“50” Mustang Bank Note, Mexican Mustang Liniment, D. S. Barnes 1850s

D.S. Barnes – Mustang Bank / Mexican Mustang Liniment, NEW YORK “50” Advertising Note. This advertisement was made to showcase bottles of Mexican Mustang Liniment. This note features a Vignette of a bare-breasted water goddess pouring water from a vase into a brook with a volcano erupting behind her. At the lower corners are Vignettes of mustangs.

“For the Outward Ailments of Man or Beast,” Mexican Mustang Liniment claimed to cure over 30 ailments, including rheumatic pains, sprains, strains, burns, bites, scalds, colds, sore throats and lameness. “Children, Adults, Horses, and Domestic Animals are always liable to accident” noted one 1871 advertisement, while emphasizing that “No family can pass a season without some kind of emollient being necessary.” Further statements declared the “merits of Mexican Mustang Liniment are well-known throughout the habitable world” with “million upon million of bottles sold” without a single complaint.

First introduced in 1825 by George W. Westbrook of St. Louis, Missouri, by the middle of the century (ca. 1856), the right to manufacture Mexican Mustang Liniment was passed to the partnership of Demas Barnes and Co. in New York, the largest patent medicine depot in the country, and to John D. Park in Cincinnati.