Antique Smiths Pineapple & Butternut Pills Medicine Vial Bottle Full Boston 1910 For Sale

Exceptional New Old Stock example of Smith’s Compound Pineapple & Butternut Pills, made by the W.F. Smith Company of Boston, Massachusetts. Guaranteed under the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906, this fully-intact remedy dates to approximately 1907–1918 and survives today in unusually pristine condition.

• NOS — Never opened. Complete contents still inside.

• Original cork (with expected age wear but firmly original).

• Label is outstanding — clean, complete, sharp printing, fully legible.

• Glass is bright, clear, clean with no chips, cracks, haze, or staining.

• Measures 2.5″ tall.

Smith’s Pineapple & Butternut Pills were marketed as a gentle, botanical remedy for constipation, indigestion, biliousness, “bad complexion,” sluggish bowels, and general stomach troubles. Pineapple supplied bromelain for digestion; butternut bark was widely used as a natural laxative.

This style of bottle—clear glass vial, wrapped label, cork closure—was typically sold in small-town apothecaries, general stores, and traveling doctor kits. Most examples survived empty or damaged. This one survives full, sealed, and remarkably clean, making it a true standout.

The W.F. Smith Company was an active early-1900s Boston patent medicine firm producing botanical tonics and “vegetable compounds.” When the 1906 Food & Drug Act passed, companies were required to mark their formulas as “guaranteed,” which places this bottle squarely in the early regulatory period of American medicine—an era when herbal remedies were transitioning from old-world tradition to early scientific oversight.

Whether you collect early patent medicine, apothecary bottles, Boston pharmacy items, or Pure Food Act-era advertising, this is one of the cleanest, best-preserved small remedy vials you'll find. Unopened examples are genuinely scarce.

W.F. Smith Co. was one of Boston’s active “patent medicine” houses operating in the late 1800s through the early 1900s. They specialized in “vegetable compound” remedies—laxatives, complexion cures, and general health tonics that were popular before federal drug regulation tightened.

The firm positioned itself as a “reliable” maker of gentle, botanical formulas. Pineapple (bromelain) and butternut bark were both common “digestive aids” in this era—bromelain for stomach upset and butternut as a laxative.

These were marketed as an all-purpose cure-all for:

• Dyspepsia

• “Biliousness” (old-timey word for liver/fatigue issues)

• Bad complexion

• Foul breath

• “Inactive bowels”

• A bottle like this would have been kept in:

  • A Boston apothecary cabinet

  • A traveling doctor’s satchel

  • A New England household medicine shelf

  • A general store counter jar

  This is a complete, never-opened survivor—almost unheard of today.

  
  

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