Lifelong philatelist, postal historian, award-winning author and PSLC/ESPHS President Charles J. DiComo, PhD shares a recent discovery entitled “The H.H. Warner & Co. “Safe Remedies” Major Double Transfer of the Central Vignette on their United States Private Die Proprietary Six-Cents Medicine Revenue Stamp RS258dt.”
By the 1850’s, many U.S. Drug Catalogs listed over 400 different proprietary medicines. In the 1860’s, the U.S. Government looked to numerous industries to collect revenue to meet the ever-growing expenses from the American Civil War. In August 1862, the printing of tax stamps began for such commodities as Playing Cards, Matches, Perfumes, Cosmetics, Canned Fruit and the lucrative business of packaged remedies, also know as Proprietary Medicines. The engraved stamps were produced from modest to eye catching, and while more than two billion were produced, many are unobtainable since they were invariably torn when the bottle or package was opened.
Many proprietors proclaimed their “magic cures”. There were 35 physicians, or persons claiming to be physicians. There were retail and wholesale druggists, apothecary’s, ministers, liquor merchants, clerks, showmen, bookbinders, etc. A few gained fame, and were elected U.S. Congressmen
–Demas S. Barnes & Ray Vaughn Pierce. By the end of the 19th Century there was an outcry by journalists, physicians and pharmacists over the secrecy of these nostrums, exposing the possible dangers in some patent medicines. This led to the enactment of the 1906 Food and Drug Act.
Once more, Dr. D’s late night search through his U.S. Private Die Proprietary Match and Medicine Revenue stamp archive has paid off with this very scarce major double transfer, hiding in plain sight, with an estimated 3 known to date. A nice find and reminds us to closely examine our stamps and covers with high magnification, either via a 10/20/30X loop or with high resolution digital scans on a computer monitor. Enjoy the hunt!