Force of Life Chemical Co.

The Force of Life Chemical Company was a distributor of proprietary medicines and food supplements, beginning with their namesake "Force of Life" product, a compound of lecithin and unidentified vegetable products, as well as specific remedies for dyspepsia, heart and kidney troubles, rheumatism, catarrh, consumption, piles, and a laxative agent. The company was incorporated at Wilmington, Delaware on 19 Sep. 1903, and operated out of offices on Broadway in New York City, New York until its voluntarily dissolution following scandal from a widely-publicised fraud trial in 1906 credited to the intervention of President Theodore Roosevelt.

Corporation
Incorporation papers were filed at Wilmington, Delaware on 19 Sep. 1903 by S. S. Adams, Jr., C. C. Pierce, L. Irving Handy; however, these names seem to have quickly disappeared from the leadership of the company, as E. Virgil Neal and his associates ran the concern and populated the board.

Leadership

 * President, E. Virgil Neal (1904)
 * President, James R. O'Beirne (1905-1906)
 * Vice-President, James A. Tedford (1904-1906)
 * Treasurer, Arthur H. Williams (1904-1906)
 * Secretary, Frederick H. Wilson (1904-1906)
 * Auditor, Solon L. Slade

Directors

 * E. Virgil Neal (1904-1906)
 * Edwin E. Keeler (1905-1906)
 * William F. Acton (1905-1906)
 * Robert T. Bagley (1904-1906)
 * James F. Pierce (1904-1906)
 * Luther Bartlett Little (1904-1906)
 * James A. Tedford (1904-1906)
 * C. W. Robbins (1904-1906)
 * A. N. Williams (1904-1906)

Force of Life
The lecithin-based supplement branded "Force of Life" was originally advertised from 1903 as the discovery of A. Wilbur Jacksone, under whose name the same product was advertised for nearly a year prior to the incorporation of the Force of Life Chemical Co. Jacksone's early 1903 advertisements encouraged readers to write him at 173 West 83rd street in New York City; his offices were, after incorporation, removed to 1932 Broadway, the same building as the company. His name would disappear from advertising subsequently, being replaced by William Wallace Hadley, an "eminent thaumaturgic panopathist" who, it was claimed, had brought a woman back to life, a feat credited to his "mysterious control over disease and death" and his discovery of "the vital principle of life itself, the dynamic force that creates and maintains existence."

Life Ray Capsule
The company sold a small capsule, described in press accounts as resembling a "short 22-caliber Flaubert cartridge" with a "cover of glass and copper," intended to irradiate company medicines as well as drinking water with the "great dynamic force of life" that is given off by the element radium. Fortunately for the customers who ordered this product, the capsules sold by the company did not actually contain the promised radium, but rather, according to Samuel Hopkins Adams' in his 1905 series of articles on The Nostrum Evil, "a mixture of corn starch and calcium sulfid."

Legal Records

 * Supreme Court Appellate Division, Second Department: Josephine T. Deady, Plaintiff-Appellant, against E. Virgil Neal, Defendant-Respondent, 1912. https://books.google.com/books?id=YvpIS_ezFVMC&pg=RA1-PP53