Patent Medicines 3

PATENT MEDICINE : Cures & Quacks continued

	Into the West
"Ayer's Cherry Pectoral For the cure of Coughs, Colds, Asthma, Croup, Bronchitis, Whooping Cough, and Consumption"

A new market in the West, where settlement opened following the Civil War, spurred additional advertising and marketing.

Homesteaders, often isolated and unable to obtain professional medical help to combat diseases such as pneumonia, dysentery and malaria, relied heavily on patent medicines. The medicine manufacturers increased their advertising, becoming the first businessmen to seek out a national market, going directly to consumers and using a variety of psychological lures.

This Ayer's Cathartic Pills trade cards advertises
"The Country Doctor. - A fine Chromo-Lithograph (7 1/2 x 13 inches, in "Statuette" style) of this original and popular subject, will be sent post-paid to any address, with a set of our elegant Album Cards, on receipt of 10 cents in cash or postage stamps."

Dr. Ayer of Lowell, Massachusetts, was among the first to realize the potential for patent medicines in the West.

He increased his advertising until, by 1870, he had contracts with 1,900 newspapers and periodicals and his factories were daily making 630,000 doses of Ayer remedies.

"Ayer's Hair Vigor. Restores gray hair to its natural vitality and color...The Vigor is not a dye; but daily applications for a week or two so stimulate the roots and color glands, that faded or gray, light or red hair, gradually changes to a rich brown color, or even black"

The enormous profits in the patent medicine industry led to the formation of conglomerates, as entrepreneurs bought what was most profitable about patent medicines - not the formulas, but the advertising trademarks. Some merchandisers amassed a "stable" of over 50 proprietary medicines. A witness before a Congressional committee in 1906 estimated that there were 50,000 patent medicines being made and sold in the United States.

And what were these merchandisers selling? All too often, they were selling equal amounts of hope, alcohol and opium.