Skip to content
io9

Learn that dreams about bacon are evil with this 1800s snake oil catalog

By

Reading time 1 minute

Comments (0)

The Kickapoo Indian Dream Book was a mail-order catalog from the 1800s that sold quack cures for ailments like dyspepsia and tapeworm. The best part of this pamphlet was the poetically absurd dream taxonomy, which warned readers about sinister bacon.

There’s something kind of astonishing about all of the dream predictions below — way too much creativity went into writing this weird-ass piece of phony baloney medical ephemera. Seriously, some mustache-twirling fairground huckster had to come up with all these dream interpretations, and some of them are unintentionally a hoot. My favorites include:

– “Dreaming of eating bacon foretells the death of a friend and portends sickness.”

– “Sugar-plums suggest deception on the part of someone near you.”

– “Pillow – to see or hold one betokens work and persecution.”

– “Lobster – to dream of lobster is indicative of a new love affair as the lobster is one of the gayest Lotharios in the animal creation.”

You can read the entire Kickapoo Indian Dream Book over at Chris Weigert’s Flickr. Thanks for the tip, Reinhart!

Explore more on these topics

Share this story

Sign up for our newsletters

Subscribe and interact with our community, get up to date with our customised Newsletters and much more.