Items

Title: Buy it, Try it, and be Happy! Morse's Dyspepsia Cure, Holliston, Mass.
Description: Trade card advertising Morse's Dyspepsia Cure featuring an image of a lighthouse and a sailing ship in choppy waters. Text at bottom reads "Eddy Stone Light House." The back lists ailments that Morse's Dyspepsia Cure helps.
Conditions Cured (LC): Biliary Tract—Diseases, Constipation, Headache, Heartburn, Indigestion, Palpitation
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Boats And Boating, Lighthouses, Sailboats, Sailing Ships, Water Waves
ID: WH177
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: The Genuine Dr. C. McLane's Liver Pills are a Sure Cure for Sick Headache
Description: Trade card advertising Dr. C. McLane's Liver Pills featuring a circular image of a small house in a wintry landscape. Spilling out of the circular frame are trees, some grasses, and a fence. Behind the circle is a cross-shaped pattern of blue and grey. The back has testimony from a satisfied customer.
Conditions Cured (LC): Headache
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Housing, Nature, Snow, Trees, Wooden Fences
ID: WH298
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Dundas Dick & Co's Compliments
Description: Trade card advertising the tasteless medicines of Dundas Dick & Co. featuring a wood-framed square that reads "Dundas Dick & Co.'s Compliments" surrounded by autumnal leaves and berries. The square is labelled "1776" and "1876" on the top and bottom, respectively. The back features a nineteenth-century calendar.
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Berries, Leaves, Nature, Picture Frames And Framing, Wood
ID: WH260
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Seasonable Suggestions [from verso]
Description: Trade card advertising Dr. Jayne's Expectorant, Dr. Jayne's Liniment, Dr. Jayne's Sanative Pills, and Dr. Jayne's Tonic Vermifuge featuring a nymph-like woman standing on a large leaf sipping something out of a flower blossom. She is wearing a white, flowing dress and has long, curly hair with leaves in it. She is framed by foliage and flowers. The back lists the ailments the advertised medicines cure.
Conditions Cured (LC): Asthma, Bronchitis, Cold (Disease), Cough, Helminths, Indigestion, Pleurisy, Throat—Diseases, Tuberculosis, Whooping Cough
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Flowers, Hair Ornaments, Leaves, Nature, Plants, Portraits, Women
ID: WH285
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Hood's Sarsaparilla Purifies the blood, creates an appetite, makes the weak strong, and builds up the system
Description: Trade card advertising Hood's Sarsaparilla featuring a cupid-like boy with small wings and a blue garment around his waist. He is marching while playing a golden horn and holding a yellow box of Hood's Sarsaparilla. The back lists the health benefits of blood purification, as well as the ingredients Hood's Sarsaparilla.
Conditions Cured (LC): Asthenia, Body Fluids, Constipation, Furuncle, Headache, Indigestion, Salt Rheum, Scrofula, Syphilis
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Angels, Cherubs, Folklore, Musical Instruments, Mythology
ID: WH144
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound
Description: Trade card advertising Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, Lydia E. Pinkham's Liver Pills, Lydia E. Pinkham's Blood Purifier, and Lydia E. Pinkham's Sanative Wash featuring a sailboat wreathed by flowers. There are two red figures on the sailboat, and the wreath of flowers includes blue, white, red, and purple blossoms. The back lists the benefits of the items advertised.
Conditions Cured (LC): Asthenia, Backache, Body Fluids, Depression, Mental, Erysipelas, Headache, Indigestion, Insomnia, Neurasthenia, Peptic Ulcer, Rheumatism, Salt Rheum, Scrofula, Tumors
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Boats And Boating, Flowers, Sailboats, Sailing Ships
ID: WH185
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Brown's Iron Bitters
Description: Trade card advertising Brown's Iron Bitters featuring a woman peering out from behind a column with text that reads: "Brown's Iron Bitters." She is wearing a blue and white dress and a pink bonnet. Behind her is a tall, flowering bush. On the top left corner is an overlaid trade mark.
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Clothing And Dress, Flowers, Hats, Nature, Women's Hats
ID: WH236
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: The Truant Boys
Description: Trade card advertising a book titled "The Sexual System and its Derangements" and the medicine Cutavaco featuring a landscape with various hidden images in it. The obvious things the picture presents are a pair of sheep resting in a fenced-off field surrounded by boulders and trees. There are more fences and fields in the distance, as well as a small hill. The back praises the book being advertised and also lists the ailments Cutavaco can cure.
Conditions Cured (LC): Acne, Bad Breath, Baldness, Bites And Stings, Catarrh, Cholera, Ear Infection, Eczema, Edema, Erythema, Helminths, Leucorrhea, Measles, Pediculosis, Poison Ivy, Ringworm, Salt Rheum, Scarlatina, Scars, Shingles (Disease), Smallpox, Throat—Diseases, Typhoid Fever, Urticaria
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Animals, Grasslands, Nature, Rocks, Sheep, Trees, Wooden Fences
ID: WH253
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: The Late James R. Wood, M.D.
Description: Trade card featuring a portarit of a mustached man in a dress suit. He is wearing a bowtie, and his hair is slicked to one side.
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Clothing And Dress, Ethnic Costume, Mustaches, Neckties, Portraits
ID: WH301F
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Old Doctor Samuel F. Stowe's Dyspepsia Cure or Compound Medicated Lozenges
Description: Trade card advertising Old Dr. Samuel F. Stowe's Dyspepsia Cure or Compound Medicated Lozenges featuring a cat clawing a pink-flowering bush. In this bush is perched a bird. The cat and bush are on a tuft of grass with red flowers.
Conditions Cured (LC): Indigestion
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Animals, Birds, Cats, Flowers, Grasses, Grasslands, Nature, Nature
ID: WH357
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Dr. Morse's Compound Syrup of Yellow Dock Root Regulating the Liver and Digestive Organs and Purifying the Blood
Description: Trade card advertising Dr. Morse's Compound Syrup of Yellow Dock Root featuring a tree populated by various animals. At its base is a bull. There are two quadruped animals in its branches. An owl perches on the frame of the advertisement text. In the background is a body of water with birds flying over it.
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Animals, Birds, Bulls, Nature, Owls, Trees, Water
ID: WH387F
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title

Specimen Medicinae Sinicae

Description

The Specimen Medicinae Sinicae is the first illustrated book published on Chinese medicine in the West. It contains an overview of Chinese medical practices including acupuncture and meridian theories, semiology of the tongue, descriptions of Chinese pharmaceuticals and their uses, and an important translation of a Ming treatise on pulse diagnosis. The Specimen includes thirty engraved plates and woodcut illustrations in the text, depicting the Chinese doctrine of the pulse and the semiology of the tongue, along with eight tables showing the variations of the pulses. Explaining Chinese pulse theory to a European audience proved difficult. Insufficient description of the plates, which pictured figures with doubled lines running through the bodies, confused western audiences, who interpreted these representations as indication that the Chinese didn't know their anatomy. The publication of the Specimen Medicinae Sinicae did little to change the commonly-held belief that the Chinese were crackerjack diagnosticians, with a misguided idea of the body's interior. The tenets of Chinese medicine and diagnostics were also somewhat muddled in the minds of westerners. Nevertheless, the translation did much to introduce pulse lore, acupuncture, and new materia medica to a Western audience of medical practitioners eager to experiment.

LIBRARY DIGITAL COLLECTIONS & EXHIBITS

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