Boyd’s Batteries Collection plus links to more info

Mr_Spud · May 13, 2023 10:08PM

Besides coins, I also collect old medicine bottles, quack medicine devices and old medical and scientific instruments and books about these things. Boyd’s Batteries, a quack medical device from the late 1800s, are often considered to be numismatic tokens similar to So-called dollars so they have double appeal to me.

They were galvanic batteries made by having disks of different metals that created a small electric current when exposed to sweat when worn as a necklace and were touted to be able to cure all kinds of diseases.

Below are pictures of my collection of Boyd’s Batteries and related stuff. And here are some links to websites with even more info on them https://www.wordcraft.net/magneticbattery.html halfway down the page on the next one https://archive.org/stream/tamsjournal27n6toke/tamsjournal27n6toke_djvu.txt

The first 2 are a little smaller than the 3rd and 4th (note- these 2 are the same size, I just shrunk the first one to get some of the chain in the picture).

And the next 2 are a little bit bigger

And here’s one of the controversial competitors ones that was made in Canada

Here’s the pamphlet that came with the Batteries

And here’s the book