From 1864, the year of its patent, until around the start of World War II one of the most popular patent medicines in this area was Dr. R. A. Armistead’s Ague Tonic.
Containing totaquine (a powder made from the bark of the South American cinchina tree), spices, simple syrup, coal tar and 5 ½ percent alcohol, it was found to be very efficacious in the treatment of malarial complaints.
Recurring malaria was a great bother to many local residents back then. An early photo of the Evansville waterfront shows, painted on the side of the wharf boat, a large sign advertising this product.
Armistead was a native of Kentucky and received his education from J. H. Waterman’s Collegiate Institution in Henderson. When he came to Indiana, Armistead appeared to have first settled in McCutchanville.
There was a persistent rumor there that he was part Indian, and there is some indication that this might have been true. A handwritten voter enumeration for Vanderburgh County’s Center Township lists all males in the township 21 years old or older.
By each name is a notation: “R” for Republican or “D” for Democrat or “niger.”
In those days, neither Indians nor blacks nor women had the vote. But by Armstead’s name is written ‘mongrel.”
Through the ensuing years, Armistead seemed to have divided his time between McCutchanville and Evansville. He first appeared in the Evansville City Directory in 1866 when he was listed as a physician and surgeon with an office on Third Street between Main and Locust streets.
In 1871, he lived at 82 S. Fourth St., but in 1873 he was renting a house from Mrs. William Inwood in McCutchanville.
By 1879, he was still listed as a patron of the McCutchanville post office. In 1880, the city directory shows him living at 46 Jefferson Ave.
At one period during the 1870s he reportedly brewed and bottled his tonic in the cellar of a cottage on the Erskine farm in McCutchanville. He did well, and Dr. Armistead’s Ague Tonic became widely used.
By May 16, 1877, he was able to give his daughter, Fannie, a splendid wedding when she married an artist and engraver from Chicago named Walter Brigham.
Brigham had once owned the Evansville Engraving and Lithographic Agency. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. Foote of the Walnut Street Presbyterian Church and was followed by a reception at the St. George Hotel.
A newspaper reported: “Dr. Armistead’s long residence here and his wide acquaintance and high reputation in this section ensure great interest in the event. The bride, his youngest daughter, is a young lady of rare beauty and gifted with unusual accomplishments of mind and manner.”
Unfortunately, good fortune did not continue to follow the doctor, because through some sort of bad and unfortunate business deal in the 1880s, he lost his patent to the Akin Medicine Co. of Evansville and eventually was cut off from all revenue from the sale of the product.
His last years were spent in poverty. Writing to his son in Tennessee, he said: “Folly and ill health have left me bankrupt.”
From his home in Baskett, Ky., he wrote in October 1891:
”I have been sick for the last two or three years and cannot go from home. If I could, I have no clothes to appear in. My clothes are absolutely ragged. I frequently look at myself and wish I had died before I came to so humiliating a condition.”
By the end of World War II, the Akin Medicine Co. had ceased operations, and Dr. Armistead’s Ague Tonic disappeared from the shelves.
