In the early 19th century, tomato ketchup finally came to be. Y’know, once everyone got over thinking tomatoes were going to kill them. One physician from Ohio named John C. Bennett decided that tomato ketchup was not only tasty; it was a game-changing medical innovation. In 1834, Bennett began selling tomato ketchup as a medicine. Much like every other fake medicine from the era, Bennett claimed that it could cure ailments like rheumatism and diarrhea.
Ketchup then became a medical fad. Bennett worked with a pill producer named Archibald Miles to make pill versions of his tomato ketchup, which became known as Extract of Tomato. Tomato-based medicine continued to spread, and newspapers published accounts of ketchup users finding relief from all sorts of pain and discomfort. This continued up until 1850.
Alas, Icarus flew too close to the giant tomato in the sky, and the empire of ketchup medicine collapsed. Other ketchup pushers entered the market, and while Bennett’s medical claims were fairly out there, these new ketchup salesmen were just outlandish. They claimed that their tomato pills could even heal broken bones, somehow. Studies were conducted by people other than Bennett about the benefits of tomatoes and ketchup, and none of the benefits that Bennett or other salesmen listed were found to be true. With these studies and a whole decade and a half of no results, the public gave up on medical ketchup.
This end of a ketchup era didn’t mean that the product as a whole went away, though. Sure, no one buys ketchup pills anymore, but there was still a demand for the product because, well, ketchup tastes good. Heinz started selling ketchup in 1876, and tomato ketchup gained traction as a non-medicinal condiment.
Top Image: Visitor7/Wiki Commons
Related: Meet Heinz’s Kranch, A Combo Of Ketchup, Ranch, And Sadness
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Ketchup Was the Trendiest Medicine Of The 1830s
Source: Pinoy Daily News
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