According to the website, Ripleys, in 1834, Dr John Cooke Bennet added tomatoes to ketchup. Previously, ketchup had been a concoction of fish or mushrooms. The addition of tomatoes meant the sauce had a plethora of vitamins and antioxidants. Cook also claimed that his recipe could cure: Diarrhoea, indigestion, jaundice, rheumatism.
Once Dr Bennet’s tomato-ketchup hit the market, copycats began selling their own tomato-ketchup. Unfortunately, some of these copycats simply sold laxatives with no trace of tomatoes. They also made wild claims that their pills could cure everything from scurvy to mend bones. Due to the false claims, the ketchup medicine empire collapsed in 1850.
