THE PATENT MEDICINES OF W. TOWNS
THE PATENT MEDICINES OF W. TOWNS by Tim Wolter
Although the bottles of W.Towns are not especially rare, researching this company has been frustrating. It is odd that an enterprise that was clearly carried out on a very large scale left so few "footprints".
I can't even clearly say when the company started. Some of their later ads claim that they got their start in 1874, but city directories in Fond Du Lac, and their own testimonials, seem to go back no farther than the 1880s. From some oblique references I suspect that the company's founder, Wyman Towns, may have practiced medicine in Canada before moving to Wisconsin. When the company later ran afoul of the Pure Food and Drug Act, investigators claimed that Towns moved to Fond Du Lac in 1893, having acquired a medical degree from a diploma mill and setting himself up as a practicing physician.
The earliest bottle from W.Towns seems to be the side embossed W.TOWNS/BLOOD PURIFIER. Not a common bottle at all, the specimen I have came from an 1880s privy here in Chippewa Falls.
This product, as well as Towns' Cough Killer, Towns' Healing Snuff, and Towns' Rheumatic Liniment all appear in an 1897 wholesale drug catalog.
So, you may be asking, where do the epilepsy medicines come from?
Around the turn of the century the W. Towns Medical Company seems to have been reorganized as a mail order business. Towns claimed to be specializing in "Chronic Nervous and Private Diseases", and sent out questionnaires full of all sorts of nosy questions. Apparently most any symptom would mean you had potential epilepsy, and the main, perhaps sole, product of the new Towns company was a medication for this condition.
At some point the company moved from Fond Du Lac to Baltimore, Maryland. This was around 1910, as an inquiry from the American Medical Association in 1912 got the following response from the local medical society: "Wyman Towns has no medical education, is not licensed, has no place in the American Medical Association Directory, and has gone to Baltimore, Maryland, where he goes about from town to town as a street faker claiming to cure fits."
This actually seems to be a bit of sour grapes, as the nationwide distribution of Towns' products suggests a fair degree of success.
For reasons unclear, the company moved back to Wisconsin in 1914, setting up shop in Milwaukee. They lingered on in some form until at least 1939, with the business being sort of adrift between Milwaukee, Baltimore and Puerto Rico.
The bottles of W.Towns challenge a few assumptions. They are very diverse, reflecting the mass marketing and large volume of a mail order operation. The Epilepsy product comes in both Cure and Remedy versions, presumably reflecting the pressure of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Oddly, the 1914 or later Milwaukee Epilepsy Treatment bottles all have applied lips, and in fact, usually look older than the earlier Baltimore versions!
Wyman Towns passed away in 1915 and was buried in Fond Du Lac. The leadership of the company passed to his children, and the move of the company back to Milwaukee at about that time may be related to his passing.
Tim Wolter
