1900 – Envelope from one of the best-selling patent medicines of all time that transitioned into a food condiment after the Food and Drug Administration stepped in

Richmond, Virginia, 1900. Envelope or Cover. Very good. This business envelope bears the printed return address of Valentine’s Meat-Juice Company of Richmond, Virgina. It was sent from Richmond to the Director of the Private Maternity Hospital of Berlin, Germany. It is franked with a 5-cent Grant stamp (Scott #281) that has been canceled with a Barry Postal Supply Company machine postmark, dated 21 February 1900. The reverse is filled with assorted postal labels, handstamps in various colors, and manuscript annotations related to its delivery despite having an insufficient address. In nice shape.

In downtown Richmond, Mann S. Valentine, a prosperous merchant lived with his family in a large neoclassical home. In 1870, his wife, Anne Maria fell ill from a “severe and protracted derangement of the organs of digestion,” that prevented her from eating solid food. Doctors had given up on curing Anne Maria, so Valentine took it upon himself to concoct his own highly concentrated protein and iron tonic which he distilled from a mix of eggs and beef broth. It worked wonders.

Valentine, ever a merchant, began to create more, which sold well in his store. Seeing the possibility of ever-increasing sales, he began to canvass local, then regional, then nationally known physicians for their endorsements. Some replied with glowing reviews reporting they used it effectively, not just as a nutritional supplement, but as a treatment for everything from nausea to dysentery and cholera. Valentine began to publish these reviews in advertisements and business boomed. He took his meat juice to the International Paris Exposition in 1878 and introduced it to a global market. Recognizing the importance of physician recommendations, Valentine began to contact European doctors for their endorsements. This envelope was, no doubt, used for that purpose.

In 1906, the newly created Food and Drug Administration began its crackdown on patent medicines. Seeing the writing on the wall, Valentine stopped promoting his meat juice as a curative and began to market it as a cooking supplement for flavoring various dishes. As such, it was even more popular than medicine and became a staple on grocery store shelves throughout the country for years until demand finally wore off, and the factory, located at Brook Road and Chamberlayne Avenue shut its doors.

. Valentine amassed a fortune during the last quarter of the 19th century and became an inveterate collector of art and artifacts. In his will, he provided a large endowment to establish a museum to house his collection, and it, much expanded, continues in operation as the famed Valentine Museum in Richmond.

(For more information, see “The history of Valentine’s Meat Juice” at the RIC Today website and Castellano’s “In the 1800s, Valentine’s Meant a Bottle of Meat Juice” at the Atlas Obscura website.)

Old meat juice bottles are frequently sold on or encountered in antique malls. Company envelopes used to request endorsements from domestic physician endorsements occasionally appear on or in philatelic auctions. Evidence of Valentines attempts to secure international professional recommendations are seldom encountered; this is the first we have seen.

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