Medico

Medico stands at the head of the American pipe industry's brands identified with the filter. It was launched in 1933 by New York-based S. M. Frank & Co. The brand was born not as a pipe series but first as a filter concept; the bodies were designed to carry that filter. Most of the brand's following eighty years were built on this same sequence.

The Filter Idea and the Brand's Birth

S. M. Frank & Co.'s origin traces back to 1900, when Sam Frank began selling pipes and tobacco products in New York. The firm gradually moved into its own manufacturing, working with the experienced maker Ferdinand Feuerbach to produce the well-known series of the period. In the early 1930s, public unease over tar and nicotine in smoke led the firm to develop an absorbent paper filter. The Medico brand was founded precisely to make this filter standard.

The mechanism is simple: the stem seats onto the shank not by screwing in but by a push fit (push bit); a paper filter sits in a socket inside the stem and the smoker changes it by hand whenever they wish. This design turned the filtered pipe into an everyday object requiring no servicing. The filter cartridges were used for many years even in pipes without a Medico body; in the history of pipe filters and systems, Medico paper is regarded as the American counterpart to Europe's 9 mm carbon filter tradition.

Ownership, Competitors, and Brylon

In 1955, S. M. Frank acquired one of its main competitors and took over the Kaywoodie brands. Medico came through this transition without significant change and continued to be the firm's volume-producing arm. Names descending from the William Demuth Company legacy would later be gathered under the same roof as well; see William Demuth Company.

The brand's second turning point is 1966. Until that year, every Medico body was worked from imported briar burl. To cut costs, the firm developed a compound called Brylon, combining a heat-resistant resin with wood flour. Brylon is more resistant than briar to cracking and rim scorch; on the other hand it is heavy, and because it does not dissipate heat as briar does, it is considered to smoke hot. Molded rather than carved, this material shares the same logic as the family of hydrostone and resin pipes, the product of similar experiments.

Series and Stamps

At its peak the brand was listed with as many as thirteen finishes; five of these are briar, the rest Brylon. On the briar side are the names Silver Crest, Premier, Bold Rebel, Kensington, and Windsor. On the Brylon side are Lancer, Apollo, Standard, Varsity, Conqueror, Medalist, Cavalier, and V.F.Q. The series name is stamped in most examples on the shank, next to the brand name.

Medico's emblem is an "M" set within a shield. On early examples a plus sign was used in place of the shield; collectors take this plus-mark stamp as a sign of the brand's first years. Medico was also distributed outside America; records include examples sold through the British channels Cadogan and Oppenheimer.