1893 Merchant’s Gargling Oil Liniment Advertising Cover

Nineteenth-century advertising cover. The front features a printed return address for Kettlesen Bros., who operated as local dealers in groceries, crockery, and glassware in Oxford Junction, Iowa. It is addressed to Fred A. Luhnow at 448 Noble Street in Chicago, Illinois. The envelope is franked with a purple 2-cent United States postage stamp, 232, from the 1893 Columbian Exposition issue, which depicts the landing of Columbus. A partial circular town postmark from Oxford Junction is stamped over the upper portion of the envelope.

The reverse side of the cover is fully utilized as a patent medicine advertisement for Merchant’s Gargling Oil Liniment. The graphics highlight that the product was manufactured by the Merchant’s Gargling Oil Co. of Lockport, New York, under secretary and manager John Hodge. Text on the flap describes the oil as a versatile remedy “For Man and Beast,” explicitly detailing separate white wrappers for human flesh and yellow wrappers for animals. Extensive lists enumerate the ailments the liniment claims to cure, ranging from human burns, frostbite, and flesh wounds to animal conditions like horse distemper, lameness, and stringhalt.

The Celebrated Gargling Oil was launched in 1833 by George W. Merchant, a pharmacist of Lockport , New York . His Universal Family Embrocation was esteemed along the Erie Canal where it was used to heal the bleeding sores of the horses and mules that pulled the boats along the Canal. Word-of-mouth of approval led to the concoction then known as Merchant ‘s Gargling Oil to be used as a liniment “for man and beast” , and the early trademark displayed a horse receiving the oil application. Merchant ‘s formula was sold to M. H. Tucker in 1855, and John Hodge joined the firm, being elected secretary in 1858. It was John Hodge who used a steamboat bedecked with banners advertising Merchant’s Gargling Oil, and the peak of the publicity stunt was the trip of the steamboat through the rapids and whirlpools of Niagra Falls on September 6, 1883. The formula for Gargling Oil, which was changed from time to time, included crude petro­latum, ammonia, water, benzine, crude oil, tincture of iodine, soft soap and water. Merchant’s Gargling Oil was still made in 1933, 100 years after its introduction.
(Holcombe, Henry W., Scott’ s Monthly Journal, 21:164-169, 204-208, July-August, 1940; see also Gerald Carson, p.40)