Some Words with a Mummy
primary document · 1845
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SUMMARY
Full story text fetched directly from Wikisource. In the story's mock-scholarly interrogation of a revived Egyptian mummy, a character asks it, 'upon its honor as a gentleman, if the Egyptians had comprehended, at any period, the manufacture of either Ponnonner's lozenges or Brandreth's pills.' Used in this bundle, alongside the direct Moby-Dick citation, as literary evidence that Brandreth's pills were a recognizable, satirized national byword by the mid-1840s, within Brandreth's own lifetime and only about a decade after his 1835 arrival in the United States.
NOTES
Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 satire “Some Words with a Mummy,” fetched directly from its Wikisource transcription, name-checks “Brandreth’s pills” as a punchline in a mock-serious question put to a revived mummy about ancient Egyptian medicine. Used alongside the Moby-Dick citation as direct literary confirmation that the pills were an established national byword within a decade of Brandreth’s arrival in America.