Abstract
Consumers in nineteenth-century America witnessed a rapid growth of patent medicines, potions, and pills, advertised and promoted to cure all manner of ailments. Women in particular found themselves challenged with maintaining an established domestic economy while being confronted by shifting expectations both in the home and in the larger world. As the chief decision makers for consumable goods used within the home, they were faced with a growing proliferation of choices, each promising to be better than the last. As they navigated a sea of dubious claims and dangerous formulations, little guidance was offered in choosing medicines for themselves and their loved ones. In 1875, an unassuming woman from Lynn, Massachusetts quietly stepped into the void, with a product that promised health and happiness for women; their particular and delicate concerns were her specialty. Her name was Lydia Estes Pinkham. This paper examines the place that Lydia Pinkham’s products held in this cultural milieu, and how the company’s advertising and images incorporated, communicated, and perhaps challenged some of the prevailing ideologies regarding women’s health. Pinkham’s grandmotherly image, juxtaposed with her matter-of-fact ways of addressing women’s health issues long before it was considered ‘seemly’ to do so, brought attention to the medical needs of American women, in part by making the subject unavoidable. The advertising’s language offered women a new vocabulary with which to assert their desire for compassionate and effective health care. These changing ideas regarding the care of women’s bodies, and their own attitudes towards them, challenged the status-quo in an era that promoted feminine passivity as the ideal.