Selling Medicines in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century
Posted by Darin Hayton on 10/01 at 10:35 PM
The Library Company of Philadelphia has a nice collection of patent medicine trading cards and related marketing ephemera. One of the photos from the PACHS homepage shows some of the trading cards:
Selection of patent medicine trade cards, late 19th century.Collection of the Library Company of Philadelphia
In addition to these trading cards, patent medicine companies used pamphlets and yearly almanacs to advertise their products. Some of these companies used popular beliefs in astrology to entice customers into buying their medicines. The Peruna Drug Co. in Columbus Ohio offered free astrological charts and advice to people who sent in their birth information (time, date, and place). The illustration on the cover of the Peruna almanac showed the Peruna laboratories and indicated the location of the astrological office in the main building.
Peruna wasn’t the only patent medicine company to use astrology as a marketing tool. The Dr. Miles Medical Company also capitalized on popular beliefs in astrology to sell its mediciens. Based in Elkhart, IN, Dr. Miles made Nervine Restorative Nerve and Liver Pills.1 Sometime around the turn of the 20th century, Dr. Miles printed little astrological pamphlets to advertise their products:
Character Readings According to the Solar Zodiac
(Source: Author’s collection)
The back cover announces the benefits of Dr. Miles’ Effervescent Nervine Tablets:
(Source: Author’s collection)
Nervine tablets, apparently, helped you relax, relieved nervousness and sleeplessness, irritability, nervous indigestion and headaches, sea, train and auto sickness. The backs of these pamphlets were often stamped with the name and address of the local druggist where you could buy the patent medicines.2
Inside the front cover is a strong statement about the value of this new science of Astro-Psychology, encouraging readers to look up their own signs and see how accurate Astro-Psychology predicts their personalities:
Manifesto for the power of Astro-Psychology
(Source: Author’s collection)
“The Astro-Psychological readings in this book are based on the relative positions of the Sun and Stars at the time of birth.
Astro-Psychology is the latest development of Astrology. It deals with both physical and mental characteristics of the people born under the various Zodiacal signs.
While Astrology puts equal emphasis on mental and physical characteristics, Astro-Psychology deals primarily with the mind.
This fascinating new development of an ancient science should bring a note of cheer to all who believe in Astrology. It teaches that, no matter how unfavorable the planetary conditions at the time of birth, all men and women have a chance for success and happiness if they will develop the powers for good that are latent in all of us.
The Dr. Miles Medical Company does not assert any belief or unbelief in the science of Astro-Psychology. we are not trying to convert anyone else to a belief or nonbelief. We are simply passing along information that we have received from the founder of Astro-Psychology for the benefit, entertainment, or amusement of all who care to read it.
You will probably find that the mental and physical characteristics under your sign in this little book give a much better description of your character and mental processes than you had thought possible.
Turn to your Zodiacal sign and see how nearly the description of the people born under this sign fits you.”
A list of prominent people born under the different signs appears about half way through the book and includes such names as Thomas Edison, Kaiser Wilhelm II, William F. Cody, Alexander Graham Bell, Charlie Chaplin, Knute Rockne, King George V of England, and Harry Houdini. There’s a name for everybody on this list:
Various famous people born under different signs
(Source: Author’s collection)
The prominent place of astrology in Dr. Miles’ and Peruna’s advertising campaigns suggest that astrology was rather popular, at least in the markets they were hoping to reach. About this time, in 1914, the U.S. Department of Agriculture published a brief article refuting the role of astrology in predicting the weather. Shortly thereafter the NY Times carried a short summary of this article:
“Astrology is branded a superstition by the Department of Agriculture in its current weekly news letter. Discussing the question of whether the planets affect the weather, the department says:
‘The belief still to be found in all countries that the planets and the moon do affect the weather never had any scientific basis whatever; it is only a remnant of the many superstitions generated and fostered by that other greater superstition, astrology.
We have every reason to believe that neither the planets nor the moon can have any appreciable effect on the weather, because they furnish so little heat upon which all weather changes ultimately depend, and this belief is fully supported by weather records.’”3
The following day a reader wrote to the Times lamenting the fact that so many people in the U.S. believe in astrology and that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had to waste its time refuting planetary influence. So perhaps Peruna and Dr. Miles were tapping into a widely held belief in an effort to sell more patent medicines. It is particularly interesting to note that both these companies continued to thrive for at least a couple decades after the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which was ostensibly aimed at ending the patent medicine industry.4
Notes—
1Oddly, Elkhart celebrates the Dr. Miles Medical Company with two rather large plaques, seen here.⇑
2An interesting if time consuming task would be to use this information to map the distribution of the different patent medicines. Looking at the sample of patent medicine almanacs I own, there is an interesting relationship between patent medicine companies, the druggist distributing the medicines, and Amish and Mennonite communities. My collection is too small to draw any strong conclusion, though Dorothy Pratt notes in her study of the Amish community in Shipshewana, IN, that at the turn of the century the Amish community relied rather heavily on patent medicines. See Dorothy Pratt, Shipshewana: An Indiana Amish Community(Bloomington: I.U. Press, 2004)⇑
3“Astrology a Superstition” NY Times June 19, 1914, page 12.⇑
4On patent medicines, see the work of James Harvey Young, especially The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America Before Federal Regulation and The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America.⇑
