Gàidhlig / English
Mac-Talla: K. D. C. Pills

Mac-Talla: K. D. C. Pills

Posted by Andrew on Monday 12 September 2016
Mac-Talla is filled with advertising on every page of the paper, and often the adverts are for some truly strange things. In the nineteenth century there was a fashion for ‘patent’ medicines, stuff with odd names which said they would cure every kind of illness. Every one of them was fraudulent, and they were made illegal at the beginning of the twentieth century, but before that happened, they were used by thousands and advertised everywhere. In Mac-Talla, the adverts usually appeared in Gaelic, but it’s obvious that they were translated from English, especially in the names of the fictional people sending their ‘testimonies’ to the paper:
 
Nearly
 
two years back, the Rev. Job Roadhouse from Seeley’s Bay, Ont., wrote to us – Allow me to tell you how much I like K. D. C. My stomach was so bad that it made corn of my throat, sometimes I was afraid that I’d lose my voice, but K. D. C. gave me such relief, that I believe it is the best stomach medicine I’ve ever tried.
 
AGAIN wrote on May 25, 1896, like this – “I’ve never heard of anyone who tried K. D. C. saying anything against it, but each one extols it as fine medicine. It extols itself in every place.”
 
Time will not dull its reputation, and certainly it is the best indigestion medicine to be found in Canada. K. D. C. Pills is all especially good for the chest.
 
Free sample.
 
It’s hard to believe that ‘Job Roadhouse’ would speak any Gaelic, or that he would write to a Gaelic newspaper in Nova Scotia to tell them this sort of thing. Did anyone at the time believe it?
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