C’mon, the guy’s name seriously isn’t "Bowles."
We have, in one of the many collections we’re dealing with at the store at the moment, a copy of Broadway Magazine from 1910. The back is filled with a lot of great period ads like the one above, and of the sort I’m sure many of you would recognize as similar to ads used as back page illustrations in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen mini-series. In fact, this very issue of Broadway has the infamous “Marvel Syringe” ad, the inclusion of which in an issue of League resulted in that issue’s pulping and revising as so, I suppose, not to offend DC’s crosstown rivals. You can read more about that (and see the ad in question) here, if you scroll down a bit.
Anyway, that’s my loose connection to comics for this post, justifying it ever so slightly for inclusion on this site. But mostly I just wanted to present this ad because, man, they really make things sound terribly dire, don’t they? “Some men are eaten alive by tape-worms, others wander hopelessly for years, dying slow deaths from bowel disease.” WOW. If only I had some kind of Candy Cathartic to counter these horrible fates.
And let’s look at the testimonial by Mr. (ahem) Bowles: I’m going to say that the phrase “there came on the scene” a freakin’ 18-FOOT TAPEWORM, expelled after taking this wonder drug, gets the 1910 Award for Most Polite Euphemism. “There came on the scene,” like, you know, Mr. J. Frederick Tapeworm, of the Hampton Tapeworms, just happened to pop by the parlor for afternoon tea.
That this medicine is from the “Sterling Remedy Co.” isn’t lost on me, by the way. I better not have missed out on some enormous Candy Cathartic fortune.
