If you think current news is filled with too many dire health warnings and confusing medical advice, you should take a look at some old newspapers.

Today we have all kinds of recalls meant to diminish chances of injury. Ads for medicines have a frightening amount of information about possible harmful side effects. Scientists duel over the meaning of studies.

Decades ago, the newspapers were filled with unregulated ads for all kinds of products guaranteed to cure every kind of ailment. It seems there was no claim too outrageous to be made. The pendulum has swung far in both directions.

One of the medicinal products of the old days was a cure-all named Dr. True’s Elixir. Its distinctive bottle is still sought by collectors all over the country.

That product originated in Auburn. It was made and sold by Dr. J.F. True in his home in the Drummond Street neighborhood beginning in 1851 and newspaper advertisements appeared just about daily for many decades. The ads extolled the elixir’s use for “disorders of the stomach, liver and bowels, including indigestion, dyspepsia, constipation, sour stomach, feverishness, sick headaches, as well as cases, in children or adults, where worms are suspected.”

Dr. True and his medicine were obviously the inspiration for a fictionalization appearing in a new comic book called “Salt Water Taffy” written and drawn by Matthew Loux. Volume 3 of the whimsical all-ages graphic novel was released a few months ago. It’s about two boys in Chowder Bay, Maine, who release the ghost of Dr. True from an old bottle that looks exactly like the originals.

Loux, a New York resident according to the Internet, said in publicity related to the comic book, “It was fun to create that kind of historical character as well as the legend surrounding him.”

It is fun-filled fiction, of course, but some of the claims in medicinal ads of the 1800s through the mid-1950s are also pure fiction. There was no broad governmental regulation until the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Even after that, advertising claims ran wild.

In the years following the Civil War, John G. Cook and Co. operated Cook’s Ice Cream Fountain and pharmacy at the corner of Lisbon and Ash streets. Below its ad for ice cream it listed many miracle medicinal products such as treatment for “Asiatic cholera” and dysentery, a “Pine Tree Tar Cordial,” Leland’s Magic Curer, and Boothby’s Humor Exterminator.

Many of the old advertisements were presented as news stories with sensational headlines.

One of them read, “Almost a Miracle at Damariscotta Mills, ME. One of the Most Remarkable Cures of Blood Poisoning Ever Accomplished.” Another said it was “The Only Remedy for Contagious Blood Poison.”

Beauty products also abounded, and an item for men promised “Nose Red No Longer.” There was even one headline that said “Thin Folks Made Fat.”

Sarsaparilla was also touted as a cure-all. One product … “100 Doses for 1 Dollar” … claimed “not even the most skeptical can doubt the peculiar power of Hood’s Sarsaparilla in purifying the blood, driving out disease, and imparting health and vigor.”

Dinsmore’s Sarsaparilla Wafers ran a contest with a $100 prize for anyone who could guess how many grains of sarsaparilla, yellow dock and dandelion each wafer contained.

Brown’s Instant Relief for Pain was produced nearby at Norway Medicine Co. It was for “internal and external use” and was said to be “nature’s remedy for man or beast.”

Nervine was advertised as the “anti-nervous roasted coffee.” It must have been the predecessor of today’s decaffeinated coffee.

Dr. True’s Elixir was a highly successful brand for many years, and with a name like True and a picture on the label of a man with a remarkable resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, how could it fail? There was also Father John’s Medicine for Colds and Body Building that has been around for generations. It had a picture of a priest that was a not-so-subtle appeal to public acceptance.

It may be difficult these days to sort out all the claims, but it must have been an impossible task a hundred years or so ago.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and a native of Auburn. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].