JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 1021
"When I'm playful I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales." --Mark Twain (Life on the Mississippi, 1883)
In this blog's continuing series on maps and propaganda come these two interesting and appealing examples, both appearing in England in the late 'teens though their histories are older than that. They do come from a much longer tradition of finding physical landmarks of the body by which to navigate biological and mental needs--bumps and blemishes of the head, "reading" blood and urine, general mechanical measurements of all sorts, and on and on, even so far as to include mapping the significance of the appearance and proximity of body moles and warts. (I addressed this earlier in a post on Mapping the Human Cosmos via Mole
s, here.)
The first image belongs to Beecham's Pills, long a staple of chemist/pharmacy and general goods sellers, which were basically patent medicine cure-alls composed of aloe, ginger and soap, and which found a happy market for more than 150 years (1842-1998). Evidently Beecham's did do something right in there somewhere, as they had some sort of positive effect on digestion. Other than that I don't know, though the little pills seem to not have caused any direct harm.
The company has a long and huge advertising history, though one of the favorites that I've seen from this early part of the 20th century had folks marching through the globe, and happy to be doing so so long as they had their care trusted to Beecham's.
Secondly is this odd bit that locates the center of one part of human health in the veins of head, showing that if you can indeed follow them like a map, then you're in trouble and need to ingest the product sponsoring the scare measure, Urodonal ("dissolves uric acid"). Urodonal is of French origins and dates back to at least 1874; it was a quack medicine composed of "pleasant herbs" which would cure all sorts of aliments relating to kidney distress, plus fatigue, tired feet, aching back and of course obesity.
The man in top hat was pointing to the Vesuvian vein with his cane, just in case you missed the thing. But I guess in the modern age when everyone must "take" something, the nonsense concoction of Urodonal was better than most because it--like Beecham's--didn't actually do anything nasty to your body. Unless of course you self-administered your medical care and relied solely on these agents for your necessary treatment for a real illness, which would mean trouble--and which is an entirely different story.
Did you know that Beechams advertising included an effort from legendarily bad poet William McGonagall? You can read it at http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/poems/opgbeechams.htm
Posted by: Chris Hunt | May 10, 2010 at 07:44 AM