Business Advertisement Card: "Dr. Seth Arnold's Cough Killer"

1972.21.0067

Object Image
Detailed Images

Basic Information

Artifact Identification Business Advertisement Card: "Dr. Seth Arnold's Cough Killer"   (1972.21.0067)
Classification/
Nomenclature
  1. Communication Artifacts
  2. :
  3. Advertising Media
  4. :
  5. N/A
Artist/Maker Unknown
Geographic Location
Period N/A
Date 1865
Culture Euro - American
Location Not on Exhibit

Physical Analysis

Dimension 1 (Height) 11.5 cm
Dimension 2 (Width) 8.0 cm
Dimension 3 (Depth) <0.1 cm
Weight 3 g
Measuring Remarks N/A
Materials Paper, Pigment--Ink
Manufacturing Processes Printing,

Research Remarks

Description

Many American advertising cards in the nineteenth century displayed a variety of visual and rhetorical themes to foster the attention of potential consumers. The appealing elements these cards displayed convinced the public that these easily disposable ephemera pieces were worthy of preservation. In this card for Dr. Seth Arnold's Cough Killer, two advertising tropes which can be observed are the inclusion of animals and the imagery medical advertisers used to make their remedial products seem more trustworthy.

American advertisers often included animals in their trade cards to charm and increase consumer patronage. Producers were particularly incentivized to make their advertisements visually appealing to children since younger audiences tended to collect and disseminate trade cards to their parents. This card demonstrates this trend by showing a girl hugging a dog, a wholesome image which helps to facilitate favorable attention from consumers.

As many Americans practiced self-medication and distrusted medical professionals, patent medicine companies were the largest distributors of domestic trade cards. Public ignorance of healthy habits and a lack of advertising regulations on trade cards allowed medical advertisers to make exaggerated and untruthful claims on the beneficial qualities of their products. This marketing approach resulted in great profits for the sellers, but also fostered the prevalence of disease and other illnesses. This card is an example of this trend because it includes the appealing imagery of a young girl hugging a dog to convince consumers that this supposedly remedial item advertised produces effects which are, overall, positive and healing.

Published Description N/A
Bibliography

“A Short History of Trade Cards,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 5, no. 3 (April
1931).

Berg, Maxine and Clifford, Helen, Selling Consumption in the Eighteenth Century: Advertising
and the Trade Card in Britain and France, The Journal of the Social History Society, (April 28,
2015).

Chase, Ernest D., The Romance of Greeting Cards, Rust Craft Publishers, 1956.

Jay, Robert, The Trade Card In Nineteenth-Century America, University of Missouri Press,
1987.

Lewis, John, Printed Ephemera: The Changing Uses of Type and Letterforms in English and
American Printing, W.S. Cowell Ltd., 1962.

Mehaffy, Marilyn Maness, Advertising Race/Raceing Advertising: The Feminine
Consumer(Nation), 1876-1900, Signs, 23, no. 1, The University of Chicago Press, 1997, 142-
143, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3175155.

Oatman-Stanford, Hunter, “Extreme Shipping: When Express Delivery to California Meant 100
Grueling Days at Sea,” Collectors Weekly, (June 2, 2016),
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/when-express-delivery-meant-100-days-at-sea/.

Peterdi, Gabor, “Lithography” section of “Printmaking” article, Encyclopedia Britannica online,
2021, https://www.britannica.com/art/printmaking/Lithography.

Artifact History

Credit Line/Dedication Gift of Natalia M. Belting
Reproduction no

Contact

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