Was watching the history channel on 19th century patent medicine for 4 hours. After watching it, I simply put two and two together and figured it all out. Fact is that you could problably get shredded easier then than you could today. The Pure Food act wasn't enacted until 1906 so the manufacturers could get away with putting anything they wanted in the potion and didn't even have to list the ingredients
Basically, For weight loss and energy from tiredness, the ingredient of that day was cocaine. It was practically used for everything at the time, cocaine mouth drops, cocaine toothpaste, straight cocaine powder. Heck, they could grab a Coca-Cola and have an 8 pack in no time. Weightlifters in that time would take a sniff before they did their performance. Also a lot of the pain medicine back in the day contained 15% morphine!!!
What's my point. Is there really such a thing as natural??? Just because it was a long time ago doesn't mean they were helpless. And they did have steroids too but I'll get to that another day