David Rosenthal

So after the war, he moves to Atlanta.

And as part of his sort of entrepreneurial aspirations in this new patent medicine consumer economy, and also to probably solve his own problem, he starts casting about for other drugs that could cure him and others of army disease.

And that is how, in the mid-1880s, he learns about a new miracle drug, sweeping America, promising to cure all ills, including army disease.

Cocaine.

Cocaine was really, really in in America in the 1880s.

Perhaps foreshadowing a little bit the 1980s in America, as we will get to later in the episode.

It was like caffeine today.

Yep.

Or the side effects, et cetera, et cetera.

So pretty quickly, cocaine becomes the most popular patent medicine ingredient out there.

It's probably the only ingredient that actually did anything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And there is a product on the market, an imported product from France.

You can't make this up.

that quickly becomes the most popular delivery vehicle for cocaine, a cocaine-fortified wine from Bordeaux in France called Vin Mariani.

It's like the most extreme Four Loko you could ever dream up.

Exactly, exactly, yes.

So this sounds utterly ridiculous today, but let me read you the list of public endorsers of Vin Mariani, the testimonies in the Rolex parlance.

Thomas Edison, Buffalo Bill Cody, United States President William McKinley, gets even better, Queen Victoria of England, and not one, but three consecutive popes in the Vatican, all swore by Vin Mariani.

So entrepreneurial Pemberton in Atlanta sees Vin Mariani's success and is like, hmm, well, I wonder if there's a way that I could copy and improve on that.