ABSTRACT
Helmbold the Buchu King first came to my attention in a lecture I attended as an undergraduate student. My professor told his class how Henry T. Helmbold,l a patent medicine producer in New York City, introduced Helmbold's Compound Extract of Buchu in 1847 and advertised it widely as a cure for diabetes, gravel (kidney stones), inflammation of the kidneys, catarrh of the bladder, diseases arising from exposure or imprudence (venereal diseases), nervous diseases, prostration of the system, and the like . . . "from whatever cause originating and whether existing in either sex." As might be anticipated with a product such as that, he made a fortune and even aspired to the presidency of the United States!
