Trade Card: Ayer's Hair Vigor

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 for Ayer’s Hair Vigor is an example of this trend because it includes the appealing image of mermaids using hair tonic to convince consumers that the hair remedy advertised supposedly produces effects which are, overall, positive and healthy.

Obituary of J.C. Ayer in Lowell Courier (Newspaper) 5 July 1878.

Holcombe, Henry Woodruff. (1979) Patent Medicine Tax Stamps: a history of the firms using United States private die proprietary medicine tax stamps. Lawrence, Mass.: Quarterman Publications, “C. Ayer & Co.” pgs. 8-19.

Jay, Rober. (1987) The Trade Card in Nineteenth-century America. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, “C. Ayer Hair Vigor Mermaid” trade card illustration on page ii.

Young, James Harvey. (1961) The Toadstool Millionaires: a social history of patent medicines in America before Federal regulation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, “Ayer, James C.” pgs. 74, 94, 98, 125, 138-39, 140-41, 174-76, 185, 236-37.

Olson, Dane. (2006), There's Nothing So Bad for a Cough as Coughing! Hohonu: A Journal of Academic Writing, Vol. 4(1) at http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/academics/hohonu/writing.php?id=106.

“Ad for Ayers Hair Vigor."
(1888), The Current, Vol. 10, p.15 at http://books.google.com

"Ayer's Hair Vigor. Restores Gray Hair to its Natural Vitality and Color." Advertising card, late 19th century. Missouri History Museum Photographs and Prints Collections. Advertising. n39449 at http://gallery.pictopia.com/mohistory/gallery/87252/photo/8620734/.

Cheri Vitez, Research Associate, 5/10/2011

“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.