(Read the last story on this page...it has nothing to do with tomatoes and will make you smile.There is a green arrow there.)
Dr. John Cook Bennett was such a sleazy dude that I kept bumping into in news stories about him when I was doing reading about the rise of tomatoes as a popular food in the early 1800s. The articles were either ones that he wrote about the tomato cure or similar articles mirroring this "work", or they were articles by people documenting the awful things he had been up to! Some folks felt it necessary to simply publish statements like, "I have nothing to do with Dr. John Cook Bennett or anything he does....".
It is a fascinating story that gets even stranger after Bennet as other men take up the tomato as miracle cure and start a Tomato Pill War. I find it amusing that Hartford, Connecticut was the center of the Tomato Pill universe. It is like knowing some dignified grand dame secretly plays Plants and Zombies. The following free and take a peek books put order to the story. I wouldn't mind reading Smith's book. Following these I have dumped some articles I saved before I realized I wasn't interested in writing about Bennett, just interested in reading about him up to a point.
Download PDF: Dr. Cecil Muncey's paper, The Tomato as Patent Medicine
Preview: The Saintly Scoundrel: The Life and Times of Dr. John Cook Bennett
Andrew F. Smith - 1994
This article shows Dr. Bennett being a bad, bad man.
I included the story about Robert Mills the saddler because it is worth reading!
This story reminds me of Bert and I! Listen to one of Marshall Dodge's performances here.
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