Did You Know Who was Cooking in Back of Lancaster’s Grocery Store? Dr. Howard I Presume! – Part 3

Part 1- Dr. G. S. Howard of Carleton Place — Just Call Me Master!

The Shenanigans of Dr. Howard of Carleton Place – Part 2

This is J.G. Lancaster’s Grocery Store in 1947 – now the Eating Place in Carleton Place on Bridge Street. Before Lancaster opened, our dastardly devil of Carleton Place, Dr. Howard, was busy making and marketing his elixirs in that every same building. Knowing of his past history in Carleton Place I have no doubt there was probably some dispute over rent, and he moved on from Lancaster’s to the building once know as Carleton Mill Supplies on Franktown Road. I can bet my last dollar it was somewhere in the back property where the new Tim Horton’s now exists.

In late nineteenth-century physicians were scarce and poorly educated. Treatments were based on the now-discredited theory of the four bodily humors that had to be kept in balance. These might include such treatments as bleeding (sometimes using live leeches), cold baths, blistering agents, and other remedies that were worse than the ailments that they were meant to treat!

Many people placed their faith in patent medicines, pitched by traveling salesmen who never failed to entertain the crowds before offering cure-alls. Modern advertising was born during this area, as patent medicine companies printed almanacs with useful information and humorous quotations mixed with plenty of advertising for mail-order herbal remedies. The newspapers and magazines of the day were crammed with ads for medicines and miracle-cure devices. Most of these medicines were at best harmless; many contained generous quantities of alcohol, opium, or cocaine, ensuring a quick feeling of well-being for first-time customers, followed by the possibility of habitual use. Bayer was the number one producer of heroin for their medicines and arsenic was used for arthritis.

Howard’s popular “Stop That Cough!” – was made at his Orien’s Manufacturing Co in Carleton Place. He had elixirs that cured everything from hair loss to cancer. Consider some of the names of once popular forms of medicine—sugartits (sugary medicine for babies), booty balls (silver mercury pills), cachets (crude precursors to capsules) and folded powders (easier to swallow than pills or tablets). And consider some of the medicines themselves:bat dung (guano), juniper tar, nux vomica, turpentine, hog lard, nutgall, pomegranate, stinging nettle and sarsaparilla..

Howard’s building on Franktown Road that he rented from Mrs. Gillies was painted with huge signs claiming:

“Orien’s Manufacturing Co.”

“Lumbermen and Contractors Supplied at Wholesale Prices”

“Manaca Bitters- guaranteed to cure Dyspepsia–Torpid Liver and Constipation”

“Dr. Howard’s Great Tonic- Only five drops make a dose. 200 Doses for One Dollar”

“Use Oriens Sure Cure for Corns”

“Oriens Linfament relieves Muscular pains, sprains and bruises, frostbites,chilblains and sore joints

and the list went on.

Modern-day medicine has its faults, but it’s is a lot better to be sick today than in yesteryear.I don’t think I could have put my faith in Dr. Howard in anything.

Photos- Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum

I Will Take Some Opium to Go Please —The “Drug Dispensary” at the Chatterton House Hotel

More stories from the Desk Books of The Chatterton House Hotel (Queen’s Hotel) Carleton Place from the Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum

Part 1- Tales of the Chatteron House Corset — Queen’s Hotel in Carleton Place- can be found here.

Part 2- Hell on Wheels at Lady Chatterton’s Hotel in Carleton Place– can be found here.

Today it’s hard to believe, but in early and mid to late 1800’s it was possible to walk into a drugstore or a hotel and buy, without prescription, laudanum, cocaine, and even arsenic. Opium preparations were also sold freely in town, halls, and in the countryside by travelling hawkers. The travelling salesmen, which were many that frequented the Chatterton House Hotel in Carleton Place, often sold their wares through the front desk help for those who needed it.

Drugs were brought to town from every corner of the country and the amount of opium sales were particularly staggering. Dangerous drugs were commonly used for making home remedies, and less frequently as a recreation for the bored and alienated people. The recreational use of opiates was popular particularly with pre-Victorian and Victorian artists and writers.

There was no moral condemnation of the use of opiates, and their use was not regarded as addiction but rather as a habit in the Victorian period. Until the end of the nineteenth century few doctors and scientists warned about the dangers of drug addiction.

The most popular opium derivative was laudanum, a tincture of opium mixed with wine or water. Laudanum, called the ‘aspirin of the nineteenth century,’ was widely used in Victorian households as a painkiller, recommended for a broad range of ailments including cough, diarrhea, rheumatism, ‘women’s troubles’, cardiac disease and even delirium.

The first photo has a prescription for Milton Teskey. Here is a little background on him below.

Teskeyville At Apple Tree Falls

On the strength of attractive natural assets and the initial enterprise of three Teskey brothers, a small community developed in the next thirty years, known for a time as Teskeyville and as Appleton Falls.  With a population of about seventy five persons by the mid-fifties, it contained Joseph Teskey’s grist mill, Robert Teskey’s sawmill equipped with two upright saws and a public timber slide, Albert Teskey’s general store and post office, Peter and John F. Cram’s tannery, and two blacksmith shops, William Young’s tailor shop and a wagon shop.  A foundry and machine shop was added before 1860, when the village grew to have a population of three hundred.  Albert Teskey, a younger brother who lived to 1887, also engaged in lumbering and became reeve of Ramsay township.  A flour mill in a stone building erected in 1853 by Joseph Teskey below the east side of the Appleton Falls was operated after his death in 1865 by his son Milton.  It was sold in 1900 to H. Brown & Sons, Carleton Place flour millers and suppliers of electric power, and resold several years later to Thomas Boyd Caldwell (1856-1932) of Lanark, then Liberal member of Parliament for North Lanark, a son of the first Boyd Caldwell who had owned a large sawmill at Carleton Place.

Photos by Linda Seccaspina