University Libraries unveils Special Collections Item of the Month
The University Libraries Special Collections department have revealed their item of the month: A pocket mirror by the Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company.
Diana Simpson, the monographs cataloguer at Cook library and the cataloguer for the pocket mirror, shared her excitement about the new acquisition.
“When I was cataloging this item, I didn’t really know anything about the Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company. One of the curators, Jennifer Brannock, started collecting women’s health ephemera – pamphlets and things related to women’s health issues in the late 19th century to early twentieth century,” Simpson added. “Students became interested in women’s health issues and how women were treated back in those days. Women’s health was kind of a thing that people didn’t want to talk about.
“I became interested in the idea of patent medicines, “ Brannock continued. “The Lydia E. Pinkham medicine company was one of many companies that were around back then. A lot of them [the medicine that the company sold] were marketed towards women, but also men; different types of medicines for all sorts of ailments.”
Simpson also shared some history about Lydia E. Pinkham, an entrepreneur and homemaker, whose husband fell upon hard financial times. She had been manufacturing a particular home remedy for years, using a recipe she had acquired from one of her husband’s colleagues.
She altered and perfected this recipe and began sharing medicine with friends and neighbors. News spread about the medicine, and she started selling and advertising this medicine, which was famously dubbed as “The Vegetable Compound.” This led to the birth of the company that eventually branched out into selling different kinds of medicines.
The herbal remedies sold by the company were mainly offered as solutions to ailments described as “female complaints.”
“They had this brilliant idea to market things with her [Pinkham] and her image and that was kind of their company logo.” Simpson added. “One of their slogans was ‘Yours for Health.’ Another one was “‘Only a woman can understand a woman’s ills.’”
“They [the company] printed all kinds of pamphlets and they would encourage women to write to Lydia about various health issues and then she would write back to them,” said Simpson.
While the original owner of this particular item is not known, Simpson estimated that the pocket mirror was manufactured sometime between the 1920s and 1930s.
“These things were very popular back in the day. They designed these little pocket mirrors to fit into your purse and you could just carry it around and then when you took it out, you could see the name of the company and just be reminded of the product you bought,” Simpson said.
Simpson shared that the online repository of the item of the month series was started by the Special Collections Library.
“Students sometimes write posts about a special collections item that they’ve seen or worked with at the Special Collections library.” Simpson added. “We catalog them for inclusion in Seymour Info so that people who are studying certain topic can physically see these objects along with other things that are owned by the special collections library”
