Mother Simington's Blood Purifier Bottle Front (Photo courtesy of Sandy Faul) |
I have been meaning to share something with you for a while,
and that is some photos of an actual bottle of Mother Simington’s Blood Purifier. I heard from reader Sandy Faul
that she had an empty bottle in her possession, and she kindly agreed to
provide me with photos and permission to share them on this blog. You will
recall from a previous blogpost, dated February 13, 2013, and titled Mother
Elizabeth Simington and Her Blood Purifier, that Elizabeth Crawford
Simington, the sister of my great great grandmother Jane Crawford Monk, was the
producer of a health elixir called Mother
Simington’s Blood Purifier, which was sold all over Iowa and nationwide at
the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. It had panacea-like
properties as there seemed to be nothing that it was not purported to cure.
Mother Simington's Blood Purifier Side View (Photo courtesy of Sandy Faul) |
Sandy states that she obtained the bottle from The Milford
Pharmacy and Gift Store in Milford, Iowa. It had come into the store’s possession
after being found in the wall of a house in Milford which was being demolished.
The bottle is described as: seven inches high, with four square sides, with two
sides printed in English, and two in Danish, and was manufactured in Milford,
Iowa by the Mother Simington Company. (Apparently there was a wave of Danish
immigration to Iowa in the 1870’s). She provided me with photos of three of the
sides, as the paper on all of the sides had started to “peel away from age”.
Sandy also forwarded me a section from History
of Clay County by Dian Gustafson, in which is it claimed that some of the
ingredients of the elixir were “sorghum and molasses”. Gustafson also reports
that Elizabeth had run the “first boarding house in Sanborn after her husband’s
death”, which was in 1899, and that she “catered to the first users of the new
railroad when it came through”.
Mother Simington's Blood Purifier Back view (Photo courtesy of Sandy Faul) |
Many thanks to Sandy for the photos, data from her own
research, and permission to share these with you. I so appreciate hearing from
readers of this blog, and all they share with me.
Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian readers and to those who
share some Canadian heritage.
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