Ketchup was once sold as medicine.

John Cook Bennett was an enthusiastic American promoter of tomatoes as health food and treatment. He claimed they could soothe indigestion and treat diarrhea, among other complaints. His recommendations included raw tomatoes and recipes for sauces, pickles and catsup, linking the condiment to medical claims.

Commercial sellers then advertised products described as tomato extracts or compound tomato pills. Such advertising tells us what sellers promised, not what the products contained or whether they treated disease. Keeping that distinction clear avoids turning a history of marketing into an endorsement of the remedy.

The familiar headline compresses these related stories into one sentence. It is fair to explain that tomato ketchup appeared in medicinal promotion, but misleading to imagine today's standardized condiment being clinically tested and prescribed. The historical evidence concerns claims made in a very different medical marketplace.

JSTOR Daily's account draws on culinary historian Andrew F. Smith's work on tomatoes in America. It describes Bennett offering tomato catsup recipes alongside other preparations while making sweeping health claims. That gives the story a firmer basis than repeating a factoid without identifying a promoter or the kind of preparation involved.

Atlas Obscura documents the commercial pill competition in the late 1830s. In 1837, Cleveland merchant Archibald Miles advertised Dr. Miles' Compound Extract of Tomato. Physician Guy R. Phelps sold competing tomato pills. Newspaper advertisements show how sellers competed through claims of scientific authority and accusations against rival products.

The medical campaign also sits within a larger change in American eating. Tomatoes were familiar to some communities while distrusted or disliked by others. Doctors and cookbook authors helped make them more acceptable. It would be too broad to say that everyone thought tomatoes poisonous until one person proved otherwise.

Ketchup itself did not begin as the sweet tomato sauce now familiar in squeeze bottles. Earlier forms included preparations based on ingredients such as mushrooms or walnuts, with roots in Asian sauce traditions. Tomato ketchup was one stage in that changing category, rather than a medicine that suddenly became a wholly new food.

A historical advertisement can establish that a product was marketed for indigestion without establishing that it relieved indigestion. The same source can be strong evidence about commerce and weak evidence about health effects. That is especially important when colorful medical history is reduced to a surprising headline.

The safest editorial wording is specific: nineteenth-century promoters recommended tomato catsup and sold tomato pills as remedies. It preserves the genuine connection while separating food, extracts and salesmanship. Ordinary ketchup should be treated as a condiment, not as a substitute for appropriate assessment or treatment of digestive symptoms.

The historical surprise is about the authority claimed for familiar food. A tomato recipe could appear beside a medical recommendation, while a pill advertisement borrowed the tomato name. These connections are real, but they do not make a sauce recipe, a commercial extract and a modern condiment interchangeable products.