Dr. Flint’s Quaker Bitters $500

Late 1870s Advertising Note.

“This ad note offers a $500 reward ‘for any Medicine equal to Quaker Bitters for all internal difficulties and derangements.’ Dr. Flint’s visage appears fashionably attired at center, while a Quaker gentleman looks on at left and a bust of Columbia, quite similar to that found on the Fourth Issue 15 Cents Fractional Currency.”

In 1876, Henry Flint launched Dr. H.S. Flint & Co. Quaker Bitters from his store at 197 Broad Street in Providence. The Flint family was in the business of housewares and furniture and issued a similar $500 ad note for the Providence Furniture Company.

A package of Dr. Flint’s Quaker Bitters in the Smithsonian Collection lists the stomach tonic’s uses as, “For nervousness, catarrh of the head and stomach, scrofulous humor, canker, pimples and humors on the face, summer complaints, female weaknesses. Restores the appetite, purifies the blood. For dyspepsia, constipation, sick headache, dizziness, low spirits caused by disordered stomach, rheumatism, neuralgia, kidney and liver complaints, bilious attacks, piles, malaria, torpidity of the system, languor, general debility, fever and ague.”

Flint’s medicinal business closed in 1881, although the family remained focused on furniture.

For more information, read “Dr. Flint’s Rhode Island Bitters Products” at PeachRidgeGlass.com.