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ca. 1899 SANITARY POCKET CUSPIDORS – DEVISED BY US
ARMY SURGEON MAJOR DANIEL M. APPEL – VERY INTERESTING
EARLY EFFORT TO CONTROL COMMUNICABLE DISEASES – “LIKE
NEW” OLD STOCK: One of the more interesting
pieces of 19th Century personal hygiene
products I’ve seen, this packaging carton of Sanitary
Pocket Cuspidors containing five of the cuspidors has to
qualify as the most unique. Devised by Major Daniel
Appel, a surgeon in the US Army, patented by C. R. Wyman
in 1899, and manufactured by Seabury & Johnson of New
York, these disposable pocket cuspidors were created in
response to the wide spread use of chewing tobacco and
the resulting – and necessary – continuous spitting
which in turn facilitated the spread of communicable
diseases.
While diseases that were spread through human contact
and from airborne pathogens had been of considerable
concern to the armies of the world for generations,
little progress was made in identifying the cause and
effective prevention until the American Civil War. The
army surgeons made considerable advances during the
following Indian War years that dramatically improved
the health of the frontier soldier, and during the short
duration of the Spanish American War the exposure to the
tropical afflictions such as malaria emphasized the need
for controlling the spread of these deadly diseases.
As with many medical conditions, we humans are adept at
aggravating the situation with life style choices and
our daily practices. Chewing tobacco was widely used in
19th Century America among most adult males,
and not a few females, and it was certainly a favored
distraction for soldiers. At the risk of stating the
obvious (or for those of you who have never had the
pleasure) unless you have a cast iron stomach, one who
chews tobacco has to relieve himself of the copious
amounts of saliva that results from having the wad of
tobacco tucked into his cheek.
When you are outdoors, ridding yourself of the saliva is
not much of a problem as long as you avoid your bunkie’s
boots, but when indoors you need a receptacle of some
sort. Spittoons were a common fixture in almost every
public building, and even today if you know where to
look, most antique buildings – barracks and headquarters
buildings included - that still retain the original wood
floor will have that distinctive ring of dark stained
wood surrounding a circle of lighter colored wood about
8-12”in diameter where the spittoon was located – the
darker wood evidence that some chewers had better aim
than others. Unless these spittoons were emptied on a
daily basis (now there’s a job to aspire to) they became
a breeding pool for any of the infectious diseases
carried by the people who had used them. Isolating the
exposure to the saliva, or eliminating the spittoon
altogether, was the purpose of these individual, and
more importantly disposable, cuspidors. As the
directions printed on the packet state, the user was
directed to dispose of the cuspidor every 24 hours by
burning, indicating it was known that fire would destroy
any disease that was present in the saliva.
These disposable pocket cuspidors were devised by Major
Daniel Mitchell Appel, a US Army Surgeon. Mitchell
joined the army from Pennsylvania in 1876 as an
assistant surgeon and was promoted to major and full
surgeon in November of 1895. He was assigned to Ft.
Baynard, near Pinos Altos, in southwestern New Mexico
Territory, a post originally established to control the
Apaches, where surgeons, military and civilian, had come
to realize that the soldiers suffering from tuberculosis
and some other diseases seemed to improve more
dramatically in New Mexico than they did in other parts
of the country. Recognizing that the high elevation,
clean air, and low humidity were contributing factors to
these results, in August of 1899 the War Department
authorized Surgeon General of the Army General George M.
Sternberg to establish a hospital at Fort Bayard for use
as a military tuberculosis sanatorium. That fall, Major
Appel opened the hospital, the first of its kind.
The timing of Appel’s assignment to Ft. Baynard and the
patent date of these cuspidors – 1899 – is more than
coincidence, and it is understandable that his
assignment to the tuberculosis hospital was instrumental
in Appel’s inspiration to devise them. I’m quite
certain that these cuspidors were issued to the patients
as well as being used by those who chewed tobacco,
whether the packets were sold or provided gratis to
customers of such places as saloons, theaters, or
stores.
The manufacturers, Seabury and Johnson, was founded in
1885 by chemist and pharmacist George J. Seabury
(11-10-1844 to 02-13-1909) and American industrialist
Robert W. Johnson I (02-20- 1845 to 02-07-1910), one of
the three brothers who founded Johnson & Johnson. Both
men shared an interest in the discoveries of Sir Joseph
Lister, in particular his studies of antiseptics
and germ theory, so it is not surprising the firm
manufactured these disposable cuspidors.
This grouping consists of the original brown paperboard
packaging carton and five of the original paper cardstock
pocket cuspidors. The carton, measuring 10 ¼” long, 3
½” wide, and 3 ¼” high, shows some shelf wear but still
retains both of the end labels. The individual
cuspidors, measuring 3 ½” wide, 3 ¼” high, and ½” thick
when closed, are all in like new condition showing no
wear or aging and each is complete with the absorbent
cotton wad in the bottom of the packet. All of the
printing on the individual packets is legible and
contains basically the same information as that found on
the end labels of the carton.
This is a very unique offering of a scarce medical
device of the period, and one that would be an
interesting addition to an Army medical or barracks room
display. The individual cuspidors are $30 each, or as a
group the five cuspidors with the larger carton is $150
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