In the summer of 1903, newspapers featured ads promoting a tonic for improved vitality. Composed of water, alcohol, quinine, phosphoric acid, and sulfuric acid, “Phosferine” found a ready audience in domestic workers, many of whom were believed to be suffering from a nervous disorder brought on by the demands of daily labor. 

The ads were forceful and direct. 

The busy housemaid, whose numberless duties always seem to require attention at one and the same moment, sometimes, not unnaturally, becomes harassed and careworn under the responsibility and unvarying monotony of her work, and develops what the Great Specialists in Nervous Disorders describe as ‘HOUSE NERVES’. 

Experts warned of dire consequences if untreated. 

To one in such enfeebled health, the daily repetition of the same tasks is a very trying ordeal, and if persisted in, will end in complete nervous collapse. 

Quack therapies targeting “shattered nerves” and somatic distress were not uncommon during the Victorian era. Amazingly, Phosferine was still on offer half a century later—this time, addressed to housewives who, it was believed, spent too much time inside. For those women, one physician proposed a novel remedy: 

There is no more bracing and soothing influence for tired nerves than a quiet hour in the fresh air.