confidential questionnaire that potential patients were required to answer “as carefully as possible,” so that—as the instructions explained—“a full and perfect understanding of each case may be had, and the proper remedies selected.” There were sixty-three questions altogether, beginning with the applicant’s age (given as thirty-one) and occupation (“clerk”), and continuing on to the most intimate matters of sexual functioning.
In answer to question thirty—“Have you had gonorrhea?”—the applicant answered yes. He went on to reveal that he had masturbated (“practiced self-abuse,” in the idiom of the time) for ten years; that his erections were “very feeble” and that “during connection” (sexual intercourse), his ejaculations were “very long delayed.”
He was also asked for the size of his waist and chest, which he gave as thirty-two inches and thirty-seven inches, respectively.
On June 6, one day after Dr. Hamill received the completed form, the book and impotence medication were mailed out to the person who identified himself as H. C. Barnet but whose measurements, as he gave them, were those of a man with a far trimmer physique. 2
Dr. Hamill was not the only peddler of impotence “remedies” in the latter years of the nineteenth century. Far from it. The 1890s were the golden age of patent medicines, a totally unregulated era when the American marketplace was flooded with snake oil. Generally compounded of little more than alcohol, opiates, and enough bitter-tasting ingredients to give them a suitably medicinal flavor, these high-sounding nostrums—Dr. Pierce’s Golden Medical Discovery, Munyon’s Miracle Phosphate, Horsford’s Neuralgia Tonic, and thousands more—promised to cure every ailment known to man, from head colds to consumption, asthma to arthritis. Beyond inducing a mild state of intoxication, however, they had no effect at all.
Over a two-week period, beginning on June 4, 1898, packages addressed to Mr. H. C. Barnet arrived on an almost daily basis at his private letter box at Nicholas Heckmann’s establishment. Virtually all of them contained marriage manuals, books of sexual advice, and guaranteed cures for impotence. Some of the latter came in liquid form, like Dr. Rudolphe’s Specific Remedy for Impotence, sold by a physician named Fowler of Moodus, Connecticut. Others consisted of tablets or capsules, like a product called Calthos, touted in full-page newspaper ads as “the greatest sensation in the medical world today.”
The purported invention of the “famous French specialist, Prof. Jules Laborde,” Calthos had (so its maker claimed) restored the “vital forces” of countless satisfied customers, including several thousand male insane-asylum inmates, who had been reduced to their pitiable condition by youthful self-abuse. Anyone who suffered from “Lost Manhood or weakness of any nature in the Sexual Organs” could receive a free five-day trial treatment by sending a request to the manufacturer, the Von Mohl Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. 3
On June 1, 1898—at precisely the same time that the man calling himself H. C. Barnet was sending out his requests for various remedies—an envelope of a distinctive blue color arrived at the Manhattan office of Dr. James Burns. In addition to his private practice, Dr. Burns sold a mail-order nostrum called the “Marvelous Giant Indian Salve.” Supposedly concocted from a secret Native American recipe—“buffalo tallow combined with healing herbs and barks”—Dr. Burns’s ointment was, according to its ads, a “guaranteed, permanent” cure for male “atrophy.” For twenty-five cents in cash, money order, or stamps, a sample box would be “mailed in a plain wrapper.” 4
The blue envelope was opened by Dr. Burns’s bookkeeper, Agnes Evans, who was struck by the elegance of the enclosed sheet of stationery. It was the same robin’s-egg hue as the
In answer to question thirty—“Have you had gonorrhea?”—the applicant answered yes. He went on to reveal that he had masturbated (“practiced self-abuse,” in the idiom of the time) for ten years; that his erections were “very feeble” and that “during connection” (sexual intercourse), his ejaculations were “very long delayed.”
He was also asked for the size of his waist and chest, which he gave as thirty-two inches and thirty-seven inches, respectively.
On June 6, one day after Dr. Hamill received the completed form, the book and impotence medication were mailed out to the person who identified himself as H. C. Barnet but whose measurements, as he gave them, were those of a man with a far trimmer physique. 2
Dr. Hamill was not the only peddler of impotence “remedies” in the latter years of the nineteenth century. Far from it. The 1890s were the golden age of patent medicines, a totally unregulated era when the American marketplace was flooded with snake oil. Generally compounded of little more than alcohol, opiates, and enough bitter-tasting ingredients to give them a suitably medicinal flavor, these high-sounding nostrums—Dr. Pierce’s Golden Medical Discovery, Munyon’s Miracle Phosphate, Horsford’s Neuralgia Tonic, and thousands more—promised to cure every ailment known to man, from head colds to consumption, asthma to arthritis. Beyond inducing a mild state of intoxication, however, they had no effect at all.
Over a two-week period, beginning on June 4, 1898, packages addressed to Mr. H. C. Barnet arrived on an almost daily basis at his private letter box at Nicholas Heckmann’s establishment. Virtually all of them contained marriage manuals, books of sexual advice, and guaranteed cures for impotence. Some of the latter came in liquid form, like Dr. Rudolphe’s Specific Remedy for Impotence, sold by a physician named Fowler of Moodus, Connecticut. Others consisted of tablets or capsules, like a product called Calthos, touted in full-page newspaper ads as “the greatest sensation in the medical world today.”
The purported invention of the “famous French specialist, Prof. Jules Laborde,” Calthos had (so its maker claimed) restored the “vital forces” of countless satisfied customers, including several thousand male insane-asylum inmates, who had been reduced to their pitiable condition by youthful self-abuse. Anyone who suffered from “Lost Manhood or weakness of any nature in the Sexual Organs” could receive a free five-day trial treatment by sending a request to the manufacturer, the Von Mohl Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. 3
On June 1, 1898—at precisely the same time that the man calling himself H. C. Barnet was sending out his requests for various remedies—an envelope of a distinctive blue color arrived at the Manhattan office of Dr. James Burns. In addition to his private practice, Dr. Burns sold a mail-order nostrum called the “Marvelous Giant Indian Salve.” Supposedly concocted from a secret Native American recipe—“buffalo tallow combined with healing herbs and barks”—Dr. Burns’s ointment was, according to its ads, a “guaranteed, permanent” cure for male “atrophy.” For twenty-five cents in cash, money order, or stamps, a sample box would be “mailed in a plain wrapper.” 4
The blue envelope was opened by Dr. Burns’s bookkeeper, Agnes Evans, who was struck by the elegance of the enclosed sheet of stationery. It was the same robin’s-egg hue as the
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