Ayer's Cathartic Pills, a safe pleasant and reliable family medicine [inscribed]

Item Overview

Title

Ayer's Cathartic Pills, a safe pleasant and reliable family medicine [inscribed]

Alternative title

Ayer's pills

Date Created

[between 1870 and 1906?]

Place of Origin

Lowell (Mass.)

Publisher

Dr. J.C. Ayer & Co.

Language

English

Collection

Patent Medicine Trade Cards
History and Special Collections for the Sciences Collection

Notes

Description

Original trade card forms part of: Collection no. 311, History & Special Collections for the Sciences, Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, UCLA.
Image on front of card depicts seven nude cherub looking children packing boxes of pills.

Caption

Additional card text: Ayer's Pills are the result of years of chemical research and practical experiment. They are compounded from the extracted and concentrated virtues of purely vegetable substances, and combine the choicest cathartic principles in medicine, in proportions accurately adjusted to secure the best curative effects. They are entirely free from croton oil, calomel, or other dangerous substances; they are sugar coated and pleasant to take, and while sufficiently powerful to act upon the most robust, are the safest physic to employ for children and weakened constitutions, where a gentle yet efficient cathartic is required. They purify, invigorate and enrich the blood, stimulate it to healthy circulation, and, if taken occasionally, keep the system in perfect order. Mild, searching, and effectual, Ayer's Pills are specially adapted to the needs of the stomach, liver, and bowels, whose derangements they prevent and cure. They are a sure remedy for Costiveness, Jaundice, Indigestion, Headache, Dizziness, transient attacks of Numbness, Biliousness and all other diseases resulting from a disordered state of the Digestive Apparatus. As a dinner pill they have no equal. Their extensive use by physicians and by the people of all civilized nations, for all the purposes of a family physic, proves their value as a reliable medicine for professional and family use. Ayer's pills are usually put up in oval wooden boxes, as represented on the face of this card; but for hot or damp climates, and for export, in sealed glass vials, as above.

Physical Description

Extent

1 print (trade card)

Dimensions

6.6 x 11.9 cm.

Keywords

Genre

trade cards

Children
Bottles
Laxatives
Drugs, Non-Prescription--Advertisements
Pills
Patent medicines
Cathartics--therapeutic use--Advertisements
Boxes

Location

United States

Resource type

still image