These days, we take medicine for granted when it comes to curing simple ailments like a cold or a cough. But, in the 19th Century when remedies weren’t so readily available, finding the right medicine and cure could sometimes take a while or prove difficult, which often led to ailments becoming worse through time. Sometimes the ingredients themselves could make things worse unknowingly, like this advert showing chloroform in the recipe!

So, you can almost hear the delight when this Blantyre man wrote to a doctor in Glasgow in 1858, thanking him for the remedy. Writing into the Paisley and Renfrewshire Advertiser George Irvine was an early resident of Low Blantyre, an emerging district in our town, then still a village. He wrote:

“To Mr Henderson, Medical Botanist, 60 Commerce Street, Tradeston, Glasgow, – Dear Sir, I have much pleasure to inform you that you have succeeded in effectually curing me of Cough, accompanied with a Spitting of blood, Shortness of Breath, and Palpitation of the Heart, of which I was afflicted for upwards of Three Years, during which time I was under the treatment of several medical gentlemen, without having any desired effect, and they all latterly gave me as being in Consumption. I have quick pleasure to inform you, or any person you may refer to me, that from the time I commenced taking your medicine, I gradually got better, and in the course of nine or ten weeks I was as well as ever I was in my life, and would be happy to give any information to any other person similarly afflicted I was.— I am. Dear Sir, yours, GEORGE IRVINE”