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Women

Images of women have always been featured in product advertisements, and large collections of medical ephemera could be built on this theme alone. A special genre of such ephemera is the group of publications dealing with women's diseases, and the champion in this area is undoubtedly the Lydia Pinkham Medicine Company. The firm published more than one hundred booklets on various subjects which would be expected to be of interest to women - on cooking, picnics, famous women, beauty tips, etc., each of them carrying notices of Lydia Pinkham products. Mrs. Pinkham's warm grandmotherly face played a prominent part in much of the company's promotional material. Further, there are postcards, trade cards and even popular songs the subject of which is the female physician, more unusual in earlier times than today. Much more widespread is the ephemera dealing with nurses and nursing, an almost exclusively female profession until recently. Many of the items relating to both female physicians or nurses are designed to be humorous, such ephemera revealing the political incorrectness of prior periods.