When these medicine trade cards were circulating around New York, surgery was in its infancy and antibiotics had yet to be invented. The average New Yorker wouldn’t have enjoyed easy access to a doctor.

So when aches and pains and ailments struck, potions and remedies like these were there, ready to be picked up at the corner pharmacy.

[Above: the front and back of an ad for “Scott’s Emulsion of Cod Liver Oil With the Hyophosphites of Lime and Soda,” for a cough]

Did they work? Without an ingredient list, it’s tough to know. But the cards are interesting to look at—a reminder that earlier generations dealt with the stomach issues, headaches, and colds that drive us to Duane Reade today.

[Above, the back and front of a trade card for a medicine sold by Charles Schneider of East 17th Street, then the upper reaches of Kleindeutschland, the city’s German neighborhood. What is it for?]

[Above: Alexander’s Cholera Infantum Cure, made by the Alexander Medicine Co. in 14th Street and Sixth Avenue and sold by a druggist named Rosenzweig in Brooklyn, could help your kids get rosy cheeks, apparently.]

They’re part of the wonderful William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards in the New York Academy of Medicine Library—which has a recently renovated and reopened Rare Book Room, available to researchers by appointment at their headquarters on Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street.

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Tags: Alexander Medicine Company 14th Street, Medical Trade Cards, New York Academy of Medicine, old cod liver oil ads New York, old Medicine Ads New York City, Schneider's 17th Street NYC, Scott and Bowne