Ayer's Ague Cure

Ayer's Ague Cure
Medical Claims	A "speedy and certain cure for Fever and Ague, Intermittent, Remittent, and Bilious Fevers, and for all disorders peculiar to malarious, marshy and miasmatic districts" without use of "quinine, arsenic, zinc, or other poisonous substances"
Year created	1857
Vendors	J. C. Ayer Co.

Ayer's Ague Cure is the brand name for an anti-malarial vegetable bitter that was formerly manufactured and sold by Dr. J. C. Ayer Co. of Lowell, Massachusetts.

Composition

Though the advertising boasted that Ayer's Ague Cure did not contain "quinine, arsenic, zinc, or other poisonous substances," it was found that it did, in fact, contain primarily quinine, quinidine, cinchonine, and cinchonidine, all four alkaloids extracted from the cinchona tree. Oleson's Secret Nostrums and Systems of Medicine (1890) describes the cure as "a syrupy tincture of cinchona with aromatics," giving the volume and formula as follows: "Each bottle holds 6 fluid ounces, and each fluid ounce was found to contain 3.2 grains of amorphous cinchona alkaloids, 3 grains cinchonine, 0.9 cinchonidine, 0.8 quinine, and 1 grain quinidine."

Advertising

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  Advertising card depicting a cabin on a waterway, a woman and child waiting as a canoeist comes to shore, with corner image of an alligator and two frogs examining a bottle of Ayer's Ague Cure taken from a box.

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  "AYER'S AGUE CURE is a purely vegetable bitter and powerful tonic, and is, with a positive knowledge of its effects, WARRANTED a certain cure for all malarial disorders." [etc.]