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  1. Vintage Labels
  2. Drugstore & Pharmacy

Dentons Drug Store - Chloroform Poison Label

SKU: ULB1157
$1.05 USD

Historic Overview

This is a great looking poison label with the unusual red and green colors on an off-white background. The chloroform poison label measures 2.4” Wide x 1.4” Tall and is from Denton’s Drug Store in Mentone, Indiana. The store was owned and run by Glenn Denton and his wife Louise until he retired to Inverness, Florida in 1970. It was a Rexall store and checkout the telephone number, 47. Our guess is this label dates to the 1930s or 1940s.

The town of Mentone is the self-proclaimed “Egg Basket of the Midwest” because of its large commercial egg production and it has a huge concrete egg in the center of town which they consider the largest egg in the world. Mentone also is the boyhood home of Lawrence Bell, founder of Bell Aircraft.

Discovered in the 1830s, Chloroform (an organic compound) is commonly associated with the old movies when the bad guy used a handkerchief loaded with Chloroform to subdue his target. In reality it has several other uses. Yes, it was first used as an anesthetic since it smelled and performed better than ether, but it was later found to have toxicity and a tendency to cause cardiac arrest. It is a precursor in the production of Teflon and is a great solvent used to produce dyes and pesticides and it can be used to bond Plexiglas together. As a side note, it was used to produce R-22 refrigerant for A/C systems, but is being phased out by government mandate.

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