Bile Beans

Ghost sign advertising Bile Beans, painted on the wall of 18 Lord Mayors Walk, just outside the city walls in York, England

Bile Beans was a laxative and tonic first marketed in the 1890s.[1][2] The product supposedly contained substances extracted from a hitherto-unknown vegetable source by a fictitious chemist known as Charles Forde.[3] In the early years, Bile Beans were marketed as "Charles Forde's Bile Beans for Biliousness", and sales relied heavily on newspaper advertisements. Among other cure-all claims, Bile Beans promised to "disperse unwanted fat" and "purify and enrich the blood".[4]

Although the manufacturer claimed that the formula for Bile Beans was based on a vegetable source known only to Aboriginal Australians, its actual ingredients, which included cascara, rhubarb, liquorice and menthol, were commonly found in pharmacies of the period. A court case initiated in Scotland in 1905 found that the Bile Bean Manufacturing Company's business was based on a fraud and conducted fraudulently, but Bile Beans nevertheless continued to be sold until the 1980s.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Leeds was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Spiegl (1996), p. 22
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference BMJ1906 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Blog was invoked but never defined (see the help page).