America's Pastime: Patent Medicine Trade Cards on Pain Main Menu Introduction Student Projects The Power of Emotional Marketing: How Vintage Medical Trading Cards Used Children to Sell Their Products to Parents The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the rise of patent trade medicine cards across the country. Prominent among the many marketing strategies employed were those involving child imagery. By exploring the historical juncture between child imagery and society, new insights are gained regarding the appeal of child imagery and its employment in various marketing approaches. - By Kevin Kerr, Curran Whitney-Vazquez, Chandler Warth, Samuel Sakowski, Eden Breslauer-Friedman Clothing as Tool of Expression: Utilizing Fashion in 19th Century Marketing In analyzing our group’s medicine trading cards, we were able to convey the significance of clothing throughout its relation to medicine. Various forms of clothing demonstrate symbolism towards an indvidual’s perception on medicine as well as foreshadowing the message in which the trading cards demonstrate. The various forms of clothing and stances the individuals and characters in the trading card portray indicate symbolize towards various forms of clothing and stances to highlight the social class and hierarchy of power with its purpose in medication trading cards. The way that every individual is dressed eludes to different perceptions of varying social classes as the medical epherma is not targeted to one specific group. This persuades individuals to buy the medicines and adapt to their encouraged medicine techniques. - By Brittney Abdi, Alan Torres, Jolene Matian, Zoe Rosenberg, Javier Perez Mejia Humanity, Animals, and Religion: The Metaphorical Sense of Rebirth and Apotheosis of Purity. In the late 19th and early 20th century, America saw a rise in Patent Medicine leading up to the civil war. It was a lucrative trade that encouraged individuals to cultivate their own brand and medicinal products. The rise in Patent Medicine could be explained by a multitude of factors, such as rapid increases in industry and manufacturing, urban living, the absence of drug regulation, and the lack of accessibility and distrust of contemporary medical practices. During this period, Patent medicine companies vigorously marketed their products through small, colorful cards that featured illustrations , along with information about the medicine's supposed benefits and ingredients. To persuade consumers to purchase their products, patent medicine companies utilized a variety of marketing techniques. Some of the most popular ones being the portrayal of humanity, animals, and religion to convey the notion of rebirth and purity. - By Dominic Castillo, Vanessa Jiang, Stephen Liu, Leo Martinez, Selena Quispe The Utilization of Youthful Figures, Both Humans and Animals, in Medical Trading Cards The UCLA Library Digital Collections consist of a diverse collection of Patent Medicine Trade Cards that depict historically meaningful and strategic methods of medical advertising, specifically focusing on irregular and alternative medicines. The following trade cards investigate the significance of youthful figures in medical advertisements, as seen in both humans and animals. - By India White Cloud, Shanya Rostami, Andreas Tunney, Noah Orshansky, Netaniel Daee, and Justin Vayakone The Appeal of Youth and Family in Patent Medicine Trading Cards Medical Ephemera has had a long history of using emotional tactics to appeal to its intended target audiences. One of the most prevalent motifs is that of youth and children. Through visual and written rhetoric, this theme appeals to many family oriented communities and their values. From reliability to rejuvenation, for many people children can represent what they want in a medicine. However, this era of trade cards was particularly deceitful towards audiences by using this rhetoric, yet had a significant impact on marketing tactics that are still seen and thriving today. - By Lauren Tanaka, Allison Bushong, Mollie Brown, and Garrison Hallum Innocent Imagery: A Technique of Patent Medical Trade Cards The evolution of curing pain and uplifting human welfare greatly interested the public. To help combat this suffering, medical corporations turned to advertising through Patent Medical Trade Cards. These small cards significantly helped sell medicines throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in the United States of America. Specific techniques and styles, such as Innocent Imagery, assisted in attracting the consumer to purchase the drug. For instance, harmless animals, delicate flowers, and emotional characters were critical sources of visualizing innocence. -By Lauren Heiberg, Sean Eshraghi, Bradley Reed, Camila Ramirez-Leng and Shayan Mansourian Youth as a Marketing Tactic to Relieve Pain Our group page dives into the way patent medicine trade cards have utilized youth and innocence as a marketing tactic to improve their advertisement. We have focused on UCLA library’s collection as a whole and chosen to individually select a few of the cards that best match our theme all together. This project has allowed us to study the advertisement techniques of medical cures and solutions of its time as a group. We hope our findings are as insightful to you as they are to us - By Tara Kahrobaie, Rebeca Daee, Talia Fouladian, Ashley Kohen, Nathan Darougar, Saman Khalifian The Children of Medicine: An Appeal to Consumer Emotions Our group page explores the intricacies of 19th century marketing strategies that heavily revolved around depictions of children and the youth in an attempt to psychologically appeal to the emotions of consumers in hopes of converting sales. However, we also discuss how problematic this can be, especially when the product advertisement itself is deceiving and may even pose a threat to the lives of consumers. Though effective, using the youth to advertise products can be unethical and as a result, there were different legislations enacted to combat this and different marketing strategies have evolved in conjunction with it. - By Johnny Thai, Margarita Balbuena, Ryan Nelson, Chuntao Qiu How Depictions of Women and Children Sell Medication In this page, we examine the usage of women and children portrayed on patent medicine trade cards to advertise and sell medication. Throughout this page, we employ the collection of patent medicine trade cards from the UCLA Library Digital Collections, analyzing the images and text to gain a deeper understanding of this form of advertising. - By: Jacquelyn Bakshian, Abby Kim, Tyler Maghen, David Sagizadeh, Shana Simanian, Mia Tumbaga The Influence of Innocence and Purity in Patent Medicine Trade Cards This page will explore how themes of innocence and purity were primarily utilized in patent medicine trade cards in order to generate enticing advertisements to consumers at the time. Themes of purity, innocence, and femininity entwined with the audience's perception of an ideal person, and this page will dissect how these themes were utilized to create an impactful advertisement for medical ephemera. —By Lesley Sierra, Alejandro Haro, Taylor Sullivan, Karina Tairyan, Jennifer Lay, Parinaz Kyavar The Healing and Appealing Powers of Purity and Femininity 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 Animals used In Medicine Trade cards Our presentation focuses on the use of animals in Patent Medicine trade cards, as advertisements , essentially animals are used are marketing tools. By using animals as the main focus on the image, the companies are able to grasp the attention of the viewers. - By Aaron Kohanbash, Aaron Ezra Kohanbash, Elan Amona, Samuel Kohanteb, and Avner Shamtoub The Usage of Various Species in Advertising Medicinal Products The UCLA Patent Medicine Trade Cards expounds on medicine under a variety of labels and names through its collection of 247 patent medicine trade cards. With the variety of medical products on the market, companies utilized artwork to advertise their products to the general public. Specifically, various species and the attributes associated with them were one common theme among patent medicine trading cards. - By Hoyeol Lee, Fady Tawfik, Daniel Rabkin, Mia Kubal, Sarkis Vartanyan, and Daniel Pirian Utilizing Trade Cards as a Key Advertising Technique Trade card makers employed them as a medium to promote medical products, utilizing various advertising tactics to entice consumers and guarantee profitable sales. These marketing approaches included leveraging maternal connections, portraying children, emphasizing the product's "healing powers," and presenting visually appealing designs. By- Hannah Shaye, Yaelle Shaye, Leah Tabibi, Odelia Safadel, Ely Gabbaypour, and Arya Afgham 19th Century Remedies for Women's Daily Troubles During the 19th century, patent medicine trade cards often were marketed to women. These cards advertised products that intended to relieve ordinary women of troubles that they faced on a daily basis. Many of these products included cure-alls, medicine for mothers, and medicinal makeup, which addressed the frequent concerns women experienced regarding bodily health, motherhood, and femininity. – By Omotola Adesina, Gengjia Lin, Renateh Moradian, Grant Pate, and Brooke Vallone.

Parental Protective Instincts: Child Imagery in Patent Medicine Trade Cards

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Since the beginning of time, children have become vunerable to natural causes and servere illness in which limits their capabilities in physical activities. It's a natural instinct for parents to provide the best resources for their children in effort to sustain full health so they can experiecne their childhood. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution in the United States began to expand the use of advance technology, in which improved transportation, factories, and also medicine. Industrial pharmacies and chemists were able to produce a mass volume of medicine and treatments, most of them also contained morphine and opium, in which were the standard course of treatment by pharmacists for acute pains and severe cases. The selection of the six cards from UCLA’s Patent Medical Trading Card collection firmly demonstrates on how the visual representation of children plays a significant role in advertisement strategies for such products. How it sends a message to customer viewers, particurly parents, and why do the children appear to be beautiful, happy, clean, and how does the background setting, dark, exotic, and hot, elucidate its narrative

"Dr. Jayne’s Expectorant - He won’t hurt you" is a patent medicine trade card that depicts a young girl holding the leash of a large dog beside her. If you look closely, the dog’s front paws are positioned in front of the little girl’s feet, indicating that the dog’s role is to protect and shield the little girl from harm. The protective nature that is illustrated by the dog in this card emphasizes that children are fragile beings that must be protected; with this message being conveyed, parents are encouraged to put more effort into protecting their own children–and in this case, that means buying their children the advertised Dr. Jayne’s Expectorant medicine.

In a similar fashion, "Dr. Jayne’s Expectorant - Can’t you talk trade card" depicts the relationship between a protective dog and an innocent child. An even younger infant is shown beside a large gray dog, whose head is hovering over the infant in a protective manner, indicating the dog’s role of keeping the infant safe from harm. The dog’s paw and the infant’s hand are also seen to be touching, further emphasizing the protective and assuring relationship between the two figures. The protective presence of the dogs in these two trade cards help create a strong association between children and fragility. When children are portrayed in such a fragile manner, sensitivity is heightened in parents, and they are encouraged to put more effort into protecting the health of their own children; ultimately, this leads to parents buying various medicines for their children, hoping it will work to protect the health of their children.

Both "Dr. Ingham’s Nervine Pain Extractor" and the "Sapanule, Glycerine Lotion" are medical cards that also appeal to parents wanting to protect their children from getting sick as a result of or while engaging in various activities. These activities are depicted taking place in familiar and familial settings, including in the house and a child/family activity in ice skating. 

For the Dr. Ingham card, the young children seem to be engaging in household chores — including being near the fireplace where safety is put at risk. This also correlates with the text on the back of the card where it claims to treat diseases like colds, congestion of the lungs, and sore throat among other things — it also states “No family should be without it”. This image evokes a sense of worry, and parents want to prevent their children from either getting ill in the first place or having a remedy on hand if/when they do get ill. This activity was also more than likely common in this period, so placing the children in this environment appeals to parents seeing their children in this scenario. 

In the case of the Glycerine Lotion, this applies to children doing activities in cold weather, as demonstrated with the thermometer displayed next to small children ice skating. The card also has diseases that could be implicated in engaging in cold, outside activities — they wear warm clothing, but the temperature display allows parents to think about the possibility of getting ill as a result of engaging in ice skating. One can see another correlation between sickness and activity with the listed diseases on the back of the card — including sore throat and symptoms concerning the lungs — which is quite similar to Dr. Ingham’s card. It is also listed as a “household remedy”, which points to it being sold as something for the family. 

In the trade card titled “Castoria”, the front illustration displays a mother elephant named Jumbo feeding a baby elephant the pain relief product called Castoria in a baby bottle. Here, we see a mother and child relationship which appeals to the emotions parents feel about their relationship with their own child. Using this mother-and-child illustration can bring out the protective and nurturing nature of parents which encourages them to associate those feelings with the pain relief product being advertised. The image is stating that it is good parenting if you feed your child our product. Having this idea in mind, it appeals to the maternal emotion and instinct toward her child because the illustration serves as a demonstration of a good parent and child relationship. The baby elephant is widely smiling as its mother is feeding the bottle of Castoria in its mouth. That part of the image also appeals to parental protective emotion by reassuring the parent that the product is good and safe for their child.  Furthermore, the trade card uses animals which also indicates how natural the parental instinct is. If it is natural for elephants, it is natural for humans as well. 


In conclusion, all these medical trade cards share similar illustrations that appeal to the parental protective instincts of their target audience. The cards feature children, babies, and a parent-and-child relationship which all appeals to parents. Using these subjects in the medical trade card, the companies take advantage of using emotions between a parent and their child to encourage them to buy the company’s pain relief product. Each trade card has the element of pathos, specifically honing the emotions of a parent's protective nature of their child.

This page has paths:

  1. Student Projects Chien-Ling Liu Zeleny

Contents of this path:

  1. Incorporation of Innocence to Trigger Protective Instincts
  2. Adrian Alvarez
  3. The Girl in the (Trade Card) Window -- Child/Girlhood and Femininity as Advertisement
  4. Pathos in Medical Ephemeral Trade Cards

This page references: