It took Europeans a long time to accept that tomatoes were just fruit. In the previous edition of The Unplanned Saga, "Cracking the Talking Tomato," we discussed how the first European and American colonists who encountered tomatoes were convinced they were poisonous. It wasn't until around the 1830s that they were convinced that the tomatoes were red, with the blood of the poor souls who ate the tomatoes.
So it's no surprise that when Europeans and Europeans finally accept the fact that tomatoes aren't poisonous, they still blow tomatoes out of proportion. From 1834 to around 1850, tomatoes became the hottest medicine in the United States in the form of ketchup.
Before ketchup was the most controversial hot dog condiment, it wasn't even made with the signature fruit we know today. Different stories explain the origins of the sauce, but ultimately, the version of ketchup was made by the British. However, these sauces are made with mushrooms or walnuts instead of tomatoes which means that ketchup is a well-known color, rather than its signature red a long time ago, Heinz tried their blue and green abominable ketchup in 2000.
At the beginning of the 19th century, ketchup finally appeared. You know, once everyone thought the tomatoes would kill them. John Bennett, a doctor from Ohio, thinks ketchup is not only delicious, but delicious. This is a game-changing medical innovation. In 1834, Bennett began marketing ketchup as a medicine. Much like all other counterfeit drugs of that era, Bennett claimed it could treat diseases such as rheumatism and diarrhea.
Ketchup later became a medical fad. Bennett worked with a pill manufacturer named Archibald Myers to make a pill version of his ketchup, which is known as tomato extract. Tomato drugs continued to spread, and newspapers published reports of ketchup users freed from various pains and discomforts. This continued until 1850.
Alas, Icarus flew too close to the giant tomato in the sky, and the ketchup empire collapsed. Other ketchup salesmen came to market, and while Bennett's medical claims were quite there, these new ketchup salesmen were just oddities. They claim that their tomato pills can even heal broken bones, somehow. Studies conducted by people other than Bennett on the benefits of tomatoes and ketchup, as well as no benefits found true by Bennett or other listed salesmen. Since these studies have been fruitless for a full decade and a half, the public has abandoned medical ketchup.
However, the end of the ketchup era does not mean that the entire product is gone. Of course, no one buys ketchup balls anymore, but there is still a demand for the product because the ketchup tastes good. Heinz began selling ketchup in 1876, which gained traction as a non-medicinal condiment.