The most successful manufacturer of proprietary medicine in 19th century America. Lydia Pinkham was born and raised in Lynn, Massachusetts. Under her maiden name, Lydia Estes, she became a schoolteacher, and an activist in the causes of slavery abolition, temperance, and women\u2019s rights, and a devoted disciple of the natural diet program of Grahamism. She was also deeply impressed by the theories of Jacob Bigelow of the Harvard Medical School, who suggested that many diseases were self-limiting and would disappear more rapidly if left to the natural recuperative powers of the patient. In 1843 she married Isaac Pinkham.<\/p>\n
During the 1870s, Lydia Pinkham began to manufacture and market an herbal remedy for \u201cfemale complaints.\u201d The venture was undergirded by one of the most impressive advertising initiatives in U.S. history. At first, the bulwark of the advertising program was a small pamphlet written by Pinkham describing in plain terms the nature and remedy of female disorders. These were distributed initially by the thousands, and later in the millions, throughout the cities of New England. In 1901 the pamphlet was expanded to 64 pages and translated into five languages. Second, Lydia\u2019s grandmotherly, comforting face appeared on the cover of the pamphlet and, beginning with an early ad on the front page of the Boston Herald, it later appeared in newspapers across the United States. The initial front\u00ac page ad in the Herald produced such spectacular results that similar ads spearheaded the company\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n
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The most successful manufacturer of proprietary medicine in 19th century America. Lydia Pinkham was born and raised in Lynn, Massachusetts. Under her maiden name, Lydia Estes, she became a schoolteacher, and an activist in the causes of slavery abolition, temperance, and women\u2019s rights, and a devoted disciple of the natural diet program of Grahamism. She […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-l"],"yoast_head":"\n