How Instagram Made Laxatives Cool

An age-old product gets a thoroughly modern, deeply weird, and potentially dangerous makeover

Illustration by Johanna Walderdorff

In Inner Hygiene, a medical history of constipation published in 2000, author James C. Whorton describes the 18th century advent of “patent medicines,” or herbal compounds that were unregulated, unproven, and peddled straight to the consumer. With ingredients like Chinese rhubarb and senna, many promised more regular bowel movements to those who consumed them — a quick solution that didn’t require a doctor’s visit to obtain.

“The products were advertised directly to the public as preparations very different from, and far superior to, the pharmaceuticals used by the [medical] profession,” writes Whorton. “They were, in short, quackery, ineffective (and sometimes dangerous) concoctions fraudulently pressed upon consumers with extravagant therapeutic claims.”

Fast forward a couple hundred years, sprinkle in a few peppy emojis and #goaldigger hashtags, and lock down a couple of six-figure celebrity and influencer endorsement deals, and Whorton could just as easily be describing the detox teas that have begun appearing on (or some would say plagued) Instagram over the past five or six years. The old-timey labels on the patent laxatives at the Smithsonian may look different from the ones…