The Drug Store
The Victorian Age was an unhealthy age by almost any measure. There were some who touted the benefits of healthful exercise but they were largely ignored by a populace which did not have the modern day conveniences which deprive someone from using various muscles as a routine part of the day. Diseases were measured by epidemics, and epidemics were fairly routine. Cholera and typhus, malaria, influenza, scarlet fever, yellow fever, and others rampaged with distressing regularity. And there was the less dangerous annoyances of life such as colds, indigestion, insomnia, and so forth.
Patent medicines have been around since the 17th century but they reached their peak in the Victorian Age and the years immediately following it (although some would say they are at their peak now). Some were specific for certain symptoms while others promised that they were a panacea for all ills known to man. They could be used to invigorate the fatigued or calm the hyperactive and some could do both. They were among the first products to be heavily advertised in magazines, playbills, posters, and newspapers.
Some were harmless but most were not. Codeine, cocaine, morphine, and other narcotics were included in many, usually in a base of alcohol. Arsenic, strychnine, belladonna, and other poisons gave them additional kick. The contents of medicine and the use of narcotics were almost wholly unregulated, and the purveyors of patent medicines were not required to justify their extravagant claims for the efficacy of their product.
It was in the Victorian Age that the use of various nostrums, electrical stimulation, or a combination of both began to be huckstered as a means of stimulating hair growth, creating an industry which thrives to this day, with about the same results. One manufacturer, Thomas Holloway of London, marketed an ointment which was promised to cure “…bad breasts (?), old wounds, sores, and ulcers.”
Many patent medicines, because of their content, were addictive and added to the cumulative levels of arsenic and mercury in the bodies of Victorians. Thus they did nothing to alleviate the ills they promised to cure, other than intoxicate the consumer past the point of caring, and added to their collective ills. It is easy to envision a Victorian suffering from the side effects of cosmetics seeking comfort from an elixir which increased the level of intoxication ever closer to a lethal level.