“Titbits Book of Wrinkles” from 1938 is another one of my favourite type of book – the compendium of knowledge. “Wrinkles” in this book mean “tips” or, as in the (slightly annoying) word of the moment, “hacks”.
This is an oddity from the “Medicine” section – a recommendation to take the “Blue Pill”.
This inspired a bit of history-surfing. I found out that this blue pill was also called “blue mass” and was quite popular as a cure-all in the nineteenth century.
Abraham Lincoln liked them and they may have caused him to suffer the effects of mercury poisoning earlier in his life – http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/07/0717_lincoln.html
But doesn’t 1938 seem a bit late for recommendations to eat mercury?
