{"product_id":"vintage-1940s-nyseptol-antiseptic-mouth-wash-bottle-nyal-company-detroit-drugstore-pharmacy-glass","title":"Vintage 1940s Nyseptol Antiseptic Mouth Wash Bottle 🧴 Nyal Company Detroit Drugstore Pharmacy Glass","description":"\u003ch2\u003e🧴 What Was Nyseptol, the 1940s Antiseptic Mouth Wash You Could Only Buy at a Nyal Drug Store?\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 8\" x 2 1\/2\" ~ a drugstore label that wears its years beautifully, topped by its orange NYAL cap\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"max-width:315px;margin:0 auto 20px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:177.78%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/72TLOORNukY\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a vintage \u003cstrong\u003eNYSEPTOL Antiseptic Mouth Wash\u003c\/strong\u003e bottle from the 1940s, a ribbed clear glass pint with its paper label and its orange metal NYAL screw cap, put out by the \u003cstrong\u003eNyal Company of Detroit\u003c\/strong\u003e. Back then you could not pick this up just anywhere. Nyseptol was sold through Nyal drugstores, hand-picked agents in each town, and this bottle sat on one of those shelves. Today it is a display piece for a pharmacy shelf, a bathroom cabinet or an apothecary collection, not for use.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eI love old drugstore bottles because the label does the talking, and this one has plenty to say: a Detroit drug house with a London name, a mouth wash built to take on Listerine, and a franchise system that turned thousands of hometown pharmacies into \"The Nyal Store.\" Let me tell you about it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e💊 Nyal's Answer to Listerine\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNyseptol arrived in the fall of 1930. A Nyal sale ad in the Canyon News in Texas listed \"75c Nyseptol mouth wash\" in October, and on November 28, 1930 the Donges drug store in Xenia, Ohio ran it as news: \"Introducing NYSEPTOL, the new antiseptic solution,\" a 20 ounce bottle, regularly a dollar, on special for 59 cents. The Nyal Company later told the Patent Office it had used the name since March 10, 1931, and the trademark, filed in September 1942, was registered on February 16, 1943 as No. 400,124, for an antiseptic mouth wash, the name set \"in bold block letters,\" just the way it is printed on this label.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNobody was shy about what it was meant to compete with. A 1932 ad in the Shelby County Reporter put it plainly: \"Pint Nyseptol, Like Listerine 49c.\" Read the ingredient line on this bottle and you can see why. Thymol, eucalyptol, methyl salicylate, menthol, oil of thyme, boric acid and baptisia line up almost one for one with the formula of early Listerine, which the Smithsonian catalogues as thyme, eucalyptus, baptisia, gaultheria (wintergreen), mint and boracic acid. Listerine itself was first mixed in St. Louis in 1879 by Dr. Joseph Lawrence and Jordan Wheat Lambert, and in the 1920s its makers made Americans worry about their breath. A 1928 Listerine ad even had to explain the new word for the public: \"halitosis (unpleasant breath).\" That is the same plain-English phrase Nyal put on this label, \"for Unpleasant Breath.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNyal sold Nyseptol hard through the 1930s and 1940s. In 1940 the ads called it \"the full strength household antiseptic and refreshing mouth wash\" and promised a \"Full Pint, Full Strength,\" which is exactly the \"Use in full strength\" you read in the directions here. By 1944 a drugstore in Putnam, Connecticut was advertising \"$1.00 Nyseptol, amber type Mouth Wash 59c\" right next to its sister product, \"$1.00 Nykaline, red type Mouth Wash.\" Pint bottles were still 49 cents in Mississippi in 1948, and Nyseptol was still in the national druggists' price books, listed as \"Nyseptol, Amber Mouth Wash,\" as late as 1962.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🏪 \"Only at Your Nyal Drug Store\"\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe thing that made Nyal different from the drugstore brands you know today was that you could not buy it at just any drugstore. Nyal sold through agencies. In 1914 the trade magazine Printers' Ink reported that the Nyal line ran to more than 150 preparations, that agencies went \"only to the best dealers in each territory,\" and that more than 16,000 druggists were in the program, over 400 of them in New York City alone. Before a new Nyal agency opened, the nearby Nyal druggist was consulted, and he could say no. A 1914 Nyal ad in Life magazine summed up the pitch: \"Sold only by Nyal Drug Stores—to protect you from substitutions.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBy 1929 a full-page Saturday Evening Post ad spoke of \"12,000 Nyal Service Drug Stores\" across the United States and Canada, with a rule that no druggist could hold the Nyal franchise without a registered pharmacist in charge of prescriptions. The motto was \"Quality … Fair Price … Fair Dealing.\" For decades small-town druggists printed \"The Nyal Store\" right under their own names in the local paper, and every fall the Nyal \"2 for 1 Sale\" ran, two items for the price of one. Nyseptol was a regular in it from 1930 on: two pints for the price of one. In 1936 and 1937 your Nyal druggist was even handing out the Nyal calendar and weather chart, with a $500 prize contest attached. In October 1945 an ad in the Ypsilanti Daily Press said it as simply as anyone could: \"Get NYSEPTOL—only at your Nyal Drug Store.\" Even in 1947, Nyal goods were sold only through a select group of stores, about 12 percent of the drug outlets in the country.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThere is a bit of drugstore lore I love from Toronto in 1923, where the druggists were split into Rexall clubs and Nyal clubs. One speaker said a good druggist would not care whether the chairman was \"a Rexall man or a Nyal man.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🗽 Why a Detroit Company Was Named for New York and London\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNYAL is an acronym. The way the company told it in 1955, Frederick Stearns of Detroit formed a small company and, \"for reasons that are now obscure,\" called it the New York and London Drug Company. \"From the initials of this company title the brand name 'Nyal' was coined.\" The paper trail backs the name up: the New York and London Drug Company was incorporated at Jersey City, New Jersey in November 1898, with $2,000 in capital, by Thomas M. Curtius and two other incorporators, and in 1905 Curtius formed Stearns \u0026amp; Curtius with F. S. Stearns; both firms gave their address as 5 Platt Street in New York. By April 1908 Frederick Stearns \u0026amp; Company of Detroit was shipping Nyal goods labeled \"Prepared for the New York and London Drug Co.\" In 1914 the Nyal company was incorporated in Michigan as a Stearns subsidiary with $2.3 million in capital, a Canadian company followed in 1915, and by 1929 Nyal listed offices in Detroit; Windsor, Ontario; Slough, England; and Sydney, Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🎻 Frederick Stearns, the Detroit Druggist Behind It\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrederick Stearns was born in Lockport, New York in 1831. By the company's own history he arrived in Detroit on New Year's Day 1855 and opened as a druggist on Woodward Avenue, and that shop grew into Frederick Stearns \u0026amp; Company, one of the two firms (Parke-Davis, founded in Detroit in 1866, was the other) that made Detroit a major center of the American drug industry. The company's big laboratory on East Jefferson Avenue opened in January 1900, with an addition by Albert Kahn in 1910, and the building stands today as the Lofts at Rivertown. His son Frederick K. Stearns ran the firm from 1887 to 1921. And here is a nice one: in 1899 Frederick Stearns gave the University of Michigan his collection of musical instruments, and it is still known as the Stearns Collection.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat Stearns plant is why this label says \"NYAL COMPANY, DISTRIBUTORS.\" Nyal's drug products were made in the Stearns factory, and Nyal itself was the selling company, so the name on the bottle is the distributor's. From 1940 the federal food and drug law required exactly that kind of honesty on a drug label.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🛒 A Detroit Drugstore Story\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNyseptol was a Detroit product, and one of my favorite places it turns up is in Detroit's Michigan Chronicle. In May 1945 the paper carried an ad from Barthwell's drug stores with \"Nyseptol Mouth Wash 49c,\" alongside other Nyal lines. Sidney Barthwell (1906–2005) opened his first drugstore in Detroit in 1933 on $500 borrowed from friends, and built what is described as the largest Black-owned drugstore chain in the United States, ice cream parlors and all. His last store closed in 1987. It is a great reminder that a bottle like this one was part of everyday life in real neighborhood stores.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e📜 Reading the Label\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eALCOHOL 28%:\u003c\/strong\u003e the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act, in force from January 1, 1907, made drug labels state the quantity or proportion of any alcohol, and this is how Nyal complied. When the North Dakota state laboratories tested Nyseptol (their bulletins for 1938 and 1940 report it), they found 29.4 percent against the 28 claimed. For comparison, Original Listerine today runs about 26.9 percent.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe ingredient list and the directions:\u003c\/strong\u003e the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, whose drug-labeling rules took effect on January 1, 1940, required the active ingredients, the alcohol, the quantity, the distributor's name and place of business, and adequate directions for use. This label has every one of them.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eMethyl Salicylate Syn.:\u003c\/strong\u003e \"Syn.\" means synthetic. Methyl salicylate is what oil of wintergreen is made of. It could be distilled from wintergreen leaves or sweet birch bark, or made chemically, and the label tells you which one this was.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eBaptisia:\u003c\/strong\u003e this is wild indigo, Baptisia tinctoria, an American plant also called indigo weed, horsefly weed and yellow broom. King's American Dispensatory (1898) says it was first used as a dressing for ulcers and \"sore mouth\" and was a favorite of the early Eclectic doctors, and the Cherokee held its root against an aching tooth. It was in the early Listerine formula too.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eD-66:\u003c\/strong\u003e one of Nyal's own catalog codes. A 1916 Nyal croup ointment box in the History Colorado collection carries \"D-28\" printed the same way.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDirections, in Nyal's words:\u003c\/strong\u003e \"Use in full strength as an Antiseptic Mouth Wash for Unpleasant Breath, Gargle, After Shaving, on Minor Cuts and Scratches, Mosquito Bites, Chapping, Minor Burns and Scalds and Minor Surface Irritations of the Skin.\" One pint, a whole medicine cabinet's worth of jobs.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e📅 Why This Bottle Is From the 1940s\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNothing on the bottle prints a year, but three things pin it down:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe base.\u003c\/strong\u003e Turn it over and the bottom is covered in a fine stippled texture of tiny raised dots, with an embossed mark among them. Glassmakers started stippling bottle bases in 1940, when Owens-Illinois developed it to stop the small cracks that formed in the base as new glass cooled, and the rest of the industry soon copied it. The Society for Historical Archaeology's bottle-dating guide says a stippled machine-made base \"dates from 1940 or later.\"\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\"1 PINT.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e From the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1967 on, a label like this had to give the ounces as well, like \"16 fl oz (1 pint).\" A plain \"1 PINT\" was printed before that.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\"DETROIT, U.S.A.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e By December 1953 the Nyal marks, Nyseptol included, had passed to Nyal Company, Inc. of New York, and by 1961 Nyal labels read \"New York, N.Y.\" A Detroit label comes from before that move.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat gives a window from 1940 to the early 1950s, and most of it is the 1940s. The Smithsonian dates comparable Detroit Nyal labels with full ingredient panels to about 1938 to 1950, the same years Nyseptol was being advertised as the full pint, full strength household antiseptic. So this one is a 1940s bottle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🔄 What Became of Nyal\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSterling Drug bought Frederick Stearns \u0026amp; Company in 1944, and with it the Stearns stake in Nyal. Sterling's goods went to every drugstore it could reach and Nyal's went only to its own agents, and Sterling named that clash when, in January 1947, it sold its 99.5 percent of Nyal to the Heyden Chemical Corporation for $654,000 in cash. At the time Nyal had its main office in Detroit, branches in New York, Atlanta, Kansas City and San Francisco, and more than 200 products. Later that year the Stearns division moved out of Detroit to Myerstown, Pennsylvania. Heyden sold Nyal on around the start of 1952, the business became Nyal Company, Inc. of New York, and by the 1960s Nyal labels were printed \"Distributors, New York, N.Y.\" The Nyal name still lives on today in Australia, where it is sold as a pharmacy brand.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🖼️ Display Ideas\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🧼 \u003cstrong\u003eIn a vintage bathroom\u003c\/strong\u003e on a glass shelf or in an old medicine cabinet.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e⚗️ \u003cstrong\u003eWith an apothecary or pharmacy collection,\u003c\/strong\u003e beside old prescription bottles, tins and drugstore advertising.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🏙️ \u003cstrong\u003eOn a Detroit or Michigan shelf,\u003c\/strong\u003e as a piece of the city's drug-making history.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🦷 \u003cstrong\u003eFor a dentist or pharmacist\u003c\/strong\u003e who would get a kick out of a 1940s mouth wash on the office shelf.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🪟 \u003cstrong\u003eIn a sunny window,\u003c\/strong\u003e where the ribbed glass really catches the light.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🎁 Who Collects These\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePharmacy and medicine collectors go after Nyal pieces because the Nyal Store was such a part of small-town life. Bottle collectors like the ribbed pint with its stippled base, Detroit and Michigan folks love a piece of hometown industry, and anyone who grew up with a corner drugstore will know that NYAL name in a heartbeat. Nyal bottles turn up, but a Nyseptol pint with its label and its NYAL cap is one I have not come across anywhere else, and once the limited supply of these old drugstore bottles is gone, they will be very difficult to find.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e❓ FAQ\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHow old is it?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe 1940s. The stippled base dates it to 1940 or later, the plain \"1 PINT\" to before 1967, and the Detroit address to before Nyal moved to New York in the early 1950s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHow big is it?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e8\" tall and 2 1\/2\" wide. The label says 1 PINT.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat does NYAL stand for?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNew York And London, from the New York and London Drug Company, the firm whose initials gave the brand its name.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWho made Nyseptol?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Nyal Company of Detroit distributed it, and Nyal's drug products were made in the Frederick Stearns \u0026amp; Company plant on East Jefferson Avenue in Detroit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIs Nyal still around?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Detroit company is long gone, but the Nyal name is still sold as a pharmacy brand in Australia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"relatedBlock\"\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🔎 More From The Vintage \u0026amp; Antique Gifts Archive\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-1940s-red-bill-crate-label-detroit-mi-beautiful-bird-decor\"\u003eVintage 1940s Red Bill Brand Celery Crate Label 🐦 Harry Becker \u0026amp; Co. Detroit Michigan Lithograph Art\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-mid-century-wheaton-ruby-red-apothecary-bottle-jar-with-cork-nj\"\u003eVintage 1960s-70s Wheaton Ruby Red Apothecary-Style Bottle 🧪 with Cork, Millville New Jersey Glass History\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-1930s-fixaco-throat-confection-tin-st-louis\"\u003eAntique 1930s FIXACO Throat Confection Tin 🎩 St. Louis Drugstore Cough Lozenge Pocket Tin\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67936417743080,"sku":"VAG-15384300978408","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/il_fullxfull.8700872828_kxxt.jpg?v=1792353558","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-1940s-nyseptol-antiseptic-mouth-wash-bottle-nyal-company-detroit-drugstore-pharmacy-glass","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}