Time in a Bottle

When I was walking behind the barn one day, a glint in the mud caught my eye.  When I leaned over to check it out, I was surprised to find this little bottle.  It must have been buried there for some time, but was still undamaged.  It is about 5 inches tall and has 10 narrow facets.  Its embossed label reads Kendall’s Spavin Treatment For Human Flesh.  On the center of the bottom it reads Made in USA, while letters ringing the bottom read Enosburg Falls Vermont.

Thanks to the wonder of the internet, it was easy to learn more about the bottle and its former contents.

Newspaper advertisement

A number of webpages reproduce the same information about Dr. Kendall and his treatments. This quotation is from J. Kevin Graffagnino of the Vermont Historical Society:

Kendall’s Spavin Cure was the brainchild of Dr. Burney James Kendall, an Enosburg Falls druggist. An 1868 graduate of the University of Vermont Medical School, Kendall devised the spavin cure formula in the early 1870s. After a few years of producing and marketing it himself, he recognized the need for additional capital and wider distribution if the business was to expand.

In 1879 Kendall formed a partnership with Carmi L. Marsh, a relatively well-to-do local farmer. In 1883 they and their two other partners incorporated the Dr. B.J. Kendall Co. In less than a decade what began as a one-man operation in Kendall’s barn had grown into a thriving business with 20 employees.

Two-man teams drove distinctive Kendall wagons from Enosburg as far west as Kansas City and as far south as North Carolina.

By the turn of the century the company was spending more than $75,000 a year just to promote the products that its 40 to 50 employees stirred, blended, ground, mixed and packaged in the Enosburg factory.

Poster c 1895

Bone spavin is now known to be osteoarthritis, or the final phase of degenerative joint disease (DJD), and it seems unlikely that Dr. Kendall’s liniment was very helpful, in spite of claims made for its curative properties. In Kendall’s manual The Doctor at Home, the human version was recommended for a wide range of ills including toothache, warts, weak back and wounds.

I didn’t come across a list of ingredients, but it’s probable that alcohol was a key component, in which case it likely was helpful for toothache and wound cleansing. Opium was also a common patent medicine ingredient. Early bottles were labelled Kendall’s Spavin Cure. However, the Food & Drug Act of 1906 changed the medicine business and forced Dr. Kendall to drop the word “cure” from his advertising.

The B.J. Kendall Co continued to manufacture proprietary medicines at Enosburg Falls at least until World War II. The handsome building that housed the company still stands in Enosburg Falls, but has fallen into disrepair. The Spavin Cure Historical Group was attempting to raise funds to restore the building and founded a radio station to that end, WEVT-LP (98.1 FM).

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Pink Pills For Pale People

There was a time when Brockville was one of the richest cities in Canada. In the 1890s, millionaires were building vacation homes along the St. Lawrence River. One of the most famous of these was Boldt Castle, constructed on a 5 acre island in the 1000 Islands for the American businessman’s wife, Louise. Construction began in 1899 and was discontinued upon her death in 1903. Farther east, one of Brockville’s native sons, George Taylor Fulford, also began construction of his new vacation home in 1899. Built on 11 acres overlooking the St. Lawrence at the east end of the city of Brockville, the mansion was completed in 1901.

Fulford Place was designed by Albert W. Fuller, an architect from Albany, New York. The house features 35 rooms and is about 20,000 square feet in size. An example of the Beaux-Arts style, the house is designed for entertaining, with a dining room to seat over 50 guests, a billiards room with an adjoining moorish smoking room, a rococo-style drawing room for the women, and a gracious veranda overlooking the river and grounds.

The marble facing the house was brought across the frozen St. Lawrence in the winter by sleigh from Gouverneur, New York. The house was bequeathed to the Ontario Heritage Trust in 1991 after the death of George T. Fuller II. Restoration work is ongoing, and stained glass windows are currently being refurbished. The house is now open to the public, with a tea room and tours available.

Landscaping work began before the house was even built. In 1895, Fulford hired Frederick Law Olmstead and his brother John to lay out the gardens. Olmstead is famous for his design of New York City’s Central Park and Mount Royal in Montreal. The remaining Italianate garden is a rare example of a privately-owned Olmstead-designed garden. The rest of the grounds were sold off in later years in order to maintain the house.

George Taylor Fulford (1852-1905) was born in Brockville to a family of United Empire Loyalist stock. After finishing school in Brockville, he went on to Business College in Belleville before apprenticing with his brother, a dispensing chemist in Brockville. Fulford took over the modest apothecary in 1874 and developed it into a successful business.

Fulford’s stroke of genius came in 1890, when for $53.01 he purchased the rights to a patent medicine from a local McGill-trained physician, Dr. William Jackson. At a time when medical care and medications were beyond the financial reach of many, patent drugs promised affordable relief for a variety of conditions. Fulford was a brilliant marketer. He advertised widely, relying on testimonies submitted by customers attesting to miraculous cures. The advertisements were placed in newspapers in a manner that made them look like news articles. The pills were marketed in 87 countries worldwide and Fulford became a self-made millionaire. The name of his product? Dr. William’s Pink Pills for Pale People.

The pills contained mostly sugar, starch and iron sulphate. Anemia was a fairly common complaint, and the pills did likely do some good as an iron supplement, although they were not the miraculous cure-all advertised. Fulford married Mary Wilder White in 1880 and they had three children, including George II. Fulford was elected to the town council in 1879 and served as an alderman. He was involved with the Liberal Party of Canada and was friends with the prime minister, Sir Wilfred Laurier. In 1900, he was appointed to the Canadian Senate.

George Taylor Fulford died in 1905. He is considered the first Canadian to die in an automobile accident, although the event happened in Newton, Massachusetts, when his chauffeur-driven car was side-swiped by a streetcar. At the time of his death, Fulford was the largest single shareholder in General Electric and was reputed to be considering buying General Motors. It has been suggested by relatives that Fulford was killed in a conspiracy by the Rockefeller family. Fulford was only 53 years old at the time of his death.

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