I came upon this little red book, at a Vintage Clothing Expo of all places, and found it rather fascinating.



 It's an entire year's collection, from 1898, of testimonials and case studies from across the country, that attest to the benefits and miraculous effects of the elixir, 'Pepto Mangan'.








 Each page, which has the day and date in bold across the top, utilizes only a small portion of the page for type, and then carries on to the next page, even if the case study continues on for several days, which I found odd and wasteful. Even back then they were killing trees! Thugs.





I actually have several of these books, from a few different years, but from the book of 1899, (with cases and praise from 1898) here is one case I found particularly delightful, in quoting how magnificent this wonder cure-all is.

Dr. Z. E. Kimble, Liberty, PA:

June 6, 1898

Your sample bottle of 'Pepto- Mangan' was received. I have taken in all, while recovering from Pneumonia, seven bottles of your  'Pepto-Mangan' during the past seven weeks and have gained 14 pounds, 3 pounds more than my ordinary weight before I was taken sick. Gude's seems to be especially adapted to my condition. 


I can't really see how gaining 14 pounds would be a desirous side effect to anyone, and I would think, most anyone would recover from Pneumonia after a whole seven weeks of being sick, medicine or not. Either that, or you'd have been dead well before that.

If in reading such accolades for a syrup sounded odd to you, you weren't the only one, so after reading several pages of these case studies or songs of praise in the book, I decided to investigate.

Upon further examination of what this ' wonder cure all' was, I found studies that had been done years later, with legitimate, professional medication, that was meant for the flu, etc. alongside 'Pepto Mangan' and the 'Pepto' proved to have no real effect, and was deemed useless, a fraud, a quack cheap shot elixir that was more alcohol than anything else, as most of those charlatan type medicines were back in the day. Some up to 44%!

So even though people may have been duped by purchasing bottles of this stuff.....
 

At least, it had no disastrous side effects, despite being worthless.

If you think about it, even high quality medicines of today come with warnings that sometimes make you cringe, and wonder if it's really worth it.

For example.... 'may cause skin irritation, blindness, hallucinations, Tourette's Syndrome, sleep apnea, schizophrenia, blood clots, death, and an addiction to Honey Boo Boo.'

Frankly, I'd take death over the last one. 

So for those poor folks of the Victorian era, rather than investing in 'Pepto -Mangan', they could have just taken a few shots of whiskey to get the same effect, but then again, the bottle probably didn't look as cool.