[Harper’s Weekly Advertisements]

Advertising for ‘Hembold’s Fluid Extract of Buchu’

This striking woodcut advertisement shows indigenous people of South Africa known as Khoekhoe collecting the leaves of the Bantu bush for shipment overseas. The pejorative term ‘Hottentot’ originated among Dutch settlers in the region and was broadly used to describe numerous groups of native people, usually in negative terms.

The text below the scene describes the health benefits of Bantu and promotes the many uses of Helmbold’s Fluid Extract. There is apparently some truth to the claims, as noted in an abstract in the Scottish Medical Journal;

“Buchu leaves and oil of buchu were used by the indigenous people of South Africa for hundreds of years. The medicinal use of buchu was taken up by the early Dutch settlers and later introduced into the pharmaceutical industry in the UK. Buchu preparations are now used as a diuretic and for a wide range of conditions including stomach aches, rheumatism, bladder and kidney infections and coughs and colds.”

Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/003693309804300610