On a Maxfield Parish poster: Even an artist like Maxfield Parish did advertisements. Here he does an ad for a product called No-To-Bac that purportedly cured tobacco addiction.

On a flat, unnumbered, unlabeled case containing various ephemera like early doctor’s calling cards with their portraits on them: [pointing at a swarthy mean looking guy with a mustache who practiced, according to his card, on West 14th Street in New York:] Isn’t he scary looking? Would you let him treat you?

On addiction cures: One of the most popular was one developed by a Dr. Leslie E. Keeley. His cure dealt with addiction to narcotics, alcohol, and tobacco. A particularly insidious group of products were those narcotics that substituted a higher dose of opium or morphine for the normal dose the addict was taking. But you can see the beginnings of an AA approach in some of these early anti-addiction cures.

On the evils of quackery: Finally, a group of writers started writing, books mostly and pamphlets to a lesser degree, exposing this charlatan doctors and cures. There began a movement to expose these products and their purveyors as the frauds they were. But the Pure Food and Drug Act wasn’t passed by Congress until 1906. And of course even today the FDA can’t keep up with these pills and potions to cure you of this and that being offered in the back of magazines or on the internet.