Medicine Chest: Business Names for Bottles?

By John Panella and Joe Widman

PHOTOS (from left): SELF HELPER CO.; SHAKE NO MORE MEDICINE CO.; MAGIC FOOD CO. (Magic Healing Remedy); HEAL DRUG CO.; HUMANE MEDICINE CO.; LIFE MEDICINE COMPANY; HAPPY MEDICINE CO.; and WIL-DU REMEDY CO.

SHOULD THIS BE AN ARTICLE?

‘Business names’ make for blah bottles … or do they?

By Joe Widman

You decide. John Pastor asked me more than a year ago if I would write six articles a year for the Medicine Chest column of his magazine, as he was losing one of his regular writers. I have written articles for decades, but never more than one every other year or so. I agreed to try it for a while.

I like John and I wanted to help him and the magazine. What I didn’t know was how I could keep finding new ideas for articles. With over fifty years of magazines, and currently two good magazines, new articles are difficult to imagine. I have thought for years that the magazines should combine. One magazine would be less expensive for readers, the articles could be consistently better, and it would avoid all of the duplication of want ads, show ads and advertisements. I hope this occurs someday in the future.

Looking at my bottles for a new article, I found that I had acquired a small number of bottles that really didn’t have their own category and they weren’t collected by anyone. Have you ever seen any collection of embossed businesses? I know you will immediately think of Warner, Kilmer or Hostetter, but do people actually collect A&DHC, Dr. Kilmer&Co, or McKee&Co? I don’t think so. Business names are usually pretty blah. The closest thing I can think of is that some Hostetter collectors have dozens of Hostetters from different bottle makers. However, they are actually collecting the embossed product and not the embossed bottle company itself.

PHOTOS (opposite page, from top left):

LIFE MEDICINE COMPANY. WIL-DU REMEDY CO. HAPPY MEDICINE CO. MAGIC FOOD CO.

By John Panella and Joe Widman

By John Panella and Joe Widman

TOP LEFT: SELF HELPER, SHAKE NO MORE, WIL-DU REMEDY, and HAPPY MEDICINE CO. bottles. TOP RIGHT: SHAKE NO MORE close-up. BOTTOM: MAGIC FOOD, HEAL DRUG, HUMANE MEDICINE, and LIFE MEDICINE COMPANY bottles. Can you think of the name of a bottle company that is interesting or collectable? Let me know if you can.

I’ll list my “collection” alphabetically. Hope you enjoy them. 1. HAPPY MEDICINE CO.

2. HEAL DRUG CO.

3. HUMANE MEDICINE CO. 4. LIFE MEDICINE COMPANY 5. MAGIC FOOD CO. (Magic Healing Remedy) 6. SELF HELPER CO.

7. SHAKE NO MORE MEDICINE CO. 8. WIL-DU REMEDY CO.

I think that some of these company names are probably more interesting than the products they contained. I’m afraid the neat names didn’t help sales much because I would rate all of these bottles as extremely rare to “one of a kind.”