Fraudulent Beans

I have often walked past this sign in York without knowing what biles beans are so today I looked them up

Bile Beans was a laxative and tonic first marketed in the 1890s.
The product supposedly contained substances extracted from a hitherto unknown vegetable source by a fictitious chemist known as Charles Forde.
In the early years Bile Beans were marketed as "Charles Forde's Bile Beans for Biliousness", and sales relied heavily on newspaper advertisements. Among other cure-all claims, Bile Beans promised to "disperse unwanted fat" and "purify and enrich the blood".

Although the manufacturer claimed that the formula for Bile Beans was based on a vegetable source known only ti Aboriginal Australians, its actual ingredients, which included cascara, rhubarb, liquorice and menthol , were commonly found in pharmacies of the period.

A court case initiated in Scotland in 1905 found that the Bile Bean Manufacturing Company's business was based on a fraud and conducted fraudulently, but Bile Beans continued to be sold until the 1980s nevertheless. (Source Wikipedia)