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1. 1 2023-03-06T23:24:28-08:00 Corey Gear d6ae61e1989aa22eba509f5d4295efc6f86cb049 Popular Demand Stephanie Zager 2 plain 2023-03-06T23:31:54-08:00 Stephanie Zager 866d2ec4746b17160f9ce3b5b9df866def03130c
2. 1 2023-03-06T23:28:09-08:00 Corey Gear d6ae61e1989aa22eba509f5d4295efc6f86cb049 Popular DemandThe author suggests that it is part of popular demand to seek these remades. The author achieves this by illustrating a large crowd of people waiting outside a storefront. Stephanie Zager 2 plain 2023-03-06T23:31:54-08:00 Stephanie Zager 866d2ec4746b17160f9ce3b5b9df866def03130c

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• 1 2023-02-27T12:18:34-08:00 The Depiction of Motherly Care and Return to Purity in 20th Century Medical Advertisements 46 Based only own analyzation of patient medicine trade cards from the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library at UCLA, I recognized that their was a common correlation between the cards I selected. Medical advertisers seemed to look to appeal to the emotions of their consumers, and portray their product as something that a loving mother would use to take care of their family. This depiction of motherly care and protection helps the consumer view the product as safe and responsible to use. - By Corey Gear plain 2023-03-26T08:32:09-07:00 The first image displayed on this page (Hood's Sasparilla) illustrates a mother dog protecting her puppies from harmful varmints. This choice of artwork, for this patient medicine card, helps the advertiser convey the protecting nature of the product to the consumer. During this time, women were often socially viewed as the "caretakers" of a household. This common social recognition allows for the advertiser to easily appeal to the consumer’s emotions, as they socially recognize how this product can be seen as something that would aid in the well-being of your family from common ailments. Additionally, this card features a bit of text in the bottom right corner that states, "First Lessons". This use of rhetoric implies the use of these remedies is common knowledge for the upkeep of your family’s well-being. This helps the advertiser create a sense of urgency and panic to purchase, amongst its consumer base, as implies the commonality of its use through verbal rhetoric.
  The next image above (Dr. Jayne’s Exporant) exhibits many parallels between motherly care and seeking purity, which is exhibited in the anchor image of Hood’s Sasparilla. Again, the author of this advertisement card chose to illustrate a mother dog looking after a child in their artwork. This appeal to the common twentieth-century social conception of motherly care and affection. This choice of artwork allows consumers to feel a sense of reassurance, in using this product, as it displays the healing nature of motherly protection.

  Additionally, the back of this card, exhibited on the right, has an interesting bit of phrasing as it states, “for coughs, colds, throat and lung troubles, as everybody well knows, Dr. Jayne's Expectorant is the standard Family Remedy”. This choice of words implies that it is common knowledge to use their product to alleviate these various ailments. This use of imagery and rhetoric, by the advertiser, helps guide the consumer into trusting their product will care for them much like their very own mother would.
  

  These advertisers’ efforts to create a sense of demand for their product continue in the patient medicine trade card Biliousine. Displayed on the right-hand side of this page, this card depicts a large crowd of nicely dressed individuals waiting outside a medical storefront. The use of this illustration continues to suggest the common demand for products that help alleviate the symptoms of various ailments and return to purity. This demand for products that provide care and relief from pain is often connected to many social thoughts of motherhood of this time. This card also suggests many of the sexiest stereotypes of feminine consumer desire. By depicting a crowd of majority women, it suggests that women are the common caretaker for a household in this time period.
  
  This common use of motherly care and affection presented, through illustrations and written rhetoric, of these three patient medicine trade cards, is in an effort to create an advertisement that hits home with the majority of its consumer base. As people often feel ill, they remember times as a child when their mothers helped nurse them back to health. By illustrating these common social understandings, these medicine advertisements are trying to suggest how their product will provide them with the same care that mothers are commonly understood to treat their children with.
  
   
• 1 2023-02-27T12:39:29-08:00 Youth and Purity in Victorian Era Medical Advertising 46 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, patent medicine trade cards were a very common form of advertising used to promote certain health remedies and medications. These trade cards often portrayed images and depictions of young women and children who represented youth and femininity. The three cards I have chosen from UCLA's Patent Medicine Trade Card Collection share this popular theme associated with purity. This marketing tactic played into societal ideals of women and the youth by evoking a sense of trust and reliability in the product, as children and women were seen ad innocent and virtuous. In addition, by using these images in advertisements, companies were able to target female consumers, who were often responsible for purchasing household goods. In this page, I will dissect these three cards to show the tactics companies in the past used to persuade people to buy specific goods and medications, and show how their advertising strategies were not that different than the ones we see in our modern age. plain 2023-03-25T22:16:56-07:00 My anchor image portrays seven childeren that are seen packing packages and boxes of pills. Advertised as a reliable family medication, Ayer's Cathartic Pills uses the emotions and desires associated with youth, and more generally, purity to persuade their consumers to purchase their product. By making the young children the focal point of the art on the card, the advertisers may have been attempting to target those who want a medicine that would be safe for their children to take. In addition, the classical style of the art may have been done intentionally to accentuate feelings of purity. In a way, the classical art has biblical notions, seeming almost angelic to the viewer. Virtue and purity are two concepts that commonly intersect with traditional biblical ideology, and this biblical notion connects to the realm of women and children. The youth and women are bure by nature. By showing the "purenes" of their medication, Ayer's creates a positive aura surrounding their cathartic pills.               
  
  A similar notion of purity can be seen in Biliousine's trade card. This patent medicine trade card pictures a large crowd of both men and women lined up to purchase the Biliousine medication. The women depicted in the drawing are shown in very eye-catching clothing. For example, they are dressed in colors like bright red and green, or white and red stripes. This may have been done to make the women the center of attention in the card. If mothers and women seem to be interested in getting this product in the piece of artwork, they will be conditioned to believe that they should be buying biliousine in reality. Moreover, focusing on women in art is associated with beauty and vitality. Images of young and attractive women convey's the idea that using their product will help consumers achieve the same youthful and vibrant look.
  
  In terms of the use of youth in advertising, we can see the addition of children in marketing on Dr. Ingham's Nervine Pain Extractor and Vegetable Liver Pills. The childern on this card are shown cleaning and doing housework, as they are surrounded by pots and pans, brooms, and buckets. By portraying very young children working, they may be advertising the fact that their medication will help you feel young again. For consumers who would be looking for something to help with their aches and pains, a medication pictures individuals doing everyday work painlessly would be alluring.This marketing strategy can be seen quite frequently in other patent medicine cards during the Victorian era, as well as in our present day. Today's advertisements that can be seen online or on the television often portray individuals with certain conditions going about their daily activities in a happy and pain-free manner. Their behavior and emotions project onto consumers, making them believe this product may help them with their illness or disease.
  
  If we take a closer look at Dr. Ingham's Nervine Pain Extractor and Vegetable Liver Pills trade card, we can see that one of the young children is using a rag to clean a long object. This is interesting, because it seems to be portraying traditional female gender roles, and in this case it is the act of cleaning. Although this perpetuates problematic gender stereotypes and power dynamics in our society, it shows a glimpse of reality and relatable behavior that some consumers may find enticing. Moreover, the colors used to create this image are very muted and give off a peaceful atmosphere to its audience. In terms of youth and female stereotypes, this may have been done to give a calming and nurturing feeling to consumers.
  
  Colors also play a significant role in Biliousine's trade card. On this card, there is a women who is wearing a very bright red dress and hat. This draws the viewer's focus completely onto the woman, and in turn helps us associate femininity with this medication. Compared to the other people in the crowded line, she stands out, making her the focal point of this image. In addition, it looks like two women, one in red and one in green, are one of the first people in line to purchase this medication, which alludes to the fact that this may be a product that many women would want to have in their homes. This image may make consumers believe that Biliousine is a common and popular household medicine, which helps companies target women who are likely the ones purchasing household products.
  
  
  
  
  
  When comparing the two cropped images that I previously examined, as seen on the left and right, women and children are common themes in my selected patent medicine trade cards. To most, they evoke specific emotions pertaining to trust, love, beauty, reliability and purity. Consumers who see these advertisements are likely going to purchase these medications because of the feelings they get when viewing the images. The details in the image is what captivates an audience, whether it be a child who is using a cleaning rag or the color of a woman's dress. Although these portrayals are not claiming that their product will make you feel younger or happier, people may still believe that they will attain certain, positive results. These tactics may be misleading, but they worked quite well in the past and in our modern world.
  
  The use of youth, femininity, and purity in patent medicine trade cards was a prevalent marketing strategy during the Victorian era. By portraying young women as beautiful and virtuous, companies aimed to appeal to female consumers and evoke a sense of trust in their products. However, it must be noted that these tactics and strategies also perpetuated extremely problematic gender stereotypes and power dynamics. While these patent medicine trade cards may serve as a historical artifact of advertising practices of our past, it is very important to acknowledge and critique the harmful messages that they conveyed. In our modern world, these sterotypical advertising tactics are still an issue, although the recent wave of progressive ideology has thankfully helped reverse these patterns.
  
  
• 1 2023-02-28T17:58:51-08:00 The Healing and Appealing Powers of Purity and Femininity 33 Our group page focuses on the use of femininity and purity in advertising as a means to demonstrate the efficacy of the advertised medications. Through close inspection of various Patent Medicine Trade Cards from the UCLA Biomedical Library Special Collections, our group has gained an understanding of advertising strategies and the use of cultural norms to demonstrate medicinal efficacy. Women, ideas of femininity, and purity found in nature are the central themes of our scalar book and reveal advertising strategies of medications in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These cards as well as our own individual pages will explore the complex and historically relevant themes of femininity and purity through the lens of advertising strategies of medications and medicinal products in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. - By Stephanie Zager, Ella Kitt, Megan Sparrow, Corey Gear, Neda Afsharian structured_gallery 2023-06-26T15:12:28-07:00
  Our anchor image is the Patent Medicine Trade Card for Antikamnia Tablets. The front side of the card shows the side profile of a woman sniffing lilies. This image is incredibly interesting when looking at the historical context of the various advertising strategies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We chose the Antikamnia Tablets card as our focal point in our scalar book because it directly shows our themes of purity and femininity in advertising. As the central image of the front side of the card, the woman depicted does not have any sort of connection to the advertised medication. Rather the woman is used as an advertising strategy to try and promote the product due to preconceived notions of purity and the appeal of women. As the centerpiece, this woman is conventionally beautiful and likely would draw the attention of consumers. This is relevant when examining the various visual rhetorical strategies present in medicinal advertisements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The inclusion of the word “purity” to the right side of the woman is also very relevant to our theme of femininity and purity in advertising. Whether the word was intended to be immediately seen by consumers or play the role of some sort of subliminal message, the inclusion of the word is the most relevant detail of this card. Through the use of a woman as the center of attention in addition to the inclusion of the word “purity”, this card demonstrates our central themes of women and purity in advertising strategies present in patent medicine trade cards.
  
  On the front of the trade card advertising Dalley's Magical Pain Extractor, a shepherd woman is depicted feeding goats. She is surrounded by nature, although you can see the front of an edifice, which looks like a church, in the background. This image is representative of the Romantic pastoral genre of literature, which glorifies the shepherd lifestyle. This genre, which experienced a resurgence of popularity that corresponded with the inception of Romanticism, was primarily popular among urban elites. It is understandable that city dwellers suffering from the various ailments that came with living in dirty urban environments would be attracted to an image of the tranquility of the natural world. The shepherd woman represents simplicity and vitality. Her image is nurturing – almost maternal – which evokes the likeness of mother nature. In essence, her femininity is intertwined with nature, which is tied to her image as a healer.
  
  In the next image of a young girl, which serves as the front of an advertisement for a drug used to treat rheumatism and neuralgia, the themes of youth, femininity, and vitality are extremely apparent. The image portrayed is that of a young girl who has long flowing hair and is donning a white dress. Her long locks indicate health and youth, while her white dress is a symbol of purity. In both this image and the former, the women depicted are somewhat ethereal. The religious connotation of purity creates a subconscious association with the cleansing of illness. Thus, the women depicted symbolize health and youth, attributes which have been commodified in these advertisements to attract those who are sick and ailing. 
  
  The image to the right (Dr. Kermott's Mandrake Pills [inscribed]) is another example of femininity in advertisements to endorse medicinal products. In contrast to other patent medicine trading cards on this page, the centerpiece depicts a middle-aged woman who is not necessarily the standard ideal of beauty in the early 20th century. The older woman, with a lopsided face and non-proportional features, seems to be writing a letter to her love. At first glance, we wondered why this woman would be the focal point of this piece since she is not conventionally beautiful. While the depiction of this woman is pellicular, this patent medicine trading card still uses femininity in relation to healing. Using a woman with such stark characteristics as hers still attracts people to the card, even if it is not because they find the woman visually pleasing. People may glance at the card, see the woman, and want to look further out of pure curiosity. In turn, they inadvertently learn more about the product. Having a woman as the focal point of this advertisement acts as a way to allure the general audience to the trading card, resulting in more people learning about the medicine being advertised.
  
  
  The Patent Medicine Trade Cards, Biliousine and Dr. Ingham’s Pain Extractors and Liver Pills, continue to present the common themes of illustrations towards the appeal of purity and femininity in their advertisements. The first image on the left (Dr. Ingham's Pain Extractors and Liver Pills) presents two young girls, youthfully cleaning around the house. It is a common perception that the youth are considered pure and uncontaminated by many of the negative elements of our world. This use of young girls in the advertisement, by the author, is an allusion to the youthful and pure revival the consumer will feel from taking this remedy. This desire, to feel like a kid again, is suggested through the artwork of the second card on the right (Biliousine). This card shows a crowd of classy women outside a storefront in a craze to purchase pain relieving remedies. This artwork suggests that there is a popular demand amongst women for the youthful and pure feelings that are highlighted in Dr. Ingham’s Pain Extractors and Liver Pills trading card. The use of women, and of femininity in a broader sense, is clear in the advertising practices of both Patent Medicine Trade Cards. We decided to compare these two cards because they both use femininity as a strategy of visual rhetoric, but there are differences. Whereas Dr. Ingham’s Pain Extractors and Liver Pills uses femininity to promote the purity of girlhood, Biliousine uses sexist ideas of womanhood and feminine consumer desire.
  
  These patent medicine trade cards are just some of the many forms of advertisements that use the healing and appealing powers of purity and femininity. The use of these two concepts in advertising is a traditional marketing tactic that tries to appeal to a consumer’s aspirations and values. Advertisements that highlight images, words, or messages related to femininity and purity aim to induce positive connections and emotions, like comfort, trust, as well as beauty.
  
  For example, the cards on this page share a common theme of portraying children, motherly figures, and women in their imagery. Advertisers are implying that using their product will help the consumer achieve the traits associated with these themes, such as femininity, purity, and youth. Using these messages in medicinal advertising suggests that their product could help you feel young again by treating your ailments, be a useful household medication, or purify you of your illnesses.
  
  Although these patent medicine trade cards originated from the Victorian era, marketing companies today still use the same tactics associated with purity and femininity. While these advertisements may be successful in selling their goods, they can facilitate very damaging gender stereotypes. Moreover, the use of these strategies can contribute to exceedingly unrealistic standards and outcomes.