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 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 Parental Protective Instincts: Child Imagery in Patent Medicine Trade Cards In the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century, pharmaceutical companies established marketing strategies in which they value child imagery upon the medical trade cards. By evaluating and uncovering new insights regarding the appeal of child imagery, the selection of six cards from the UCLA’s Patent Medical Trading Card collection will elucidate its marketing values and how it appeals to buyers. By Chelsie, Adrian, Micaiah, Princess 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.

The Utilization of Youthful Figures, Both Humans and Animals, in Medicinal Trading Cards.

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The medical trading card titled Pond's Extract illustrates a youthful girl trotting on a black pony with her dog through picturesque countryside. The girl radiates an appearance of health through her even skin complexion and golden locks of hair. The status of the girl's health is also reaffirmed by her riding the pony because it's a physical activity requiring decent fitness and stamina. Moreover, Pond's Extract depicting this youthful girl was not purely based on aesthetics purposes but served as a marketing technique common in the nineteenth century. Due to a lack of regulations, knowledge, and standards, medicine often contained hazardous and potent ingredients that were unsuitable and safe for children. Thus, Ponds Extract utilized the young girl for advertising that the medication was effective and suitable for child consumption. Furthermore, since the medicine was also a "vegetable pain destroyer," compared to harsh chemical ingredients, it supports the idea that Ponds Extract wanted to brand itself as a safer medical alternative. 

Ayer’s Sarsaparilla Purifies the Blood is a trade card that shows two women and two children outdoors. The children are having fun, feeding the dog, and expressing joy. A possible interpretation of this image is that the women are mothers of the boy and girl. With these details, the image advertises what the medicine can create, the freedom of health for parent and child so that they can enjoy and appreciate life more. Parents in the 19th century showed immense care and concern for their children, and the relaxed demeanor from the adults represented in this card shows that Ayer's extract removes that stress from the parents. The card gives you certainty that their medicine can be trusted to care for the family. The girl feeding the dog represents the innocence of children in which they don’t have to worry about disease and can live a playful life a child should experience. Ayer's extract is advertised as maintaining this innocence.



In the same vein as the prior cards, the frontside of the card titled “Ayer's Cathartic Pills, a safe pleasant and reliable family medicine” makes use of several adolescent figures as a meaningful tactic to better advertise a “family medicine.” The children are portrayed in this image are engaging in behaviors that can be described as soothing and playful, thus further evoking themes of happiness and cheerfulness, which the consumer will then associate with the pills themselves, much to the delight of the merchant. As a means to show the effects of these “Cathartic Pills,” the children are instrumental in reassuring consumers that, should they buy the product, their lives will be reminiscent to these children, in the sense that they will adopt the lighthearted nature of the children. The bright colors in the background coupled with the innocent looking children themselves, being without clothes, contributes to attracting potential consumers, as the highly engrossing delineation in itself is enough to intrigue consumers and draw them into the prospect of taking the pills. Rather than view such pills as possibly being to their detriment, consumers will only naturally associate the emotions they feel when viewing the children with the product itself—as is there human inclination.

As seen in the two previous cards that were just presented. The medical trading card titled, “Boschee's German Syrup, August Flower, and Ague Conqueror”, presents an elderly man with three little children having one baby in one of the child’s arms. The illustration shows the elderly man having a pipe in his hand, with his back bent over, and looking kind of ill pointing out the words “For Coughs and Lung Diseases” expressing to the buyers that this medication is for those medical problems listed. Moreover, there are also children presented in this image being attracted to the elderly man by him pointing at the poster being shown about the medicine. Having the children being presented in this ephemera card is conveying that children and adults are able to take the medication. As shown in the front of the illustration, the children are attracted to the medication, indicating that this medication is safe for children as well because it can “cure the worst.”

 

 

In the medical patent trading card advertising Dr. Jones’ Taraxacum Tonic, the artist implemented figures that allude to innocence and purity. Oftentimes, advertisers would put children in their advertisements as children are characters of innocence and have no ill intent; the child is trying to help their grandmother by giving the grandmother medicine. The child in the image is wearing the brightest colors in the image which makes her the focal point, highlighting the medicine as well. Color is also reflective of youth, and health which the grandmother in the image would potentially gain by taking the medicine. The grandmother is dressed in dull, brown clothing, which emphasizes her old age and dullness. At the bottom of the image, there is text which reflects what the young girl is saying to her grandmother: she insists her grandmother takes the medicine since it will “make you [the grandmother] well”.


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This page has paths:

  1. Student Projects Chien-Ling Liu Zeleny

Contents of this path:

  1. The Utilization of Animals to Advertise Medical Trading Cards in the 19th Century
  2. Methods of Advertisement Doctors did to Sell Pharmaceutical Drugs in the 19th Century
  3. Nature's Healing Touch: The Role of Natural Imagery in Medicinal Trading Card Ephemera Advertising
  4. The Employment of Purity and a Carefree Nature in Medical Advertisement
  5. Herbal Medicinal Trading Cards
  6. Outlook of Health in the 19th Century: Fixation on Blood Purity and Removing Pain

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