page_title: Swaim's Panacea
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Swaim's Panacea / History
caption_attribution_description: English: 1894 advertisement for Swaim's Panacea, appearing in the 1895 Philadelphia Record Almanac
context_page_description: Swaim's Panacea was an American patent medicine sold by William Swaim of Philadelphia, starting in approximately 1820, with formulations still being sold into at least the 1920s. It was advertised to cure various diseases including scrofula, mercurial disease, deep-seated syphilis, rheumatism, sores, swellings, etc.
context_section_description: Swaim was originally a bookbinder, and the popular story went that he discovered the recipe on the page of a book he was binding at his New York shop.   More likely he obtained the recipe from Dr. N.J. Quackinboss who had administered it to Swaim himself.  Quackinboss was using a formulation previously published by a Dr. McNeven which originated from France, where a remedy called the "Rob de Laffecteur" invented by the French apothecary Pierre Boyveau was very popular.
  Swaim moved to Philadelphia and began to market his own version of the cure, at least by 1820, and perhaps as early as 1811.  After getting permission to administer his concoction to some local asylum residents to alleged beneficial effect (and gathering numerous endorsements, including from local physicians), he was able to sell his product at high prices ($3 a bottle, a significant sum at the time), and became very wealthy with a net worth of approximately $500,000.
   
  Swaim used a symbol of Hercules killing the Hydra in early advertisements of his product, which was being bottled in rectangular bottles by 1825, and in green cylindrical bottles by 1829.  Swaim advertised heavily, and took advantage of developments in commercial lithography in the 1830s to advertise his concoction with a portrait of a woman named Nancy Linton, advertising her "actual appearance" after being cured, although this appearance still looks rather gruesome to modern eyes.  The panacea contained mercury, and Linton's appearance appears to reflect signs of mercury poisoning.  Mercuric chloride (called corrosive sublimate at the time) did have a prior history of being used to treat syphilis.  Oil of wintergreen and sarsaparilla were primary ingredients of Swaim's product.
  By 1828, the Philadelphia Medical Society published a report strongly refuting Swaim's laudatory claims and previous endorsements of the popular panacea, as had the New York Medical Society.  Respected physicians who had endorsed the product as promising in the beginning, such as Nathaniel Chapman who later founded the American Medical Association, disavowed their early approvals.  Despite Swaim's claim that the product contained no mercury, the medical reports showed otherwise.
  After William Swaim died in 1846, his son James continued the business until his death in 1870, along with Swaim's son-in-law Franklin Stewart.  (Stewart's son Samuel Swaim Stewart invented the Banjeaurine.)  "Swaim's Laboratory" was located in Philadelphia at 113 S. Seventh St, just below Chestnut for many years.  Sometime after 1890, production was moved to Clifton, Staten Island in New York.
  In 1900, James F. Ballard of St. Louis, who produced a number of patent medicines, acquired the rights to Swaim's Panacea and all other Swaim products from the Swaim family.  In the 1910s, the United States government fined Ballard $30 for misbranding of products under the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, including Swaim's Panacea, as he was continuing to advertise the product with the amazing claims that had then been made for over 90 years.  It appears the product continued to be sold at least into the 1920s.
caption: 1894 advertisement in the Philadelphia Record Almanac.
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