England -- Fiction; Patent medicines -- Marketing -- Fiction; Pharmaceutical industry -- Fiction; Satire; Science fiction
Under the shadow of our great leading line we were presently taking
subsidiary specialties into action; “Tono-Bungay Hair Stimulant” was
our first supplement. Then came “Concentrated Tono-Bungay” for the
eyes. That didn’t go, but we had a considerable success with the Hair
Stimulant. We broached the subject, I remember, in a little catechism
beginning: “Why does the hair fall out? Because the follicles are
fagged. What are the follicles?...” So it went on to the climax that
the Hair Stimulant contained all “The essential principles of that most
reviving tonic, Tono-Bungay, together with an emollient and nutritious
oil derived from crude Neat’s Foot Oil by a process of refinement,
separation and deodorization.... It will be manifest to any one of
scientific attainments that in Neat’s Foot Oil derived from the hoofs
and horns of beasts, we must necessarily have a natural skin and hair
lubricant.”
And we also did admirable things with our next subsidiaries,
“Tono-Bungay Lozenges,” and “Tono-Bungay Chocolate.” These we urged
upon the public for their extraordinary nutritive and recuperative
value in cases of fatigue and strain. We gave them posters and
illustrated advertisements showing climbers hanging from marvelously
vertical cliffs, cyclist champions upon the track, mounted messengers
engaged in Aix-to-Ghent rides, soldiers lying out in action under a hot
sun. “You can GO for twenty-four hours,” we declared, “on Tono-Bungay
Chocolate.” We didn’t say whether you could return on the same
commodity. We also showed a dreadfully barristerish barrister, wig,
side-whiskers, teeth, a horribly life-like portrait of all existing
barristers, talking at a table, and beneath, this legend: “A Four
Hours’ Speech on Tono-Bungay Lozenges, and as fresh as when he began.”
Then brought in regiments of school-teachers, revivalist ministers,
politicians and the like. I really do believe there was an element of
“kick” in the strychnine in these lozenges, especially in those made
according to our earlier formula. For we altered all our
formulae—invariably weakening them enormously as sales got ahead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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