# Ely's Cream Balm ?s



## hj (Oct 22, 2006)

Hi all,

 I dug this Ely's bottle yesterday, and I was wondering if someone could help me with dating it. I have seen pictures of them without Oweco, N.Y. embossed under the name and also ones that have a turned out lip. Mine has a lip that turns to the inside of the neck.  Any ideas on the design progression of these bottles?

 Thanks,
 HJ


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## richf (Oct 22, 2006)

Hi HJ,
 I would say your Ely's dates from between 1885 and 1890. They are neat little bottles and come in several variants. Where are you digging?
 Rich


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## bottlenutboy (Oct 22, 2006)

i dont know i would start by looking at the mold seams then the base then the type of top


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## hj (Oct 22, 2006)

Thank you both for your replies. I dig on the western border of Pennsylvania, almost exactly midway between Erie and Pittsburgh. This bottle was dug at a dump on the lower section of my wife's parents farm. It is an easy dig, the bottles are dumped down a steep hillside toward a stream. This one is what I refer to as a roll-out, I was digging about 2 feet away when it just tumbled out as dirt rolled down the hill, I almost missed it. I have found turn of the century stuff here before, but I have never found one with the lip turned inside. Kind of threw me.

 HJ


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## photolitherland (Aug 3, 2010)

I know this thread is 4 years old but I found this really cool article about the Spanish Influenza online and it mentions Ely's Cream Balm at the bottom of the page:

  Philadelphia, October 4 1918: 636 new cases, 139 deaths.
    Dr. A.A. Cairns, acting president of the Philadelphia Board of Health, is frantic: more new cases every day, and the city's death toll is mounting. How can the disease be stopped when no one even knows why it is spreading? The state has already closed all the vaudeville and picture houses, theaters, and saloons in Pennsylvania. Cairns decides to close all schools and churches in the city...
    Philadelphia businessmen are up in arms about the epidemic. More cases mean more employee absences and fewer customers. It is no longer business as usual, but business if possible. In desperation, the Bell Telephone Company runs the following full-page notice in the newspapers:
    Telephone Service Faces A Crisis
    The situation is one which the public must meet squarely -- 800 operators -- 27% of our force -- are now absent due to the influenza. It is every person's duty to the community to cut out every call that is not absolutely necessary that the essential needs of the government, doctors and nurses may be cared for.

    Worried Philadelphians, wearing gauze influenza masks over their noses and mouths, quickly cross to the other side of the street if a passerby chances to cough or sneeze.
    Weeping women in West Manayunk block the car of Dr. Joseph Schlotterer, who is making a house call, and permit him to leave only after he treats 57 neighborhood children.
    Frantic shoppers strip pharmacy shelves bare. The press of customers is so great that the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Temple University suspend classes so that pharmacy students can help fill prescriptions. Most are for whiskey, which, now that saloons are closed, is available only in drugstores. Rather than wait to become a statistic, people turn to home remedies: goose-grease poultices, sulfur fumes, onion syrup, chloride of lime.
    Snake-oil artists hawk their useless potions in newspaper ads:
    Use Oil of Hyomei. Bathe your breathing organs with antiseptic balsam.
    Munyon's Paw Paw Pills for influenza insurance.
    Sick with influenza? Use Ely's Cream Balm. No more snuffling. No struggling for breath.

 To prevent further spread of the epidemic among Penn students, most of whom are in the SATC, the Board of Health cancels a football rally and a campus Liberty Loan rally featuring screen actor William S. Hart.
     Major Griffith, in charge of the SATC at Penn, warns that campus residents who fail to keep their windows open will be severely punished. The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania is quarantined, and no visitors are permitted.
    The SATC commandeers two of the University's largest fraternity houses -- Delta Psi and Phi Kappa Psi -- and fits them out as emergency hospitals. Due to the shortage of physicians, third- and fourth-year Penn medical students volunteer to take care of the patients.
    Panic is beginning the grip the city. 

 http://www.upenn.edu:9000/gazette/1198/lynch2.html


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