See Dr. Grace Feder Thompson's letter appealing for patients; Dr.
Pierce's medical empire; Lydia E. Pinkham's
fabulously successful vegetable compound & trinkets & publications;
Dr. E. C. Abbey's The Sexual System and Its Derangements
(1882); Dr. Young's rectal dilators; Orange Blossom medicine; ad for Ergoapiol
(1904), an abortion substance; and Lysol douche
liquid ad, 1948 (U.S.A.)
YOUR remedies for
menstrual period pain and problems. See more remedies here.
 
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"The 20th Century Song Book,"
(menstrual, kidney & liver problems, constipation & bowels, tiredness,
indigestion, colic, colds, chills, fever, childbirth, rheumatism, arthritis,
menarche, leuchorrhea, dizziness, pain, headache, Cardui, Wine of Cardui,
tonic, "female weakness," etc.)
Chattanooga Medicine Company, U.S.A., 1904
Complete booklet, 32 pages plus covers
Although the following (much of which appears in Home
Treatment for Women) applies to this booklet as well as to Cardui's
Home Treatment, this booklet seems to feature
women of a higher social class - and men and many animals, which the medicine
also helped. Many of the readers were farmers or at least rural people,
judging by the testimonials.
Singing and playing musical instruments at home was common before radio
and record players, and rural people probably appreciated the free music
interspersed with tips on curing themselves and their animals - all with
Cardui and related products.
The booklet contains an interesting description of the size and nature
of the company and how it was started. No less than a man of the cloth invented
Wine of Cardui, reassuring readers with the godly connection. But
it gave a good buzz.
Cardui, one of thousands of patent medicines in the 19th and 20th centuries,
seems to have found favor mainly in the southern half of the United States,
judging by the origins of the many testimonials in this booklet. Maybe the
Chattanooga Medicine Co., based in Tennessee, distributed its bottles
and packets only to that area. But this booklet lists factories in San Francisco
and St. Louis and, of course, Chattanooga; and a Martha Killian writes from
South Africa to praise the tonic.
One of the many afflictions these three medicines - Cardui, Black Draught,
and Cardoseptic - treated was "female weakness," which the unremitting
housework and endless childbirths and children might have brought on (but
men took it too - and animals). Medicine, not perfect today, was much less
so in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the sick and tired often looked
to their druggists for healing, just as we do today. Think of all the supplements,
mostly unregulated, that we swallow, alcohol (see
the Cardui label with ingredients) among them. Same thing back then.
And this is also the same: if people wait long enough, with or without
medicine, many disorders clear up by themselves, something doctors know
and knew. So during the weeks and months and years these folks imbibed Cardui
and its siblings some disorders would have cleared up anyway.
Lydia Pinkham made similar cure-alls and
became fabulously successful.
Booklets like this are museums of rural speech. Some words and phrases
are probably gone forever. I would love to hear the speakers of the time
talk.
This booklet appeared before radio began to smooth out regional differences
in the 1920s by allowing listeners to hear speakers far away from the little
towns and farms that many never left. But my stepmother, from North Carolina,
dumbfounded an elevatorful of New Jersey residents in that state by exchanging
some words with my father (a New Jerseyite). She laughed and said that one
person told her they did not know people really spoke like that and thought
she was faking it. So even today there are surprises. Vive la différence!
As an artist I find the illustrations fabulous,
better than the Wall Street Journal's daily portraits of people in the news.
Drawing for publication prevailed over photography then, which had just
started in printed media a few decades earlier so there was a large number
of experienced artists available.
Midol pain reliever pills for menstruation:
old tins (containers), old ads,
old booklet (selections)
YOUR remedies for menstrual period pain and
problems. See more remedies here.
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Below: Front cover. The paper booklet measures
5 1/8 x 7 3/4" (about 13 x 19.8 cm) and has
a looped string, probably for hanging near the piano.
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Below, right: A section of Charles Dana
Gibson's pen-and-ink drawing "The American Colony [in England],"
1899, five years before the Cardui booklet. Gibson's virtuosity earned him
a huge income and he created illustrations for books and the leading American
magazines. He's better than the artist of the Song Book but you see the same faces in the young women; compare this
profile with the one in the lower right corner of the Song Book (and see
a definite case of
copying). You see the same trend in Irving Nurick's
drawings for Kotex (and other companies) decades
later - but, Oh! are the faces from the two eras different! Ideals
change. Try drawing this with a pen you have to dip every few strokes; try
doing it any way you want.
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Below: Gibson influenced American illustrators
for years, here, James Montgomery Flagg, known to you for the poster "I Want You for [the] U.S. Army." These two
artists were masters in what is known as the Golden Age of American Illustration.
The lady, by the way, is about to make the putt that the gentleman at right,
whom I cut, missed. (See a girl teaching her mother to play
golf in a Modess ad two decades or so later.)
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Below: We know Gibson best for the Gibson Girl, below, in bathing suits in Gibson's
book Americans (1900).
Their hauteur smolders on the beach, but not from the sun, and their hair
never touches the water.
(The Gibson pictures are excerpted from The Gibson Girl and Her America,
edited by Edmund Gillon, 1969; source unknown for the Flagg.)
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© 2008 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute work
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