Light cardboard trade card for Pond's Extract; front: colour, chromolithograph; a mouse is in an empty bottle of Pond's Extract; outside a wine glass and spoon lay next to the bottle and a dog and a cat are trying to reach the mouse through the bottle; a picture of the bottle in wrapper in the top …
Light cardboard trade card for Pond's Extract; front: colour, chromolithograph; a mouse is in an empty bottle of Pond's Extract; outside a wine glass and spoon lay next to the bottle and a dog and a cat are trying to reach the mouse through the bottle; a picture of the bottle in wrapper in the top right-hand corner; back: tan with brown writing; lists everything it cures, warns about substitutes ("Pond's Extract" is blown in glass) and shows a facsimile of the product bottle in the wrapper.
Number Of Parts
1
Provenance
Purchased by Dr. M. Chiong for his patent medicine collection, July 15, 1995 (before).
Product dated at 1848; still around in 1911 (Hudson Bay catalogue) and after W.W.I (1918); cost 40 c and 75 c in Eaton's in 1893; according to "The Toadstool Millionaires", it had been in business for 30 years in 1878, making the start at around 1848; card claims 50 years, so likely made c.1898
Material
paper: red; yellow; blue; brown; grey
Inscriptions
Front: "ANOTHER LIFE SAVED BY // POND'S EXTRACT; back: "FOR FIFTY YEARS THE UNEQUALED VEGETABLE PAIN DESTROYER. // NEVER HARMFUL. ALWAYS BENEFICIAL. // PRESCRIBED BY PHYSICIANS EVERYWHERE // IS INVALUABLE FOR // Catarrh Cuts Chafing // Soreness Piles Sunburn // Influenza Boils Lameness // [etc. - lists everything it heals] // BEWARE OF IMITATIONS"
Permanent Location
Storage Room 0010
0010-G Chiong Trade Cards Binder A
Dimension Notes
Length: 13.2 cm. x Width: 9.0 cm.
Condition Remarks
Front: right corner bent, and very few spots of white showing; on the right-hand edge, a small tear near the middle; back: some blue staining, otherwise very good
Copy Type
Original
Reference Types
Book
Reference Comments
"The Snake-Oil Syndrome: Patent Medicine Advertising" by A. Walker Bingham, colour plates 35, 46, 64; "The Great American Fraud" by Samuel Hopkins Adams, p. 3; "One For A Man, Two For A Horse" by Gerald Carson, pp. 57, 109 (same card but in black and white); "The Toadstool Millionaires" by James Harvey Young, pp. 186-187; "Step Right Up" by Brooks McNamara, colour insert # 7
Research Facts
Contained witch-hazel, traded on epidemic scare in New York by advertising its effectiveness on meningitis (it has no effect); used Outcault's "Buster Brown" for advertising between 1902 and W.W. I, "The Universal Pain Extractor", before federal legislation