Wisconsin Historical Society
Wisconsin Gov. Robert Marion La Follette is remembered for championing the minimum wage, taking on the railroad tycoons and delivering impassioned speeches on the back of buckwagon. For this and more, the progressive from Primrose is memorialized with a bust in the state Capitol Rotunda. The white marble statue captures another famous attribute of Fighting Bob: His prominent pompadour.
La Follette tamed his unruly mane with a homemade hair tonic, which he purportedly applied to his roots twice daily. The formula is preserved in Lynne Watrous Hamel’s book A Taste of Old Madison: Collected Recipes & Nostalgia from Madison’s Early Days, published in 1974.
There are just four ingredients in the tonic: Eight ounces of cologne. One-half dram of English lavender oil and rosemary. And a one-ounce tincture of dried secretions from the infamous blister beetle.
That’s right. When Fighting Bob warned of “The Danger Threatening Representative Government” from the steps of the Capitol, there was bug juice in his hair.
These secretions contain large amounts of cantharidin, which is also the potent ingredient in the aphrodisiac Spanish Fly. But it’s more of a love poison, than a love potion. It’s working as advertised when it inflames the urethra, causing the genitals to swell. Ingest too much and it’s deadly.
But the former U.S. senator and presidential candidate may have been onto something by using Spanish Fly to make his hair stand tall. It’s said to stimulate hair follicles helping to prevent, even cure, baldness. Cantharidin is still used in hair products today (although it’s hard to come by in the United States).
Sound like a bunch of 19th century hogwash? Fighting Bob didn’t think so. And he had the pompadour to prove it.
