Baseball History Daily

An 1890s advertisement featuring George Wright, which appeared in newspapers across the country, and presented as a regular news story, for Paine’s Celery Compound:

“He is a prince among gentlemen athletes. Once he was known as the king of base-ball players, and to this day many say the game has not produced a shortstop to equal him. But, while Mr. Wright’s interest in base-ball is still as great as ever, he is now playing cricket, and is one of the best cricketers in the country.”

Paine’s, like many patent medicines of the late nineteenth century, claimed to be a cure for the grippe (influenza):

“Says Mr. Wright: ‘Last spring I did not feel in the best of health. I do not mean to say that this is strange, because most people during the past season have been out of sorts, but I was troubled with a tired, languid feeling, a thing quite unusual to me.

“I was not what might be called sick, but I was not well. a friend recommended me to try something of which he spoke in the highest terms. I am in the habit of relying on my constitution to bring me through, but I determined to follow my friend’s advice.

“I must say that I am glad I did so, for I found it benefited me greatly, and I am taking it now, even while out-of-doors and indulging in my regular exercise. This is what Paine’s Celery Compound did for me.”

George Wright

The ad said Paine’s “makes the weak strong,” and that “Thousands of people attribute their recovery from the grippe” to the compound.

According to The Journal of the American Medical Association, Paine’s contained fifteen different types of vegetables, but that “loses much of its impressiveness when it is seen that the total amount of vegetable extractives is less than 1.5 percent.” The Journal also noted that the compound contained 19.85 percent alcohol, which may account for Wright’s assertion that it “benefited me greatly.”

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