I came upon this advertisement while looking for something else. Mr. Grimstone has created a cure for eye ailments as well as headaches. Well, they can go together. The interesting part was the snuff—non-tobacco, by the way.
A little further research showed me that mine might have been one of Mr. Grimstone’s earlier ads, that his eye-snuff was a household word often employed for comic purposes in novels,
and in magazines like Punch, and that he was harassed by the excise people. That last link will take you to quite the tale of woe.
A Cyclopedia of Domestic Medicine says “Grimstone’s eye-snuff ... is of service in many cases of chronic ophtalmia.”
Others call it quack medicine. The Quack Doctor offers a neat summary of Grimstone's patent medicine career here.
Image: Four eyes. Drawing, c. 1794, from Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust,
Text clipping is from my copy (courtesy author Candice Hern) of The Ladies’ Cabinet for what we believe is February 1836.
One of us -- 
1 comments:
I had a copy of an advertisement for a way to treat diseases of the eye by galvanism. Since changing computers I am not certain I still have it.
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