Posts Tagged ‘Shakers’
“It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form”*…
We Americans spend over $60 Billion a year on dietary supplements and herbal remedies; to the extent that the market is regulated here in the U.S. it is (essentially exclusively) by the FDA– which treats the category as “food,” not “medicine” and “oversees” the industry/market very lightly. Indeed, while the extent of fraud in the supplement/remedy market (ineffective, mislabeled, or dangerous products) is estimated to be in the billions of dollars per year, the introduction to the FDA’s data base of “Health Fraud Products” reads:
This list includes unapproved products that have been subject to FDA health fraud related violations. These products have been cited in warning letters, online advisory letters, recalls, public notifications, and press announcements for issues varying from products marketed as dietary supplements claiming to cure, mitigate, treat or prevent disease, to the use of undeclared ingredients or new dietary ingredients.
This list only includes a small fraction of the potentially hazardous products marketed to consumers online and in retail establishments. Even if a product is not included in this list, consumers should exercise caution before using certain products…
That said, over half of us make those choices based on health and wellness information from social media influencers or podcasts… and too often these days, even the ostensibly qualified pitch-people are being faked by AI.
As Matthew Wills reminds us, we’ve been here before…
Never more than seventeen thousand people, the Shakers are today best remembered for their handsome furniture. In their own time they were renowned for their homemade medicinal remedies. They might have had a dubious reputation for their outlandish dancing, celibacy, gender equality, and for believing that their founder, “Mother” Ann Lee, was a manifestation of Christ’s Second Coming, but their guarantee of purity in their botanical products was generally accepted as given.
So much so that as Shaker communities dwindled through the nineteenth century, others wanted the cachet of their name in the patent medicine world. Amid all the fakery and flimflam of the pre-regulated drug market, the Shaker brand was the best.
It was worth stealing, and defending.
The Shakers, or more properly the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, arrived in North America from England in 1774. They established their first communes in New York and New England, then farther into the continent as the European frontier expanded. Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, and Florida also boasted Shaker outposts, mostly shorter-lived than the original ones.
At first, Shakers funded their separation from the “world” by selling furniture and housewares to non-Shakers. But as the number of Shakers dwindled and America’s industrial capacity increased, Shakers typically turned to selling seeds, simples [here], and botanically-based remedies. These were easier to produce, and, imbued with the Shaker reputation for purity, were as good as gold.
Medical historian J. Worth Estes quotes an 1881 almanac advertising Shaker remedies on the basic principles of Shakerism:
innocence, temperance, virgin purity, love, peace, justice, holiness, goodness, and truth. The almanac further explained that Shakers are “just and honest in all [their] dealings with mankind,” and that they “eschew every species of falsehood: lying, deceit and hypocrisy.” Such statements helped “guarantee” the purity and high quality of Shaker-made drugs in the nineteenth century struggle for the American drug market.
Shakers provided ingredients for “worldly” producers, and, in some cases, they even provided start-up capital for non-Shaker manufacturers. The A.J. White company of New York, New York, made Shaker Extract of Roots and Mother Seigel’s Curative Syrup with Shaker-sourced botanicals and capital. This remedy was advertised as “a cure for impurities of the blood” and “a cure for dyspepsia and liver complaints.” A.J. White’s company successfully expanded overseas, and when he died in 1898, his English branch bought out his American branch; in various guises the company existed until 1957, when it was purchased by Smith, Kline & French, whose successor entity is today the world’s tenth largest pharmaceutical company.
In the 1880s, Smith Bros. & Co. of Montreal started producing a product called Shakers’ Blood Syrup. This had a label similar to A.J. White’s Shaker Extract, except it said “Cures completely scrofula, cancer, rheumatism, catarrh, ulcers & skin & blood diseases.” The Shakers of New Lebanon, New York, sued for patent infringement and Smith Bros. agreed to stop pirating the Shaker name.
Shakers also produced their own remedies on their communes. Corbett’s Syrup of Sarsaparilla, for instance, was made in Canterbury, New Hampshire for about half a century until 1896. In 1886, it was one of the few Shaker products to be awarded a U.S. patent. Promoted as “a blood purifier and therefore, by implication, as a panacea,” it was made of “an aqueous mixture of sarsaparilla root, pipsissewa, yellow dock root, dandelion, thoroughwort, black cohosh, elder flowers, Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate), juniper berries, blue gentian, pokeweed root, sugar and alcohol.” At some point potassium iodide was added to “ensure the remedy’s ‘purity.’”
Estes provides a checklist of some 80 other proprietary medicines made in Shaker communities. The names are marvelous: Brother Barnabas Hinckley’s Compound Concentrated Syrup of Bitter Bugle, Eclectic Live Pills, Larus Eye Water, Vegetable Family Pills, Young Shakers’ Grand Catholicon. As Estes notes, more than a few of these products had active ingredients that were cathartic or purgative, a fact rarely noted on labels. Cathartics are generally defined as working faster than laxatives.
After the Food and Drug Act of 1906, products like the 75% alcohol (sanitizer strength!) Norwood’s Tincture of Veratrum Viride, made by non-Shakers with Shaker-sourced botanical ingredients, had to be labeled “Poison” on their instructions for use. Patent medicines, and the Shakers, didn’t survive the twentieth century…
Amid the fraud and flimflam of early drug markets, Shakers stood for purity, creating a brand others were eager to exploit: “A Trusted Name in a Dubious Drug Market” from @jstordaily.bsky.social.
* Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat
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As we hear history rhyme, we might recall that it was on this date in 1626 that Peter Minuit, the new director of “New Netherland” for the Dutch West India Company, in what we now know as Manhattan, “purchased” the island from the the Canarsee tribe of Native Americans for a parcel of goods worth 60 guilders: roughly $24 dollars at the time, now just over $1,000.
In the event, Native Americans in the area were unfamiliar with the European notions and definitions of ownership rights. As they understood it, water, air and land could not be traded. So scholars are convinced that both parties probably went home with totally different interpretations of the sales agreement. In any case, the Carnarsees were likely happy to take payment in any meaningful amount pertaining to land that was mostly controlled by their rivals, the Weckquaesgeeks.
1626 letter from Pieter Schaghen (a colleague of Minuit) reporting the purchase of Manhattan for 60 guilders [source]
“If it is not useful or necessary, free yourself from imagining that you need to make it”*…
The Shakers, a millennial Christian sect founded in the mid-18th century, are characterized by their simple, communal lives… and their celibacy (as a product of which there are only three known Shakers alive today). That said, they had an outsized impact on design– now on display at Frank Gehry-designed Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany. Jane Enfield unpacks the Shakers’ legacy…
Vitra Design Museum is presenting The Shakers: A World In Making, an exhibition highlighting the enduring design principles of the 18th-century Shakers who prioritised utilitarianism, craftsmanship and ethics.
Designed by Milan studio Formafantasma, the exhibition spotlights the design legacy of the Shakers, a Protestant sect founded in England around 1747 whose members created unadorned and meticulously built architecture and furniture.
“Today, the relevance of Shaker principles feels more urgent than ever,” Vitra Design Museum curator Mea Hoffmann told Dezeen.
“Their approach to democratic design, combining utilitarian function with exceptional craftsmanship and ethical intent, offers a compelling alternative to the excesses of modern consumer culture.”…
… The historical works were created after the Shakers emigrated to the USA in 1774, where they established 18 communities from Kentucky to Maine and created pieces that set the tone for a utilitarian, wood-heavy trend that endures to this day.
Among Hoffmann’s highlights is an four-metre-long bench from 1855, which was designed as communal but gender-segregated seating for the traditional Shaker meetinghouse.
“Community and shared property were at the heart of Shaker life,” explained the curator.
“There’s something very compelling about the inherent proximity that comes from sitting together on a bench – you can’t help but feel your connection to the people around you.”
Also on display is an “elevator” shoe, created around 1890. The footwear was specially designed with a raised sole for a woman whose legs were of two different lengths to facilitate her mobility.
“The Shakers were dedicated to including all members in daily life and often adapted or created objects to allow everyone to contribute,” noted Hoffmann.
The curator emphasised that the exhibition strives to highlight the Shakers’ knack for embracing external influences despite their particular way of life, highlighting the sect as early adopters of electricity, indoor plumbing and telecommunications.
An object that reflects this is a 1925 radio designed by trailblazer Elder Irving Greenwood, who is said to have persuaded the Canterbury Shakers to install electricity throughout his New Hampshire community in 1909.
“It’s an interesting example of the Shakers’ openness to technological change and innovation,” reflected Hoffmann. “Although they retreated from the world, the radio demonstrates that this apparent division may have been far more permeable.”
“Beyond adopting existing technologies, the Shakers also engineered their own machinery, such as steam engines and specialised cutting devices, to streamline labour-intensive tasks,” continued the curator.
“As they mass-produced their standardised goods, they also developed the tools necessary to improve production.”…
… Considering the sect’s enduring visual language, Hoffmann described the Shakers as holding a “unique position within the design canon”.
“Although their object culture emerged from an organic craft tradition rather than a centralised design ideology, their work has had a lasting influence, particularly on 20th-century Scandinavian designers such as Kaare Klint and Børge Mogensen, and continues to inspire contemporary practitioners today,” said Hoffmann.
“In many ways, Shaker design anticipated modern aesthetics, though it was entirely unintentional,” concluded the curator. “It’s an interesting example of groups of people getting to similar places from very different starting points.”…
More (and more photos) at: “Shaker exhibition at Vitra Design Museum “feels more urgent than ever‘,” from @dezeen.com.
* Shaker maxim
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As we keep it simple, we might spare a thought for a contemporary of the earliest Shakers, Richard Lovell Edgeworth; he died on this date in 1817. A politician and writer, he is best remembered as an inventor (perhaps most notably– and Shaker-like– a turnip-cutter and a velocipede [an early bicycle]).
That said, Edgeworth was no Shaker. He was a member of the Lunar Society, an informal organization of Birmingham-based industrialists, scientists, and intellectuals that met regularly to discuss and share ideas relating to their (amny and various) fields of interest. Other members included Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood, and James Watt.
And perhaps more tellingly, Edgeworth was anything but celibate: he married four times and fathered 22 children.
“Give credit where credit is due”*…
In the early 19th century, a young woman revolutionized the lumber business…
As a young woman, Tabitha Babbitt was a weaver in Harvard, Massachusetts. She used to watch the workers at the local sawmill. Observing them use the difficult two-man whipsaw, she noticed that half of their motion was wasted. It had two handles which two men would pull from side to side. However, the saw only cut the wood when it was being pulled forward. This meant the second or reverse pull was fairly useless other than to get the saw back to starting position which was a waste of energy. Tabitha proposed creating a round blade to increase efficiency. Eventually she came up with a prototype, attaching a circular blade to her spinning wheel, using the pedal of her wheel to power it. As the blade spun, no movement was wasted. The circular saw was connected to a water-powered machine to reduce the effort to cut lumber, meaning that wood could be cut faster with half the manpower. The first circular saw she allegedly made is in Albany, New York State USA. A larger version of her design was later installed in the sawmill.
But – Tabitha was a member of the Shakers, a Christian sect founded circa 1747 in England who had emigrated and settled in revolutionary colonial America. Their core beliefs centred round a perfect society, created through communal living, gender and racial equality, pacifism, confession of sin, celibacy and separation from the world. As such, they valued hard manual work, a simple lifestyle, and thrived on the forestry industry.
However, their beliefs prohibited any member applying for patents as they believed intellectual properties should be shared by the community with no restriction. Because she did not patent it (and according to wiki the reference to her invention exists only in Shaker lore), there is controversy over whether she was the first true inventor of the circular saw.
Two French men patented the circular saw in USA after reading about her saw in Shaker papers. One of the patentees, Stephen Miller argues she wasn’t the first inventor based on the date she joined the sect. He contended that it was invented at Mount Lebanon Shaker Village by Amos Bishop or Benjamin Bruce in 1793 – or not by a Shaker at all.
Samuel Miller obtained a patent in UK for a saw windmill which supposedly used a form of a circular saw in 1777 though the type of saw is only mentioned in passing, making it seem as though it was not his invention. Walter Taylor a few years later in same area of the United Kingdom seemed to have types of circular saws at his sawmill but in fact he only ever received patents for improvements to blockmaking.
However, it appears Babbitt’s circular saw design was much larger than other circular saw mechanisms and enough modifications were made to differentiate her invention from the rest. Her basic design was also the one that soon was copied at various American sawmills, popularising the use of circular saw in mills.
Tabitha was also credited with improving the spinning wheel head, inventing a process to manufacture false teeth, and inventing a process for manufacturing the then semi-revolutionary type of nail known as “cut nails” which replaced forged nails, a claim to fame she shares with a few other inventors including famed inventor Eli Whitney…
An unsung hero: “Tabitha Babbitt” from the Mills Archive, via Mathew Ingram‘s When the Going Gets Weird (also source of the image above).
* Attributed to Samuel Adams, who used the phrase in a late 18th century letter
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As we investigate innovation, we might recall that it was on this date in 1959 that Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed the first patent for an integrated circuit (U.S. Patent 3,138,743). In mid-1958, as a newly employed engineer at Texas Instruments, Kilby didn’t yet have the right to a summer vacation. So he spent the summer working on the problem in circuit design known as the “tyranny of numbers” (how to add more and more components, all soldered to all of the others, to improve performance). He finally came to the conclusion that manufacturing the circuit components en masse in a single piece of semiconductor material could provide a solution. On September 12, he presented his findings to the management: a piece of germanium with an oscilloscope attached. Kilby pressed a switch, and the oscilloscope showed a continuous sine wave– proving that his integrated circuit worked and thus that he had solved the problem.
Kilby is generally credited as co-inventor of the integrated circuit, along with Robert Noyce (who independently made a similar circuit a few months later). Kilby has been honored in many ways for his breakthrough, probably most augustly with the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics.
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