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Trade Cards: An Illustrated History

Highlights from the Waxman Collection

Food and Health

From earliest times people have accepted the idea that there is a close relationship between their physical well-being and what they take into their bodies. Through trade cards and other advertising, it is possible to see in this period of scientific transition the ways in which people tended to regard food as medicine and medicine as food. Victorian America was preoccupied with disease, and the roster of ills was quite different from those recognized today, as were the remedies. Through the cards promoting medicinals of various sorts, we encounter an amazing list of conditions, among them, nervous dyspepsia, phthisis, marasmus, relapsing fever, inanition, mal-assimilation, catarrh , tetter, neurasthenia, locomotor ataxia, ovarian neuralgia, consumpulus, and female complaint. Patent medicines and nutritional regimens were both heavily advertised, and the line between the two was often very slender. Note the origin of many of today’s recreational beverages in liquid remedies whose names survive in such terms as soda, tonic, phosphate, seltzer, and root beer.

Food for Young and Old

"Ridge's food for infants and invalids" trade card, depicting an old man with two children
Ridge’s Food, its makers proclaim, is good for “old people, whose digestive powers are impaired.” Described as more palatable than oatmeal, it is suggested for the young as well as the old, invaluable in cases of “prostration of the system.”
Dr. Buckland's Scotch Oats Essence trade card, depicting a woman with cherubs
Dr. Buckland’s Scotch Oats Essence will “positively cure,” among other ailments, drunkenness, paralysis, opium habit, sciatica, ovarian neuralgia, and epilepsy. Sending in a label from the package will bring a handsome print of the glamorous actress Lillian Russell “beautifully done in 15 colors.”
Pettijohn's California breakfast food trade card, depicting a bear
This breakfast cereal delivers it all—good taste and good health. Distinctive, recognizable trademarks and brand mascots, such as the Pettijohn bear, were a relatively recent feature in print advertising.
Imperial Granum trade card, depicting faces of infants and children
This “Medicinal Food,” says this 1877 card, “makes strong Bone and Muscle…makes good Flesh and Blood,” and is “kind and friendly to the Brain.” Its principal constituent is “GLUTEN derived from WHITE WINTER FLINT WHEAT.” It is “creamy…delicious” and possesses “Rare Medicinal Excellence.”
Trade card depicting bad digestion with a demon and good digestion with an angel
The competition among brands of baking powder has generated some of the most hard-fought battles in the history of the food industry. Sea Foam was a tireless advertiser, with an amusing vision of the consequences of using the wrong product.

Miracle Remedies

Trade card, depicting eight white babies with root beer glass
“Purifies the blood,” promises this card advertising Hires, the most popular brand of root beer. Both beverage and medicinal product, it “tickles the palate—a pleasure and a tonic.”
"Tarrant's seltzer aperient" trade card, depicting a man with a drink
This dapper gentleman credits a fizzy carbonated mixture with giving him thirty years of regularity.
"Horsford's acid phosphate for mental and physical" trade card, depicting a young girl
Horsford’s “Delicious Drink” is easily made by stirring the lemony phosphate powder into sugared water. At the same time, however, it treats nervousness, hysteria, and night sweats; it will also “harmonize with such stimulants as are necessary to take.” At one time, Chicagoans referred to soft drinks as phosphates.
"Ayer's sarsaparilla" trade card, selling a blood purifier
Sarsaparilla was a remedy compounded from a number of tropical roots and was claimed to cure everything from ringworm to “female weakness,” not to mention “the lassitude and debility peculiar to the Spring.” It evolved into a sweetened soft drink that was popular in New England well into the mid-twentieth century.
"The 'Best' Tonic" trade card
This extract of malt and hops, its makers state, “cures dyspepsia” and other disabilities but is at the same time a “wholesome table beverage.” Invigorating curative drinks such as this and quinine water were known as tonics.
"Wild Cherry" trade card, depicting a young girl
Rock & Rye contains “75 percent of Rye Whiskey three years old” and “no artificial ingredients.” One consumer happily reports, “my family abstain from spirituous drinks but believe in good medicine.” Afflicted with eight simultaneous cases of whooping cough, they gave it “a thorough trial with beneficial results.”
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