The Peruna Story: Strumming That Old Catarrh
secondary literature · 2007
LINK
SUMMARY
A 2007 historical-bottle-collecting magazine article by Jack Sullivan, fetched directly as a PDF from the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors (FOHBC) website. Byline and publication ("Bottles and Extras," May-June 2007, pp. 28-31, by Jack Sullivan) are read directly from the article's own printed masthead and byline as fetched, not from search-tool prose. Drawing chiefly on Adams's 1905 series and two cited 1959/1961 popular histories of quackery, it covers Hartman's biography, the arrival of advertising manager (later vice president and son-in-law) Frederick W. Schumacher, the company's Columbus facilities (factory, Hartman Hotel and Sanitarium, farm), Adams's 1905 interview and Hartman's admission that Peruna does not cure anything, Adams's chemical test of the product's contents, the reformulation (senna and blackthorn bark added, alcohol content cut from 28 to 18 percent) and the resulting sales collapse, the short-lived Ka-Tar-No revival of the original formula, the product's later history as a Prohibition-era "tonic" and country-radio advertiser, and its reported withdrawal from the market "sometime during the 1940s." This bundle does not rely on that withdrawal date because Lockhart et al. (2025) document Peruna advertisements continuing through at least 1983. It also does not rely on the article's stated death year for Hartman (it gives 1912, at age 82, from pneumonia caught farming in a snowstorm), which conflicts with the Feb. 5, 1918 Kansas City Star obituary date documented in Lockhart et al. (2025) and with multiple independently checked tertiary sources; this case follows the better-corroborated 1918 date and does not carry this article's 1912 date as a fact.
NOTES
Jack Sullivan’s 2007 “Peruna Story” is a secondary historical-bottle-collecting account, fetched directly as a PDF from the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors. It supplies this case’s narrative detail on Hartman’s business partnership with son-in-law Frederick W. Schumacher, the scale of the Columbus operation (a factory, hotel-sanitarium, and farm), the specifics of the reformulation (senna and blackthorn bark added, alcohol cut from 28 to 18 percent), Hartman’s own booklet response to the reformulation (“shocked beyond all measure,” recommending the product even for children), and the short-lived Ka-Tar-No revival. This bundle does not use Sullivan’s statement that Peruna disappeared in the 1940s because Lockhart et al. (2025) document Peruna advertisements continuing through at least 1983. It also flags and does not use another factual error in the article: its claim that Hartman died in 1912, which is contradicted by the Feb. 5, 1918 Kansas City Star obituary documented directly in Lockhart et al. (2025) and by independent tertiary corroboration (Wikipedia’s Samuel Brubaker Hartman entry; the Hartman Building and Theater historic-structures.com record; the Hartman Hotel’s own closure-year record), all of which place Hartman’s death on or about Jan. 30, 1918. This case follows the 1918 date throughout.