Warner’s Safe Cure: Collecting in the 1970′s

When I started collecting Warner’s Safe Cures in the mid-1970′s, bellbottoms were in and disco was on the turntable (the internet, ipods and satellite radio were the stuff of science fiction). I remember salivating when I saw show displays like the one above from Mike Seeliger. While I’m sure that I had a few Warner’s Safe variants, perhaps a Kidney & Liver Cure, Diabetes Cure and maybe even a half pint London Safe Cure, my collection was in its infancy. Mike, on the other hand,  along with folks like Jack Stecher, had taken Warner’s collecting to a new level.  I remember that I could not believe how many Warner’s there were and, more importantly to me, how was I ever going to get my hands on some of those rare Warner’s depicted in Mike’s book (parttime jobs as a teenager were not the source of great wealth).

Well,  flash forward 35 years and I have put together a pretty nice collection of Warner’s Safe Cures, including a few that are likely “one-of-a-kinds”.  Although, I have not displayed my collection, except for participating in the 2001 Warner’s Display at the Rochester Show, I still have the bug.  I am fortunate to call Jack and Mike friends and to be able to share the Warner’s Safe Cure bug with other friends worldwide via this blog. After two and a half years, we are coming up on 25,000 hits.

My advice to younger collectors is to decide on what type of bottles you like. Whether it is Warner’s Safe Cures, bitters, fruit jars or something else. Learn as much as you can about the bottles you like and their value. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have the money to run out and buy every bottle you like. Patience is a virtue. Stick with it and you will eventually meet your goals. Most of all, have fun

Special thanks for Mike Seeliger for allowing me to use copies of his photographs and slides from the 1970′s. They bring back great memories of my early days of collecting and remind me of how much fun I have had collecting bottles.

Warner’s Safe Cure: Newspaper Advertisements

It seems that virtually every medium available to H. H. Warner carried his pitch to the patent medicine buying public. In the age the preceded broadcast media, newspapers were the principal way to reach out to the public at large. Fortunately, copies of those newspapers including their advertisements still exist and I have been able to pull out a few of the Warner’s Safe Cure ads that ran from the early 1880′s until into the 1920′s.  As you will see, many of the ads take on a familiar formula and incorporate testimonials that proclaim that Warner’s Safe Cure saved the user from certain death. Although the ads are not limited to Safe Cure, many of them continue the pitch that Warner made when he first introduced his line of Safe Cures – the kidneys are the key to good health.

The above advertisement is the earliest I have found to date. It ran in the Fort Wayne News on June 11, 1880. Notably, it mentions parenthectically “Formerly Dr. Craig’s Kidney Cure”.  Clearly, Warner had not established himself and wanted to ride the coattails of Craig. The ad also lists the early Safe Cures including: Kidney & Liver Cure, Diabetes Cure, Nervine, Bitters and Safe Pills.  With an almost biblical flourish, it says “Read! Save Thyself.”

A close look at the ad reveals that it looks almost amateurish. Most of the print is typeset, but the graphics look almost hand-drawn. Needless to say, it would be a few years before Warner would have a full marketing department at his disposal.

Warner’s Safe Cure: The Ultimate Go-With

If you are a Warner’s collector,  what would you consider to be the ultimate go-with?  There are no shortage of possibilities since Warner was such a prolific advertiser. There are wonderful posters, almanacs, dominoes, signs, etc. While all of these items are great to highlight a Warner’s Safe Cure collection, I think the ultimate go-with might just be an actual Warner’s Safe. For those of you who are familiar with the history of the Warner’s Safe Cure Company and its founder, H. H. Warner, you know that his first fortune was made as a salesman of fireproof safes. It is that image that then graced so many bottles of his medicines into the 20th Century.

Every once in a rare while, one of these Warner’s Safes surfaces and is offered for sale. Now is such a time. The folks at Antique Searchers in Syracuse are offering a safe for sale on eBay. You can find their listing at: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330422118971&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT. They have kindly let me reproduce their pictures here:

About two years ago, I did my first installment of Warner history entitled The Rise and Fall of the Warner Empire (Part I). In that posting, I briefly discussed Warner’s early history as a safe salesman for the Mosler Safe Company of Cincinnati. I also attached a link to Dr. Richard Cannon’s article in the Antique Bottle & Glass Collector highlighting another Warner’s Safe in Colorado. This article is repeated in the eBay listing. Dr. Cannon did some excellent research and it is well worth a read. It does not seem to me to be overstatement that had H. H. Warner not been a highly successful safe salesman and had he not contracted Bright’s Disease and been “cured” by Dr. Craig’s concoction, he would have been completely lost to history.

But I digress. This wonderful safe is up for sale for a few more days. Needless to say, the successful bidder will need to pick it up in Syracuse. Considering it weighs in at 800 pounds +, you would have some heavy lifting on your hands. However, just think how nice this safe would look adorned by a nice collection of Warner’s Safe Cures. Good luck on the bidding and thanks to the folks at Antique Searchers for letting me highlight this great go-with.

Warner’s Safe Cure: Bright’s Disease

The name “Bright’s Disease” figures very prominently on the early labels of Warner’s Safe Cure. As I have mentioned on several occasions, it was this singular disease that, according to H. H. Warner, brought him to the brink of death and changed the course of his life from being a wealthy and successful fireproof safe salesman to an incredibly wealthy patent medicine proprietor. His story is recounted in detail in the early Safe Cure almanacs:

That being said, what exactly is Bright’s Disease? Do people still contract it or has it faded into history as a medical anacronysm. At its most basic level, it was an inflammation of the kidneys. Dorland’s Medical Dictionary defines it as ” a broad descriptive term once used for kidney disease with proteinuria, usually glomerulonephritis; named for Richard Bright,  an English physician who published a description of diseases in 1827.” In short, excess protein in the urine.

 

The 1879-1880 Almanac offered Warner’s Safe Cure as “The Original Dr. Craig’s Kidney Cure – An Absolute Specific for Bright’s Disease.”  To drive the sale home, Warner recounted his own near-death experience for Bright’s Disease:

The remedy was suggested to the mind of Dr. Chas. Craig, when lying at the point of death from Bright’s Disease, not as a probably cure for this presumably fatal terror, but as a possible relief from some of the intense pain he was suffering, and a help to his rebellious stomach. To his surprise, as soon as  he had taken the first dose of this first weak vegetable decoctin, he felt better, and, continuing to take it, he was soon on his feet again, a well and strong man. After his recovery, he administered it to his neighbors similarly afflicted, and they also got well. By degrees, as the result of experience and professional consultation, other vegetable ingredients were added to quicken and increase its efficiency, and with the compound thus prepared, thousands of cases have been cured, and many of them to the astonishment of the patients and their acquaintences. Therefore, the sick-bed suggestion which came to the mind of Dr. Craig, has seemed to him and to others almost like a revelation.

As Dorland’s suggests, the term Bright’s Disease is no longer used in medical parlance. It may be no exaggeration to suggest that but for a severe case of it that afflicted H. H. Warner, his influence on American business may have been limited to fireproof safes.

 

Warner’s Safe Cure: You Have What?

 

Have you sometimes wondered about some of the disease names that appear on the labels of patent medicines. While some of them are familiar, like Heart Disease and Impotency, others really leave you wondering. Take the above Safe Cure label, what the devil are Dropsy, Melancholia, Catarhh and Female Weakness? That’s when you really have to appreciate the internet. There’s actually sites that define archaic disease names. Check out Old Disease Names by Sylvain Cazalet. Here are a few examples of the diseases that used to plague our ancestors in the late 19th Century:

Dropsy: Abnormal swelling of the body or part of the body due to the build-up of clear watery fluid. Edema (swelling), often caused by kidney or heart disease.

Melancholia: Severe Depression

Catarrh:  Inflammation of a mucous membrane, especially of the air passages of the head and throat, with a free discharge. It is characterised by cough, thirst, lassitude, fever, watery eyes, and increased secretions of mucus from the air passages. Bronchial catarrh was bronchitis; suffocative catarrh was croup; urethral catarrh was gleet; vaginal catarrh was leukorrhea; epidemic catarrh was the same as influenza.

Bright’s Disease: Chronic inflammatory disease of the kidneys. [NOTE: This was the disease that afflicted H. H. Warner in the late 1870's and for which he sought relieve from Dr. Craig's Cure].

Here are a few more that I always wondered about:

Ague: Any intermittent fever characterised by periods of chills, fevers and sweats. Most commonly identified as malaria. Malarial Fever. Malarial or intermittent fever characterised by paroxysms (stages of chills, fever, and sweating at regularly recurring times) and followed by an interval or intermission whose length determines the epithets: quotidian, tertian, quartan, and quintan ague (defined in the text). Popularly, the disease was known as “fever and ague,” “chill fever,” “the shakes,” and by names expressive of the locality in which it was prevalent—such as, “Swamp fever” (in Louisiana), “Panama fever,” and “Chagres fever.”

Consumption: Tuberculosis. A wasting away of the body; formerly applied especially to pulmonary tuberculosis. The disorder is now known to be an infectious disease caused by the bacterial species Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Synonyms: marasmus (in the mid-nineteenth century), phthisis.

Dyspepsia: Indigestion and heartburn. Heart attack symptoms. 

Gout: Painful inflammation caused by a build up of uric acid in the tissues.

Warner’s Safe Cure: A Chronology

I thought I would take a shot at creating a time line that summaries the significant events in the existence of the Warner’s Safe Cure Company and its founder, H. H. Warner. I’m sure that I will miss something and welcome any suggestions. This will likely be a work in progress, but here goes:

• 1842    Hulbert Harrington Warner born near Syracuse, New York in a small town called Warners, which was named after his grandfather, Seth, who had moved there in 1807 from Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

• 1864     Warner marries Martha L. Keeney, a prominent young woman from Skaneateles, New York. Like Warner, she was born in 1842, but died suddenly in 1871. The marriage produced no children. 

 

• 1865    Warner avoided service in the Union Army in the Civil War. He moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan where he and a partner were engaged in the stove and hardware business.

• 1870     Returned to New York and settled in Rochester as a dealer in fire and burglar proof safes. He was a dealer for the predecessor of the Mosler Safe Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. (See New York Daily Graphic, May 10, 1888; Rochester Union & Advertiser, April 27, 1883).

• 1872     Warner marries Emily Olive Stoddard (born 1847 in Michigan). It appears that this second marriage produced one child, a daughter, Maud. It also appears that Emily predeceased Warner.

• 1879     Following his recovery from Bright’s Disease, Warner purchases the rights to Dr. Charles Craig’s Kidney Cure and promptly begins to market it as Warner’s Safe Kidney & Liver Cure. In addition, he offers four other products: Safe Pills, Safe Nervine,  Safe Bitters and Safe Diabetes Cure. The company operates initially out of a building on Exhange Street in downtown Rochester.

• 1879     Warner is introduced to “Doctor” Lewis Swift, who was by vocation a partner in a hardware store and by avocation an astronomer who has discovered several comets. It was rumored that Swift was leaving Rochester, because he believed his talents were not sufficiently appreciated.

• 1882     Warner opens his Toronto Office and offers his cures in the 3-Cities bottles.

• 1883     Warner opens his London Office and begins offering his cures in a spectacular array of colored bottles.

• 1883     The Warner Observatory is completed and fitted out by January at a cost to Warner of $100,000. It boasts a 16″ telescope that was 22 feet long donated by the citizens of Rochester. It becomes a focal point of much of Warner’s advertising.

• 1884     The Warner’s Safe Remedies Building is opened on Warner’s 42nd birthday in January on St. Paul’s Avenue in Rochester. The iron front building was also marketed as the Warner’s Safe Yeast Building and in its eight stories housed Warner’s manufacturing, shipping and marketing operations. The fascade is graced with the monograms “W” and fitted out with first class details. The building remains today as the last vestige of Warner’s patent medicine empire.

 

• 1885     Warner adds his Safe Rheumatic Cure, Animal Cure and Safe Throatine to his product line. In addition, he introduces his Tippecanoe Bitters in two grades, “The Best” and “XXX” and phases out his Safe Bitters.

• 1887     Warner introduces his Log Cabin Remedies line of products, which included Log Cabin Sarsaparilla, Log Cabin Hops & Buchu Remedy, Log Cabin Cough and Consumption Remedy, Log Cabin Extract, Log Cabin Rose Cream, Log Cabin Hair Tonic, Log Cabin Plasters and Log Cabin Liver Pills.

 

• 1887     Warner opens his Frankfurt, Germany and Melbourne, Australia Office expanding his patent medicine empire onto three continents.

• 1888     Warner delivers his inaugeral address as president of the Rochester Chamber of Commerce in January.  Warner had been elected president in 1887 winning out over George Eastman, the owner of a little known camera company. Warner is perhaps at the peak of his prosperity with business failure and bankruptcy looming on the horizon.

• 1888     Warner opens his Pressburg, Hungary Office, which remains open only two years. Bottles from the Pressburg Office are particularly prized by collectors because of their rarity.

 

• 1891     Warner opens his Kreuzlingen, Switzerland and Dundein, New Zealand Offices. No Warner bottles embossed Kreuzlingen have ever surfaced. The bottles from the Dundein Office have become known as 4-Cities bottles because they bear the names of four of Warner’s offices at the time: Rochester, London, Toronto and Melbourne.

• 1893     In what would become known as the Panic of 1893, the American securities market crashed in February. Warner was overextended and when his creditors began to call his loans, he scrambled to raise cash. Warner’s longtime business partner, Arthur G. Yates, was unable to cover all of Warner’s debt. Warner was left to travel the country trying to offer his shares in H. H. Warner & Co. Ltd. as collateral for his debts. While some creditors accepted the shares, others did not, and Warner was forced into bankruptcy  on May 8. He lost his mansion on East Avenue, his Observatory, his yacht, his retreat on Warner Island in the St. Lawrence River and, most importantly, his reputation.

 

• 1917     Christina de Martinez Warner (born 1878 in Mexico) was never officially married to  Warner, but apparently resided with him and served as an officer to the Nuera Remedy Company in Minneapolis in the 1930′s to early 1940′s. She resided at his address of 1311 Blaisdell Avenue in Minneapolis between 1917 and 1948.

• 1923     Warner dies in Minneapolis having never regained the economic prominence he enjoyed when the the Warner’s Safe Remedies Company was at its peak. To his credit, he never quit trying to reestablish his former renown. Warner is buried next to his first wife, Martha, in her family’s plot at Lakeview Cemetary in Skaneateles, New York.

• 1929     The Warner Mansion on East Avenue in Rochester is razed to make way for a parking lot.

Warner’s Safe Cure: The Sincerest Form of Flattery

If you were starting up a patent medicine company in the late 19th Century, you might consider emulating the business model of H. H. Warner (at least before he began investing gobs of money in worthless mining ventures). While you would be hard pressed to be as successful as Warner on such a large scale, perhaps you could imitate one of Warner’s more visible marketing devices…his bottles. Now, you could not just copy his bottles. Indeed, Dr. Charles Craig, who sold his Kidney and Liver Cure to Warner in 1879, was on the receiving end of a lawsuit when he tried to reenter the patent medicine business. But, if it happened that your product’s bottle bore a resemblence to Warner’s Safe Cure, well, that might be the way to go.

Having said all that, there is no evidence (that I’m aware of) that any of Warner’s competitors set out to imitate the appearance of his bottles as a means to tapping into his customer base. And yet,  for some of the Warner’s Safe Cure look-a-likes, one cannot help but wonder if their similar appearance was just coincidental. 

With help from Jack Stecher, I picked out a few good examples of Warner’s Safe Cure look-a-likes. In my mind, perhaps the best candidate is Baker’s Vegetable Blood & Liver Cure of the Lookout Mountain Medicine Co. of Greeneville, Tennessee. Baker’s has both the Warner’s shape, the amber color and “Blood & Liver Cure,” which is not dramatically different from “Kidney & Liver Cure.” The other look-a-like candidates have to include Craig’s Kidney Cure and Long’s Standard Malaria Cure, both from the center of the Warner universe, Rochester. Both Craig’s and Long’s have the Warner shape and color as well as the geography. One final example is Spark’s Kidney & Liver Cure - Perfect Health of Camden, New Jersey. Again, Spark’s has the Warner shape and color that begs comparison. The benign explanation is that the Warner’s Safe Cure bottle was just a standard shape and size among glassmakers that appealed to other patent medicine proprietors. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting question to ponder.

Thanks to Jack Stecher and Glass Works Auctions for the photographs.