Picture of Health: Images of Medicine and Pharmacy from the William H. Helfand Collection
Along with attractive women and domestic scenes, children were among the most popular images used in nineteenth-century American advertising trade cards. In this example, well-dressed children advertise a product that contained iron and quinine, and was recommended for several conditions, including loss of appetite, indigestion, malaria, and even hypochondria. Nichols' Bark and Iron claimed to be especially adapted for Clergymen, Counselors, Journalists, and persons of sedentary habits." Certainly the iron the tonic contained could be expected to be beneficial in cases of anemia and the quinine in treating malaria, but the product could not have been as useful for other conditions for which it was recommended. William H. Helfand, from The Picture of Health: Images of Medicine and Pharmacy from the William H. Helfand Collection (1991), p. 118.