Just What the Doctor Ordered: Biochemical Analysis of Historical Medicines from Downtown Tucson, Arizona
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Just What the Doctor Ordered: Biochemical Analysis of Historical Medicines from Downtown Tucson, Arizona William A. White III 1 Accepted: 29 September 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract In the last decade, historical archaeologists in the American West have begun conducting biochemical analyses of contents in bottles recovered from archaeological sites dating to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Archaeological excavations conducted at the Alameda-Stone Cemetery Site provided a large amount of data about the residents of a Tucson, Arizona neighborhood that existed between 1889 and the 1950s. This was a transformative period in the pharmaceutical industry when university-trained pharmacists advanced their field and advocated against the use of mass-produced patent and proprietary medicines. The discovery of two sealed medicine bottles with intact contents provided an opportunity to examine medicinal products from bygone days. This analysis centered on the main question: What can archaeologists discover about the contents of historical bottles that were discarded and have been subjected to environmental conditions for decades? The bottle contents from Tucson were analyzed by gas chromatograph/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) to reveal the ingredients of the medicines and were compared with biochemical medicine analysis conducted at other sites in the American West. These results, in conjunction with historical and archaeological data, demonstrate archaeologically recovered medicines can provide insight into pharmacy and medicine ingredients used in the American West during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Keywords Historical medicines . Artifact analysis . Mass spectrometry . Tucson . Arizona
Introduction By the early twentieth century, patent and proprietary medicine manufacture and sales was a huge industry in the United States. The Collier’s Weekly writer Samuel Hopkins * William A. White, III [email protected]
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University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 2251 College Ave, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
International Journal of Historical Archaeology
Adams (1905-06) reported that Americans spent $75 million on patent medicines in 1905 alone. Inadequate municipal sanitation systems and growing cities meant illness was commonplace in the United States at that time, which provided a ripe population of willing medicine customers seeking relief. The patent and proprietary medicine industry grew through sustained and widespread marketing campaigns that included both print materials, testimonials, both true and fabricated, and live-action sales shows. During the nineteenth century, transportation networks brought mass-manufactured goods to all corners of the country. Medicine advertisements proceeded the products across the country. Unfortunately, not all medicines were effective, despite believable advertising claims boasting the efficacy of patent and proprietary medicines’ abilities to remedy, even cure, almost any ailment. Th
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