Charles W. Oleson, M.D.

1842–1906

Charles Wilmot Oleson was a physician whose early experience in a druggist’s shop and Civil War hospitals preceded his medical practice in Illinois. Secret Nostrums and Systems of Medicine gathers published analyses and descriptions of proprietary remedies. Its interest lies in what it reveals about the ingredients, advertising and professional criticism of late nineteenth-century medicine.

From Portland to medical practice in Illinois

Oleson was born in Portland, Maine, in 1842. After attending local schools he worked for a druggist, learning about medicinal substances before entering military service in 1862. He became a hospital steward and then an assistant surgeon with the 14th United States Colored Infantry. The Maine Historical Society preserves a surgical kit associated with his wartime service, a material reminder of the circumstances in which he first practised medicine.

After leaving the army he studied at Berkshire Medical College and Harvard Medical School, graduating from Harvard in 1866. He established a practice in Bloomingdale, Illinois, and, after a short period in Columbus, Ohio, settled in Lombard in 1877. His family included a son, Richard Bartlett Oleson, who also became a physician. He served in local offices, including village and school finance, and died in Lombard on 1 December 1906.

His home remains part of Lombard’s documented architectural history. The village’s historical survey identifies Charles and Mary Oleson as its original owners and connects the house with his medical career. In 1901, The Alkaloidal Clinic recommended his book to a reader seeking information about the ingredients of patent medicines.

Opening the proprietary medicine cabinet

The held copy of Secret Nostrums and Systems of Medicine is the fifth edition, revised and enlarged, published by Oleson & Co. in Chicago in 1894. Its original preface is dated December 1889. Oleson describes his task as collecting formulas and methods already published in medical and pharmaceutical journals and arranging them for convenient reference. He expressly declines to guarantee the accuracy of the analyses, offering their sources instead.

Books and contributions

1 work in the current library

Secret Nostrums and Systems of Medicine: A Book of Formulas

Charles W. Oleson, M.D.

Science, Nature & the Cosmos

Sources and further reading

This distinction is central to the book. Oleson was compiling reports, rather than presenting every entry as the result of his own laboratory investigation. He acknowledges journals including The Medical World, The Western Druggist and The New Idea, the last associated with the drug manufacturer Frederick Stearns & Co. The collection therefore records a professional and commercial conversation about secrecy, rather than standing wholly outside the medicine trade it examines.

Many entries compare extravagant advertising with the substance reported inside a package. One reproduces a chemist’s finding that Kaskine, promoted as a powerful disease remedy, was ordinary granular sugar. Others describe bottles, labels, selling claims and mixtures said to resemble particular branded preparations. The book also moves beyond products to criticism of medical advertising and the methods of practitioners selling supposedly exclusive systems. Such material shows how professional readers attempted to distinguish useful knowledge from a profitable claim of mystery.

Oleson revised the collection as it circulated. His fifth-edition preface explains that he had removed certain preparations intended only for physicians because they fell outside its scope. Later editions and contemporary recommendations attest to an ongoing readership. The volume now belongs to the history of pharmacy, commerce and medical criticism. Its formulas document the period; neither their inclusion nor the compiler’s medical qualification establishes that they are accurate, effective or suitable for use today.