Advertisement for the 'Clérambourg' laxative

Much of traditional western medicine is centred on the digestive system. For centuries medical practice regarded the waste products of digestion - urine and faeces - as the best indicators of what was happening inside the body. Many of the medicines prescribed were designed to promote digestion and evacuation. In the absence of invasive diagnostic instruments such as the endoscope, doctors reasoned by analogy between the digestive system and other systems such as those concerned with the blood, nerves and sweat. Inadequate evacuation was invoked as a cause of harmful or evil humours in the blood (causing for example syphilis and gout), to be counteracted by 'cleansing of the blood', through tonics, laxatives, and other therapies.
This colour lithograph poster advertises a medicine designed to clean the liver and blood and to free blockages in the intestine. The organs of the body are depicted in terms derived from 19th-century industrial machinery: the nervous system is shown as electrical wiring, the molars as mill-wheels, the lungs as bellows, the heart as a vacuum-pump, the arms as mechanical armatures, etc. The print shows the adaptability and persistence of ancient ideas in medical thought.