorer consumers who weren't able to afford a whole expensive package all at once.
Before the new law, the proprietors did not at all have to prove their patent medicines were effective, nor did they have to prove anything they claimed on the label, and to be honest, most of them didn't bother with that after the law was enacted either, instead hedging their bets that the government wouldn't catch up with them. In nineteen sixteen, the United States government caught up with the Doctor Williams Medical company.
Doctor Williams Pink pills were targeted not because people were sick or dying from them, they were pretty benign, but because of the company's outrageous claims and promises regarding the medicine's curative qualities. Many patent medicines claimed to cure everything from quote generalized debility to other complaints like lassitude and weak stomach fibers, and all of those promises were the key to patent medicine's success. They were the hook. What
were your other choices? If you were someone with a health complaint waited out may a doctor for a round of blood letting. No thank you, said many people, while consumers didn't seem to mind the ridiculous claims that a product could cure your acne and bring you back to
life and essentially put dinner on the table. Exaggerated promises got a lot of patent medicine peddlers in trouble, a jury found in favor of the United States government, and all the dreams that Pink Pills promised were shattered because shipments of the product were ordered to be destroyed.
So did they work? Though the Pink Pills couldn't stand up to the wild marketing claims that they were a cure, all the pills were actually potentially medically helpful to some people living with anemia who took them. In theory maybe, Hey, we're not doctors here, but while the ingredients were weak, they were iron supplements, which we do know is important for the management and treatment of iron deficiency anemia. Those testimonials may not have all been total bs.
Some people may have felt a little bit better, a little less pale. You know what makes me feel better? Well, cocktail, are you ready for some Cure's? What ails you, little.
Cocktail without a little rosy cheeks to my life. What are you doing right?
Right? Obviously I'm not reinventing the wheel. We're calling this the pink pill. Thinking about this, it immediately put me in mind of a drink that cracks me up and is one that I can't imagine many people really enjoying unless you just really love gin, and that is a pink gin. A pink gin. You can buy pink gin on the shelves now in your local liquor store. They just have pink gins. They've gotten very popular because people
like pink things. But a pink gin was actually a drink that was invented in the mid eighteen hundreds, which is literally just two out of gin and like three dashes of angusterra bitters, and some bartenders would thin it a little bit with water. But unless you'd love gin, which some people do, but I don't think a whole lot like street gin, this is probably not a delicious drink. But I thought that might make a good start for
another drink. And of course there's also that little mention of licorice the very beginning of this episode that was in the pills. Yeah, so I thought, how is a way we can just low grade include some licorice flavor in here without getting two out of control. We're gonna start with that pink gin base. We're not gonna buy pink gin. You don't have to. You got bitters. If you don't have bitters, we have an option. It'll come
up at the mocktail. But we're gonna start with two ounces of gin, three to four dashes of angusterra bitters. That's what turns it pink. It has bitters have a reddish quality to them. Angoster it does anyway, and so that's what gives it a pink look. And then you're gonna add, oh, just a kiss, like an eighth of an ounce of anissets to get that liquorice flavor in there. You don't want a lot more than that. It's not yummy.
It just it becomes a different drink. Then you're gonna do between a quarter and a third of an ounce of simple syrup or vanilla syrup, and that is to your taste. There's no wrong way. You were gonna give this a nice good shake with ice, make it super cold, pour it over ice in like a rocks glass or whatever glass you wish, whatever serving vessel makes you happy.
And then you'll top it with ginger ale. And the ginger ale is the reason that I say there's not a one right measure for the syrup, because if you're using like a regular sugar ginger ale, you might want to pull it back. If you're using a sugar free you might want to pour a little more syrup in there.
But this fixes the problem for me of just straight gin, and it makes it quite lovely, and that little kiss of liquorice flavor is really quite nice, and it just just gets a little more depth that brings out some of the more floral notes. This is also one that, in my opinion, this went through an uncharacteristically large number of tests. For me, usually I'm pretty fast, I can whip out a couple and I figured out this one. Some of it was ab testing. I was like, Okay,
what if we use this gin versus this gin? What if we made it with absinthe instead of aniset. Don't do that, is my advice. I did not like it at all, and I tried it with club soda instead of ginger reel, and it just tasted a little too thin. You need a little more flavor in there to make it all work, but it is quite yummy. If you would like to make an alcohol free pink pill, that is very easy. We're going to do what we've been doing for a while now and use flatonic water as
your gin substitute. Two ounces of that if you're go okay with bitters, because some people that don't drink are still okay with bitters because it is a tiny amount, you can put those in. If you don't want to do bitters, literally a drop of whatever red syrup you
have on hand, and if you have grenadine, great. If you have hibiscus grade, there's not enough of it that it's going to shift the flavor around too much, especially when you consider that volume to the amount of gin or fake gin in this case you have, so you're good. Aniset syrups or liquorice syrups are pretty easy to get a hold of, and then your simple syrup and then
your ginger ale. Everything is the same. So again, that's two ounces of gin or your flattonic three to four dashes of anguster, a bitters or one drop of the red syrup of your choice, one eighth of an ounce of aniset or a licorice syrup one quarter to one third of an ounce of simple or vanilla syrup and then shake it over ice, top it with ginger ale delicious. It's not going to fix any of your ailments.
It's definitely if you drink enough.
Of anything, you'll feel like you don't have any ailments. Please don't be unwise, drink responsibly. But yeah, that's the pink pill. You're still going to be an emic if you started with anemia. That won't fix a thing, but like I said, you might feel that. Also, if you think you're a n ee mcplease see a doctor.
We've lifted the sometimes the most common one.
Yeah, we are so thankful that you spent this time with us today talking about pink pills for pale people, which is a phrase I just love. We will be right back here next week with another story of snake oil and another cocktail to go with it. Criminalia is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.