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Medicinal adverts

The Gloucester Journal and most other newspapers were always full of adverts for medicines for all sorts of ailments.  Most were of the ‘quack’ variety and were probably of little use, although the amounts of opium and/or alcohol may well have helped control symptoms and their effects.   Robert Raikes the Elder had a vested interest in this way of advertising as he and his business partner, William Dicey, were also sole proprietors of ‘Dr Bateman’s Pectoral Drops’ and this featured prominently in the Gloucester Journal’s pages. The medicine was a tincture of opium and camphor used for disorders of the chest or lungs and was marketed as a remedy for ‘all Rheumatic and Chronic complaints, in pains of the limbs, bones, and joints, for influenza, and in violent colds’

GA Ref.No: GJ/1781