A Baby in Every Bottle 

Elaine Luther | Forest Park, Illinois, USA 

Prior to the professionalization of medicine in the 18th and 19th centuries, women played a key role in the community as healers. In their 1973 pamphlet, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English write, “Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists of western history. They were abortionists, nurses and counsellors. They were pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, traveling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other, and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called ‘wise women’ by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright.”

In the archives of the Stewart-Swift Research Center, Elaine Luther found an 19th century advertisement for Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound which promised “a positive cure for all female complaints.” Luther writes, “When I encountered Lydia Pinkham, maker of the famous patent medicine in the archive, I thought she was a charlatan. As I read, I realized I’d been wrong about her. As a Quaker, she was educated and duty-bound to help others. Which she did by giving away her herbal tincture. After the economic crash of 1873, when her husband lost everything, her sons convinced her to sell the tincture. The herbs in her ‘vegetable formula’ really do help women with ‘female troubles,’ such as menstrual cramps and symptoms of menopause. Most patent medicine companies crashed and burned, while the Pinkham company endured. This suggests the product really helped. In addition to selling the tincture, the company also sold a birth control product that most of us wouldn’t recognize as such today. The douche formula contained boric acid, considered at the time a strong spermicide. The company was known for both its sensational ads and educational pamphlets, including one that explained women’s bodies to them, including their reproductive system and how pregnancy occurs. I have included images of both here, the ads, and a page from her pamphlet. The plant shown is black cohosh, an ingredient in her formula.”