Hey, how are your kidneys? A big concern, more than 100 years ago

Glancing at newspaper ads from 1905, it seemed like everybody had kidney trouble.  The papers advertised plenty of medicines that claimed to calm the kidneys.  One ad for Warner’s Safe Pills claimed that “weak kidneys cause more suffering and deaths than all other diseases combined.”  Warner’s pills could help not just the kidneys, but the liver, bladder, and blood.  Or you could take Dr. Kilmen’s Swamp Root for the same ailments.  The Hoeschler brothers had drugstores on Main Street and South 4th St. in 1905, and they sold Matt J. Johnson’s 6088, which supposedly cured blood trouble or…you guessed it…kidney trouble.

The castles on Cass Street were where the rich folks lived a century ago, and one of the castles caught fire in 1905.  Col. F.A. Copeland’s house at 10th and Cass burned to the ground, a loss of $35,000.  Arson was suspected.  Copeland and his family were spending the winter in Florida in 1905, yesterday in La Crosse.