Antique 1910s Carbolic Acid Poison Label ✨ Graham & Worthams Drug Store, Corvallis OR

Who Were Graham & Wortham? ☠ Antique Carbolic Acid Poison Label From a Corvallis, Oregon Drug Store

Size: 2 1/2" x 2 1/2" ~ Little to no wear.

☠️ CARBOLIC ACID across the top, a grinning skull and crossbones, POISON in big orange-red capitals, and a whole emergency plan printed underneath it. This is an unused druggist's label from Graham & Wortham's Drug Store in Corvallis, Oregon, and I love that the store printed the antidote right on the label, because back then the label might be the only help in the house.

🔍 What's On It

Orange-red ink on cream stock, inside a ruled border. CARBOLIC ACID at the top, the skull and crossbones beside POISON, and then the treatment, word for word:

"External—Flood with water and bathe with dilute alcohol or whiskey, or a bland oil (olive, cottonseed, linseed)."

"Internal—Give milk, raw-egg white, mucilage, gruel, or cornstarch paste, and follow with an emetic (tablespoonful of mustard in a tumbler of warm water)."

"Call Physician."

And across the foot, GRAHAM & WORTHAM'S DRUG STORE, CORVALLIS, PHONE 48, OREGON. The back is blank, with the front just ghosting through. These were never pasted on a bottle.

💀 Why the Antidote Reads Like That

Carbolic acid is phenol, the stuff Joseph Lister used to make antiseptic surgery possible, and for decades every drug store sold it over the counter as a disinfectant. It was also corrosive enough to burn skin on contact and a common cause of poisonings, which is exactly why a careful druggist put the antidote right on the label.

Read it the way a scared person in 1910 would have. Whiskey or alcohol on the skin. Milk, egg white, gruel or cornstarch paste to coat the stomach. A tablespoon of mustard in warm water to bring it all back up. And only then, almost as an afterthought, "Call Physician." That last line tells you a lot about how far away the doctor could be.

💊 Graham & Wortham's Drug Store

Here's the part I really enjoy, because these two were real Corvallis fixtures. There was a Graham behind a Corvallis drug counter by 1872, when the store was Graham & Bayley, and in 1879 Thomas Graham, druggist, was in business as Graham, Hamilton & Co., "dealers in medicines, chemicals, dye stuffs, oils, glass and putty," plus wines and liquors "for medicinal use," lamps and wall paper. He was the Benton County treasurer in 1879 and 1880, and treasurer of the town's volunteer fire company, Young America Engine Company No. 1, too.

Henry Wortham came up from Mississippi. He was in Corvallis by 1879, when he ran for city marshal and got all of 23 votes, so it's a good thing he stuck to pharmacy. By the fall of 1892 the store was advertising as Graham & Wortham, and that December a new boot and shoe shop opened "next to Graham & Wortham's drug store." Through the 1890s and 1900s their name ran under ad after ad in the Corvallis papers for Foley's Kidney Cure, Laxative Bromo Quinine, Dr. King's New Discovery and every other patent cure of the day, and in 1906 their counter was where you got your season tickets for the Corvallis Lyceum Course.

My favorite story: in February 1919 a "smooth stranger" passed a worthless check and got the Graham & Wortham drug store for $10, even though the police had warned the town's drug stores to watch for him just days before. When Henry Wortham died in March 1921, at 64, the Portland paper said he'd been in the drug business in Corvallis for 35 years, all of it with Graham & Wortham. He never married. The store kept its name for a while after him, showing up in a list of Corvallis stores as late as 1925, and by 1940 the local directory was naming its successors.

🗓️ How Old Is It?

There's no date printed on it. The store traded as Graham & Wortham from 1892 until at least 1925, so this label comes from somewhere in those years. That little "PHONE 48" fits right in: a two-digit number from the days when you picked up the receiver, the operator said "number please," and you just asked for 48.

🏞️ Corvallis

Corvallis is the Benton County seat, where the Marys River runs into the Willamette, and its name is Latin for "heart of the valley." It was briefly the capital of Oregon Territory in 1855, and it's the home of Oregon Agricultural College, now Oregon State University.

I haven't found another Graham & Wortham carbolic acid label out there.

📏 Details

• Antique carbolic acid POISON label with skull and crossbones and the printed antidote
• Graham & Wortham's Drug Store, Corvallis, Oregon, Phone 48
• Orange-red ink on cream paper, about 2 1/2" x 2 1/2", unused, New Old Stock
• You'll get one label like the ones shown

🖼️ It's a great little conversation piece for a pharmacist, a nurse, a chemistry teacher, a Beaver fan or anybody from Corvallis, and it looks sharp framed beside an old apothecary bottle.