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Speaker 1: Pushkin. A fearful tragedy, declared the newspaper, all caps, of

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Speaker 1: course it was, after all the eighteen eighties. A fearful tragedy.

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Speaker 1: A clergyman of Stanford, Connecticut, killed by his own wife.

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Speaker 1: But why? What were the circumstances? Could the tragedy have

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Speaker 1: been prevented? Never fear The full explanation is forthcoming. But

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Speaker 1: be warned, this is not actually a news report. It's

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Speaker 1: an advertisement, apparently based on a true story. A fearful tragedy,

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Speaker 1: A clergyman of Stratford, Connecticut, killed by his own wife,

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Speaker 1: insanity brought on by sixteen years of suffering with female complaints.

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Speaker 1: The cards lydia E. Pinkham's vegetable compound. They're sure cure

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Speaker 1: for these complaints would have prevented the direful deed. Well, well,

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Speaker 1: it's quite a tale and quite a claim. Gather around,

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Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, and take a comfortable seat, for I

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Speaker 1: am about to tell you a tale of direful deeds

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Speaker 1: are plenty, and of female complaints, and of the most

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Speaker 1: efficacious vegetable compounds you could wish for. I'm Tim Harford,

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Speaker 1: and you're listening to cautionary tales. Lydia Estes Pinkham was

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Speaker 1: born Lydia Estes in the city of Lynn, Massachusetts, in

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Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen, the tenth child of a modestly wealthy family

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Speaker 1: of Quakers. If you'd met Lydia as a young woman,

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Speaker 1: you wouldn't have imagined that she'd get into the business

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Speaker 1: of herbal treatments for female complaints. She would have seemed

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Speaker 1: more like a social activist, even an anti racist. Lydia,

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Speaker 1: her mother, and some of her sisters were among the

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Speaker 1: founder members of the Lynn Female Antislavery Society. Lydia and

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Speaker 1: her sister Julie Elma were friends with a great abolitionist activist,

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Speaker 1: Frederick Douglas. He was about their age and had moved

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Speaker 1: to Lynn after escaping slavery, and the girls put their

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Speaker 1: reputation on the line for Frederick Douglas. Lydia stood in

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Speaker 1: the way of a railroad conductor who was trying to

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Speaker 1: send Douglas to the car reserved for blacks and irish

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Speaker 1: the Quaker faith because it wasn't staunch enough in its

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Speaker 1: demands for the abolition of slavery. Julie Elma created a

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Speaker 1: scandal after being seen walking arm in arm with Douglas.

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Speaker 1: She was thrown out of her church when she refused

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Speaker 1: to rule out marrying a black man. Color would make

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Speaker 1: no difference to me in a husband. I would look

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Speaker 1: only upon a man's character. Both Lydia and Julie Elmer

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Speaker 1: were founding members of a new Debating and Lecture Society.

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Speaker 1: No person shall be excluded from full participation in any

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Speaker 1: of the operations of this Society on account of sex, complexion,

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Speaker 1: or religious or political opinions. Frederick Douglas became the society's

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Speaker 1: president and Lydia its secretary. A debating society upholding feminism,

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Speaker 1: anti racism, and religious tolerance. It's quite a start to

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Speaker 1: a remarkable career. Then came the second stage of Lydia's life,

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Speaker 1: that of wife and mother. At the age of twenty four,

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Speaker 1: she married one of her fellow debaters, Isaac Pinkham, a

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Speaker 1: widower and a gentleman, described by a contemporary as kindly

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Speaker 1: but of no great vigor. That seems implausible. For one thing,

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Speaker 1: the Pinkham's had four sons and a daughter. For another,

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Speaker 1: Isaac's problem seemed less to be lack of vigor, but

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Speaker 1: restless activity. He had big dreams and questionable business judgment.

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Speaker 1: Lydia's father had given them a house in the center

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Speaker 1: of the city that Isaac, always with an eye on

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Speaker 1: the next prize, sold up and moved the family eight times.

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Speaker 1: As a career. He tried first shoemaking, then kerosene manufacturing

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Speaker 1: and produced, training, farming, and building. Lydia's biographer, Sarah Stage

58
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Speaker 1: writes that he changed occupations as often as some people

59
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Speaker 1: changed clothes. Lydia Pinkham, meanwhile, was trying to keep everything

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Speaker 1: together at home. Lydia's second son, Daniel, died in infancy

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Speaker 1: of gastro enteritis. It must have been terribly hard and

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Speaker 1: all too common in the nineteenth century. She also named

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Speaker 1: her next baby Daniel. Life had to go on, and

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Speaker 1: go on it did. One of Lydia's many housewifely chores

65
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Speaker 1: was to brew up a vegetable tonic at home. This

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Speaker 1: wasn't unusual. Home Brewed medicines were ubiquitous since doctors were

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Speaker 1: expensive and of doubtful help, and disease was an ever

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Speaker 1: present threat. Lydia Pinkham's tonic was based on an existing formula,

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Speaker 1: adapted after some kitchen experiments and a close reading of

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Speaker 1: the American dispensatory, a comprehensive description of herbs and their

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Speaker 1: medical uses. Her tonic contained a variety of botanical ingredients,

72
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Speaker 1: including golden ragwort, unicorn root, fenugreek, butterfly weed, black cohosh,

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Speaker 1: and alcohol. It was, in her opinion, the finest remedy

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Speaker 1: of my experience, remedy for what four female complaints? Of course, painful,

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Speaker 1: irregular or heavy menstruation, a prolapsed uterus, menopausal symptoms, etc. Etc.

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Speaker 1: Lydia gave away pints of the stuff to her neighbors.

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Speaker 1: It was only in eighteen seventy five, after Isaac Pinkham's

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Speaker 1: latest scheme real estate speculation catastrophically failed, that Lydia was

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Speaker 1: finally tempted into commerce. She was in her mid fifties,

80
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Speaker 1: her father was long dead, the family money long spent,

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Speaker 1: and the Pinkham's desperately needed some cash. The story goes

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Speaker 1: that two strangers rode up to the Pinkham residence in

83
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Speaker 1: a handsome carriage, said they'd come five miles up the

84
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Speaker 1: coast from and offered Lydia five dollars for six bottles

85
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Speaker 1: of her famous vegetable compound that was easily a week's wages.

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Speaker 1: And although somewhat embarrassed, Lydia Pinkham accepted the price and

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Speaker 1: made the sale. It was the start of the third

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Speaker 1: and most remarkable phase of Lydia Pinkham's life, that of

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Speaker 1: HeLa entrepreneur and agony aunt, all rolled into one. The

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Speaker 1: idea first came from her twenty seven year old son Dan, mother,

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Speaker 1: if those ladies will come all the way from Salem

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Speaker 1: to get that medicine, why can it not be sold

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Speaker 1: to other people? Why can't we go into the business

94
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Speaker 1: of making it and selling it same as any other medicine.

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Speaker 1: Lydia Pinkham and her children put Lydia's vegetable compound on

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Speaker 1: the market, promoting it with matronly images of Lydia E.

97
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Speaker 1: Pinkham herself, and promoting the tonic with a four page

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Speaker 1: pamphlet from which Lydia offered frank health advice buy a

99
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Speaker 1: woman for women. Dan Pinkham set out to spread the

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Speaker 1: word of his mother's miraculous vegetable compound. He paced the

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Speaker 1: streets of Boston and New York, hustling for sales to

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Speaker 1: drug stores, going door to door handing out leaflets, haggling

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Speaker 1: with printers over the cost of printing those leaflets and

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Speaker 1: writing letters home asking for money for God's sake? Whose

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Speaker 1: management is it that keeps me from having what I

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Speaker 1: actually need? Now? In consequence of your cuss judgment, I

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Speaker 1: shall have to live upon a cracker diet. There is

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Speaker 1: no use in writing I actually can't spare three cents

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00:08:46,050 --> 00:08:50,570
Speaker 1: to buy a stamp with. Dan's advertising ideas were imaginative

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Speaker 1: but impractical. He littered New York's parks and graveyards with

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Speaker 1: little cards with faux handwritten notes on them, giving the

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Speaker 1: impression that someone had been meaning to post a message

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00:09:03,250 --> 00:09:07,530
Speaker 1: recommending Lydia E. Pinkham's vegetable compound to a friend, but

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Speaker 1: had dropped the car before it reached the mailbox. Several

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Speaker 1: thousand times, Dan also fantasized about draping a banner from

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Speaker 1: one end of the Brooklyn Bridge to the other. His

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Speaker 1: younger brother, Will was working smarter, not harder. After making

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Speaker 1: a big sale to the Boston wholesaler Weeks and Potter,

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Speaker 1: Will Pinkham swung past the offices of the Boston Herald

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Speaker 1: and asked how much it would cost to put an

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Speaker 1: advertisement with his mother's picture on the front page. Sixty

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Speaker 1: dollars came the response. Will Pinkham had eighty four dollars

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Speaker 1: in his pocket, so he slapped down the cash and

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Speaker 1: went home to tell his mother what he had done

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Speaker 1: to her. It was a disastrous echo of her rash

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Speaker 1: husband's business gambles. That was like a thunderclap out of

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Speaker 1: a clear sky. And we all sat down and had

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Speaker 1: a good cry. But within two days order from Boston

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00:10:10,010 --> 00:10:14,770
Speaker 1: drug stores emptied the Pinkham stock of vegetable compound. Stores

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Speaker 1: which had bought a dozen bottles at a time, now

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Speaker 1: placed orders for a hundred or more. The lesson was clear.

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Speaker 1: It pays to advertise, especially if you advertise with the

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Speaker 1: matronly image of lydia E Pinkham. Lydia E Pinkham's Vegetable

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Speaker 1: Compound cures female complaints such as dragging sensations, week back,

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Speaker 1: falling and displacements, inflammation and ulceration, and organic diseases, and

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Speaker 1: it dissolves and expels tumors at an early stage. Women

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Speaker 1: suffering from any form of female weakness are invited to

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Speaker 1: write Missus Pinkham Lynn, Massachusetts for advice. The Pinkham's bought

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Speaker 1: another front page advert the following week and got much

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Speaker 1: the same result. As they sank more money into advertising,

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00:11:05,170 --> 00:11:09,570
Speaker 1: sales continued to soar. Missus Pinkham was on her way

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Speaker 1: to having one of the most famous faces in America.

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Speaker 1: Hair in a bun, slightly graying neck, concealed by a

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Speaker 1: starchy ruff, fastened centrally by a simple brooch. She was

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Speaker 1: the very picture of middle aged respectability and wisdom. Her

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Speaker 1: vegetable compound would soon become legendary. It's the all American

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00:11:30,970 --> 00:11:35,130
Speaker 1: rags to riches story. But there is one nagging question.

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Speaker 1: Did the vegetable compound cure anything? The tonic consisted of

149
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Speaker 1: a few herbs preserved with a generous splash of booze.

150
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Speaker 1: The advertising claimed it was so efficacious for female complaints

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Speaker 1: that it would prevent menstruating or menopausal women from direfully

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Speaker 1: murdering their husbands, even that it would prevent cancer. Was

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Speaker 1: that actually true? It wasn't a question that people seemed

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Speaker 1: to be interested in asking cautionary tales will return after

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Speaker 1: the break. Missus Pinkham was not the first entrepreneur to

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Speaker 1: make money selling unusual concoctions. The wave of enthusiasm for

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Speaker 1: such remedies had begun before she was born. Oddly, These

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Speaker 1: remedies were called patent medicines, although no patents were involved. Instead,

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Speaker 1: entrepreneurs used trademarks to protect their brand image, which is

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Speaker 1: telling in its own right. This was a world of

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Speaker 1: style and snake oil over substance, and fakes and quacks prospered.

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Speaker 1: As a newspaper editor complained as early as eighteen hundred,

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Speaker 1: the vendors of patent medicines in almost every capital town

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Speaker 1: in the United States are fattering on the weakness and

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Speaker 1: folly of a deluded public. One of those vendors was

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Speaker 1: Thomas Diet, a penniless immigrant from England looking to make

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Speaker 1: a mark on Philadelphia. By day, he polished shoes. By night,

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00:13:20,450 --> 00:13:24,090
Speaker 1: he manufactured the black shoe polish. He soon had more

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Speaker 1: shoe polish than he could use. Opened a store, then

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00:13:27,330 --> 00:13:31,650
Speaker 1: a warehouse, then a bottle factory, before finally realizing that

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00:13:31,730 --> 00:13:35,090
Speaker 1: if he was to spend his days putting gloop into

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Speaker 1: bottles and medicinal gloop would be far more profitable. Even

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Speaker 1: at the time, there were many critics of such tonics

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Speaker 1: and potions. They would be dismissed as trumpery, by which

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Speaker 1: they meant fraud or showy nonsense. It's a good word,

176
00:13:52,050 --> 00:13:56,090
Speaker 1: but the critics didn't dampen the vigorous demand, and Thomas

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Speaker 1: Diet took full advantage. Diet sold a wide variety of cures,

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Speaker 1: his own concoctions, the popular medicines of his rivals, and

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Speaker 1: above all treatments perfected by his grandfather, the noted Doctor

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Speaker 1: Robertson of Edinburgh. Doctor Robertson's vegetable nervous cordial, Doctor Robertson's

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Speaker 1: gout and rheumatic drops, Doctor Robertson's infallible worm destroying lozenges,

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Speaker 1: and Doctor Robertson's cure for a certain disease presumably something

183
00:14:29,570 --> 00:14:34,970
Speaker 1: or everything involving the male never regions. Diet was proud

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Speaker 1: of his ancestor, doctor Robertson, despite the fact that the

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Speaker 1: Philadelphia Medical Journal scathingly explained that there had been no

186
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Speaker 1: noted doctor Robertson in Edinburgh for two centuries. No matter,

187
00:14:51,090 --> 00:14:54,370
Speaker 1: Thomas Diet was soon claiming to be a physician himself,

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Speaker 1: and more to the point, by the eighteen thirties he

189
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Speaker 1: was enormously wealthy, making the equivalent of ten million dollars

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00:15:02,890 --> 00:15:06,210
Speaker 1: a year. He kept a grand estate and was driven

191
00:15:06,210 --> 00:15:11,010
Speaker 1: around in a fine English coach with half a dozen outriders.

192
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Speaker 1: He kept expanding his operations, even setting up a bank.

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Speaker 1: Why was he so successful, certainly because he was a

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Speaker 1: master of vivid, clever advertising. But was it because his

195
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Speaker 1: worm destroying lozenges actually were infallible? Not a chance. And

196
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Speaker 1: when Diet's fortunes turned, which they did in eighteen thirty seven,

197
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Speaker 1: it wasn't because people stopped buying useless treatments from a

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Speaker 1: fake doctor with an imaginary grandfather. It was because Diet's

199
00:15:43,210 --> 00:15:47,290
Speaker 1: bank collapsed in the midst of a nationwide banking panic.

200
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Speaker 1: If he'd stuck to selling the nonexistent doctor Robertson's far

201
00:15:52,250 --> 00:15:58,770
Speaker 1: from infallible worm destroying lozenges, he'd have been fine. Why

202
00:15:58,890 --> 00:16:02,690
Speaker 1: do people buy treatments without any evidence that they work?

203
00:16:03,250 --> 00:16:07,170
Speaker 1: In some ways, it's a timeless question. As Lydia Pinkham

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Speaker 1: was perfecting her vegetable compound in the eighteen seventies, Western

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00:16:12,050 --> 00:16:17,130
Speaker 1: Egyptologists that just obtained a papyrus which contained detailed accounts

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00:16:17,210 --> 00:16:22,410
Speaker 1: of Egyptian medical practice from fifteen hundred BCE three and

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Speaker 1: a half thousand years ago, and, as one medical historian explains,

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Speaker 1: quackery is an ancient tradition these papyri, the oldest proper

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00:16:33,970 --> 00:16:38,210
Speaker 1: medical instructions of our species, contained potions and salves and

210
00:16:38,330 --> 00:16:43,450
Speaker 1: drugs whose effectiveness was a fantasy. The first doctors in

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Speaker 1: the world were frauds. For the next three and a

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Speaker 1: half thousand years, little changed. Even today, there are plenty

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Speaker 1: of phony cures, especially when conventional medicine can't help. Quackery

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Speaker 1: abhores a vacuum. So when the SSARS CoV two virus

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Speaker 1: was discovered in early twenty twenty and no proven treatment

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Speaker 1: or vaccine was available for COVID, within weeks people were

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Speaker 1: on social media recommending special red soap or treatments for malaria,

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Speaker 1: or even using a USB flash drive as a BioShield.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot of money to be made by selling

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Speaker 1: snake oil to the fearful or desperate. But while quackery

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Speaker 1: began at least three and a half thousand years ago

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Speaker 1: and continues to the present day, its golden age may

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Speaker 1: have been the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the age

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Speaker 1: of doctor Robertson's worm destroying lozenges and Missus lydia E.

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Speaker 1: Pinkham's vegetable compound. A few years ago, the economist Werner

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Speaker 1: Truscan published a study of the US market for unproven

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Speaker 1: concoctions in this golden age. He concluded that even after

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Speaker 1: adjusting for inflation, people spent more than a hundred times

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Speaker 1: as much on these dubious patent medicines in nineteen thirty nine,

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Speaker 1: firmly in the oddern age than they had back in

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Speaker 1: eighteen ten, when Thomas diet was just starting out. Across

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Speaker 1: that period, demand for patent medicines grew twenty times faster

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Speaker 1: than the economy as a whole, and these strange potions

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Speaker 1: became a major industry in their own right. So why

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Speaker 1: did people buy them? The simple answer, sometimes they made

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Speaker 1: people feel better. There are two reasons for that. One

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Speaker 1: is the placebo effect. People do often benefit simply from

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Speaker 1: the belief that they're being treated. Many quack medicines included

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Speaker 1: ingredients such as chili, alcohol, and opium, producing plausible highs, lows,

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Speaker 1: and tingles. The chili was fine, the opium was a problem.

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Speaker 1: Parents could and tragically sometimes did, medicate their own children

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Speaker 1: to death lydia. Pinkham's vegetable compound contained neither chili nor opium.

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Speaker 1: That it was twenty percent alcohol, making it to drink

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Speaker 1: as strong as port or sherry. A small glass of that,

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Speaker 1: and well, you might indeed relax and feel a little

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Speaker 1: differently about your female complaints. And then there's the fact

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Speaker 1: that most people who feel bad feel better in due course.

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Speaker 1: If they're suffering from an infection, the immune system kicks

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Speaker 1: in period pains pass with each monthly cycle. The symptoms

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Speaker 1: of menopause usually fade after a few years. And if

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Speaker 1: you happen to be taking medicine when your sufferings a bait,

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Speaker 1: well perhaps you'll give the medicine the benefit of the

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Speaker 1: doubt and tell your friends. There was another reason for

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Speaker 1: the popularity of patent medicines. People bought them because they

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Speaker 1: didn't trust the doctors. The doctors of the day had

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Speaker 1: a habit of prescribing calamel, a compound of mercury, which

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Speaker 1: was distinctly toxic and caused inflamed gums and ashen complexion

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Speaker 1: and in extreme cases are rotting away of the or

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Speaker 1: Women in particular had reason to be wary of doctors.

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Speaker 1: In the nineteenth century, evidence was slowly emerging that physicians

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Speaker 1: were accidentally killing their female patients by attending births while

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Speaker 1: their hands were contaminated from disease from other patients or

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Speaker 1: from dissecting corpses. The medical profession, however, was outraged at

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Speaker 1: this suggestion and refused to consider the evidence that it

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Speaker 1: was true. Charles D. Meegs, an American obstetrician, sputtered that

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Speaker 1: doctors a gentleman, and gentleman's hands are clean if the

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Speaker 1: alternative was jaw rotting, calamel, crude surgery, or death from

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Speaker 1: infection after a doctor prodded your uterus with cadaver juice

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Speaker 1: under his fingernails, all at vast expense. Well small wonder

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Speaker 1: that people flocked to the patent medicine cellars, especially those

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Speaker 1: like Lydia Pinkham, who offered relief for female complaints. It's

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Speaker 1: hard to read the economist Werna Truskan's research without thinking

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Speaker 1: not just of the trumpery of patent medicines, but trumpery

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Speaker 1: of the more political kind. All across the world, left

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Speaker 1: and particularly right wing populists have been in the ascendancy,

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Speaker 1: while old fashioned centrists have been out of fashion. The

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00:21:30,370 --> 00:21:36,090
Speaker 1: parallels are inescapable populists, like patent medicine sellers, often suggest

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Speaker 1: approaches which offer a short term pick me up, even

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Speaker 1: if they only make things worse over time. Populists like

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Speaker 1: patent medicine sellers thrive when the establishment has let people down.

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Speaker 1: The doctors of the nineteenth century talked confidently, but looked

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Speaker 1: down on their clients and offered their own ineffective remedies.

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Speaker 1: Are political centrists so different Today? Populists, like patent medicine sellers,

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Speaker 1: rely on marketing huge adverts, bold claims, attention grabbing stunts.

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Speaker 1: In the nineteenth century, it was common for quack medicine

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Speaker 1: sellers to operate alongside a circus. Modern populists try to

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Speaker 1: generate a circus all of their own, and populists, like

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Speaker 1: patent medicine sellers, are quick to claim that the people

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Speaker 1: are on their side. Consider this newspaper editorial from eighteen

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Speaker 1: eighty one. There is no such thing as medical authority.

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Speaker 1: The people are and are obliged to be the only

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Speaker 1: judges of medicine and of physicians. The people are the

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Speaker 1: only true judges, and the people have had enough of experts.

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Speaker 1: If people like what's on offer, whether it's tough talk

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Speaker 1: about immigration or a vegetable compound, well, isn't that all

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Speaker 1: the proof of effectiveness that anyone would need? It? Was

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00:22:58,450 --> 00:23:02,210
Speaker 1: a tempting claim about patent medicines then, and it's attempting

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Speaker 1: claim about politics today, because one thing that infuriates people,

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Speaker 1: whether the reactionary voters of today or the suffering patience

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Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, it's feeling that you're not being

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Speaker 1: listened to by the people who should be looking after you.

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Speaker 1: Listening to people was something Lydia Pinkham did very well. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: dear Missus Pinkham, I have been afflicted with a malady

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Speaker 1: that my physician, frankly tells me that he has never

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Speaker 1: met with before, and I write to ask you the

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00:23:34,570 --> 00:23:38,210
Speaker 1: cause and what the cure is. It is an affection

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00:23:38,290 --> 00:23:41,530
Speaker 1: of the gums and mucous membrane of the mouth. The

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00:23:41,650 --> 00:23:45,090
Speaker 1: gums turn white and a layer easily rubs off, leaving

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Speaker 1: them very red and angry. The inside of my cheeks

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00:23:49,370 --> 00:23:52,050
Speaker 1: and corners of my jar are white and look and

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00:23:52,250 --> 00:23:57,610
Speaker 1: feel hot. Such letters to Missus Pinkham were common adverts

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Speaker 1: for the Pinkham Company actively encouraged suffering women to write

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Speaker 1: in for advice. No man would ever read their letter,

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Speaker 1: they were assured. In this case. Lydia Pinkham's response was,

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Speaker 1: to the point, you have taken virulent poisons in the

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00:24:13,890 --> 00:24:18,210
Speaker 1: form of medicine that has coresed disease of the mucous membranes.

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Speaker 1: It's the typical response of the quack healer blame mainstream

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Speaker 1: medicine for the affliction. But given that these symptoms were

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Speaker 1: typical of calamel poisoning, Pinkham was probably right. Missus Pinkham

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Speaker 1: recommended instead the dry form of her compound, which was

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Speaker 1: alcohol free, supplemented by some healthy living Bathe yourself all

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Speaker 1: over every night in hot water, eat farinaceous food and broths,

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Speaker 1: ride out and walk out, dig use the trowel, take

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Speaker 1: the compound according to instructions, and let doctors alone. That

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00:24:54,930 --> 00:24:58,090
Speaker 1: might work, or it might not, but it sounds better

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Speaker 1: than calamel. Unlike the doctors, Missus Pinkham seemed to be listening,

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Speaker 1: and she was listening with the benefit of her own experience,

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Speaker 1: as one of the Pinkham upon his advice books explained,

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Speaker 1: it takes a woman to understand a woman. Take, for instance,

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Speaker 1: the long list of diseases and discomforts which come directly

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Speaker 1: from some derangement of the female generative organs. Do you

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Speaker 1: think it possible for a man to understand these things.

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Speaker 1: That still doesn't answer the question of whether Lydia E.

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00:25:32,570 --> 00:25:37,690
Speaker 1: Pinkham's vegetable compound actually worked. But then what did the

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Speaker 1: doctors have to offer that was better nothing. The Pinkham

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Speaker 1: Company was set up as a partnership between Lydia Pinkham's

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Speaker 1: four children, and it remained within the family for decades.

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Speaker 1: But at the start of the twentieth century, the Pinkham's

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Speaker 1: became a tempting target for a backlash against patent medicines

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Speaker 1: in general. In nineteen oh five, Edward Bok, the editor

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Speaker 1: of The Ladies Home Journal, launched a ferocious attack on

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Speaker 1: the Pinkham's. He published a discomforting pair of contrasting images.

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Speaker 1: On the left, her recent advertisement for Lydia Pinkham's vegetable compound,

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Speaker 1: urging women to write to missus Pinkham for advice. On

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Speaker 1: the right, a photograph of an ornate monument in a

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Speaker 1: cemetery in Lynn, Massachusetts, to Lydia E. Pinkham, showing that

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Speaker 1: she had died on May the seventeenth, eighteen eighty three,

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Speaker 1: twenty two years earlier. The implication was clear the Pinkham's

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00:26:44,450 --> 00:27:07,050
Speaker 1: were liars. Cautionary tales will return after the break Edward

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00:27:07,090 --> 00:27:11,610
Speaker 1: Box attack was an uncomfortable moment for the Pinkham family business,

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00:27:11,730 --> 00:27:15,730
Speaker 1: which was being run by Lydia's son Charles. They were

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Speaker 1: encouraging people to write to Missus Pinkham, but Missus Pinkham

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Speaker 1: had been dead since the early years of the company.

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00:27:23,330 --> 00:27:26,970
Speaker 1: The Pinkham defense was to brazen it out. They issued

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Speaker 1: a statement noting that the Missus Pinkham mentioned in the

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Speaker 1: advertisement was Lydia's daughter in lawd Jenny, and she supervised

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Speaker 1: the company's correspondence with female customers. The company explained that

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Speaker 1: they had never claimed that Lydia E. Pinkham answered all

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Speaker 1: the letters, and declared optimistically that the general public understands

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00:27:47,650 --> 00:27:52,410
Speaker 1: this very well. But why were prominent commentators such as

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Speaker 1: Edward bock so keen to attack the Pinkham operation. Not

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Speaker 1: because there was any suggestion that the vegetable compound did

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Speaker 1: not work. Nobody seemed to care about that. Instead, just

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Speaker 1: as Thomas Diet had been undone, not by selling phony

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00:28:08,850 --> 00:28:12,330
Speaker 1: cures but because of a bank run, campaigners such as

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00:28:12,370 --> 00:28:16,170
Speaker 1: Bok worried less about whether patent medicines helped women, and

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Speaker 1: more that they contained alcohol. One of Bok's articles was

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Speaker 1: titled The Patent Medicine Curse. It included a table showing

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Speaker 1: the alcohol content of Lydia, Pinkham's vegetable compound, and three

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Speaker 1: dozen other patent medicines. No woman has a moral right

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Speaker 1: to give a medicine to her child or to any

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Speaker 1: member of her family, or to take the medicine herself,

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Speaker 1: the ingredients of which either she does not know or

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Speaker 1: has not the assurance of a responsible physician to be harmless.

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00:28:47,810 --> 00:28:51,090
Speaker 1: Bok finished with a flourish arguing that to give a

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Speaker 1: medicine containing alcohol to a child would be to strike

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Speaker 1: at his very soul, planting the seed of a future drunkard.

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00:29:01,890 --> 00:29:05,570
Speaker 1: As for the women themselves, Bok sneered at their symptoms.

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Speaker 1: They feel sluggish after the all wind indoor confinement. They

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00:29:10,970 --> 00:29:16,530
Speaker 1: feel that their symptoms need a toning up. The idea

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00:29:16,610 --> 00:29:21,370
Speaker 1: that some women might be suffering agonizing, disabling pain doesn't

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00:29:21,410 --> 00:29:25,810
Speaker 1: seem to have occurred to Edward Boch. But then, despite

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00:29:25,850 --> 00:29:29,650
Speaker 1: the fact that he edited the Ladies home Journal, he

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00:29:29,770 --> 00:29:33,570
Speaker 1: was almost proud to declare, weirdly in the third person

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Speaker 1: that he knew nothing about them. It is a curious

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00:29:37,450 --> 00:29:41,770
Speaker 1: fact that Edward Bok's instinctive attitude towards women was one

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00:29:41,850 --> 00:29:46,330
Speaker 1: of avoidance. They had never interested him. Of women, therefore

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00:29:46,410 --> 00:29:49,810
Speaker 1: he knew little of their needs less, nor had he

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00:29:49,850 --> 00:29:52,930
Speaker 1: the slightest desire, even as an editor, to know them

390
00:29:52,970 --> 00:29:58,330
Speaker 1: better or seek to understand them. Three things, however, he

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00:29:58,450 --> 00:30:03,490
Speaker 1: did understand. First, the medicine contained alcohol. Second, in the

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00:30:03,530 --> 00:30:07,810
Speaker 1: opinion of Edward Bok, women were inventing their symptoms. And third,

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00:30:08,210 --> 00:30:10,730
Speaker 1: the Pinkham come and he was inviting women to write

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00:30:10,730 --> 00:30:14,450
Speaker 1: to Missus Pinkham even though Missus Pinkham was dead. What

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00:30:14,730 --> 00:30:19,970
Speaker 1: more did anyone want? Well, if you were suffering from

396
00:30:20,330 --> 00:30:25,930
Speaker 1: female complaints, perhaps a cure. The medical term for one

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00:30:26,090 --> 00:30:30,730
Speaker 1: particular form of female complaint is dysmenorrhea. We usually just

398
00:30:30,850 --> 00:30:34,810
Speaker 1: call it period pain, and it can be incapacitating in

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Speaker 1: its severity. The doctors of the late nineteenth and early

400
00:30:38,810 --> 00:30:42,730
Speaker 1: twentieth century didn't have much to offer beyond suggesting that

401
00:30:43,010 --> 00:30:46,850
Speaker 1: pregnancy was the natural cure. But surely we can do

402
00:30:46,930 --> 00:30:50,690
Speaker 1: better in the twenty first century, can't we. If you

403
00:30:50,730 --> 00:30:54,530
Speaker 1: search the medical literature, you won't find many treatments for

404
00:30:54,610 --> 00:30:59,410
Speaker 1: severe period pain. Exercise might help a bit. Maybe the

405
00:30:59,490 --> 00:31:03,170
Speaker 1: same is true for the contraceptive pill. Anti inflammatories such

406
00:31:03,210 --> 00:31:07,090
Speaker 1: as hyberprofen can help, Ginger might help. That's about it,

407
00:31:07,690 --> 00:31:12,650
Speaker 1: but intriguingly small study conducted in twenty thirteen reported that

408
00:31:12,730 --> 00:31:17,570
Speaker 1: a safe and widely used drug might provide total pain

409
00:31:17,690 --> 00:31:23,730
Speaker 1: relief over four consecutive hours for women suffering dysmenorrhea. Before

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00:31:23,730 --> 00:31:26,450
Speaker 1: you rush to get yourself a packet of this miracle drug,

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00:31:26,530 --> 00:31:28,930
Speaker 1: I'm afraid the study wasn't big enough to rely upon.

412
00:31:29,290 --> 00:31:32,130
Speaker 1: The researchers ran out of money and they struggled to

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00:31:32,130 --> 00:31:35,170
Speaker 1: get funding. Since you can read more about this in

414
00:31:35,330 --> 00:31:40,890
Speaker 1: Caroline Creado Perez's book Invisible Women, she interviewed the lead researcher,

415
00:31:41,250 --> 00:31:43,850
Speaker 1: who told her simply that he thought he'd never get

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00:31:43,850 --> 00:31:49,050
Speaker 1: funding for a full trial. So that's annoying. If you're

417
00:31:49,090 --> 00:31:52,890
Speaker 1: curious about what this promising little drug is, well, it

418
00:31:52,970 --> 00:31:56,450
Speaker 1: was originally tested in nineteen eighty nine as a treatment

419
00:31:56,490 --> 00:32:00,890
Speaker 1: for angina. It did not work. However, all of the

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00:32:00,970 --> 00:32:06,570
Speaker 1: trial participants were men, and they reported an intriguing side effect,

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00:32:07,090 --> 00:32:12,650
Speaker 1: magnificent erections, and so the drug syldenophil was repurposed and

422
00:32:12,810 --> 00:32:17,770
Speaker 1: put on the market as the wander drug viagra. You

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00:32:17,850 --> 00:32:20,570
Speaker 1: can't help, But wonder that if women had been on

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00:32:20,610 --> 00:32:25,010
Speaker 1: the original trial, we might also have fortuitously discovered that

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00:32:25,210 --> 00:32:30,330
Speaker 1: elusive treatment for severe period pain. As it was, men

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00:32:30,450 --> 00:32:34,850
Speaker 1: got their miracle drug, but women are still waiting. Given

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00:32:34,930 --> 00:32:38,530
Speaker 1: this performance from the medical mainstream, it's really no wonder

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00:32:38,530 --> 00:32:46,970
Speaker 1: that treatments such as Lydia Pinkham's vegetable compound thrive. Whether

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00:32:47,010 --> 00:32:49,770
Speaker 1: the Pinkham's really believed in the power of their own

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00:32:49,810 --> 00:32:55,290
Speaker 1: medicine is unclear. Letters from Lydia's sons Dan and Will

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00:32:55,650 --> 00:33:00,170
Speaker 1: suggest a certain degree of cynicism about that. But Lydia

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00:33:00,290 --> 00:33:03,970
Speaker 1: herself seems to have kept the faith in herbal remedies

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00:33:04,090 --> 00:33:07,930
Speaker 1: when the most testing times came. Here's her diary from

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00:33:08,090 --> 00:33:12,450
Speaker 1: eighteen seventeen nine, not long after the vegetable compound had

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00:33:12,490 --> 00:33:17,170
Speaker 1: become a best selling sensation. Daniel Sick in New York,

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00:33:17,770 --> 00:33:21,330
Speaker 1: recommended to take three of my liver pills, then steep

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00:33:21,370 --> 00:33:24,610
Speaker 1: one half ounce of pleurisy root and bugleweed and one

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00:33:24,650 --> 00:33:28,450
Speaker 1: half ounce of marshmallows, taken one half cup at a time,

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00:33:28,850 --> 00:33:34,010
Speaker 1: three or four times per day. Dan Pinkham Rallied but

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00:33:34,170 --> 00:33:39,250
Speaker 1: only for a time. In October eighteen eighty Dan Pinkham

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00:33:39,410 --> 00:33:45,370
Speaker 1: died stricken by tuberculosis. He was just thirty two. His

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00:33:45,490 --> 00:33:48,570
Speaker 1: brother Will had the same illness and was too sick

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00:33:48,650 --> 00:33:52,330
Speaker 1: to attend Dan's funeral. Will died at the age of

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00:33:52,410 --> 00:33:57,370
Speaker 1: twenty eight just two months later. Lydia Pinkham had lost

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00:33:57,570 --> 00:34:02,090
Speaker 1: three of her sons, Dan, Will, and the infant Daniel,

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00:34:02,410 --> 00:34:05,650
Speaker 1: and in all three cases the cause had been illnesses

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00:34:05,690 --> 00:34:11,130
Speaker 1: which are easily treatable. Today, medicine can make progress. That

448
00:34:11,170 --> 00:34:15,690
Speaker 1: progress doesn't come from overconfident doctoring, and it doesn't come

449
00:34:15,730 --> 00:34:20,650
Speaker 1: from a herbal tonic cleverly packaged up with some grandmotherly wisdom.

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00:34:20,650 --> 00:34:26,130
Speaker 1: Medical progress requires proper testing of treatments, the tests which

451
00:34:26,210 --> 00:34:30,170
Speaker 1: weren't done on Calamel and which still haven't been properly

452
00:34:30,170 --> 00:34:34,490
Speaker 1: conducted to see if viagra really can treat severe period pain.

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00:34:35,370 --> 00:34:38,690
Speaker 1: But you don't need scientific tests to make money out

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00:34:38,690 --> 00:34:42,050
Speaker 1: of people who are desperate for relief, and Lydia E.

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00:34:42,410 --> 00:34:47,050
Speaker 1: Pinkham's vegetable compound made plenty. Like the image of her

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00:34:47,090 --> 00:34:50,970
Speaker 1: old friend Frederick Douglas, Lydia's portrait became one of the

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00:34:51,010 --> 00:34:56,970
Speaker 1: most reproduced images in the world. Indeed, when Queen Victoria

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00:34:57,090 --> 00:35:02,010
Speaker 1: died in nineteen oh one newspaper. Editors across America often

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00:35:02,130 --> 00:35:06,290
Speaker 1: lacked a portrait of the monarch, so they decorated their

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00:35:06,330 --> 00:35:11,210
Speaker 1: reports and obituaries with the next thing, a picture of

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00:35:11,250 --> 00:35:16,850
Speaker 1: the late Lydia E. Pinkham. Close enough. If you don't

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00:35:16,890 --> 00:35:21,290
Speaker 1: have the real thing, you'll find something to fill the gap.

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00:35:42,650 --> 00:35:45,330
Speaker 1: The best history of Lydia Pinkham and the business of

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00:35:45,330 --> 00:35:50,290
Speaker 1: women's medicine is Female Complaints by Sarah Stage. For a

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00:35:50,290 --> 00:35:52,650
Speaker 1: full list of our sources, see the show notes at

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00:35:52,730 --> 00:35:58,690
Speaker 1: Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by me

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00:35:59,010 --> 00:36:03,690
Speaker 1: Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Alice Fines

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00:36:03,890 --> 00:36:08,130
Speaker 1: with support from Edith Ruslow. The sound design and original

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00:36:08,210 --> 00:36:11,890
Speaker 1: music is the word work of Pascal Wise. The show

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00:36:12,050 --> 00:36:15,050
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,

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00:36:15,370 --> 00:36:20,330
Speaker 1: Ryan Dilley, Julia Barton, Greta Cohne, Little Millard, John schnars

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00:36:20,690 --> 00:36:26,090
Speaker 1: Kylie Migliori, Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, and Morgan Ratner.

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00:36:27,210 --> 00:36:31,090
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales here's a production of Pushkin Industries. If you

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00:36:31,170 --> 00:36:34,610
Speaker 1: like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review.

475
00:36:34,770 --> 00:36:38,050
Speaker 1: It helps us for mysterious reasons and If you want

476
00:36:38,090 --> 00:36:41,250
Speaker 1: to hear the show, add free sign up for Pushkin

477
00:36:41,370 --> 00:36:44,530
Speaker 1: Plus on the show page and Apple Podcasts, or at

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00:36:44,570 --> 00:37:11,530
Speaker 1: pushkin dot fm, slash plus