Healing Bookmarks

by

Lauren Roberts

Bookmarks have been inexpensive advertising vehicles for authors, publishers, bookstores, clothing manufacturers, beverage makers. In fact, darn near every product and many service producers use bookmarks and have done so since the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

It should come as no surprise then that makers of medicines, especially those of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, depended on bookmarks that their salesmen could use as “gifts” and reminders of their products. Some were charlatans, others more real, but they all had this in common: They were out to sell their products, and reading being a popular pastime bookmarks made a perfect aide memoire. That purpose is perfectly illustrated by this bookmark from Reed & Carnrick, a firm that has since merged with Schwarz-Pharma, a European firm. “May this bookmark help to ‘keep your place’ during your reading,” it emphasizes, “as well as mark that page of your memory on which are written the advantages of . . .” The bookmark seems aimed at physicians since it notes that “kidney emergencies,—such as Nephritis, Uremia, Eclampsia, et cetera,—is meant the early and conscientious use of Nephritin. Play safe by making it your invariable rule to prescribe Nephritin at the very first sign of a kidney condition.”

Another, say we say, quirky bookmark comes from the Antikamnia Chemical Company of St. Louis IL. Advertising its Antikamnia Tablets for “headaches, neuralgias, La Grippe, Women’s Ills and Men’s Worries, it indicates that two tablets will “beat ‘em all.” This bookmark, unlike the previous one, has all the hallmarks of an over-the-top nineteenth century one beginning with its name.

The Antikamnia (“opposed to pain”) Chemical Company was founded in 1890.  Their medicines contained what was described as a coal tar derivative but was actually acetanilide, a mild anti-fever drug that in 1948 was demonstrated to be was shown to be both a toxic compound, doing damage to the liver and kidneys, and addictive. It was also mixed with substances like codeine and quinine in order to enhance its pain-relief effects.

In 1914, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of the United States v. Antikamnia Chemical Co. after the company’s products were seized. Its ruling noted that the “purpose of the Food and Drugs Act of 1906 is to secure purity of food and drugs and to inform purchasers of what they are buying. Its provisions are directed to that purpose, and must be construed to effect it . . . Regulation No. 28 for the enforcement of the Food and Drugs Act requiring labels to state not only what drugs contain, but also what the contents are derivatives of, is within the delegated power of the act and does not enlarge or alter its provisions. It is a violation of the Food and Drugs Act of 1906 and of Regulation No. 28 to label tablets as containing acetphenetidin without stating that acetphenetidin is a derivative of acetanilid.”

The wonderful BibliOdyssey has a full page of its highly collectible calendars, and a sample pocket kit in addition to links to UCLA’s collection on the Antikamnia Chemical Company, a short article on the company in the American Journal of Roentgenology and more.

The Phenyo-Caffein Company of Worcester, MA, seems, with one exception—an obscure “restraint of trade” law case wherein the merchant is forbidden to sell the product for less than the face price—to have disappeared from the pages of history. But its bookmarks are interesting. Small—two inches long and 1.25 inches wide—they nevertheless promise pain relief from headaches and neuralgia: “It touches the spot / And the pain is not.” The backside offers even more: Mail us2 Phenyo-Caffein Box Covers,” it says, “for a Chilian or Checkboard Puzzle or 4 Covers for the 2 puzzles.” What is a Chilian puzzle? I have no idea.

Maltine. It sounds like Ovaltine, something I vaguely recall from childhood as being chocolate like. Not true, though. You could get this maltine with various additives including coca wine, peptones, cod liver oil, wine of pepsin and—especially alarming—with phosphate iron, quinia and strychnia.

According to Webster’s Dictionary, maltine is the fermentative principle of malt as well as “a name given to medicinal preparations made from or containing malt.” It is used as a digestive and flavoring agent, which sounds pretty innocuous. But the copy on the back seems a bit more ominous (at least to our current medical standards): “Its effects in anaemia, childrosis and other forms of blood impoverishment are almost magical.” Hmm. Magical might just be the right word with some of those ingredients.

Wright’s Indian Vegetable Pills were developed by Philadelphia doctor William Wright in 1837. They were just one of many patent (popular) medicines hawked in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and reputed to cure every thing. No doubt most of them were at least honest in one way because alcohol (or morphine, codeine, cocaine and other addictive substances) were frequently part of their make-up. Even medicines marketed to mothers for their fussy children were known to have these ingredients.  

Dr. D.B. Hand’s  remedies “for sickly and crying babies” included diarrhoea mixture, colic cure, pleasant physic, worm elixir, cough & croup medicine, teething lotion, general tonic and chafing powder. Though I can find very little about him today—the New York Times has an 1891 article on a lawsuit in which he played a relatively minor role—but numerous examples of his trade cards and bookmarks abound. He must have been very active in promoting his products, and very well off too from their sales. It’s very easy to imagine frustrated, tired mothers believing that a doctor would not lead them astray. And when his medicine worked—well, there was no need to question what made it work.  

Hood’s Sarsaparilla (“If Made by Hood, It’s Good”) was made by C.I. Hood Company of Lowell, MA. It is one of the few companies about which there is information, and that is surely due to its success. C.I. Hood had spent 42 years in an apothecary store. In 1917, he talked about his beginnings: “It occurred to me that there was a great opportunity for a business introducing a blood-purifying medicine with efficiency and economy as its base . . . just at this time, a patient . . . brought to my drug store a prescription of unusual ingredients, which produced a remarkable cure for this customer, who had been a great sufferer from blood and nerve troubles . . . for several years . . . I took this prescription as a base and perfected a formula for Hood’s Sarsaparilla.” Not surprisingly for the time it included, among the herbs, 18 percent alcohol.

Unlike many patent medicine producers, Hood moved slowly. But Hood’s Sarsaparilla (first put on the market in 1876) proved so popular that he moved the headquarters out of his store and eventually into five-story building with a total floor area of 175,000 square feet. Its automatic bottling machine filled 10,000 bottles a day while its 18 tanks, in which sarsaparilla was prepared, had a capacity of 420,000 bottles. By 1892, Hood sought a diversion from work. He found it in a farm that also became a fantastic success.

Advertising was a boon to him as it was to most patent medicine manufacturers and salesmen. However, Hood utilized the new development of color lithography to an extent beyond most. We must remember that in the 1880s life was very localized. No mass communications other than magazines and to a lesser extent newspapers existed. Color images were rare in most homes until an inexpensive color printing method came along. According to Cliff and Linda Hoyt:

The advertisers of the day were quick to capitalize on this situation by distributing free color pictures of children, animals, young ladies, and country scenes. These pictures had advertising combined with the design, and text on the back of the extolled the merits of the product. The use of printed advertising developed markets in all parts of the country, and the world. This deluge of printed matter was the first stop taken in the development of name brand products.

Hood's dedication to good patent medicines was equalled by his dedication to good advertising. The Hood Laboratory contained a large, and prolific, advertising department which took almost half of the building. At its height, the printing room contained eighteen cylinder printing presses, two newspaper presses, and a color printing press which was the largest in the world at that time. These presses produced a stream of trade cards, posters, jigsaw puzzles, games, cookbooks, and hundreds of different pamphlets and newspapers.

The glory of the company's advertising style was its calendars. About 150 printers, pressmen, and binders were employed exclusively in the production of the calendars for over five months each year. The artwork was of the highest quality, most of it done especially for these calendars. Not an inch of space was wasted. Each page was filled with almanac information, testimonials, symptoms of diseases, descriptions of products, and coupons for games, puzzles, and other gifts. And with all that, they still managed to squeeze in the days of the month.

’The medical ad,’ opined an advertising executive at the turn of the century, ‘which gives symptoms and tells the progressive stages of a disease, saying plainly what it will lead to if it is not checked, is the one which will produce the most effect on the ordinary mind. I believe most ailing people get a morbid satisfaction from reading vivid descriptions of the symptoms of their sickness.’