Very Cool Bottle

I have a very cool item for VTT this week. I bought this bottle in the Houston area for $5.00 about 15 years ago. There were three in the shop, and I wish I had gotten all three. I thought it was really cool and displayed it with some other nifty bottles I had in my kitchen at the time. It may be difficult to see, but inside the bottle there is a green glass marble on a little track near the top. (You can click the picture to enlarge it.) The track seems to have been made by squooshing the glass from the outside with some kind of tongs when it was still molten. The brown thing in the bottom is just the washer from the bottle opening that has dried up and fallen down.The front reads "Trade Mark/Zoedone/The New Aerated Beverage/Wrexham, and the back says Nuttal & Co. Makers Schelens.Today my nephew suggested researching the bottle and sharing it for VTT. I was amazed at what I learned, and the potential age of the bottle. We learned that Zoedone used phosphates to make the fizz, and contained calcium, sodium, potassium, and iron, marketing it as a medicinal tonic that would increase brain power. The tonic was made in the town of Wrexham, North Wales, UK., and is advertised in the British Medical Journal o 1879 and written about in the London Medical Record of 1881. In 1892, James Mew wrote Drinks of the World and referred to Zoedone in the past tense, which leads me to believe that Zoedone was no longer being sold, or had fallen out of favor as a medicinal tonic. We couldn't find out when production actually stopped, but these dates show that the bottle could be more than 100 years old!

One advertisement mentions that Zeodone was made without sugar, so it could help diabetics. Besides its medicinal properties, Zeodone was touted as a mixer perfect with claret, as well as being preferable to champagne because it was much less expensive! Sounds like it was a standard "snake oil" packaged in a nifty bottle to me!
I hope you'll visit our hostess Suzanne at Colorado Lady and the other Vintage Thingies Thursday participants.
Don't forget to come back tomorrow for my ENORMOUS 8 book giveaway!