The Great Chill and Fever Cure

By Bill Baab

The Savannah River flows serenely past Augusta, Georgia on its way to the Atlantic Ocean some 130-odd miles downstream, except in places below the city where sand bars create immense flats covered by aquatic vegetation. During the early morning hours, fog-like mists arise from the flats where, during the 19th Century and through the middle of the current century, it was commonplace to see American alligators sunning themselves on the river banks. These mists sometimes invade downtown Augusta and create a visibility problem for motorists on busy Reynolds Street a block away from the river.

The River Swamp/Chill and (motif of alligator) Fever Cure/Augusta, GA.

The swirling, grayish mists were considered bad for a person's health by early physicians, who thought just breathing in the moisture-laden clouds produced yellow fever and malaria. These theories existed centuries before medical men discovered malaria was caused by bites from some 60 species of the Anopheles mosquito, depending on where you were in the world. Naturally, it wasn't long before cures began to appear on the American medical market and Augusta's physicians began dreaming up their own doses.

The most famous of these is the celebrated River Swamp Chill and Fever Cure, whose embossed graphics of an alligator reposing in a swamp-like habitat have helped it to become one of the most sought-after cures by collectors of antique bottles.

Check out these auction prices: On July 8, 1992, a River Swamp auctioned by Harmer Rooke in New York brought $950. In a Glass-Works auction on Nov. 6, 1995, one brought 1,550. On July 15, 1996, another brought $925. Bear in mind that each of those bottles sported a strong embossment. The stuff's formula, of which alcohol certainly played a major part, was the brainchild of Louis A. Gardelle, a French émigré who came to Augusta during the early part of the 19th century. He became a pharmacist and introduced River Swamp to citizens in his adopted city in 1885.

1891 ad: Grier's Almanac L.A. Gardelle - Druggist. River Swamp Chill & Fever Cure Bottle. (Photo: Bill Baab)

"Guaranteed Cure for Chills and Fever and Preventative of Malaria," boasted Gardelle through a rare advertisement discovered in a May, 1905 Grier's Almanac. An 1891 Grier's Almanac sports an ad that guarantees "Where two bottles taken and fail to break up chills, the money will be refunded."

A regular-sized River Swamp cost 50 cents. The large economy size sold for $1. The known bottles are various shades of amber in color, with the regular size measuring 6-3/8 by 2-1/4 by 1-1/4 inches, according to noted cure collector John Wolfe of Dayton, Ohio. He has in his collection on of the rare large sizes and lists it as being 7 by 2-5/8 by 3/4 inches. An aqua River Swamp was dug in Augusta during the mid-1960s by pioneer Augusta bottle collector Maxey Tarpley, who now lives in Edisto Beach, S.C. He doesn't recall what happened to it.

Gardelle's concoction was preceded in the early 1880s by Barry's Malarial Antidote and Horsey's Antidote for Malaria, both Augusta bottles. In 1887, Frog Pond Chill and Fever Cure hopped onto the Augusta scene from the inventive minds of druggists F.A. Beall and J.B. Davenport. The writer, who happily owns a mint River Swamp of the regular size, has always wondered how many of his favorite cure bottles exist. He knows of up to six in Augusta collections, but how many more are out there?

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