Items

Title: If You would have a darling Ride, Try the Catville Toboggan Slide
Description: Trade card advertising Dr. Thomas' Eclectric Oil featuring a cat on a toboggan. It has a red blanket over the bottom half of its body and is reaching for its kittens who seemingly fell off the ride. A crescent moon and stars are in the sky. The back lists the ailments the Oil can cure.
Conditions Cured (LC): Backache, Burns And Scalds, Cold (Disease), Cough, Deafness, Earache, Hoarseness, Throat—Diseases, Toothache
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Animals, Blankets, Cats, Moon, Nature, Sleds, Snow, Toboggans, Trees
ID: WH365
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Parker's Ginger Tonic
Description: Trade card advertising Parker's Hair Balsam and Parker's Ginger Tonic featuring a formally-dressed man sitting in an armchair defending himself against devilish creatures with an oversized box of Parker's Ginger Tonic. On the creatures' wings are written various ailments the Tonic cures. There is a broken crutch by the man's feet. The back describes the ailments the Balsam and the Tonic cure.
Conditions Cured (LC): Body Fluids, Cold (Disease), Cough, Dandruff, Diarrhea, Heartburn, Indigestion, Itching, Neuralgia, Rheumatism, Tuberculosis
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Clothing And Dress, Costume, Crutches, Demonology, Devil, Domestic Space, Folklore, Men, Mythology
ID: WH318
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills
Description: Trade card advertising Morse's Indian Root Pills featuring a young girl sitting in a field with a dog. The girl is holding a snack in her right hand. The dog, on her left, is facing her. The girl is in a blue-and-white dress and is wearing a crown of blue flowers. The back has text explaining the benefits of Morse's Indian Root Pills.
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Animals, Children, Children's Clothing, Clothing And Dress, Dogs, Flowers, Food, Grasses, Hair Ornaments, Nature, Wreaths
ID: WH306
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Vegetine: The Great Blood Purifier
Description: Trade card advertising Vegetine featuring two young children and a basket of animals. Within the basket are a lobster, who is pinching the left-most child's clothing, and a duck or goose. The right-most child is liftng the top off of the basket that contains the animals. The back has testimony from a satisfied customer.
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Animals, Baskets, Children, Children's Clothing, Children's Hats, Clothing And Dress, Costume, Ducks, Hats, Lobsters
ID: WH371
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Burdock Blood Bitters
Description: Trade card advertising Burdock Blood Bitters featuring a portrait of an extravagantly-dressed woman with gold jewelry, flowers adorning her headdress and dress, and a tambourine. The back lists the benefits of taking Burdock Blood Bitters.
Conditions Cured (LC): Asthenia
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Clothing And Dress, Embroidery, Flowers, Gold Jewelry, Musical Instruments, Portraits, Shawls, Tambourine
ID: WH127
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Dr. White's Cough Drops Are the Best
Description: Trade card advertising Dr. White's Cough Drops featuring a yellow rose and berries on the left and a circular image of a snowy landscape on the right. Within the image are a small house, a fence, some rocks, and some snow-covered trees. The back lists the ailments the Cough Drops can cure.
Conditions Cured (LC): Cold (Disease), Cough, Hoarseness
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Berries, Flowers, Housing, Leaves, Nature, Rocks, Snow, Trees, Wooden Fences
ID: WH380
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title

Aristotle’s Masterpiece, Or The Secrets of Generation displayed in all the parts thereof

Description

Published initially in 1684 and popular in both America and England for over two hundred years, this became the most widely reprinted medical book in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The contributions of the Masterpiece were not particularly scientific, but drew largely from Hippocrates, and Galen, as well as other classical and medieval writers. The source material came from two earlier books: Levinus Lemnius’s Secret Miracles of Nature, originally published in Latin in 1599, and The Complete Midwives Practice Enlarged (author unknown). Chapter headings include sections titled, “The Signs of Barrenness” “The Way of getting to a Boy or a Girl,” “How a Midwife Ought to be Qualified” and “A Word of Advice to both Sexes in the Act of Copulation.” The information this title offered on conception, pregnancy, and childbirth wasn’t particularly innovative; many seventeenth century discoveries in gynecology are absent from the text and replaced by Hippocratic pathology, or by superstition. The “Aristotle” of the title was pseudonymous, and likely evoked by the book’s author to give the tome scientific credibility. The book’s true author is unknown, though Culpepper and William Salmon, an English physician and author, are sometimes credited.

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Subjects (LC)

Abnormalities, Human, Conception, Early works to 1800, Gynecology, Medicine, Midwifery, Obstetrics, Reproduction, Sex instruction, Sexual behavior

Title: Headache Cured. Dr. Mettaur's Headache Pills, a Certain Relief
Description: Trade card advertising Dr. Mettaur's Headache Pills featuring a baby sleeping in a basket and a dog sitting erect in a chair next to it. By the end of the basket are various dishes and a jug. There is a rag of some sort by the foot of the chair draped over these items. The back lists the ailments Dr. Mettaur's Headache Pills can cure.
Conditions Cured (LC): Biliary Tract—Diseases, Constipation, Headache
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Animals, Blankets, Chairs, Children, Dogs, Domestic Space, Infants, Pitchers, Sleep, Sleep Positions
ID: WH304
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: N'aie pas peur, petite soeur! Elle ne nous attrapera pas! ... Nos 20 gouttes de véritable Fer Bravais nous ont donné de la force et de bonnes jambes
Description: Trade card advertising Fer Bravais featuring two children running away from a horned goat. The three figures are in a grassy field, and there are two containers at the goat's feet. The image is framed with a forest motif that includes autumnal leaves, acorns, and a lizard. The back lists the ailments Fer Bravais can cure.
Conditions Cured (LC): Chlorosis, Fatigue, Influenza, Typhoid Fever
Subjects (LC): Acorns, Advertising—Medicine, Animals, Children, Children's Clothing, Clothing And Dress, Goats, Grasslands, Leaves, Lizards, Nature, Pails
ID: WH202
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Kendall's Spavin Cure
Description: Trade card advertising Kendall's Spavin Cure featuring a donkey braying at a well-dressed man. A fence separates the two, on top of which there is a young boy sitting. They are surrounded by a field of grass with trees and birds in the background. The back features testimony from satisfied customers.
Conditions Cured (LC): Bad Breath, Bruises, Bunion, Burns And Scalds, Frostbite, Neuralgia, Rheumatism, Thrush (Mouth Disease), Wounds And Injuries
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Animals, Birds, Children, Donkeys, Dress And Clothing, Eyeglasses, Grasslands, Men, Men's Hats, Nature, Neckties, Trees
ID: WH168
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Burdock Blood Bitters
Description: Trade card advertising Burdock Blood Bitters featuring a portrait of a woman in elegant dress with a red, feathered hat that is adorned with a large B pin of sorts on which is written Burdock Blood Bitters. She is wearing gold jewelry, including a choker with a B on it. Her dress is blue with lilies on it, and she has a small rose pinned to the front of her dress. The back has partially-obscured testimony from Burdock Blood Bitters users.
Conditions Cured (LC): Asthenia, Headache, Indigestion
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Clothing And Dress, Feathers, Flowers, Gold Jewelry, Portraits, Women's Hats
ID: WH240
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title

Des aller furtrefflichsten, hoechsten und adelichsten Gschoepffs aller Creaturen

Description

Walther Hermann Ryff was a surgeon employed in Strassburg in the early 16th Century. One of the highlights of this text are the 42 hand-colored woodcuts in the text, compiled from a number of Renaissance sources. Depicted in the counterfeit style, the illustrations in this book would have implied eye witness knowledge and discovery. In this way, Ryff’s book asserted itself as a credible description of anatomy (though its illustrations were far from anatomically accurate). The text of this book relied on lectures in anatomy and physiology, compounded from other sources. His audience was the ‘gemeine,’ or common man, and its composition in German, rather than Latin, ensured it would have a wider audience. In this way, Ryff’s book would have been indispensable to new readers as a compilation of Renaissance knowledge about the body. The book also offers evidence about early printing history. The wood-blocks for this edition were reused for a set of broadsides before they were passed to a Parisian printer for new editions of Ryff’s work, and for a popular work on surgery. This illustrated the practice of passing wood-blocks from publisher to publisher, and shows how work published in one city continued to be published and disseminated in others

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