The pills that cured all ills; James Morison the Hygeist (2014)

The striking thing about this is how widespread a problem constipation was and how desperate people were to solve it. What were people eating in Victorian England? Gristle and paste, sprinkled with arsenic?

> In England a quack never fails unless he is untrue to himself, that is, if he be not sufficiently outrageous in his professions; let him promise and persevere in promising the impossible - let him screw his courage to that point and he’ll not fail; the yearly sum in advertisements alone by some of those venders of nostrums (the value of which they assert, and truly, is unknown and incredible) must be immense. [...]

> – Henry Wood – "Change for the American Notes in Letters from London to New York by an American Lady." (1843)

I feel this phenomenon is still going strong over a century later and an ocean away.

But what were they made of?