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Vintage Toronto Ads: Compounding the Paine
Source: the Mail and Empire, April 11, 1896.
While modern medicine would likely have reservations about the true effectiveness of Paine’s Celery Compound, one thing was for sure: with an alcohol content of up to twenty-one percent, several spoonfuls would have dulled the user’s misery for a few hours.
Paine’s Celery Compound was created by Windsor, Vermont druggist Milton Kendall Paine from a combination of celery seed, camomile, sugar, and assorted barks and roots. After some local success, Paine sold the formula to Burlington, Vermont–based patent medicine manufacturer Wells & Richardson in 1887. By the end of the 19th century, the formula was advertised across North America through the time worn method of testimonials. The stories provided by users like Mrs. McMaster outlined the precarious state of their health before downing their first dose of Paine’s.
How legitimate those testimonials were is debatable. An expose of the patent medicine business published in the November 7, 1905 issue of Collier’s magazine noted how Paine’s approached a prominent Chicago newspaper with a full-page ad that featured several blank spaces in the middle. The advertiser told the paper’s manager that if reporters could secure a handful of strong endorsements from local politicians, the ad was theirs. Of those people who wound up lending their names to the ad, several admitted they had never tried the product but were happy to appear in print as “prominent citizens.”
As for the statement Mrs. McMaster supposedly gave to a Star reporter? From the evidence we’ve dredged through, all we’ve determined is that this ad appeared in the Star the same day as it did in the Mail and Empire.