As soon as I saw the name on the tin half-buried under other items on the auction table, an image formed in my head: A woman lying prostrate on the floor, her head slightly raised by one man as another held smelling salts under her nose.
The poor dear had fainted and someone had pulled out the smelling salts.
That image was likely from some old British movie I’d seen on TV featuring Victorian women. No one walks around with smelling salts for fainting spells anymore, and most of us wouldn’t know what to do if we witnessed one. Instead of whipping out the smelling salts, we’d pull out our smartphones and dial 911.
The front of the tin bore the name Vaporole, made by Burroughs Wellcome & Co., of London, with offices from New York to Bombay. The contents were described as Aromatic Ammonia (“For Use as Smelling Salts”). The salts contained 36 percent alcohol.
“The capsule, enclosed in the silken sac, to be broken between the fingers, and the vapors carefully inhaled,” read the directions on the front.
I obviously opened the tin to see if it contained any of those little capsules in their sacs, and it did. In fact, the tin was almost completely full. The capsules looked like tiny rolled pillows tied at each end. I didn’t bother to test them, though. I didn’t know how long they’d been in the tin and what effect they’d have if opened. So I closed the tin and moved on.
I had never seen smelling salts before – they’re so tiny you could never actually see them in the movie. I never expected the product to look so soft. I figured they were like tablets with hard shells to snap open.
Now curious, I wanted to find out more. I learned that smelling salts had been around in some form for a long time (as far back as Roman times). The Science Museum of London has a Vaporole tin similar to the one at auction and dated it from 1924 to 1940. The ammonia was mixed with lemon and lavender oil. The salts were also used for people recovering from “post anaesthetic shock, especially when using chloroform,” according the museum.
They were sold in boxes of 12. The Vaporole smelling salts appeared to have been first introduced around the early 1900s, and were advertised as better than the usual smelling salts, which were said to deteriorate quickly.
I found several first-aid kits from around that time that contained smelling salts.
They are even being used today by some pro athletes to give them a boost. Anyone who’s ever watched old boxing movies have seen handlers rousing a slack fighter with a whiff of smelling salts so he can go back out to pummel or get pummeled again.
The ammonia is usually perfumed with lavender or some other oil to give it an aromatic smell, likely so the senses can tolerate it. Smelling salts are not dangerous, per se, but it’s not a good idea to sniff too much of those little sacs. Small amounts of ammonia gas from the salts “jump starts” the nervous system, as one site explained it, and snaps a person back to consciousness.
Here’s how they work, medicinally, according to the National Institutes of Health:
“The release of ammonia gas that accompanies their use irritates the membranes of the nose and lungs, and thereby triggers an inhalation reflex. This reflex alters the pattern of breathing, resulting in improved respiratory flow rates and possibly alertness.”
In other words, the salts force you to breath.
