The Patent Medicine Trade Cards Collection is a digital collection of 247 patent medicine trade cards found in United States, Canada, Belgium, and Hungary between the 1870 and and 1906. Some are in English, and others are in French and German. Patent medicines were not actually patented, but they were trademarked medicines that were sold under a variety of names and labels. These cards advertised, most of the time falsely, the many cures a particular medicine can bring. They were small and colorfully illustrated to draw in the attention of the public. In 1906, the first Pure Food and Drug Act passed ending the era of patent medicine.
The collection contains the metadata for each of the cards, describing what the card is advertising and what the illustration shows. Sometimes, the cards have a long introduction or description on the back about the advertised medicine. The site allows for zooming in/out of the illustration, turning pages, viewing full screen, and clicking on hyperlinked descriptions. It also gives information about where and when the card originated from, format of the card, language, name and place of the publisher, and related concept topics. You can search the collection by coverage, language, name, subject, and type.
Based on all of these information, the viewer can have a sense of what types of medicine were advertised, how they were advertised, what the recurring themes of the trade card illustrations were, what ailments were mentioned frequently, and what the differences and similarities were between the trade cards based on geographical locations. The viewer can also wonder what might have led to the Pure Food and Drug Act to be passed in 1906. How outrageous were the claims? Also, what kind of drawing and coloring styles were used?
However, due to the limited amount of information about the cards, the collection won’t be able to tell a richer story. For example, were the cards successful in bringing in more customers? Were the customers satisfied? How were they distributed? What part did the trade cards play in the passing of Pure Food and Drug Act? How were medicine advertised and sold before and after the trade cards? What led to the creation of trade cards? How many of them were made each time, and how long were they in circulation? In order to find out more about the patent medicine trade cards, the viewer needs to look to other sources than this collection, such as articles, manuscripts, documents, secondary research, etc. This digital collection may provide the base for research on patent medicine, but it needs much more supporting evidence to further a more detailed and effective scholarly work.