Antique 1920s Oxalic Acid Label 🧪 Rare, from Portland Pharmacy

Why Was Oxalic Acid a Poison? 🧪 Oxalic Acid POISON Label, Lents Pharmacy, 9201 Foster Road, Portland, Oregon

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

A real piece of the old corner drugstore! This is an antique Oxalic Acid poison label from the Lents Pharmacy in Portland, Oregon, never used. It's printed in deep red on cream: OXALIC ACID across the top, a skull and crossbones beside a big POISON, the first-aid directions underneath, and at the bottom the pharmacy's own LP monogram in a riveted ring beside "Lents Pharmacy" in a flowing script.

🏷️ What's Printed on It

• OXALIC ACID
• POISON (with the skull and crossbones)
• "External—Wash with water."
• "Internal—Give magnesia, chalk, or whiting suspended in much water. Follow with emetic (tablespoonful of mustard in a tumbler warm water)."
• "Call Physician."
• Lents Pharmacy, 9201 FOSTER ROAD, PORTLAND, ORE.

Oxalic acid was a household cleaner and bleach in those days, great for rust stains and wood, and a real poison if it was swallowed, which is why the druggist pasted a label like this on every bottle. The antidote on the label makes sense, too: the magnesia and chalk were there to bind the acid up before it could do more harm, and a spoonful of mustard in warm water was the old way to bring it back up.

🏙️ Lents and the Pharmacy on the Corner

Lents was platted as the Town of Lent in 1892 by Oliver P. Lent, an Ohio-born pioneer, with its first blocks running from Foster Road to 92nd Avenue, and a streetcar came out from downtown Portland that same year. By 1912 it had nearly 10,000 people, and Portland annexed it. The Lents Pharmacy stood right on the northwest corner of Foster and 92nd, and the 9201 Foster Road address on this label matches the block numbers Portland adopted in its Great Renumbering of 1931, which put the 9200 block at 92nd Avenue.

The pharmacy has a Portland mayor in its family tree. Frank Peterson ran the Lents pharmacy for a number of years, and his son, Fred L. Peterson, born in 1896, became a pharmacist too, with his own Glisan Street Pharmacy. Fred went on to three terms as a city commissioner starting in 1941 and served as Portland's 43rd mayor from 1953 through 1956.

🏡 Display

It's a great little piece for a pharmacy collection, a doctor's office or a bathroom shelf, and a perfect gift for a pharmacist or anybody from Lents and Southeast Portland.