Illustrated Graphic Book: "Great Deeds Accomplished by Women"

Includes a product list with pitches and prices for everything from a Smart-Weed Flatulency cure to Medicated Tampons.

Women's History: An interesting circa 100 year old cultural artifact, important as much for the women who are left out as for those who are featured.

Romanticized "fairy tale" style illustrations of famous women, including illustrated blips for Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Pocohontas, Molly Pitcher, Marie Antonette, Martha Washington, Queen Victoria, Florence Nightingale, and Edith Cavell.

Overall, the patronizing tone and treatment of this subject would simply not fly today.  But then, note how progressive and "modern" the booklet sounds when it opens with these lines:
"How many times ... when a girl or woman has scorned a matrimonial venture, and has made an outstanding place for herself in what had been considered a man's career, have we heard someone say, 'A woman has no right to sacrifice possible motherhood and refuse to do her duty of raising a family of children.'  Such a remark is more than futile or inane, it is pathetic."

Dr. R. V. Pierce was a legend in his own time, and thanks to all of his publications and his vast mail-order empire and product distribution network, he was loved and/or hated in almost every town in America.  The back inside cover has a nice illustrated ad for the questionable classic:  The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser.  The ad on page 31 for Pierce's "Invalid's Hotel and Surgical Institute" is also quite interesting as it rambles on with all of its impossible promises and claims.

"Dr. Pierce ... was that quintessentially American late-1900s figure, the snake-oil salesman who traded in mysterious medicines. Pierce founded an Invalids' Hotel in Buffalo, NY, and dispensed an array of tinctures and potions that supposedly cured a multitude of afflictions."Among his many concoctions were "Dr. Pierce's Pleasant Purgative Pellets," "Dr. Pierce's Anuric Tablets," "Dr. Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery," "Dr. Pierce's Nasal Douche,"and "Dr. Pierce's Favorite Prescription." The latter was an elixir he marketed "for Weak Women" to relieve them of "female illnesses.""Not surprisingly, Pierce inveighed mightily against the establishment of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. This legislation included the requirement that active ingredients in medications be listed on labels and standards of purity be maintained. No doubt Pierce had to partake of many handfuls of Pleasant Purgative Pellets at this prospect.
Just what was in Pierce's  Golden Medical Discovery and other products? It was alleged that various elixirs contained opium, alcohol, and digitalis, but the printed label for the Golden  Medical Discovery listed bloodroot, Oregon grape root, stone root, queen's root, sacred bark, black cherrybark, and cinchona bark."He claimed that it could relieve dyspepsia, liver complaint, chronic diarrhea, skin diseases, coughs, blood diseases, chronic nasal catarrh, and nervous disability; it could also be used as a tonic and to strengthen weak lungs."
(For more information, visit:  Dr. R.V. Pierce, Quack Extraordinaire  -  Piccalilli Pie - Christina Wilsdon)

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