$12.50 CAD
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Recipes for:
Lydia Pinkham's Four Remedies:
Many, many testimonials for the products, ordering forms, etc..
Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Co.
Lynn Massachusetts and Cobourg Ontario
32 pages + covers
Some paper rust near staples, one page detached, crease on covers, covers bit dirty, interior good (some browning), small wormholes.
17.5 x 11 cm
Lydia Estes Pinkham (February 9, 1819 – May 17, 1883) was an iconic concocter and shrewd marketer of a commercially successful herbal-alcoholic "women's tonic" meant to relieve menstrual and menopausal pains.
Like many women of her time, Pinkham brewed home remedies which she continually collected. Her remedy for "female complaints" became very popular among her neighbours to whom she gave it away. One story is that her husband was given the recipe as part payment for a debt, Whatever truth may be in this, the ingredients of her remedy were generally consistent with the herbal knowledge available to her through such sources as John King's American Dispensary, which she is known to have owned and used. In Lydia Pinkham's time and place the reputation of the medical profession was low. Medical fees were too expensive for most Americans to afford except in emergencies, in which case, the remedies were more likely to kill than cure. For example, a common "medicine," calomel, was in fact not a medicine, but instead a deadly mercurial toxin, and this fact was even at the time sufficiently well known among the sceptical to be the subject of a popular comic song. In these circumstances, there is no mystery why many preferred to trust unlicensed "root and herb" practitioners, and especially to trust women who were prepared to share their domestic remedies, such as Lydia Pinkham.
WIKIPEDIA
