YOUR remedies for menstrual period pain and
problems. See more remedies here.
A discussion of the letter testimonials,
and their authenticity, of the Pinkham company (in a discussion of a Pursettes
ad with a letter testimonial)
See two letters to MUM about the ingredients
of her Compound, and one about the lyrics of an English
pop song, Lily the Pink, about her.
Other amazing women: Nelli Bly,
Dr. Marie Stopes, Dr. Grace Feder Thompson
 
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The Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Co., maker of medicine for headaches,
stomach illness, insomnia, depression, cancer, tumors, women's diseases,
flatulence, menstruation, fertility, etc.:
About the ingredients of the Pinkham Vegetable Compound:
three e-mails
First e-mail:
As an herbalist, I think you underestimate the medicinal value of Lydia Pinkham's elixir.
It has always contained effective herbal medicines (in fact the FDA
[the American Food and Drug Administration] or its precursors required
tests as early as the 1920s, if memory serves). The 13-20% of alcohol is
not atypical of an herbal tincture. Indeed, an herbal extract with less
alcohol is pharmacologically unstable. The alcohol does help disperse the
medicine to the tissues better than the pill form, carrying it to the uterine
tissues. But the herbs used are powerful medicines in their own right,
although the modern formulation is somewhat less effective than that of
the 1960s and before.
The original recipe for Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound is as follows:
Unicorn Root (Aletris farinosa L.) 8 oz.
Life Root (Senecio aureus L.) 6 oz.
Black Cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa (L.) Nutt.) 6oz.
Pleurisy Root (Asclepias tuberosa L.) 6 oz.
Fenugreek Seed (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.) 12 oz.
Alcohol (18%) to make 100 pints
This formula is believed to have been developed through reading King's
American Dispensatory. J. Burton, in his biography, of Lydia Pinkham, 1949,
claims the addition of 8 oz. of False Unicorn (Chamaelirium luteum). I
seem to remember that as recently as the 1960s it had Angelica and Cimicifuga,
when it was indicated for menstrual cramps as well as menopause. I read
an excellent biography of her sometime in the 1970s which documents a number
of formula changes over the years [that biography might be "Female
Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine," by
Sarah Stage, Norton, 1979, a great resource about Mrs. Pinkham and the
patent medicine industry in the U.S.A.].
The current ingredients are:
Piscidia erthrina (Jamacian dogwood)
Asclepias tuberosa (Pleurisy root)
Glycyrhizia
Taraxacum officinale
Gentiana lutea
Leonarus cardiacus
Ferrous lactate
D-Alpha tocopherol
Ascorbic acid
Ethyl alcohol (13%)
It tastes strongly of the ferrous lactate and lacks the old punch,
and is only suggested as a menopause formula. It is currently distributed
by NUMARK Laboratories, of Edison, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Karen Vaughan
The second e-letter arrived in February 2001:
Thank you for putting up the Web site. It is very interesting and enlightening.
You may wish to dignify Lydia Pinkham's compound by adding that the
ingredients (iron, dogwood, pleurisy, licorice) contain a mineral and herbs
which have been and are still being used by alternative, naturopathic,
and traditional Chinese medicine to treat health problems such as iron
deficiency anemia, adrenal exhaustion, fatigue, inflammations, respiratory
diseases etc.
Information about pleurisy root and licorice herbs can be verified
at
Alcohol remains a carrier liquid and preservative for herbal tinctures
to this day.
Your comments about the alcohol being the only effective ingredient
in Pinkham's compound are not true, and you should correct this.
Sincerely,
The third arrived in June 2009:
Great site and I've bookmarked it to spend some more time later.
But I noticed something i'd like to bring to your attention in the
hopes of getting a correction, on your Lydia Pinkham
page<http://www.mum.org/MrsPink1.htm>
*Even though Mrs. Pinkham had been in the temperance movement, as a
student of phrenology she had studied human nature, and almost 20% of her
concoction was alcohol, which she said acted "as [a] solvent and preservative,"
certainly solving many a problem and preserving not a few of her fellow
citizens. Many similar medicines of the past used alcohol as the active
ingredient, (continued below picture) which was often the only way respectable
women were able to enjoy the intoxicant. And during the banning of alcoholic
beverages in America, especially in the 1920s, the Pinkham "medicine"
enjoyed its greatest success.*
I myself am an herbalist, making some of my own herbal preparations
and also serving as *an independent distributor*<http://www.mynsp.com/home-remedies-that-work>for
Nature's Sunshine Products (over 600, many herbal formulas). I am involved
in this work because herbs are, quite simply, magical in use and for the
most part utterly benign when used responsibly and knowledgeably. So I'm
a big fan of Mrs. Pinkham, partly because of her accomplishments (I'm also
a feminist), and especially for making herbal remedies available to women
and quite a few men as well since the menstrual products weren't the only
ones she produced.
So naturally I object to the disdainful, disapproving tone in this
passage which imagines -- and implies -- that the 20% alcohol content
was what was *really *being delivered in her products and that people may
not have been getting any value other than that from her remedies. As late
as the 1960s, when I was a pre-teen, my mother still had a little bottle
of Lydia Pinkham's Little Liver Pills in her medicine cabinet and every
now and then, I was told I needed to take a few.
For some of her products, aIcohol was absolutely required. For one
thing, it's the medium used to make herbal tinctures. Alochol (brandy or
vodka or even grain alcohol) extracts the consituents from the herb and,
just as she claimed, serves as a preservative. Because of its resulting
strength, one takes a dropperful or two at a time of a tinctured herb or
herbal formula, instead of having to make and drink a whole cup or two
of tea several times a day.
In times past, there were only so many ways to preserve food products
(and herbs are a type of food) without refrigeration -- preserving with
alcohol, preserving in vinegar (pickles), preserving via natural fermentation
(saurkraut, kimchee, etc.), perserving with sugar (jams and jellies) and
canning. Only alcohol (and to a less reliable extent vinegar) also draws
out the properties of the herb into the medium, allowing the now spent
plant material to be discarded, and the tincture saved for future health
needs -- a dropperful or two at a time
Now, a 20% alcohol product was clearly not a tincture -- perhaps a
strong tea (infusion or decoction) -- but even so, how could one preserve
it in those days without alcohol? Nowadays we have modern processing which
would essentially "can" a product like that -- like our fruit
and vegetable juices or anything else in bottles or jars -- but the product
then requires refrigeration if not immediately consumed. Mrs. Pinkham could
hardly expect that all her customers had refrigeration ("ice boxes"
in the day).
So, not only is the passage in question not fully informed, but I find
it a tad sexist, too, to imply that women only used Mrs. Pinkham's products
so they could surreptitiously imbibe. If that happened -- and I assume
it did on occasion -- there were still plenty of women AND men who were
using the products as specified for the herbal health benefit, just as
my mother (and I) did. And truly, we have absolutely no evidence -- merely
an obvioius anti-herbal remedy bias -- that any of her products were ineffective
or worthless. I happen to know from personal experience that they weren't.
Thanks for your attention to this matter.
Patricia Santhuff
*http://www.mynsp.com/Home-Remedies-That-Work*<http://www.mynsp.com/
Home-Remedies-That-Work>
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NEXT: Trade
card: little girl and cat - See more Mrs. Pinkham,
below (and see her first page)
The Schlesinger Library, of the Radcliffe Institute
for Advanced Study, part of Harvard University, has probably the
largest collection of material about the Pinkham
enterprise, the records of the Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company.
Part of the donation of SarahAnne Hazelwood to this museum, much of
it patent medicine and old medical equipment, was a very interesting biography
and study of Mrs. Pinkham's business, Female Complaints:
Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women's Medicine, by Sarah Stage.
See two letters to MUM about the ingredients
of her Compound, and one about the lyrics of an English
pop song, Lily the Pink, about her.
Other amazing women: Nelli Bly,
Dr. Marie Stopes, Dr. Grace Feder Thompson
See also the patent medicine Cardui,
Dr. Grace Feder Thompson's
letter appealing for patients, Dr. Pierce's medicines,
and Orange Blossom medicine.
© 1998, 2005 Harry Finley. It is illegal
to reproduce or distribute work on this Web site in any manner or medium
without written permission of the author. Please report suspected violations
to hfinley@mum.org
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