Bile Beans were a widely advertised patent medicine first marketed in Australia in 1897 before production moved to Leeds, England. Promoted as a remedy for ailments ranging from indigestion to headaches, they were claimed to derive from a secret vegetable known only to Aboriginal Australians and researched by the scientist Charles Forde. In reality, "Charles Forde" was the pseudonym of the entrepreneur Charles Fulford, and the supposed discovery was entirely fictitious. In 1906, Scottish judges ruled that the company's business was founded on fraud, yet Bile Beans remained commercially successful and continued to be sold until the 1980s. This paper bag advertising Bile Beans probably dates from around the 1930s, and is part of the collection of ephemera at Wellcome Collection in London.

Design credit: unknown artist