Early 20th-century product claiming the ability to revive male sexual prowess. At the turn of the century, a number of remedies tried to help men who could not hold a penile erection. During the 1920s, perhaps the most successful of these remedies, which were usually sold through the mail, was manufactured by the Packers Product Company of Chicago. Packers, whose remedy was called Orchis Extract, was owned by Fred A. Leach, who had previously owned a business that sold a vacuum apparatus which, he claimed, men could use to lengthen their sex organ. Orchis Extract was named for, but had no material relationship to, orchids flowers with a prominent stamen resembling an erect penis. The company’s floral logo quickly communicated the claims for the product.
Packers also used a picture of the stockyards of the nearby Armour & Company in its advertising. The advertising implied, but did not clearly state, that the company was taking the sexual organs of the recently slaughtered animals to make a serum, capitalizing upon the latest scientific discoveries. The literature mentioned in passing that the extract was made from a substance derived from the testicles of rams.