Items

Title: The Morse Indian Root Pills
Description: Trade card advertising Morse's Indian Root Pills featuring text explaining why potential customers should take them. The back is blank save for linear designs on the top and bottom.
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine
ID: WH305
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title

An Abstract of the Patent Granted by His Majesty King George…

Description

Patent medicines originated in England in the mid 17th century and were marketed with extravagant claims, offering cures for a host of maladies. Recommendations for dosage were vague, and ingredients (often including opium) were usually not specified. In 1726 Benjamin Okell was granted the royal patent for Dr. Bateman’s Pectoral Drops, a tincture of gambir (an astringent extract from an Asian plant) and opium. Advertisements published in the London Mercury as early as 1721 directed prospective customers to the warehouse and printing shop at Bow's Churchyard, where they could purchase the drops for one shilling. Our copy of the 1731 reprint by Peter Zenger is likely the first piece of medical printing in New York. Zenger, who would later become famous for printing seditious texts, was instrumental in establishing freedom of the press in America. The Academy has the only known copy. Bound with our copy of the abstract is a copy of A Short treatise of the virtues of Dr. Bateman's Pectoral Drops, also issued by Okell and his printing house partners. Here, Batemans efficacy as a treatment for numerous ailments are described in sections dedicated to each. The last section of the treatise offers testimonials from satisfied customers.

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Subjects (LC)

Advertising—Medicine, Early works to 1800, Fever, Medicine, Patent medicines, Rheumatism

Title: Morse's Yellow Dock the Great Blood Purifier and Kidney Remedy
Description: Trade card advertising Morse's Yellow Dock featuring a kitten's head turned to the right. The kitten is brown and white. The back has a dataset for countries around the world.
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Animals, Cats
ID: WH310
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Ayer's Cathartic Pills, a safe, pleasant and reliable Family Medicine
Description: Trade card advertising Ayer's Cathartic Pills featuring seven cherubic, naked babies handling oversized pill boxes and such with the words Ayer's Pills on them. Some babies are wrapping the items, some are pasting labels onto them, and some are filling them with pills. The back has an image of a bottle with name of the manufacturer on it: J.C. Ayer and lists what ailments Ayer's Cathartic Pills cure.
Conditions Cured (LC): Biliary Tract—Diseases, Constipation, Dizziness, Headache, Indigestion, Jaundice
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Babies
ID: WH121
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Who Said Hood's Sarsaparilla?
Description: Trade card advertising Hood's Sarsaparilla featuring three babies in white frocks crawling towards the customer. A quote on the bottom reads "Who said Hood's Sarsaparilla?" The back explains the benefits and curative properties of Hood's Sarsaparilla.
Conditions Cured (LC): Body Fluids, Headache, Salt Rheum, Scrofula
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Babies, Portraits
ID: WH151
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Dr. Thomas' Eclectric Oil
Description: Trade card advertising Dr. Thomas' Eclectric Oil featuring a Russian flag. The flag is yellow and contains a symmetrical image of a brown eagle wearing a red crown and holding one scroll in its beak and one scroll in its talon. The back lists the times it takes Dr. Thomas' Eclectric Oil to cure various ailments.
Conditions Cured (LC): Backache, Burns And Scalds, Cold (Disease), Cough, Croup, Deafness, Earache, Throat—Diseases, Toothache
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Flags, Russia
ID: WH181
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Ayer's Cathartic Pills, a safe, pleasant and reliable Family Medicine
Description: Trade card advertising Ayer's Cathartic Pills featuring seven cherubic, naked babies handling oversized pill boxes and such with the words Ayer's Pills on them. Some babies are wrapping the items, some are pasting labels onto them, and some are filling them with pills. The back has an image of a bottle with name of the manufacturer on it: J.C. Ayer and lists what ailments Ayer's Cathartic Pills cure.
Conditions Cured (LC): Biliary Tract—Diseases, Constipation, Dizziness, Headache, Indigestion, Jaundice
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Babies
ID: WH122
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: In every Home much sickness and suffering can be prevented by the discreet use of Parker's Ginger Tonic
Description: Trade card advertising Parker's Hair Balsam, Parker's Ginger Tonic, and Hindercorns featuring two young children. The girl, on the left-hand side of the card is looking at the customer with her hands around the back of her neck. She is wearing a red-and-white top of some sort. The boy, on the right-hand side of the card is in profile and is wearing a golden wreath of laurels. The back lists the benefits of each item advertised and contains customer testimony.
Conditions Cured (LC): Acne, Asthma, Body Fluids, Bronchitis, Bunion, Cold (Disease), Corns, Dandruff, Diarrhea, Headache, Indigestion, Insomnia, Itching, Malaria, Rheumatism, Warts
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Children, Wreaths
ID: WH317
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Hood's Sarsaparilla
Description: Trade card advertising Hood's Sarsaparilla featuring the face of a young woman bursting through a newspaper titled "Hood's Latest." She has rosy cheeks and short, curly hair. The back outlines Hood's Sarsaparilla's ingredients and curative properties. The back also contains quotes from satisfied customers.
Conditions Cured (LC): Bad Breath, Biliary Tract—Diseases, Body Fluids, Catarrh, Headache, Indigestion, Rheumatism, Salt Rheum, Scrofula
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Newspaper Layout And Typography
ID: WH141
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Morse's Yellow Dock the Great Blood Purifier and Kidney Remedy
Description: Trade card advertising Morse's Yellow Dock featuring a kitten's head turned to the right. Around its neck is a blue bow with some red in it. The back has a dataset for countries around the world.
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Animals, Bows, Cats
ID: WH309
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title

Here biginneth the inventorie or the collectorye in cirurgicale parte of medicene compiled and complete in the yere of oure Lord

Description

An illuminated and illustrated manuscript of the Chirurgia magna, or great surgery, by Guy de Chauliac. Attempting in the Chirurgia to collect the best medical ideas of his time, he compiled sources from Arabic and Greek writers, including Rhazes, Avicenna, Hippocrates, Aristotle and others. Guy wrote the first text of the Chirurgia in Latin at Montpellier, in approximately 1363. This text was published in many editions and remained the authoritative text on surgery through the seventeenth century. It consists of 181 pages of English black letter in double columns and lines lightly ruled in red. It is ornately illuminated in gold and silver with finely decorated floral borders and large floriated initials, heightened with gold leaf. The manuscript includes 24 drawings of surgical instruments. The calf binding dates to Henry VIII’s reign or to the Elizabethan era. The original brass and leather clasps are engraved with stars and lion heads. There has been dispute about the manuscript’s date, with authorities dating it between the late 14th and second half of the 15th century. The manuscript was sold with the Streeter collection to the New York Academy of Medicine in 1928.

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