Advertisement for 'Carter's Little Liver Pills'
Trade card, 1900
This is a small trade card advertising the
very popular patent medicine, Carter's Little Liver Pills. Trade
cards were a common means of advertising and were printed by the
hundreds then handed out in various public places. This one shows
the company's trademark black crow sitting on a tree branch, a red
banner in its beak advertising the product. The pills were first
manufactured in 1868 when Dr Samuel Carter of Erie, Pennsylvania
devised a formula that he thought was 'good for sick headache,
torpid liver, indigestion, constipation or what-ails-you'. The
formula included podophyllum resin from dried mandrake root
combined with dried aloes juice, and bisacodyl as the active
ingredient. The back of the card claims that the pills cure
'headache, biliousness, constipation, etc.' and are 'strictly
vegetable'.