Paul Minor

Delving Into Yester~Year

Local historian and writer Paul Miner takes items from The Republican’s Yester-Year column to develop an interesting, informative and often humorous article.

To the Editor: We’ve abundant obsessions with smells, aromas, fragrance and odors. Daniel Robeadeau Clymer, third mayor of Reading, Pennsylvania, wormed his way into the pages of The Republican in August 1886 with a sleeplessness remedy unknown to me.

“Onions inhaled cause sleep, rest and repose. “Tie a fresh onion around the neck and bruise it to make its odor thorough, and you secure sound sleep.” The fellow considered publishing his recommendation “an act of humanity.” Editor J.C. Olchiltree asked, “Who didn’t know onions put people to sleep? The odor may drive off care, but it will also drive off your best friends.”

Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) was in “bad odor” in mid-1853. Congress had ordered the tree removed from the capital based upon an unfounded “opinion” that it caused disease. Other cities including Indianapolis planned to follow suit.

The Advertiser reported no reason for that opinion, but “there appears to be no controversy upon the subject,” adding that it was probable the tree would cease to be cultivated across America.

That invasive remains – pass northbound by Blanton Woods and beyond and you can see it. I wonder whether we’ve really been fighting it for nearly 170 years.

Darby’s Prophylactic Fluid in 1883 removed “all offensive odors” and prevented and treated smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, yellow fever and malaria. “Noxious odors and gases,” too, and putrescent things as well.

Should mulish folks questing for Ivermectin opt for Darby’s instead? Surely, it could handle Covid. At one buck a pint, the price was right. Free for some today appears to be too steep.

Readers in 1890 learned that Parisian women were obsessed with perfumes. They bathed their hair in it, wore shoes of perfumed leather and their clothes were “folded in odorous sachets.”

One “fair belle of the frivolous city” had taken to injecting drops of perfume to improve her odor. “Like many social queens,” she had an opium habit, and the resulting bodily smell forced her hand.

It worked for her, but after her maid blabbed about it, quite a few began running up perfume and they fell “mysteriously ill.”

Sufferers from catarrh and hay fever were urged in 1887 to avoid cocaine, mercurials, and iodoform, particularly the latter because of its offensive odor. All were “injurious and dangerous.”

Instead, Ely’s Cream Balm, at only 50 cents, was free of “all poisonous drugs” and it had cured thousands “where all other remedies have failed” merely by applying “a particle” to each nostril.

For “perfect smell, taste and hearing” there was Sanford’s Radical Cure. That quackery restored those three senses and “deodorized” the head, leading me to wonder whether there could be something that obviated smell to unburden folks of ponderously odiferous assaults.

Dear Editor, I believe I’ve shared the 1883 Pittsboro correspondent’s contribution questioningly corroborating the contention that billy goat odor possessed smallpox prophylactic properties.

“A young woman who has a beautifully rounded throat, with lovely neck and arms to match” in 1892 credited nightly dousing herself for half an hour with cod liver oil. “You must be prepared for a somewhat disagreeable odor and the ruination of your night robe.”

Three weeks of treatment were required. She did not recommend internally dousing with the stuff, which is a good, because I hear it causes fish breath and belching. Some suitors would be put off by that.

A man “burdened with the name of W.T. Thiselton Dyer” wrote in 1887 about an unidentified plant hailing from Madras, India, that temporarily removed taste from everything from sugar to cigars. Reprinted from Chicago, the article demands something else – something that obscured “the redolent flavor of boiled cabbage, and the pungent odor of the onion.”

Again, the onion. “S.F.X.” penned a paean to that vegetable in December 1881, comparing it to the working masses, “the bone and sinew of the country.” They were the hard-handed, broad shouldered, brave-hearted children of toil.” Some might call them potatoes or cabbages.

Vermont Senator George F. Edmunds was “passionately addicted to onions,” a lady camping companion declared in 1885. The senator ate an onion and graham cracker for breakfast. Lunch was a graham cracker sandwich and an onion, and dinner was meat and onions.

That man needed Darby’s.

Paul Miner Lizton