YOUR remedies for menstrual period pain and problems. See more remedies here.
See modern home remedies here.
Handwritten letter to a sick woman, Typed letter to a Canadian (1918), Ad from the Salt Lake Weekly Herald (1881) for Mrs. Pinkham, trade cards (flowers, girl with cat), post card of Stanford University, a bottle for Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, mending kit, booklet Stretching Your Dollar, bottles for her Blood Medicine and (just plain) Medicine, Home Talks, Private Text-Book Upon Ailments Peculiar to Women, Fruits and Candies booklet, and a modern bottle, box and instructions for her Tablets.
A discussion of the letter testimonials, and their authenticity, of the Pinkham company (in a discussion of a Pursettes ad with a letter testimonial)
See two letters to MUM about the ingredients of her Compound, and one about the lyrics of an English pop song, Lily the Pink, about her.
Other amazing women: Nelli Bly, Dr. Marie Stopes, Dr. Grace Feder Thompson
CONTRIBUTE to Humor, Words and expressions about menstruation and Would you stop menstruating if you could?
Some MUM site links:
homepageMUM address & What does MUM mean? | e-mail the museum | privacy on this site | who runs this museum?? |
Amazing women! | the art of menstruation | artists (non-menstrual) | asbestos | belts | bidets | founder bio | Bly, Nellie | MUM board | books: menstruation and menopause (and reviews) | cats | company booklets for girls (mostly) directory | contraception and religion | costumes | menstrual cups | cup usage | dispensers | douches, pain, sprays | essay directory | extraction | facts-of-life booklets for girls | famous women in menstrual hygiene ads | FAQ | founder/director biography | gynecological topics by Dr. Soucasaux | humor | huts | links | masturbation | media coverage of MUM | menarche booklets for girls and parents | miscellaneous | museum future | Norwegian menstruation exhibit | odor | olor | pad directory | patent medicine | poetry directory | products, current | puberty booklets for girls and parents | religion | Religión y menstruación | your remedies for menstrual discomfort | menstrual products safety | science | Seguridad de productos para la menstruación | shame | slapping, menstrual | sponges | synchrony | tampon directory | early tampons | teen ads directory | tour of the former museum (video) | underpants & panties directory | videos, films directory | Words and expressions about menstruation | Would you stop menstruating if you could? | What did women do about menstruation in the past? | washable pads
Leer la versión en español de los siguientes temas: Anticoncepción y religión, Breve reseña - Olor - Religión y menstruación - Seguridad de productos para la menstruación.

The Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Co., maker of medicine for headaches,
stomach illness, insomnia, depression, cancer, tumors, women's diseases,
flatulence, menstruation, fertility, etc.:
About the ingredients of the Pinkham Vegetable Compound: three e-mails


First e-mail:

As an herbalist, I think you underestimate the medicinal value of Lydia Pinkham's elixir.

It has always contained effective herbal medicines (in fact the FDA [the American Food and Drug Administration] or its precursors required tests as early as the 1920s, if memory serves). The 13-20% of alcohol is not atypical of an herbal tincture. Indeed, an herbal extract with less alcohol is pharmacologically unstable. The alcohol does help disperse the medicine to the tissues better than the pill form, carrying it to the uterine tissues. But the herbs used are powerful medicines in their own right, although the modern formulation is somewhat less effective than that of the 1960s and before.

The original recipe for Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound is as follows:

Unicorn Root (Aletris farinosa L.) 8 oz.

Life Root (Senecio aureus L.) 6 oz.

Black Cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa (L.) Nutt.) 6oz.

Pleurisy Root (Asclepias tuberosa L.) 6 oz.

Fenugreek Seed (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.) 12 oz.

Alcohol (18%) to make 100 pints

This formula is believed to have been developed through reading King's American Dispensatory. J. Burton, in his biography, of Lydia Pinkham, 1949, claims the addition of 8 oz. of False Unicorn (Chamaelirium luteum). I seem to remember that as recently as the 1960s it had Angelica and Cimicifuga, when it was indicated for menstrual cramps as well as menopause. I read an excellent biography of her sometime in the 1970s which documents a number of formula changes over the years [that biography might be "Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine," by Sarah Stage, Norton, 1979, a great resource about Mrs. Pinkham and the patent medicine industry in the U.S.A.].

The current ingredients are:

Piscidia erthrina (Jamacian dogwood)

Asclepias tuberosa (Pleurisy root)

Glycyrhizia

Taraxacum officinale

Gentiana lutea

Leonarus cardiacus

Ferrous lactate

D-Alpha tocopherol

Ascorbic acid

Ethyl alcohol (13%)

It tastes strongly of the ferrous lactate and lacks the old punch, and is only suggested as a menopause formula. It is currently distributed by NUMARK Laboratories, of Edison, New Jersey, U.S.A.

Karen Vaughan

CreationsGarden@juno.com


The second e-letter arrived in February 2001:

Thank you for putting up the Web site. It is very interesting and enlightening.

You may wish to dignify Lydia Pinkham's compound by adding that the ingredients (iron, dogwood, pleurisy, licorice) contain a mineral and herbs which have been and are still being used by alternative, naturopathic, and traditional Chinese medicine to treat health problems such as iron deficiency anemia, adrenal exhaustion, fatigue, inflammations, respiratory diseases etc.

Information about pleurisy root and licorice herbs can be verified at

http://www.healthy.net/clinic/therapy/herbal/herbic/herbs/index.asp

Find dogwood at http://www.herbmed.org/

Alcohol remains a carrier liquid and preservative for herbal tinctures to this day.

Your comments about the alcohol being the only effective ingredient in Pinkham's compound are not true, and you should correct this.

Sincerely,

The third arrived in June 2009:

Great site and I've bookmarked it to spend some more time later.

But I noticed something i'd like to bring to your attention in the hopes of getting a correction, on your Lydia Pinkham

page<http://www.mum.org/MrsPink1.htm>

*Even though Mrs. Pinkham had been in the temperance movement, as a student of phrenology she had studied human nature, and almost 20% of her concoction was alcohol, which she said acted "as [a] solvent and preservative," certainly solving many a problem and preserving not a few of her fellow citizens. Many similar medicines of the past used alcohol as the active ingredient, (continued below picture) which was often the only way respectable women were able to enjoy the intoxicant. And during the banning of alcoholic beverages in America, especially in the 1920s, the Pinkham "medicine" enjoyed its greatest success.*

I myself am an herbalist, making some of my own herbal preparations and also serving as *an independent distributor*<http://www.mynsp.com/home-remedies-that-work>for Nature's Sunshine Products (over 600, many herbal formulas). I am involved in this work because herbs are, quite simply, magical in use and for the most part utterly benign when used responsibly and knowledgeably. So I'm a big fan of Mrs. Pinkham, partly because of her accomplishments (I'm also a feminist), and especially for making herbal remedies available to women and quite a few men as well since the menstrual products weren't the only ones she produced.

So naturally I object to the disdainful, disapproving tone in this passage which imagines -- and implies -- that the 20% alcohol content was what was *really *being delivered in her products and that people may not have been getting any value other than that from her remedies. As late as the 1960s, when I was a pre-teen, my mother still had a little bottle of Lydia Pinkham's Little Liver Pills in her medicine cabinet and every now and then, I was told I needed to take a few.

For some of her products, aIcohol was absolutely required. For one thing, it's the medium used to make herbal tinctures. Alochol (brandy or vodka or even grain alcohol) extracts the consituents from the herb and, just as she claimed, serves as a preservative. Because of its resulting strength, one takes a dropperful or two at a time of a tinctured herb or herbal formula, instead of having to make and drink a whole cup or two of tea several times a day.

In times past, there were only so many ways to preserve food products (and herbs are a type of food) without refrigeration -- preserving with alcohol, preserving in vinegar (pickles), preserving via natural fermentation (saurkraut, kimchee, etc.), perserving with sugar (jams and jellies) and canning. Only alcohol (and to a less reliable extent vinegar) also draws out the properties of the herb into the medium, allowing the now spent plant material to be discarded, and the tincture saved for future health needs -- a dropperful or two at a time

Now, a 20% alcohol product was clearly not a tincture -- perhaps a strong tea (infusion or decoction) -- but even so, how could one preserve it in those days without alcohol? Nowadays we have modern processing which would essentially "can" a product like that -- like our fruit and vegetable juices or anything else in bottles or jars -- but the product then requires refrigeration if not immediately consumed. Mrs. Pinkham could hardly expect that all her customers had refrigeration ("ice boxes" in the day).

So, not only is the passage in question not fully informed, but I find it a tad sexist, too, to imply that women only used Mrs. Pinkham's products so they could surreptitiously imbibe. If that happened -- and I assume it did on occasion -- there were still plenty of women AND men who were using the products as specified for the herbal health benefit, just as my mother (and I) did. And truly, we have absolutely no evidence -- merely an obvioius anti-herbal remedy bias -- that any of her products were ineffective or worthless. I happen to know from personal experience that they weren't.

Thanks for your attention to this matter.

Patricia Santhuff

*http://www.mynsp.com/Home-Remedies-That-Work*<http://www.mynsp.com/
Home-Remedies-That-Work>

NEXT: Trade card: little girl and cat - See more Mrs. Pinkham, below (and see her first page)

The Schlesinger Library, of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, part of Harvard University, has probably the largest collection of material about the Pinkham enterprise, the records of the Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company.
Part of the donation of SarahAnne Hazelwood to this museum, much of it patent medicine and old medical equipment, was a very interesting biography and study of Mrs. Pinkham's business, Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine, by Sarah Stage.
See modern home remedies here.
post card of Stanford University, a bottle for Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, mending kit, booklet Stretching Your Dollar, bottles for her Blood Medicine and (just plain) Medicine, Home Talks, Private Text-Book Upon Ailments Peculiar to Women, Fruits and Candies booklet, and a modern bottle, box and instructions for her Tablets. A discussion of the letter testimonials, and their authenticity, of the Pinkham company (in a discussion of a Pursettes ad with a letter testimonial)
See two letters to MUM about the ingredients of her Compound, and one about the lyrics of an English pop song, Lily the Pink, about her.
Other amazing women: Nelli Bly, Dr. Marie Stopes, Dr. Grace Feder Thompson
See also the patent medicine Cardui, Dr. Grace Feder Thompson's letter appealing for patients, Dr. Pierce's medicines, and Orange Blossom medicine.
© 1998, 2005 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute work on this Web site in any manner or medium without written permission of the author. Please report suspected violations to hfinley@mum.org