Pages from the past
By Kathleen Halloran
THE TREASURES AND TRASH that we find in antique
stores, flea markets, and antiquarian bookshops seldom have their
histories intact. Recently I found myself holding the delicate,
worn pages of a publication called The Herbalist Almanac, two
copies of which were passed on to me by a friend who discovered
them, encased in plastic, in a stack of old magazines at a Chicago
flea market. Dated 1932 and 1941, they were given to me to unravel
the story behind them.
Both feature artwork on the cover depicting a Native American
brave holding out a plant to a chief sitting by a campfire. Inside,
tiny print and old-fashioned line drawings fill the pages, which
are yellowing, crumbling newsprint with occasional color plates of
medicinal plant illustrations.
The booklets are packed with articles about herbs, native
plants, common ailments, and traditional medicines, as well as
excerpts from newspaper articles that reflect the early herb
industry’s concern about credibility and its wrangling with the
medical establishment. Charts include detailed month-by-month
weather forecasts and advice on everything from the best fishing
days to the luckiest days for pulling teeth, castrating livestock,
harvesting tobacco, and weaning babies. The readership clearly was
a rural one.
Many personal testimonials from readers on the efficacy of
herbal treatments are tucked in as fillers among quaint ads hawking
these products. “‘I am using your Peach Tree Leaves at 25¢ per box
as a tonic and my hair sure is growing in new and coming in thick.
My friends all even notice it.’ Writes Mrs. S. R., Evansville,
Ind.”
I was intrigued because these charming booklets carry no name
other than the imprint of a small, now-defunct herb business in
South Holland, Illinois. Yet they are infused with someone’s
personal dedication to herbs and herbal ways. It seemed a mystery
to me that the author, clearly an opinionated and passionate man,
had effaced himself so completely from their pages. Who was he?
My first clue was a tiny line on a page that I almost
overlooked: the copyright, held by one Joseph E. Meyer.
The company
The Herbalist Almanac, I was to learn, was started in 1925 and
came out every year for more than fifty years. It was the work of
not one man, but two: Meyer and, after about 1935, his son
Clarence. It was a free publication offered by a company called the
Indiana Botanic Gardens in Hobart, which was not a public garden at
all, but the nation’s oldest seller of herb products. Founded in
1910 by Joseph Meyer, it’s still in business today. The almanac
stopped publication in 1979.
The company began with an herbal laxative tea blend containing
marshmallow root, licorice root, cascara sagrada, Jamaican
gingerroot, and fennel seed, among other ingredients. This tea
remained a cornerstone of the company’s business over the decades
as it added more and more products to its line. By 1932, it was
selling more than 1,000 varieties of dried leaves, seeds, roots,
barks, flowers, and herbal combinations—almost everything priced at
25 cents a box. Customers could purchase herb plants and seed
packets, as well as various ointments and cosmetics.
By 1941, the company had expanded into culinary herb blends,
selling “aromatic botanicals for the kitchen” that would seem at
home in today’s trendy gourmet kitchen stores—gravy herbs, curry
powders, flavored vinegars, ketchup spices, and savory seed blends.
By then it was also selling herb-related books, including a new one
called Back to Eden by Jethro Kloss, which first appeared in 1939
and is still in print.
The almanacs
Perhaps the Meyers didn’t need to put their names on the
almanacs because the men were well-known to customers and readers.
In 1932, Joseph writes: “It has been my life work to investigate by
direct personal study and inquiry to compare and to learn the best
and most efficient of the herbs and roots used by more than a score
of Indian Medicine Men whose friendship and confidence I have
won.”
The Herbalist Almanac was not only a marketing tool for the sale
of herb products, but also a soapbox. “You can save yourself much
suffering and a great deal of money by turning your back to
man-made dangerous and poisonous chemicals and going back to
nature,” it states.
The booklets contain many such hints of dissatisfaction with the
“progress” of conventional medicine and nostalgia for the good old
days. One news article quotes a Dr. Griffith’s plea for a return to
grandmother’s medicine chest and the accusation that physicians who
relied on more modern vaccines and drugs had “neglected” sage,
chamomile, boneset, and other botanicals that had stood the test of
time.
During the Depression years, self-doctoring was a way of life.
The Indiana almanacs contain treatment regimes for ailments ranging
from baldness to bowel problems, as well as features on individual
herbs of garden, field, and forest—not only the natives but even
plants such as ma huang and yerba maté that must have seemed
exotic. One story describes a man named Li Chung-Yun who, at the
age of 252, had outlived twenty-three wives and was then living in
China with his twenty-fourth; Li had taken ginseng daily for more
than 200 years.
Glowing letters from readers abound. Listen to Mrs. H.D.B. of
Oakfield, New York: “My husband had a very severe case of Gangrene,
and in all, five doctors cared for it. All of them said that the
only hope was to amputate next to the body, because his whole foot
was affected. I sent for a bottle of Mentholine, priced $1.00,
after three toes had already dropped off; I began using it and in
three days’ time I saw an improvement. I kept on until I had used
four bottles, and today his foot is cured.”
All the herbs and preparations mentioned could be ordered from
whatever herb company had its imprint on the almanac, all of which
were agents for the Indiana Botanic Gardens product line.
Throughout the pages, the Meyers convey their respect for
traditional cures, a reverence for healing plants, and a concern
for the careful preservation of their medicinal qualities. A
bold-faced line at the bottom of one page states in no uncertain
terms: “Botanicals Over a Year Old Are Worthless.”
The end
The almanacs, particularly the one from 1941, carry hints of a
changing marketplace. “Get me just one customer—send me the name
and address for verification and I’ll send you a fine book free,”
and elsewhere, “If our preparations please you, will you kindly
tell your friends?”
This issue, which is loaded with recipes and an exhaustive
dictionary of dream interpretations, announces that the following
year will see “an entirely new, different and if possible more
interesting Almanac,” although the editor adds his opinion that
“each edition of this Almanac has been better than the previous
edition.”
I stumbled across a reference to a book that helped me connect
my tattered copies of the almanac to their family and business
history. The book, by a Joseph Meyer, was published by Meyerbooks,
a small Illinois firm specializing in books on herbs, herbal
recipes, health, and Americana. I discovered that the firm was
owned by Joseph’s grandson, David Meyer, who left the Indiana
Botanic Gardens to start his publishing company in 1976. He filled
in the gaps of the story.
The almanac lasted fifty-four years, then quietly died when
Clarence Meyer retired. “The Herbalist Almanac retired with him,”
David Meyer said. Clarence lived until the age of 94, passing on in
1997. The almanacs that survive in flea markets are a telling
testimony to the endurance not only of a family legacy, but of the
herb industry as well.
Kathleen Halloran, a freelance writer who lives in Laporte,
Colorado, is the former editor of The Herb Companion, sister
publication of Herbs for Health.
Material from The Herbalist Almanac is still available in a
number of compilations from Meyerbooks Publisher, PO Box 427,
Glenwood, IL 60425. Titles by the Meyer family include The
Herbalist Almanac: A 50-year Anthology, Old Ways Rediscovered, and
The Old Herb Doctor.