Embossed Medicine Bottle
This highly collectible bottle is about 8½ inches tall and is embossed:
Mrs J.H.R. Matteson
CLAIRVOIANT REMEDIES
BUFFALO, N.Y.
This bottle's proprietress has an interesting story. Born Antoinette Wealthy in Baden, Germany, in 1847, she married a blind musician in 1864. After his death twenty years later, she became sole support of her family. Drawing on her imagined psychic powers (she had an obviously fantasy-prone personality and was also a spiritualist), she advertised as a "clairvoyant docrtress." She dispensed custom herbal remedies, compounded from formulas divined while in a trance. She died in 1913. A brief biography of Mrs. Matteson is in Joe Nickell, The Mystery Chronicles. (Lexington, Ky.: The University press of Kentucky, 2004), 208-211.
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