Dr. J. C. Delano
starting page with carried over text from Dr. E. P. Read.
In the late 1920s Read acquired the formulas of Dr. J. C. Delano, an elderly man of partial Native American descent, and continued to operate the former owner's business, melding it with his own African-American style Herbs of Life brand. Delano, who was said to have retired at the age of 100 and to have still been alive at 103 when Read first published a catalogue of his remedies, can be estimated to have been born in the late 1820s, and thus contributed a great many traditional formulas to Read's repertoire. The cover of this catalogue calls on the herb catalogue trope of Native people standing beside tipis as they bring natural herb remedies to non-Natives, but the image also mocks the trope, because the Natives not only pick the herbs, they also boil them up, bottle them, and pack the bottles into cases, alongside burlap bags of bulk dried herbs, for their patient horse to haul into town for sale.
