Bile Beans

[1][2] The product supposedly contained substances extracted from a hitherto-unknown vegetable source by a fictitious chemist known as Charles Forde.

[4] Although the manufacturer claimed that the formula for Bile Beans was based on a vegetable source known only to Aboriginal Australians, its actual ingredients, which included cascara, rhubarb, liquorice and menthol, were commonly found in pharmacies of the period.

[15] By the 1940s, the ingredients included various purgatives, cholagogues, and carminatives, including aloin (aloe), Podophyllum, cascara, scammony, jalap, colocynth, leptandrin, saponis (soap), cardamom, capsicum, ginger, peppermint oil, and gentian, mixed with liquorice, powdered gum (acacia or tragacanth) and glucose, coated with black charcoal or carbon powder to form ovoid pills.

[21] A half-page advertisement in the Sheffield Evening Telegraph on 12 October 1900 featured a lady who had been cured by Bile Beans after ten doctors had failed to successfully treat her condition; copies of signed affidavits from neighbours were also printed.

[27] By that time, advertising for Bile Beans had become increasingly targeted at women, promising them health, bright eyes and a slim figure if taken regularly.

[30] The Bulletin of the North Carolina State Board of Health hypothesised in 1916–17 that many provincial newspapers relied heavily on the revenues generated by advertisements from manufacturers of suspect remedies, and it speculated that editorial control had been applied to restrict extensive reporting of the Bile Beans court case.

[31] Similar suspicions had been raised almost ten years earlier by medical director Eric Pritchard,[32] who went on to highlight a clause showing newspaper advertising contracts could be revoked if the publication carried any material considered "detrimental to the Company's interest".

[35] He made several bequests, which included the gift of twenty per cent of the company shares to the British charity Barnardo's, although this conditional donation sparked consternation.

[2] The business was so successful that Frank Fulford was able to purchase Headingley Castle in Leeds in 1909, and to donate artworks to the museum at Temple Newsam.