“Cures after Doctors Fail”: Marketing Pain Relief in 1900s Washington, D.C

The turn of the century was a pivotal moment in American medicine advertising, at the confluence of the beginnings of governmental regulation of medicine, the development of mass production, and increasing social pressures against alcohol and other drugs that led to nationwide prohibition. Patent medicines, non-doctor-prescribed remedies whose ingredients were unlisted and often highly alcoholic, led the rush to brand and market medicinal products. In this article, I examine two products sold as pain relievers, McElree’s Wine of Cardui and Mexican Mustang Liniment. I incorporate the concepts of multimodality and language materiality from linguistic anthropology to understand the ways imagery, text, bottles, and bottle contents worked together as a material commodity tied to a brand identity and an associated set of semiotic referents, encouraging consumer trust in the product. I argue that the physical properties of these bottles are tied to a particular brand identity that brought together icons, material objects, and texts that generated a set of associations with the product. Analyzing these products and their associated advertising materials provides insights into idealized narratives of health and healing, and practices of racialized and gendered marketing, which began to develop during that era.