Hindoo Pain Conquers the Courthouse

Posted on by under Doctors, Postcards

A question came to us from a patron that has surely crossed the minds of many others who have seen the colorful postcard of Mansfield’s first brick courthouse (built in 1827): how did the courthouse come to be an advertising space for Hindoo Pain Conqueror? While the front façade of the courthouse in this popularly reproduced image is plastered with posters and another large advertisement for Colden (possibly Golden) Anodyne for Colds & Cough, Hindoo Pain Conqueror stands out as a particularly curious addition to the city landscape. Here is a branded medicinal pain killer capitalizing on the mystique of the Far East.

Initially, we wondered whether the courthouse had genuinely been branded in this way or if a later image had been altered and subsequently produced en masse, but a study of the images in the Sherman Room’s collections reveal that the advertisement is visible in photographs taken at different angles, which then raises the question of how long the advertisement was there.

The original photograph used for the postcard, dated c. 1870. We have three copies of this photo in various sizes and shades of black and white in our collections.
Looking closely at the bottom left stoop, you can see the Hindoo Pain Conqueror is still there in this stereoscopic photo dated 1873.

The notable photo of “Hog Day in Mansfield,” dated January 7, 1862, offers the earliest photographic evidence that the front of the courthouse was once clean and pristine.

If we take the postcard at face value, then the advertisement was present by 1868 (although the earliest mention of Hindoo Pain Conqueror in any newspaper dates to 1870). According to A. A. Graham’s History of Richland County, Ohio, the front columns to which the questionable advertisements were later affixed were not part of the courthouse design until 1851 when the decision was made to make the building “more imposing” with the addition of a third story.1 At a cost of $15,000 (close to $375,000 in 2024), Graham reasoned the building’s new silhouette was “no doubt intended to improve the architecture of the old building, but if such was the object, it cannot be called a brilliant success.”2 Indeed, the Mansfield Herald noted on January 23, 1873, “the old court house has never been a favorite with our people, not from any intrinsic fault of its own perhaps, but because it looked bad, which the poor thing could not help . . . The gouty pillars of plastered brick, as expressionless as the lumber that surmounted all, are being demolished and borne away, no longer to annoy the eye of taste or sadden the memory of those who have been actors in its dingy premises.”3 If the courthouse was an eyesore before it became a billboard for patent medicine, it is no wonder that local newspapers did not bother reporting on such blatant vandalism. One can only assume Hindoo Pain Conqueror’s crafty promoter saw an opportunity to get his product’s name in front of as many people as possible while all eyes were on the building’s demolition – little did he know that his unorthodox tactics would long outlive his product.

The Hindoo Pain Conqueror came, saw, and is bound to conquer – indeed, has conquered, if we can judge from the immense number of bottles of ‘Hindoo’ he is selling.4

Reported by The Sandusky Register in November 1873, Hindoo Pain Conqueror had captured the city’s imagination with an intensity rivaled only by Julius Caesar. The unnamed salesman garnering such adulation was Christian Solomon Ritz who had been traveling the state of Ohio with this wonder drug since the summer of 1872.5 As the traveling agent for Ridenour, Coblentz & Co., Ritz was welcomed into many communities as a “good Samaritan.”6 In Bucyrus and Tiffin, he lectured “every evening on the street, from his hindoo chariot, presenting the claims of this wonderful medicine, and demonstrating the wonderful curative powers of this great remedy;”7 in Wilmington, his supply was “several times exhausted by the large demand;”8 and The Indianapolis News reported 1,061 bottles had been sold there in the month of March 1875.9 Besides being described as a “gentleman, honest and honorable in his dealings,” Ritz did not bring any particularly notable advertising skills to his work for Ridenour, Coblentz & Co., and little is known about how he entered the profession.10

Born in the late 1830s to Solomon Ritz and Elizabeth Gambrell/Gambrill, Christian Ritz spent much of his youth in Ohio.11 As a Lutheran clergyman, Solomon frequently moved his family around Ohio and briefly into Iowa. Solomon was instrumental in establishing St. Paul’s Lutheran Church and the Sandyville Lutheran Church in New Philadelphia, Ohio, in 1833;12 he served as president of the board of Wittenburg College in Springfield, Ohio, in 1849;13 and his congregation in Ashland was saddened to hear of his departure to “some point in the West” in the fall of 1854.14 The Ritz family settled in Tipton, Iowa (Center Township), where Solomon organized the Trinity Lutheran Church.15 It was while living in Iowa that Christian was drafted into the Union Army, enlisting with the 1st Iowa Infantry in May 1861. Not long after enlisting, the Muscatine Weekly Journal of Muscatine, Iowa, reported in June 1861 that Christian was among the sick at Hannibal, having “accidentally shot himself in the arm by dropping his musket while guarding a locomotive.”16 According to the paper, “the wound is not considered dangerous, but owing to unskillful surgical treatment at first it was so painful that he was obliged to stop off the boat at Keokuk while on his way to this city.”17 With this injury, Ritz claimed the distinct honor of being the first Iowa soldier wounded in the war.18 As one would expect, though, the story of his injury only grew more heroic and exaggerated with each passing year; by 1892, the injury was no longer an accident but, rather, a result of him attempting to “hold a train of cars alone against six rebel soldiers.”19 Whether the injury was truly accidental as first reported in 1861 remains up for debate, but the 1890 Veterans Schedule lists Ritz as being discharged with a disability in August 1861, and it is reported he received a $6 per month pension for his injury.20 An 1863 roster of persons subject to military duty shows Ritz working as a grocer in Buffalo Township, Illinois; he is one of two men on this list who had previously been discharged.21

By the end of the war, Ritz had settled in Ohio, where he married Jennie S. Stotenour and began working as a traveling agent for various druggists.22 His name first appears in Columbus in February 1865, linked to Dr. Seelye’s Liquid Catarrh Remedy produced by Dr. D. H. Seelye (of course!) & Co. out of Chicago.23 According to an 1865 piece in the Daily Ohio Statesman in Columbus, 800,000 bottles of the Catarrh Remedy were sold annually in the United States.24 First advertised in Chicago in 1859, the Catarrh Remedy survived the war but only by a few years, disappearing from the press sometime in 1867. Although evidence is scant, it is believed that Dr. D. H. Seelye passed away in 1865 from the disease his remedy was supposed to prevent – consumption (it was assumed long term catarrh would surely develop into consumption/tuberculosis).25 No formal announcement of Dr. Seelye’s death was made, likely to prevent the truth of his condition from impacting sales. Acute respiratory diseases like catarrh were recognized as “an important cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the entire period of the Civil War” and Dr. Seelye’s was not the only option available to those afflicted with the disease.26 One thing that set Dr. Seelye’s apart in the crowded catarrh marketplace was the adoption of proprietary stamps for advertising.

Dr. D. H. Seelye’s Proprietary Medical Stamp. Image taken from a past auction hosted by The American Revenue Association. See: https://www.revenuer.org/auction.asp?auction=AUCTION87&category=335.

Beginning in 1862, the U.S. government added taxes to a variety of goods including patent medicines and “to confirm that taxes were paid, a ‘revenue stamp’ was purchased and appropriately affixed to the taxable item.”27 Enterprising individuals and companies took this as an opportunity to create “their own distinctive stamps that bore their company design and trademark on them.”28 Not only did such stamps offer additional advertising value to the products, they also “conveyed the not[ion] that the federal government was placing a ‘government seal of approval'” on those products.29 It is estimated that these stamps, bearing Dr. Seelye’s image front and center were first used in October 1865, about six months after Ritz began working as the advertising agent for the company and after Dr. Seelye’s death. Perhaps, the stamps were a practical tool used to bolster sales and maintain the appearance of Dr. Seelye’s active involvement with the company.30 According to the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, many of the widely available catarrh “medications” used creosote, distilled from wood tar, as the primary ingredient alongside a good dose of alcohol to make them palatable.31 A full list of ingredients is never provided in the advertisements for Dr. Seelye’s Liquid Catarrh Remedy, but, starting in 1866, the ads note: “This remedy contains NO MINERAL OR POISONOUS INGREDIENTS, but is prepared from vegetable extracts EXCLUSIVELY; therefore it is PERFECTLY HARMLESS even to the most tender and delicate child.”32 The producers of Hindoo Pain Conqueror made similar claims that their drug was “entirely vegetable, composed of roots and herbs growing in Hindoostan’s sunny clime,” yet the recipe called for “oil of tar” (creosote), turpentine, opium, and chloroform, among other ingredients.33

The “secret Hindoo recipe” for Hindoo Pain Conqueror. Image posted to Medical Antiques Facebook group by Isaac John, May 31, 2024.

Dr. Seelye’s Liquid Catarrh Remedy and Hindoo Pain Conqueror are the most notable products Ritz promoted. Indeed, barring a six-year gap in his resume, Hindoo was the next big venture he participated in – city directories show Ritz was living and working out of Mansfield by 1867.34 The Liquid Catarrh Remedy stands in stark contrast to Hindoo Pain Conqueror despite their shared reliance on only the finest “vegetable” ingredients. The Catarrh Remedy promised one reasonable solution – to address the symptoms and effects of catarrh – while Hindoo Pain Conqueror was said to treat everything from catarrh to diarrhea and lameness in the back. Directly comparing the two products and the imagery they employed in their promotion shows a distinction between a classic sales pitch grounded in established medical knowledge/practice and a more modern approach reliant on mysticism and miracles.

This image can be found as part of the company’s patent application, dated December 6, 1870. See: https://www.loc.gov/item/2020744452/.

In 1864, The Daily Milwaukee News commented that “the long experience of Dr. D. H. Seelye in treating Bronchial diseases and Cataral [sic] difficulties, justly entitles his Liquid Catarrh remedy to the confidence of the public.”35 The quality of his drug rested on his personal reputation as a physician while Hindoo Pain Conqueror was “The Great Secret of the Hindoos.”36 Samuel Ridenour and John Philip Coblentz, the proprietors of Hindoo Pain Conqueror, claimed in an 1873 promotional pamphlet that “the secrets and ingredients . . . [were] obtained from a learned Hindoo, His Royal Highness, Dr. Luximon Roy.”37 This gave a certain authenticity to their product and keyed into the rising popularity of homeopathic and patent medicine in the late nineteenth century. While homeopathy finds its origins in Germany in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century, its popularity in the United States largely relied on an “appropriation of exotic knowledge and medicinal substances.”38 Very often, this “exotic knowledge” was Asian in origin and the most attractive was the mysterious Hindoo who was “naturally more mystical than Americans.”39 In the late 1850s, the world was mystified by the “Black Doctor of Paris,” a man of Japanese or East Indian nativity, who “cured” Adolphe Sax of a malignant cancer on his lip. According to The Daily Exchange of Baltimore, this doctor “resuscitated the inventor of the Sax horns . . . us[ing] simply the juices and natural extracts of plants, brought by him from the East – the country of marvelous antidotes.”40 It did not matter that this doctor “was imprisoned for his quackery” in 1860 because the promises of his Eastern medicine had already taken root in the public imagination and others, like Dr. Luximon Roy, were finding an eager audience in the United States.41

An 1854 title page for a lecture on the “Grand Hindoo Poetical Phrenological Chart” given by Prince Luximon Roy. The full lecture may have never been published. See: https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbccpmat.copy0031/?sp=2246&st=text&r=-0.222,-0.138,1.298,1.529,0.

Luximon toured a cross-section of the country, from Ohio to Louisiana, performing traditional music “in full oriental costume” and lecturing on topics like Hindoo Psychology. Hindoo Mesmerism, and Hindoo Miracles.42 In a lengthy description of his performance, The Fremont Weekly Journal noted in May 1853, “Those who are sick can obtain genuine Indian Medicines at his room at the Fremont House.”43 Luximon presented himself as the nephew of Ram Mohun Roy, an Indian religious reformer whose writings in the early nineteenth century made Indian religion more accessible to European and American Protestants. Ram Mohun Roy’s influence in the international religious arena garnered him the title, “the father of modern India.”44

In addition to familial ties to the esteemed reformer, Luximon claimed to have been educated by Christian missionaries in Hindoostan (India) before arriving in the United States in 1832.45 Luximon first appeared in Ohio in 1853 but had moved on from the state by 1857, a full thirteen years before Hindoo Pain Conqueror was first advertised in Bloomington, Illinois. At that time, Hindoo Pain Conqueror was linked to John C. Coblentz and Charles Perrigo (John C. was the son of John Philip Coblentz). It is possible that any of the four men associated with the production of Hindoo Pain Conqueror had seen Luximon’s performance at one point, but it is highly unlikely that they received any secrets for its recipe from him. Indeed, a thorough genealogical study published in March 2024 asserts none of Luximon’s Hindoo identity was real and was in fact an alias for Dr. George W. Ellis who adopted the persona as a marketing tactic for his phrenology lectures after he abandoned his wife and young child for unknown reasons.46 Ellis maintained his ruse, successfully for the most part, until his death in 1885. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat called Ellis/Roy a “harmless, garrulous pretender to science” in their announcement of his death.47 Hindoo Pain Conqueror, it is clear, was borne out of a long history of opportunistic and performative pseudoscience that preyed on the public’s desire for a quick fix to the ills of life (something we are still grappling with today).

Hindoo Pain Conqueror was described as a “family medicine” because it was a product of the Coblentz family (Samuel Ridenour was John Philip’s brother-in-law) and because it was a product that could be used by the whole family.48 Interestingly, in their 1873 pamphlet, the Coblentz clan acknowledged that their drug might be considered a quack medicine, but they argued it was the great secret of the Hindoos to produce a medicine that could strike “at the very root of the disease, conquering all those diseases, and restoring health to the suffering and afflicted.”49 Surely, the great Hindoos could not be practitioners of quack medicine despite documented cases to the contrary (of course, genuine Hindoos were not in the habit of advertising their techniques) and, as specified in the pamphlet, is it not just as questionable that established physicians were prescribing calomel [mercury] for so many diseases?50 For the American consumer looking for an answer to the maladies of the day, it was very difficult to escape dubious drugs and treatments.

The Coblentz family of druggists and chemists were descendants of German immigrants who had arrived in the United States prior to the emergence of homeopathic medicine, yet their most well-known product exploited influences of nineteenth century German medical theory and a fascination with the Far East.

When Christian Ritz began promoting Hindoo Pain Conqueror in 1872, he became the active face of the product. Testimonials of his work and the efficacy of the product started appearing in newspapers throughout Ohio; Perrigo and Coblentz had simply relied on small advertising pieces that got straight to the point in the years before Ritz came along. Since Hindoo Pain Conqueror had been on the market for two years prior to Ritz’s engagement as advertising agent, it is safe to assume that the Hindoo name and imagery were not products of his imagination, but we cannot definitively say why the Coblentz family decided to lean into that imagery.

An early advertisement for Hindoo Pain Conqueror from 1870.

None of the extant newspaper advertisement for Hindoo Pain Conqueror feature the “picture of a Hindoo doctor” referenced in their 1871 trademark application but, instead, rely solely on the Hindoo name.51 There are no specific reports or advertisements out of Mansfield between 1870 and 1873 but given that Ritz was most active as Ridenour & Coblentz’s advertising agent in 1872, it is plausible that Ritz saw a unique opportunity to use the disdain of the courthouse façade to his advantage – at minimum, the product placement didn’t make the problem any worse. Without documented sales figures, it is impossible to know how effective the courthouse campaign actually was. Its longevity and the renewed interest it has brought to the product over a century later show that, if anything, Hindoo conquered the memory of the courthouse.

Our thanks to Isaac Coblentz for sharing his family research with us and bringing this courthouse oddity to our attention.

  1. A. A. Graham, History of Richland County, Ohio (Mansfield, OH: A. A. Graham & Co., Publishers, 1880): 385. ↩︎
  2. Graham, 386. ↩︎
  3. Quoted in Graham, 385-386. ↩︎
  4. The Sandusky Register, November 15, 1873, 4. ↩︎
  5. “Hindoo Pain Conqueror,” The Journal-Republican [Wilmington, OH], June 6, 1872, 3. ↩︎
  6. “A Good Samaritan in Town,” Bucyrus Journal, September 20, 1872, 2. ↩︎
  7. Ibid; “The Good Samaritan,” The Tiffin Tribune [Tiffin, OH], October 3, 1872, 3. ↩︎
  8. The Journal-Republican [Wilmington, OH], June 20, 1872, 3. ↩︎
  9. “Great Excitement on the Streets,” The Indianapolis News, March 25, 1875, 4. ↩︎
  10. Clinton Republican [Wilmington, OH], June 6, 1872, 3. ↩︎
  11. “Ohio, County Marriages, 1789-2016,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939K-BVSV-YV?cc=1614804&wc=ZTDY-K68%3A121352001%2C123289901: 13 October 2021), Knox > Marriage certificates 1837 > image 116 of 247; county courthouses, Ohio. ↩︎
  12. “Synod Meeting Nears End, Anniversary Service Next,” The Daily Times [New Philadelphia, OH], October 6, 1933, 16. ↩︎
  13. Ancestry.com. U.S., School Catalogs, 1765-1935 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. ↩︎
  14. The States and Union [Ashland, OH]. October 4, 1854, 2. ↩︎
  15. “Tipton Church to Note Centennial [Image],” The Daily Times [Davenport, IA], August 13, 1955, 5. ↩︎
  16. “Return of One of the Volunteers,” Muscatine Weekly Journal [Muscatine, IA], June 28, 1861, 3. ↩︎
  17. Ibid. ↩︎
  18. Muscatine Weekly Journal [Muscatine, IA], February 18, 1887, 6. ↩︎
  19. The Muscatine Journal [Muscatine, IA], June 14, 1892, 8. ↩︎
  20. The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Special Schedules of the Eleventh Census (1890) Enumerating Union Veterans and Widows of Union Veterans of the Civil War; Series Number: M123; Record Group Title: Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs; Record Group Number: 15; Census Year: 1890; Martin-Rott, Susie. Muscatine County, Iowa Civil War Soldiers [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. ↩︎
  21. The National Archives in Washington, DC; Washington, DC, USA; Consolidated Lists of Civil War Draft Registration Records (Provost Marshal General’s Bureau; Consolidated Enrollment Lists, 1863-1865); Record Group: 110; Collection Name: Consolidated Enrollment Lists, 1863-1865 (Civil War Union Draft Records); NAI: 4213514; Archive Volume Number: 2 of 7. ↩︎
  22. Ancestry.com. Ohio, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1774-1993 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016. ↩︎
  23. Daily Ohio Statesman [Columbus, OH], February 8, 1865, 1. ↩︎
  24. Daily Ohio Statesman [Columbus, OH], March 24, 1865, 3. ↩︎
  25. “Dr D. H. Seelye,” Find a Grave, March 7, 2017, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/177093122/d-h-seelye. ↩︎
  26. Maj. George R. Callender, M.C. and Maj. James F. Coupal, M.C., The Medical Department of the United States Army in World War, Volume XII: Pathology of the Acute Respiratory Diseases, and of Gas Gangrene Following War Wounds (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1929): 4; see: https://achh.army.mil/history/book-wwi-volxii-seci-intro. ↩︎
  27. “Revenue Stamps of the United States,” Wikipedia, August 25, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_stamps_of_the_United_States. ↩︎
  28. Schuyler J. Rumsey, Donald Green Collection of Private Die Medicine Stamps, Public Auction No. 64, December 12, 2015, page 9, http://www.rumseyauctions.com/pdfs/Sale64.pdf. ↩︎
  29. Ibid. ↩︎
  30. Schuyler J. Rumsey, Donald Green Collection of Private Die Medicine Stamps, Public Auction No. 64, December 12, 2015, page 72, http://www.rumseyauctions.com/pdfs/Sale64.pdf. ↩︎
  31. Tracey McIntire, “Bad Medicine: Sickening Civil War Remedies,” National Museum of Civil War Medicine, December 13, 2022, https://www.civilwarmed.org/bad-medicine/#_ftn3. ↩︎
  32. One of many such representative advertisements can be found in Waukesha Freeman [Waukesha, WI], July 24, 1866, 1. Emphasis in original. ↩︎
  33. “Hindoo Pain Conqueror: Great Secret of the Hindoos,” pamphlet published by Ridenour & Coblentz, Springfield, O., 1873, page 2. Patented recipe for Hindoo Pain Conqueror, image posted to Medical Antiques Facebook Group by Isaac John, May 31, 2024. ↩︎
  34. Business Guide and City Directory of th3 City of Mansfield, O., for 1867-’68 (Mansfield, OH: L. D. Myers & Bro., Book and Job Printers, Herald Establishment, 1867): 64. ↩︎
  35. The Daily Milwaukee News, November 19, 1864, 5. ↩︎
  36. “Hindoo Pain Conqueror: Great Secret of the Hindoos,” pamphlet published by Ridenour & Coblentz, Springfield, O., 1873. ↩︎
  37. “Hindoo Pain Conqueror: Great Secret of the Hindoos,” pamphlet published by Ridenour & Coblentz, Springfield, O., 1873, page 2. ↩︎
  38. Di Lu, “’Homeopathy Flourishes in the Far East’: A Forgotten History of Homeopathy in Late Nineteenth-Century China,” Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science 73 (2018): 329-351. ↩︎
  39. Michael J. Altman, Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu: American Representations of India, 1721-1893 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017): 117. ↩︎
  40. “A Japanese Physician,” The Daily Exchange [Baltimore, MD], March 25, 1859, 2. ↩︎
  41. The Homes County Republican [Millersburg, OH], January 12, 1860, 2. ↩︎
  42. “The Greatest Novelty Yet,” The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer [Wheeling, WV], January 10, 1854, 2. ↩︎
  43. “Advertisements: Great Novelty,” The Fremont Weekly Journal [Fremont, OH], May 21, 1853, 2. ↩︎
  44. “Ram Mohan Roy,” Encyclopedia Britannica, June 25, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ram-Mohan-Roy. ↩︎
  45. Urbana Citizen and Gazette [Urbana, OH], November 24, 1854, 2; The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer [Wheeling, WV], January 7, 1854, 3. ↩︎
  46. “Mississippi to Maine: The Elusive Legacy of George W. Ellis,” AP Genealogy, March 2024, https://apgenealogy.wordpress.com/2024/03/31/mississippi-to-maine-the-elusive-legacy-of-george-w-ellis/. ↩︎
  47. “Death of Luximon Roy,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 2, 1885, 8. ↩︎
  48. “Great Excitement on the Streets,” The Indianapolis News, March 25, 1875, 4. ↩︎
  49. “Hindoo Pain Conqueror: Great Secret of the Hindoos,” pamphlet published by Ridenour & Coblentz, Springfield, O., 1873, page 3. ↩︎
  50. The Holmes County Republican [Millersburg, OH], January 12, 1860, 2; “Hindoo Pain Conqueror: Great Secret of the Hindoos,” pamphlet published by Ridenour & Coblentz, Springfield, O., 1873, page 3. ↩︎
  51. William Henry Browne, A Treatise on the Law of Trade-marks and Analogous Subjects (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1873): 629. ↩︎

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