Lydia Pinkham

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Lily the Pink redirects here. For the song by The Scaffold, see Lily the Pink (song).

For other uses, see Pinkham (disambiguation).

Lydia E. Pinkham (from a 1904 pamphlet)

Lydia Estes Pinkham (1819 - 1883) was a patent medicine manufacturer and businesswoman.

A resident of Lynn, Massachusetts, Lydia Pinkham first began developing home remedies after the near bankruptcy of her husband. Mass marketed from 1875 on, Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound was one of the best known patent medicines of the 19th century. Descendants of this product are still available today. Lydia's skill was in marketing her product directly to women and her company continued her shrewd marketing tactics after her death. Her own face was on the label and her company was particularly keen on the use of testimonials from grateful women.

The product, with its 20% alcohol content, is often derided, but it did contain black cohosh. It is often suggested by the alternative medicine community that this ingredient (and a purified version, Remifemin) really do provide relief from symptoms of menopause. A report by the Natural Standard, which performs evidence-based reviews of alternative therapeutics, says:

Black cohosh is a popular alternative to prescription hormonal therapy for treatment of menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes, mood problems, perspiration, heart palpitations, and vaginal dryness. Initial human research suggests that black cohosh may improve some of these symptoms for up to six months. However, most studies are not well designed and results are not conclusive.

The report gives the evidence a "B" rating, "good scientific evidence for this use." In a day when the mainstream treatment of these conditions was sometimes surgical removal of ovaries—with a mortality rate of 40%—it can be argued that at the very least Pinkham's remedy followed the sound medical principle of "first, do no harm."

Advertising copy urged women to write to Mrs. Pinkham. They did, and they received answers. They continued to write and receive answers for decades after Lydia Pinkham's death. These staff-written answers combined forthright talk about women's medical issues, good advice, and, of course, recommendations for her product. In 1905 the Ladies' Home Journal published a photograph of Lydia Pinkham's tombstone and exposed the ruse. The Pinkham company insisted that it had never meant to imply that the letters were being answered by Lydia Pinkham, but by her daughter-in-law, Jennie Pinkham.

From a box of her medicine

Lydia's company continued increasing profit margins fifty years after her death but eventually the advent of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) curtailed the company's activities.

Although Pinkham's motives were partly self-serving, feminists admire her for distributing information on menstruation and the "facts of life," and consider her to be a crusader for women's health issues in a day when women were poorly served by the medical establishment.

Lydia Pinkham Memorial Clinic in Salem, Massachusetts

In 1922, Lydia's daughter Aroline Chase Pinkham Gove founded the Lydia E. Pinkham Memorial Clinic in Salem, Massachusetts. The clinic, still in operation as of 2004, provides health services to young mothers and their children. It is designated Site 9 of the Salem Women's Heritage Trail.

[edit] Drinking songs

Drinking songs that consist of numerous verses describing the humorous and ribald invigorating effects of some food or medicine form almost a small genre in themselves. Lydia and her "medicinal compound" are memorialized in the folk songs "The Ballad of Lydia Pinkham," and "Lily the Pink". A sanitized version of Lily the Pink was a number one hit for The Scaffold in the United Kingdom in 1968/9. As folk songs, they have no definitive versions. Some representative samples will convey their flavor:

Let us sing (let us sing) of Lydia Pinkham

The benefactress of the human race.

She invented a vegetable compound,

And now all papers print her face.

Mrs. Jones she had no children,

And she loved them very dear.

So she took three bottles of Pinkham's

Now she has twins every year.

Peter Whelan (Peter Whelan), he was sad

Because he only had one nut

Till he took some of Lydia's compound

Now they grow in clusters 'round his butt.

—The Ballad of Lydia Pinkham

Here's the story -- a little bit gory

A little bit happy -- a little bit sad

Of Lily the Pink and her medicinal compound

And how it drove her to the bad.

Ebenezer thought he was Julius Caesar

So they put him in a home

And then they gave him medicinal compound

Now he's Emperor of Rome.

Ripley Twinger, the opera singer,

Could break glass with his voice, they said

He rubbed his tonsils with medicinal compound

Now they break glasses over his head.

—Lily the Pink

It should not pass without mention that the reason a humble women's tonic was the subject of such and sundry ribald drinking ballads and an increasing success in the twenties and early thirties was its availability, as a 40-proof patent eye-opener, during Prohibition.

[edit] The original product and its modern descendants

Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound

The original formula for Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound was:

Unicorn root (Aletris farinosa L.) 8 oz.
Life root (Senecio aureus L.) 6 oz.
Black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa (L.) Nutt.) 6 oz.
Pleurisy root (Asclepias tuberosa L.) 6 oz.
Fenugreek seed (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.) 12 oz.
Alcohol (18%) to make 100 U.S. pints

As of 2004, Numark Laboratories of Edison, New Jersey markets a product named "Lydia Pinkham's Herbal Liquid Supplement." This product is neither very similar to nor utterly different from the original. Listed ingredients, with asterisks marking those present in the original compound, are: Motherwort, Gentian (Gentiana lutea), Jamaican dogwood (Piscidia erthrina), *Pleurisy root (Asclepias tuberosa), Licorice (Glycyrrhiza), *Black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa), and Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale). The product is carried by the Walgreens drugstore chain.

Time of Your Life Nutraceuticals of St. Petersburg, Florida produces a product named Lydia's Secret for Lydiapinkham.org. Said to be "based on" the original formula, it has these listed ingredients (again, with asterisks marking those present in the original): *Black cohosh root, Dandelion root, *Pleurisy root, Chastetree berry, False unicorn root, Jamaica dogwood bark, Gentian root, Vitamin E, Vitamin B6, Magnesium, Zinc.