Postcard size trade card on light cardboard; front depicts child in celery stalk; back: black & white, shows box of compound with description of uses; chromolithograph.
Postcard size trade card on light cardboard; front depicts child in celery stalk; back: black & white, shows box of compound with description of uses; chromolithograph.
Number Of Parts
1
Provenance
Purchased by Dr. M. Chiong for his patent medicine collection, July 15, 1995.
Flourished until after Prohibition, and then disappeared -- 1933 (still advertised in 1911 in the Hudson Bay Catalogue); sold in Eaton's catalogue in 1893 for 70 cents (Canadian); first year had a Patent Medicine Dept. (a year or so before)
Material
paper: cream
ink: black, green, pink, yellow
Inscriptions
On front: "PAINE'S CELERY // COMPOUND // Paine's Celery // For // The Nervous // The Debilitated // the Aged // Wells, Richardson & Co. // Montreal"; back of card: "THE CELEBRATED NERVE TONIC // A Word to the Nervous // You are painfully // aware that you have // nerves? Then you // are sick. A healthy // boy has as many as // you, but he doesn't // know it. That is the // difference between // "sick" and "well". // Why don't you // cure yourself? It is // easy. Don't wait. // Paine's Celery Com- // pound will do it. Pay your druggist a dol - // lar, and enjoy life once more. Thou - // sands have. Why not you?"
Permanent Location
Storage Room 0010
0010-G Chiong Trade Cards Binder A
Temporary Location
On exhibit “Selling Hope: A History of the Medical Marketplace” at Museum of Health Care, 29 June 2017.
Dimension Notes
Length: 15.6 cm. x Width: 8.9 cm.
Condition Remarks
Slight staining on the back (blue, pink and green dyes) and a name written on the left-hand edge in pencil
Copy Type
Original
Reference Types
Book
Reference Comments
Anesthesiology October 2017, Vol. 127, 624.
https://doi.org/10.1097/ALN.0000000000001864
"The Great American Medicine Show" by Armstrong & Armstrong, p. 166; "Bottles" by Michael Polak, pp. 19 & 21; "The Snake-Oil Syndrome" by A. Walker Bingham, pp. 32 & 50; "The Golden Age of Quackery" by Stewart H. Holbrook, pp. 52-57; "The Great American Fraud" by Samuel Hopkins Adams, pp. 16 & 17, Hudson's Bay Fall and Winter Catalogue, 1910-1911
"The Golden Age of Quackery" by Stewart H. Holbrook, chapt. 2; Hudson's Bay Fall and Winter Catalogue, 1910-1911
Research Facts
“Paine’s Celery Compound: Celery Seed Bracer or Cocaine Elixir?”
Contained 21% alcohol, with natural ingredients of "celery extract, hops and coca" -- combination of cocaine and alcohol; Samuel Hopkins Adams put Paine's in the category of The Bracers (alcoholic stimulants)