Why the appeal? A study of almanacs advertising Dr. Chase's patent medicines, 1904–1959

Introduction

As a study of one company's almanacs from 1904–1959, this paper does not claim to provide a comprehensive history of patent medicines, nor is it a detailed history of the Dr. A.W. Chase Medicine Company. Rather, it is an exploration of one tactic used to sell patent medicine during the first half of the 20th century, and is a starting point for studying the role of advertisements in popular medical practice. This study is based on a thorough reading and analysis of a collection of over 30 almanacs published between 1904 and 1959 that can be found at the Osler Library at McGill University. The Dr. Chase Almanacs are the most complete set at the Osler library, which boasts over 200 almanacs published between 1848 and 1970 from over 50 different companies.1 It is worth noting that though Dr. Chase was originally American, his products were peddled in Canada as early as 1885. The almanacs in question are specifically geared towards a Canadian context, as they were printed in Toronto, and appeal directly to a Canadian market. This discussion takes the patent medicine almanac and asks why the appeal? Why did patent medicine companies use almanacs to sell patent medicines over decades, and why did consumers purchase the products they sold?

KEY POINTS.

• Patent medicines were advertised, and presumably consumed, with much vigour in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

• Discussion of patent medicine advertising techniques helps to understand the practices and rationale for self-medication.

• Exploring the motivation behind patent medicine consumption in the 20th century may prove relevant to understanding the appeal of pseudo-medicines in the 21st century.

POINTS CLÉS.

• À la fin du XIX^e siècle et au début du XX^e siècle, les médicaments brevetés faisaient l'objet d'une vigoureuse publicité et, sans doute, d'une forte consommation.

• L'examen des techniques utilisées pour faire la promotion des médi caments brevetés est utile pour comprendre les pratiques en matière d'automédication et les raisons qui justifient le recours à de telles pratiques.

• L'examen des facteurs qui ont favorisé la consommation de médicaments brevetés au XX^e siècle pourrait aider à comprendre l'attrait pour la pseudo-médecine au XXI^e siècle.

It is important to briefly explain what is meant by patent medicines. For many, the term patent medicine is interchangeable with nostrum, proprietary, quack and alternative medicine.2 Though perhaps all of these terms can apply to Dr. Chase's medicines, “patent” in this discussion refers to the genre of medicine available without a prescription and intended for self-medication, often secret in formula, and claiming to cure a wide variety of ailments.3,4

Use of almanacs to sell products

Patent medicines flourished in the 19th century and advertisers started using almanacs to sell their products with vigour by the 1850s, making the almanac a rich source of information on self-medication for the historian. Almanacs had existed long before this period, dating as far back as Ramses the II.5 Typically made up of 3 sections, all almanacs include introductory information, a calendar and some sort of reference material like “interest and currency tables, local and federal court schedules, a list of local roads … essays on various subjects, [as well as] humour and anecdotes.”5 In the 17th century, almanacs were the most common form of print material available to the masses. Dr. Chase's almanacs are clearly patterned on 17th century publications and are typically 50 pages long, with 12 pages dedicated to the calendar and approximately 5 dedicated to reference guides and additional information, meaning advertisers could dedicate about 30 pages to advertising in every almanac. Both familiar and adaptable, this form of popular print was an ideal promotional tool for a marketing campaign, as the low manufacturing cost allowed companies to distribute almanacs free of charge to consumers.

Marketing was crucial in the early patent medicine industry. In fact, if a company did not successfully advertise, they were likely to fail, and “in some cases, the annual cost of advertising a single compound reached as high as $400,000” in the late 19th century.6 And according to advertisers, the almanacs reached a wide audience. Ayers, a popular patent medicine company that sold medicines in both Canada and the US, is said to have distributed 25,000,000 almanacs a year at the end of the 19th century, bragging that it was “second only to the Bible in distribution.”7,8 Though not as widespread as Ayers, in Canada, Dr. Chase's 1928 “Annual Greeting” claims that with the publication of “1,733,000 Almanacs… these good wishes go to about 9,000,000 people and you may be sure that Dr. Chase's Almanac has the widest circulation of any Canadian publication.”9 Over 25 years later, Dr. Chase's company boasted a distribution of 2,300,000 almanacs in 1949, reaching two and half million homes in 1951. This demonstrates that almanacs were a common advertising tool in what may have been a saturated market.

So why did the Dr. A.W. Chase Medicine Company produce almanacs until 1959? Evidently there was something to the almanac that held special appeal, as the producers of Dr. Chase's medicines self-consciously maintained the original features of the almanac, and endeavoured to be engaging, entertaining and useful for over 50 years. The first edition, which was announced in the 1903 publication “The Human Body in Health and Disease, by Dr. A.W. Chase,”10 informs the reader in 1904 that, “We have tried to make this book so useful to you that you will hang it in a convenient place for daily reference and welcome to your home each new edition as it is issued, year to year.”11 This mandate was maintained for over 50 years, as the format of Dr. Chase's Calendar Almanac remained relatively unchanged throughout the first half of the 20th century.

How consumers used the almanacs

Some of the continuous features include “eclipses for the coming year, names and symbols of the planets… a list of the 12 signs of the zodiac or a woodcut of the “anatomy” or both, and the astronomical and astrological information.”12 Featured in all almanacs between 1904 and 1959, earlier almanacs especially prioritized this type of information, often displaying the zodiac on the first or second page. The calendar months took up a full page each, and rarely contained advertising. The purpose of dedicating a whole page to each month was, according to the editor, so that “with little effort you can keep a record of promissory notes, of when money is paid or received, of the time of planting, of hiring help, of notable purchases, of births or any domestic or other event that might prove of interest in time to come.”11 This is a clever marketing strategy because it encourages Dr. Chase's clientele to actually buy into the almanac itself, arguing that it is worth keeping and reading throughout the year. Historians have noted the utility of this strategy, as “month after month, day after day, persons looking up information in these almanacs were confronted with ads for some product or other.”5

While it was certainly the intention of advertisers that the almanacs be used, it is difficult to discern how effective this strategy was. However, there is evidence that the calendars were useful to at least some readers. Twenty of the almanacs in the Osler collection contain notes in the calendar pages. These notes range from records of social events such as plays or marriages, to sowing times, weather and farm-related business, even to deaths. It is clear from the type of information entered on these pages that the almanacs served a function in day-to-day life. More than half of the almanacs contain some kind of financial record, and seem to be used almost daily to help keep track of household purchases. For example, in 1907, one can see that the owner planted beans on June 19, or stayed home all day on June 16, and in 1948, a customer noted that on June 10 tin for the gutter cost $6.00. Dr. Chase's Almanacs are not the only almanacs that were used; many of the almanacs in the Osler collection contain entries such as those mentioned above, suggesting that almanacs were seen as a useful tool by many consumers, as well as advertisers.

Though the actual impact of almanacs on consumers is hard to determine, it is clear that almanacs were common tools for patent medicine advertisers. In fact, this collection of almanacs can be seen as part of a much larger tradition of print culture, as one patent medicine almanac was printed for every 2 Americans by the late 19th century.13,14 Neither were almanacs the only such marketing technique, as advertisers employed a huge variety of tactics to peddle their products, including billboards, paintings on walls, trees or rocks, and medicine shows.5 Dr. Chase was no different, and the Osler collection contains publications such as “The Ills of Life and How to Cure Them, or Every One his Own Physician, by Dr. A. W. Chase,” as well as pamphlets entitled “Let Me Tell Your Fortune” and “Dress Making in the Home,” from the1930s. Given the plethora of tactics and diversity of marketing techniques, it has been argued that the patent medicine industry led the way in terms of advertising strategy well into the 20th century, making the advertising techniques of patent medicine companies interesting to the economic and medical historian alike.15 While other tactics were certainly used, the almanac proliferated in late 19th and early 20th century markets. Patent medicine advertisements were everywhere. Advertisers of patent medicines toiled to permeate the market with their medical messages, meaning that consumers in the 20th century were familiar with patent medicine advertisements and the messages they contained, making almanacs an interesting vantage point from which to explore popular medical practice in the early 20th century.16

Advertising messages

So what were the advertising messages contained in Dr. A.W. Chase's Calendar Almanac, and how did advertisers appeal to consumers? The almanacs sought to sell a family of medicines, and surprisingly, just as in the medium itself, there is overwhelming continuity in the line of the Dr. Chase Family of Medicines throughout the first half of the 20th century. In 1904, the original product line included Dr. Chase's Nerve Food, Liver Cure, Backache Plasters, Ointment, Catarrh Cure, Syrup of Linseed and Turpentine and Kidney-Liver Pills. Somewhere between 1924 and 1927, Dr. Chase's Liniment was added to this list, and Mouthwash was sold between 1927 and 1938. Paradol, a painkiller, was introduced in the 1950s and D.M.H Cough Syrups, Cold Tablets and Enerjets emerged in 1959. Though Backache Plasters were not advertised in the 1930s, they were included in the 1950s, so that the list of medicines sold by Dr. Chase's Medicine Company in 1959 contains all of the original product line with only minor modifications to a few of these products, as well as the new arrivals.

This tenacious grip on the traditional product line is a deliberate strategy, as readers are informed in 1949 that:

“…the sincerity, integrity and devotion to practice that Dr. Chase originally showed in the dispensing of his medicines are still present in the Dr. Chase Medicine Company today. And while the modern world demands a “New Look,” it still suffers increasingly from the old ills and responds to the old treatment for those ills. Where modern medicine proves beyond doubt the value of a new ingredient, it is added to the Dr. Chase medicine to which it is best suited.”17

This commentary suggests a hesitation to make changes to the original products, and bases the effectiveness of many of the medicines on traditional cures for common ailments. It is interesting that the marketing strategy based on “old treatments” and “old ills” proves surprising resilient into the 20th century, especially considering many medical and scientific advances. In other words, not only are the products relatively unchanged, but also the explanations for their efficacy rely on the same basic premise for over half a century.

Pseudo-science

Most of the explanations for the efficacy of Dr. Chase's medicines focus on pseudo-scientific description of the functioning of various organs. The primary message of Dr. Chase's almanacs is that the body is a system that can be regulated through patent medicines. Advertisements largely focused on the “healthful action” of the liver, kidneys and bowels, and the fortification of the blood. For example, in 1911 advertisers explained that “the beginning of colds, contagious diseases, liver and kidney troubles, appendicitis, and other inflammations of the internal organs can usually be traced to the constipation of the bowels and the poisoned, congested condition of the system which results.”18 Taking Dr. Chase's products would help with this, and contribute to overall health, as “with daily action of the bowels you need have little fear of contracting either the common or more serious ills of life.”18 Over 40 years later, the message remains relatively unchanged. For example, in 1947, customers are informed that

“a healthy, active liver is a great preventative of disease, [because] it eliminates the poisons which result from digestion and the breaking downs of tissues in the process of living. From these materials it forms bile, which is emptied into the intestines and acts as Nature's Cathartic. So when the liver fails you become constipated and the poisons remain in the blood stream where they are carried to all parts of the body.”19

In other words, Dr. Chase's Medicine Company appealed to consumers through a simple explanation of the body, and an apparently logical and efficacious solution involving regular bowel movements, among other “healthful actions.”

By explaining how the medicines work within the body's system in general yet pseudo-medical terms, Dr. Chase's products not only use a clever marketing technique to imply medical legitimacy, but are also selling a fairly flexible idea of health, which relies primarily on evacuation and healthy blood.20 This explanation of illness remains more or less unaffected by advances in science, as constipation remains, as it was in the 19th century, an uncomfortable condition that is often easily remedied with a laxative.21,22 The persistence of folk remedies despite technological advances is not limited to patent medicines; many historians have noted that scientific discoveries do not always lead to rapid changes in practice.23–25 Perhaps understanding this, Dr. Chase's Medicine Company continued to rely on a simplistic explanation of the body in an era of rapid medical discoveries. In short, the tenacity of “traditional” remedies for “old” ailments and the generic, flexible descriptions of the systemic functioning of the body form the basis of the “medical” rationale for taking Dr. Chase's patent medicines.

Self-medication

In addition to promoting a flexible idea of the body, the Dr. Chase Calendar Almanacs repeatedly remind readers that Dr. Chase's products are medicines, and consistently encourage a culture of self-medication. In 1944, an advertisement explains that “Dr. Chase's ointment is a medical product… and should not be confused with creams or salves.”26 Readers are told that such products cost more because of their special medicinal ingredients. Consumers also learn that “medical treatment is a serious matter and you want to know why you can depend on the medicine selected.”26 This description is followed by 4 pseudo-medical reasons to trust Dr. Chase's Kidney-Liver pills. Evidently the medical nature of Dr. Chase's products was important to their advertising strategy.

While emphasizing the medicinal ingredients in Dr. Chase's product line, advertisers worked diligently to convince their readers to self-medicate. The message of self-medication started with the very first almanac, and remains strong in every edition. In the first almanac, printed in1904, the caption “Be Master of your Health” is followed by the statement that “Dr. Chase's Medicines were intended to maintain or to restore health rather than to afford mere temporary relief.”11 Similarly, in 1916, a caption asks “pourquoi ne pas être Votre Propre Médecin?” and informs the reader that “C'est pour se conformer a cette idée que le Dr. Chase a établi son système de remèdes de famille.”27 In 1917 the caption “Every man his own physician” is followed by text informing the reader that Dr. Chase's medicines “cure where ordinary doctors and ordinary medicines fail and for this reason they are in demand everywhere.”28 Furthermore, Dr. Chase's company declared that their products were medically effective, and “are not so much intended to afford mere temporary relief as they are to effect thorough cure by eradicating the cause of trouble,” at times urging customers to try their medications before seeing a doctor.28 Though advertisers had to remove the word “cure” following legislation in 1919, the message changes little.3 In 1944, one reads that “in many rural sections of Canada and as a result of the war, in towns and cities as well,” doctors were in short supply. Readers are reminded that this situation was similar to when Dr. Chase first started selling his products, for “doctors were scarce then and people came from great distances for treatment. This led to mailing medicines and finally selling them through drug stores.”26 Following this reminder, customers are told they can still rely on Dr. Chase “for the relief of pains and aches and the more common ills of life,” implying that Dr. Chase's medicines could continue to stand in for the absent doctor.26 This emphasis on self-medication is interesting, as it seems an attempt to carve a niche for patent medicines relying on medical authority, while at the same time encouraging people to bypass doctors for many common ailments. Whether people actually considered Dr. Chase's Family of Medicines to be a stand-in for the doctor is another question. Regardless, Dr. Chase's Company portrays the products as part of a medical program.

Scientific legitimacy

Along with appeals to medicine, direct appeals to scientific legitimacy are evident in nearly every almanac. In the 1930s, readers learn that “during recent years there have been some important discoveries made in Medical Science — the outstanding one being the development of Vitamins — and it has seemed advisable to introduce Vitamin B1 into the formula of Dr. Chase's Nerve Food.”29 Conveniently for the medicine producers, the new and improved Nerve Food must still be taken “regularly and persistently until it has had an opportunity to thoroughly build up your health and strength, and eliminate the ills and discomforts which you have endured.”29 This is almost word-for- word the same advice from 1911, where Nerve Food worked by “building up the nerve force” and required several weeks, and incidentally several boxes of the product, in order to become effective, demonstrating the flexibility of this “scientific” rationale.18 Additions to the Dr. Chase product line in 1959 again display the deliberate decision to rely on some version of science to sell patent medications. The introduction to the 1959 edition stated that “as new medical discoveries have been made, some products have been discontinued, some products greatly improved and new products added. In the past few years, following new medical scientific discoveries, we have brought you Enerjets, a really wonderful combination of seven vitamins and three minerals plus Liver and Iron.”30 These examples demonstrate that there is a clear attempt on the part of the Dr. Chase Medicine Company to keep their products up to date and competitive in the face of new medical and scientific discoveries, while maintaining essentially the same product line and the same rationale for taking patent medicines. And to some extent, they have been successful; Dr. Chase's Nerve Food can still be found available for purchase on the Internet.31

Conclusion

The appeal of these products, and the platforms used to sell them, are an area deserving further historical attention, as the use of patent medicines is not simply an early 20th century phenomenon. Nor is it limited to Dr. Chase's product line. Indeed, pseudo-medical products are today a billion dollar industry. Exploring the rationale behind patent medicine consumption in the 20th century may prove pertinent to understanding the appeal of pseudo-medicines in the 21st century. In addition to studying public interest in patent medicines in general, a more detailed history assessing the cultural attraction to patent medicines in the context of an era of “magic bullet” medicine would likely be a worthwhile study. One possible explanation for the persistence of patent medicines despite ever more sophisticated medical discoveries is that scientific discoveries helped companies such as Dr. Chase's Medicine Company by increasingly focusing on medicines as a way to cure illness. Surely the masses that had seen the discoveries of Salvarsan, penicillin, insulin and vaccines for polio would have greater, not less, belief in the power of medicine. As the decades following the Second World War came to be known as the era of “miracle drugs,” the appeal of patent medicines likely did not diminish, for medical developments as a whole seemed to promote the taking of specific medicines for improved health.32–34 Though patent medicines were not on the same playing field as many pharmaceutical medications, the generations that believed in a “pill for all ills” may not have made such a distinction. Admittedly, this study is limited by access to only one side of the story, that of advertisers. What consumers believed about patent medicines, how they fit within the domain of medical science and how often they were used instead of or alongside “official” medicine remains an important question for further research.