C.W. Roback's Astrological Almanac for [1851-1853], etc.
Other titles: Roback's Astrological Almanac
1851--1861? Annual
Boston, MA, Philadelphia, PA, New York, NY, etc.. Publisher: C.W. Roback. Succeeded by: Dr. C.W. Roback's Family Pictorial Almanac, for [1854]: or, Guide to Health, Happiness, and Wealth. Containing Medical Advice, Astrological and Psychological Facts for the People (Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, 1855-1857); Dr. C.W. Roback's Medical Almanac and Family Adviser, for [1859]: For the Use of Farmers, Planters, and Citizens of all classes. A Guide to Health and Complete Household Physician: Containing Unquestionable Proofs of the Infallibility of the Scandinavian Blood Pills and Blood Purifier, as Curatives of the Outward and Inward Diseases that Afflict the Human Race (Cincinnati, 1858-1861); Dr. C.W. Roback's Medical Almanac (Fifth Year of Dr. Roback's Scandinavian Almanac, Cincinnati, 1861)
1/1, 1850 for 1851.

This, under a variety of titles, was an annual put out by Roback to advertise his Scandanavian patent-medicine wares -- "Dr. Roback's Love-Powder," "Dr. C.W. Roback's Scandinavian Blood Purifier, prepared from Swedish herbs, an infallible . . ." etc. -- and to inform the public of his prowess as a professor in astrology, astronomy, "trenology" (phrenology?) and geomancy. Roback (1811-1867?) was born in Sweden as Carl Johan Nilsson and, as Sten Almqvist has unveiled in "The Knave of Fallebo" (Fallebo being Roback's birthplace), went through a variety of names (Carl Johan Fallenius, William Williams, Billy the Swede, Dutch Billy, C.W. Hufeland) before settling as C.W. Roback. He had a career in Sweden and Denmark in minor knaveries before coming to the United States sometime in the 1840s where he turned to patent medicines and astrology, concocting for himself the usual back-story of Eastern travel: "At the age of fourteen I began to devote myself to studies of the occult sciences. The studies I then began were continued for seventeen years, a time during which I visited various parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. Passing into Africa across the Red Sea, I visited Great Cairo and the Pyramids, and from there, following the reaches of the Nile, I acquainted myself with everything that could be gathered from the modern Egyptians concerning incantations and miracles wrought by the ancient Egyptian priests. Some inscriptions on the gigantic ruins interested me profoundly, and I collected several rolls of papyrus, taken from the catacombs, and containing horoscopes for kings of the Ptolemaian dynasty." His Mysteries of Astrology, and the Wonders of Magic, etc. (1854) appropriated as his own the achievements of the prominent Swedish Roback family (complete with photographs of his relatives!) and recited that Roback was a seventh son of a seventh son who had come to America to endow an Astrological College as home for his 7,000 rare volumes, It prominently displayed on its title page his titles as "President of the Astrological College of Sweden, and Founder of the Society of the Magi in London, Paris, and St. Petersburg." His astrological pretensions and wide advertising ran him afoul of Thomas Hague (on whom see the note under Hague’s Horoscope), who in Junius Unmasked (1851), contrasted his own, reputable work in astrology with the shameless mass-marketing of Roback. Noted in "Astrological Serial Publications in the United States" in S.C. Gould's Notes and Queries and Historic Magazine 18, no. 2 (February 1900): 58-59. Library of Michigan; Michigan State University; Ohio History Connection, University of Rochester Medical Center; etc.

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