Medical Advertising in the Popular Press: Almanacs and the Growth of Proprietary Medicines

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the distribution of proprietary drugs in the seventeenth century, an area that has been comparatively ignored by recent scholarship. It provides an overview of the genre of almanacs and the role they played in early modern advertised. The chapter also focuses on the types of pre-made, prepackaged and branded proprietary medicines that were advertised in the popular press. It discusses the way in which the products were distributed in late seventeenth-century London, the provinces and abroad. The chapter shows the growing acceptance, popularity and subsequent demand for proprietary medicines in the seventeenth century changed the face of the English medical marketplace forever. It illustrates the beginnings of the 'booming health culture' of the eighteenth century, which encompassed a preoccupation with health and fascination with proprietary medicines. The almanac advertisements show that such retailers were generally only one out of several possible places to purchase proprietary medicines.

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