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Friday, August 19, 2022

Brown Embossed Piso Company of Warren PA Bottle.


Here is a Treasure Coast Bottle Find: Piso's Consumption Cure.
Top photo embossing: TRADE PISO'S MARK.
Bottom photo embossing: PISO CO. WARREN PA. U. S. A.


The bottle shows two large bubbles indicating that it is a blown bottle. Unfortunately, there is not a maker's mark on the bottom.  The maker's marks can really help narrow down the date of a bottle.

Talbott’s original formula for Piso’s Cure included opium and possibly other morphine derivatives. But the immediate post-Civil War era brought a revulsion against those drugs as many returning veterans had developed addictions to them as a result of treatment for their wounds.  Although Congress only later outlawed opium-derived ingredients in patent medicines, the Trio saw the ban coming and by 1872, according to company literature, eliminated opium and morphine from Piso’s ingredients. They later won a lawsuit on that score. The medicine still contained cannabis (marijuana), chloroform, and alcohol, but Piso’s label did not mention them.

Below is a trade card image advertising Piso's cure for consumption and catarrh.


Whether it was the effects of the Great Depression or the 1937 passage of the Marijuana Tax Act, effectively barring cannabis in medicine, Piso’s corporate life ended before World War II...

Here is a link with much more information on the Piso company and its medicines.

BandE_Pages_1-24.pmd (fohbc.org)



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