Antique 1930s-40s Arsenate of Lead Pharmacy Label ☠️ Glen’s Drug Store Auburn NE

Why Did a Nebraska Drug Store Sell Arsenate of Lead? ☠️ Antique 1930s-40s Pharmacy Label, Glen's Drug Store, Auburn NE

Size: 2 1/2" x 1 1/2"

☠️ A skull and crossbones, ARSENATE OF LEAD in big red letters, and an antidote printed right on the label. Then at the bottom, in a fancy red banner, the friendly hometown drugstore that sold it: Glen's Drug Store, Auburn, Nebr. It's never been on a bottle, and the back is blank.

🔍 What's On It

All in red on cream: ARSENATE OF LEAD, a POISON box with the skull and crossbones, and ANTIDOTE: Emetic of mustard and warm water, then white of eggs, castor oil. Keep body warm. Call Physician at Once. Below that, Net Contents left blank for the druggist to fill in, Distributed by, and the store's name in a scalloped banner. The same printed form turns up with other druggists' names on it, so this was a stock label a drugstore ordered with its own name at the foot.

🍎 Why a Drug Store Sold It

Arsenate of lead wasn't medicine. It was bug killer, the standard insecticide for apple orchards and gardens. It was first used against the gypsy moth in Massachusetts in 1898 and went on mainly to apples, other fruit trees and garden crops, to fight pests like the codling moth. Druggists packed it up for local customers, which is why this label leaves the Net Contents blank to fill in, and why it needed a poison warning and an antidote. DDT started replacing it after 1947, and the EPA banned lead arsenate on food crops in 1988.

💊 Carl Glen of Auburn

And here's the man behind the store. Carl M. Glen was born in Tecumseh, Nebraska, on July 28, 1895, went to school in Auburn and Nebraska City, and studied pharmacy at Babcock College of Pharmacy in Des Moines. He went to work for the J. C. Thygeson Drug Co. in Nebraska City in 1908, served in the Army in World War I with a machine gun battalion and a field hospital, and in 1922 became J. C. Thygeson's partner in a drugstore in Auburn. In 1934 he went out on his own as owner and manager of the Glen Drug Co., and that's the store on this label, so it was printed in 1934 or later.

He was a real Auburn fixture. He chaired the committee that built the town's $25,000 swimming pool in 1931, served on the school board while the new Auburn High School went up in 1937, was past commander of the American Legion and past president of the Chamber of Commerce, and listed his hobby as hunting. One of the photos here is an old real-photo postcard of Main Street, or J Avenue, in Auburn. THYGESON & GLEN is still painted high on the building from the partnership years, and down over the door hangs a GLENS DRUG STORE sign, so the picture was taken after Carl went out on his own in 1934; the cars at the curb are late-1930s models, with a J. C. Penney a few doors down and Hested's five-and-ten next door. That postcard picture is there for history only and isn't included; you get the label.

Auburn is the county seat of Nemaha County, down in the southeast corner of Nebraska near the Missouri River. The town itself came out of a merger in 1882, when the neighboring towns of Sheridan and Calvert joined up as one. Before lead arsenate, farmers fought bugs with Paris green, a bright green arsenic compound that went after the Colorado potato beetle from the 1860s on.

📏 Details

• Antique Arsenate of Lead poison label, Glen's Drug Store, Auburn, Nebr.
• Red on cream, skull and crossbones, printed antidote
• About 2 1/2" x 1 1/2", unused, blank back
• You'll get one label like the ones shown

🖼️ It's a great little piece for a pharmacy collection, a garden shed, or anybody with family from Auburn or Nemaha County.