Short Stop for Coughs - A story of Medicine and Marriage

Today a story that crosses multiple categories.  Patent medicine lore, local history..and baseball.  And like a ball scooting through the infield this story took some odd hops.

Most people rarely think of it but there is an entire underground world beneath their feet.  In any but the newest communities the past lies buried.  Buried in dumps and trash heaps and filled in outhouses.  When by accident or intent these areas get excavated interesting things turn up.  Have a look at these 1890's drug store bottles.

These don't specify the town but it was Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.  Bottles like this are very common and were used in much the same way that prescription bottles are still used, to hold compounded medications.  But in this story there is a twist.

From the same era and location, a typical patent medicine.  It draws on the baseball reference as a pun.  You want that cough to be shortly stopped.  But were Thomas the Druggist and O.C. Thomas one and the same?

Yep.

O.C. Thomas - I've yet to learn his actual name - is first mentioned in the local paper in 1889.  He and "Mrs. O.C. Thomas" were living in " a portion of Captain Leroy's house" and were burglarized when they were out on the town.  Silverware and money went missing.

Thomas set up his drug store at the corner of Bridge and Willow streets.  The building is no longer extant.  Most of the mentions in the daily paper are trivial things.  Mrs. O.C. was frequently reported to be off visiting relatives, or to be hosting the ladies of various Societies at their home.  She seems to have been quite the social butterfly.

As to her husband there are mentions of the store being "handsomely painted and papered" in 1891, and of course the usual little blurbs inserted into the local news column, stating that such and such was available at the lowest prices at Thomas the Druggist.

One such item is illuminating.  Frequently in the early 1890's you encounter this:
  

"When you want Short Stop for Coughs see that the signature of O.C. Thomas is on each cartoon and blowed in the bottle."*

Some of the ads make mention of other druggists in town selling an inferior article and saying you should always ask for the real thing.  This strikes me as a bit cheeky, as there was a very similarly named product from somewhere out east ( probably New York? ) that was marketed nationally.  The description of the bottle I've seen says it was square, 4" by 1 1/2" and embossed simply SHORT STOP FOR COUGHS.  Publicly scolding your brother pharmacists for selling a product that you presumably are selling a knock off version of, hmmm, I suspect O.C. did not make himself popular.

In April of 1892 the paper records a fascinating little story.  There was a burglary attempt at the O.C. Thomas store.  O.C. who "sleeps at the store" noticed somebody trying to climb in over the transom.  He chased him off but believed he recognized the perpetrator.  No follow up provided.

It made me wonder a bit about the marital bliss of the Thomas couple.  I don't think sleeping in the store was a common thing.  

In March of 1895 there was an announcement that the store was closing.  It is said that " the store for some time has been run by a St. Paul wholesale concern, Mr. Thomas acted as the agent."

This was new to me.  In an era where saloons were often owned by the breweries that supplied their goods - you can be assured with an exclusive contract arrangement - here is what looks like a similar situation for a drug store.

At this point I spun a number of theories about our friend O.C.  Was he a prominent man brought in by an outside company to open up new territories?  Was his marriage to Mrs. O.C. a sham?  Did he have a background in patent medicine manufacturing and was his previous copyright purchased by the "wholesale concern"?  In slight support of this last notion the Short Stop bottle has slight irregularities on one of the side panels.  Something, presumably letters giving a location, has been struck out of the mold.  This was pretty common when locations or partnerships changed, but alternatively might have just reflected O.C. doing business with a low cost glass manufacturer who reused older molds.

The subsequent wanderings of O.C. and Mrs. Thomas can be gleaned from here and there.  It is mentioned that on leaving Chippewa Falls in 1895 he relocated to Crookston Minnesota.  In 1898 he is said to have been "formerly with Edward Hollinshead of Fargo" but had just bought the drug stock of Sullivan and Johnson at Valley City. ( both these locations are in North Dakota).

In 1899 he confusingly is said to have bought "E. Remmer's interest in the Opera House Drug Store in Valley City".  Perhaps he consolidated several stores into one business.

My last trace of the presumably happy couple comes in 1923.  At this point they lived in Bowdon North Dakota, a little hamlet with a current population of 131.  It is said that he and the missus had left in early November for an "extended automobile journey through the southern part of the U.S.".

And lets leave him there.  I like to think that our contentious pharmacist, foe of burglars and counterfeiter of quack medicines enjoyed his later life as a snowbird, motoring happily along with Mrs. O.C. as they visit more of her assorted relatives in warmer climes.
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*Cartoon as a word for a paper box strikes the modern eye as odd.  But this was at the time a common variant.  The etymology runs from the Latin carte for paper ( from which we get chart, card, etc), to the Italian cartone, indicating a strong heavy paper.  This was used for blueprints and sketches.  Cartoon for a drawing on such paper turns up already by the 1670's. By the 1840's it had been extended to include the political cartoons in newspapers.  It seems to have died out in the 20th century.

"...blowed in the bottle." is just plain odd phrasing.  Etymology can't explain everything.