F.C. Fowler (1859-1919)
He Gained Great Wealth from his Snake Oil
A "Cure" for Imprudence, Excesses, Lost Vitality, Loss of Memory, and Gleet
By KEN SIMON
In the spring of 1893, the Connecticut Farmer reported that Prof. F. C. Fowler of Moodus had sown wild oats in the marshes along the coves. The idea was to bring back the rail, a game bird that had vanished when the native crop failed. Is it possible that nobody at the paper seems to have noticed the joke? Fowler had by then spent a decade getting rich off men who had sown wild oats of another kind, and who could be relieved of the consequences, along with three dollars, by return mail.
Frank C. Fowler was born in East Haddam on December 26, 1859, and grew up on a farm. His official biography says he was educated in the public schools. It does not mention a degree, and neither did he, though over the years he rose from "Mr." to "Prof." to "Dr." without the record showing that he earned any of them. Since 1882, the legislative manual noted respectfully, he had been "prosperously engaged in the manufacture of proprietary remedies."
Mirabile Dictu: The Remedy from P.O. Box 237
In 1891, if you were a young man, a middle-aged man, or an old man (the booklet shouts all three), a small green pamphlet from Moodus had news for you. You were probably dying. Fortunately, relief cost just three dollars, plus twelve cents in stamps.
Prof. F. C. Fowler's Dr. Rudolphe's Specific Remedy promised to cure "Youthful Errors," "Lost Manhood," memory loss, premature old age, and, for good measure, gonorrhea, which he declared an "infallible cure." The diagnosis was simple: nearly every human complaint, from indigestion to insanity, traced back to a certain private habit. The treatment was simpler still: pills, mailed in a plain wrapper.
The professor insisted he was no quack. He devoted whole pages to denouncing quacks. His remedy was "not a Patent Medicine, and I shall never patent it," a pledge that also spared him the bother of disclosing what was in it. The formula, he explained, came from a "celebrated chemical professor" named Rudolphe, whom history has otherwise declined to record.
The engraving on the inside cover shows Fowler's Medical Laboratory: four ornate stories, a flag snapping overhead, carriages at the curb. Anyone who has driven through Moodus may wonder where exactly that stood. The mailing address, tellingly, was a post office box.
The testimonials came signed only with initials, and patient letters were "destroyed as soon as read." Readers were encouraged to pass the booklet along to a suffering friend, who "will never be the wiser." In East Haddam, the discretion was surely appreciated.
Mirabile dictu, as Fowler's logo says: Amazing to see, amazing to behold.
Venture Smith established his homestead in 1775 on 10 acres at Haddam Neck, the first of several more land purchases there and at Salmon River Cove. About 200 years later, his property became part of the site where CT Yankee Atomic Power Company's nuclear plant
In 2008, the Town of East Haddam proclaimed September 6th Venture Smith Day. During the 2019 celebration, his descendants gathered at Venture and wife Marget Smith's gravesite in the cemetery of East Haddam's First Congregational Church.
The cover of Venture Smith's story as "related by himself." Click to read it online.
Good for Below the Best
The remedies were aimed well below the belt. "TO WEAK MEN," his newspaper ads announced in 1886, "suffering from the effects of youthful errors, early decay, lost manhood, etc." A "valuable treatise," sealed, would be sent free of charge. The treatise was the booklet for Dr. Rudolphe's Specific Remedy, and the free part ended at the order form. In one 1888 column his notice sits between Dr. Schenck's Mandrake Pills and a Dr. Bonschur of New York, a few inches below an electric belt that promised "soothing currents" directly "through all weak parts." It was a crowded field, and Fowler outlasted most of it.
Business was spectacular. In December 1892 the East Haddam correspondent reported that "work at the medical office was never more prosperous than now," with the staff "augmented almost daily."
Venture Smith established his homestead in 1775 on 10 acres at Haddam Neck, the first of several more land purchases there and at Salmon River Cove. About 200 years later, his property became part of the site where CT Yankee Atomic Power Company's nuclear plant was
In the same column Fowler announced a new residence and a 62-foot steam yacht, with elegantly upholstered cabins and "the finest French plate glass." That winter he bought 2,000 acres for raising deer, to be fenced "to make escapes impossible," a precaution his customers' dollars would have recognized. He turned loose 200 quail. He built a hotel, a trotting park, and eventually a stable of more than 100 horses.
He also took a hand in the local press. Fowler became one of the owners and publishers of the Connecticut Valley Advertiser, the Moodus weekly that the legislative manual called "one of the most successful weekly newspapers in the state." For a man whose fortune rested on newspaper ads, owning a paper with "Advertiser" in its name must have felt like cutting out the middleman.
All of it ran on the United States mail, and specifically on the little post office in Moodus, which handled a steady stream of plain sealed wrappers. Fowler's traffic was said to add $1,000 to $2,000 a year to the office's receipts. His own income was put at $500 a week, which is roughly $18,000 to $19,000 today. A dollar then bought about as much as $37 does now. At $500 a week, Fowler's reported income comes to about $950,000 a year in today's money. A mill hand or laborer in the 1890s earned roughly $1 to $1.50 a day, maybe $400 to $450 a year. So Fowler was making more in one week than most of his Moodus neighbors made in a year. The same method puts his reported $200,000 fortune at around $7 million today, and much more if you measure it against wages.
Venture Smith established his homestead in 1775 on 10 acres at Haddam Neck, the first of several more land purchases there and at Salmon River Cove. About 200 years later, his property became part of the site where CT Yankee Atomic Power Company's nuclear plant was
The Post Office Shuts Him Down
Then, on March 17, 1894, the Meriden Daily Journal ran a headline Fowler cannot have enjoyed: "IMPROPER MAIL MATTER: Blow to Secret Medicine Business of F. C. Fowler of Moodus." The Post Office Department in Washington had ordered the Moodus postmaster to refuse all mail from "Prof." F. C. Fowler. The Journal put the title in quotation marks, which was about as close to an editorial as 1894 allowed. "The cause of the notice is not known," the paper added with a straight face. Anyone who had read the booklet could have guessed.
Two days later the Hartford Courant reported the ban, got his initials wrong ("S. C. Fowler"), and noted the collateral damage: the order cut off not only much of Fowler's income but the Moodus post office's as well. Ordered by Washington to turn away his best customer, the postmaster may have felt a touch of lost vigor himself.
The cover of Venture Smith's story as "related by himself." Click to read it online.
Life: How to Enjoy It, and How to Prolong It (21st edition, Moodus, 1896) was Prof. F. C. Fowler's full-length treatise on "Manhood." Its 210 pages run from digestion and the kidneys to the dangers of tobacco and self-abuse.
On the title page Fowler calls himself a "Physiognomist and Anthropologist," and inside he introduces his own invention, the "Physiognometer," which claimed to measure a man's vital force by the thickness of his neck. The frontispiece shows the author "at the age of 41, from a photograph taken many years ago." In 1896 he was 36.
The preface is a stirring attack on mail-order quacks who flood the country with free pamphlets, sell $3 remedies by post, and promise to burn their patients' letters. Readers of Fowler's own booklet may find that description familiar.
The formulas section leaves out cures for the sexual complaints the book dwells on, explaining that such medicines are best left to specialists. The final page adds that the author will be glad to advise sufferers, in perfect confidence, at Moodus, Conn.
If the professor was ruined, he hid it well. That April his steam yacht Silva left on a shooting trip to the Bay of Chaleur. By August he owned two yachts and was contracting for a 190-footer from Boston. By October he had sold the Silva and ordered a 120-foot schooner-rigged steamer from Nyack, with triple-expansion engines, at a cost of $60,000 furnished. It would be, the papers promised, "the finest on the Connecticut river." Whatever Washington had done, the Remedy apparently kept reaching its customers.
Two years later East Haddam sent him to Hartford. In 1896 Fowler led the field for state representative with 382 votes. In the legislature he chaired the committee on Manual and Roll and served on Legislative Expenses, an assignment that shows either real faith in his bookkeeping or a sense of humor in the Speaker's office.
Around 1901 he moved to New London, where he kept making medicine until about 1916. He died there in March 1919, at 59, of diabetes, one of the few ailments Dr. Rudolphe never claimed to cure. His estate was estimated at $150,000 to $200,000. The obituary called him "Dr. Fowler" throughout and noted, with admirable restraint, that he "amassed his fortune in the manufacture of proprietary medicines."
He was twice married and left two sons. The 2,000 deer, presumably, stayed behind the fence.