Audacious ads for medicines to treat the 1918 Spanish flu included Laxative Bromo Quinine (“Tablets used by every civilized nation to throw off attacks of colds, grip, and influenza”) and Creophos (“A scientific tonic and internal antiseptic to build up the constitution”). None worked, but many generated profits for those peddling them. Read more about the deadly Spanish flu pandemic a century ago in On the Shore, a tale of conflict between generations in a Lower East Side immigrant family (see NOVELS).
