Medical Trade Cards and Advertisements Collection

Medical trade cards and other advertisements promoting medical services and products were designed to directly connect patent medicine manufacturers to the consumer public.

At the start of the nineteenth century, the cost of seeing a physician and a fear of their treatments drove the popularity of “cure-all” patent medicines. Patent medicines, also known as proprietary medicines, were mass-produced remedies created from homemade formulas that often held no proven medicinal efficacy. Despite this, they boasted cheaper and painless cures for a wide range of ailments including cholera, tuberculosis, whooping cough, constipation, and what was then referred to as “female weakness,” among many other ailments. In the nineteenth century patent medicine manufacturers were unregulated and not required to list the active ingredients of their products. As a consequence, many products contained high volumes of alcohol mixed with ingredients such as heroin, cocaine, morphine, marijuana, and mercury.

Unlike traditional newspaper advertisements, trade cards were an innovation in advertisement due to their use of vibrant colors, the unrestricted variety of products promoted, and ease at which they were circulated to the public. Trade cards were usually available in stores and often slipped into the shopping bags of customers.

Medical trade cards often employed imagery that was meant to appeal to contemporary consumer tastes, such as flower bouquets, rosy-cheeked children, and animals. Some trade cards and other advertisements also depicted and perpetuated misogynistic sentiment, as well as negative racial and ethnic stereotypes.

As trade cards increased in popularity, a pastime of scrapbooking these cards began to grow in the United States. Advertisers took advantage of this new trend by creating distinct trade cards that were both eye catching, while also clearly demonstrating the purported medical benefits their product. The peak popularity of trade cards is estimated to have been between 1870 and 1890. By the early 1900s, mass-circulating magazines replaced trade cards as the popular form of advertising.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Albert, Michael R., MD. “Nineteenth-Century patent medicines for the skin and hair,” The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 43 (2000): 519-526.

Baker, Peggy M. “Patent Medicine: Cures & Quacks,” Pilgrim Society & Pilgrim Hall Museum. Accessed January 2020. https://www.pilgrimhall.org/pdf/Patent_Medicine.pdf.

Black, Jennifer M. “Corporate Calling Cards: Advertising Trade Cards and Logos in the United States, 1876–1890,” The Journal of American Culture, 32:4 (2009): 291-306.

Cloyd, Alison and Marisa Shaari. “Good For What Ails You? Patent Medicines and Advertising Cards,” Oskar Diethelm Library. Accessed January 2020. https://oskardiethelm.omeka.net/exhibits/show/patent-medicines-advertising-c/click-to-start-exhibit/patent-medicines-and-trade-car.

Hale, Margaret. “A New and Wonderful Invention: The Nineteenth-Century American Trade Card,” Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School. Accessed January 2020. https://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/a-new-and-wonderful-invention-the-nineteenth-century-american-trade-card.

Marcellus, Jane. “Nervous Women and Nobel Savages: The Romanticized ‘Other’ in Nineteenth-Century US Patent Medicine Advertising,” The Journal of Popular Culture, 41:5 (2008): 784-808.