Colourful professor marketed ointment

Press, 27 July 1989, Page 13

Colourful professor marketed ointment

museum pieces

Dear Sir, For some time my children have been suffering from irritating blotches on their faces. On being persuaded to try your Marvellous Ointment I procured a tube and it works wonders. My husband had a poisoned thumb to which I also applied the Ointment. You could almost see it healing the wound. I strongly recommend it to all my friends. Signed A.E. I had always thought letters like the above, printed in newspapers for advertising purposes, had been faked by the manufacturer until I looked at the Professor Bickerton papers in the Canterbury Museum. I found a whole folder of similar letters, some used by Bickerton to advertise his products. Professor Alexander W. Bickerton had been appointed Professor of Chemistry at the newly opened Canterbury College in 1873. His effervescent personality, bubbling over with ideas, schemes and inventions, made him immensely popular among not only his students but the public of Christchurch. Professor Bickerton in 1880. purchased 30 acres of land on the New Brighton Road, which he planted in pine trees and called Wainonl. In 1884 he moved to Wainoni where he planted out large grounds. They became a pleasure garden which he gradually developed to include fireworks, plays, a fernery, cycle rides and other exciting attractions which the public of Canterbury flocked to see and enjoy. When he ceased teaching at Canterbury College in 1902, he looked for other ways of making an income and the Wainoni

Remedy Company was born. He had always been an enthusiastic inventor, and had for many years concocted remedies for his own minor ailments and those of his family. Locally he had a reputation as a healer, and about 1903 started making his own medicines for sale — in a shed on the Wainoni estate. Professor Bickerton’s Marvellous Ointment (or Censol) claimed to cure chilblains, poisoned wounds, burns and scalds, skin rashes, piles, shingles, boils and carbuncles. Certainly the surviving correspondence to Bickerton attests to its success. He also manufactured an iron tonic, “Vifer,” which he claimed he accidentally discovered while analysing iron. "Sapon” and “Kinap” were blended oils. In somewhat flowery language he wrote his publicity blurb for his oils: Professor Bickerton’s Blended Oils.—A stinging or emollient embrocation. In ordinary Harthorn and oil. Olive oil is saponified by liquid ammonia. In Professor Bickerton’s blended oils or embrocation, the saponification is effected by anhydrous ammonia, and the linament contains in addition to ordinary oil, the effective senica oil rendered inodorous, as well as the curative fir tree oils. And as the saponification is effected without water these blended oils do not separate. The enmolient oil is intended as a massage and gymnastic lubricant, and as it contains combined hartshorn it is a splendid skin stimulant: The stinging oil is intended as a counter irritant for rheuma-

tism, lumbagho, face-ache, bruises, etc., etc. By mixing the two in various proportions any degree of fiery or emollient character can be obtained. He continued to sell his remedies until about 1905 when he went on to new ideas of making money to support himself. The final word rests with Bickerton. In the following advertisement his handwriting and notorious lack in following grammatical rules and spelling gives away the fact that he was pretending to write to himself and reply:

After much persuasion Professor Bickerton has been induced to put on the market a number of his chemical discoveries. Some of them have had over thirty years of limited but marvellously efficacious use. In his letter, replying to our urgent request for him so he says as follows: "Doubtless you are right and my absurd reticence has stood in the way of any extended usefulness of the remedies I have his puton. I suppose it is useless to attempt to be sane in amd world, and if people will not use a remedy unless it is advertised and, placed upon the market as a patent medicine, I suppose it must be done. I have submitted papers to medical and other scientific societies, have written to the papers and spoken in public regarding some of these remedies, and have offered them freely and without cost to the world, but as you ask, 'Who is there that is using them?”’

By

JO-ANNE SMITH