Item #4123 Indian Vegetable Medicines! A Most Important and Wonderful Discovery for the Restoration of Health! Prepared by J. S. Spear, the Old Indian Doctor!! So Celebrated for his Remarkable Cures. J. S. Spear, esse.
Indian Vegetable Medicines! A Most Important and Wonderful Discovery for the Restoration of Health! Prepared by J. S. Spear, the Old Indian Doctor!! So Celebrated for his Remarkable Cures.
Indian Vegetable Medicines! A Most Important and Wonderful Discovery for the Restoration of Health! Prepared by J. S. Spear, the Old Indian Doctor!! So Celebrated for his Remarkable Cures.
Indian Vegetable Medicines! A Most Important and Wonderful Discovery for the Restoration of Health! Prepared by J. S. Spear, the Old Indian Doctor!! So Celebrated for his Remarkable Cures.
Indian Vegetable Medicines! A Most Important and Wonderful Discovery for the Restoration of Health! Prepared by J. S. Spear, the Old Indian Doctor!! So Celebrated for his Remarkable Cures.
Indian Vegetable Medicines! A Most Important and Wonderful Discovery for the Restoration of Health! Prepared by J. S. Spear, the Old Indian Doctor!! So Celebrated for his Remarkable Cures.

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Spear, J.[esse] S.

Indian Vegetable Medicines! A Most Important and Wonderful Discovery for the Restoration of Health! Prepared by J. S. Spear, the Old Indian Doctor!! So Celebrated for his Remarkable Cures.

Boston: Dutton & Wentworth, Printers, 37 Congress Street, [c.1856]. Broadside printed in red, blue and green, 40.75” x 29.125” plus margins, mounted on original linen and affixed to original wooden rollers, remnants of silk selvage at edges; text in various typefaces and compartments, illustrated with wood-engravings.

An extraordinary survival and a large-scale tour-de-force of multi-color broadside printing in the 1850s, here employed to promote various patent medicines offered by J. S. Spear of Boston, mounted on linen and wooden rollers in the style of a wall map.

While various articles and papers by American medical professionals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were essentially dismissive of the Native American materia medica, “Indian cures,” as they were known, nevertheless gained traction with the public, fostering the production and promotion of patent medicines supposedly based on traditional native remedies. Like many other snake oil salesmen of the era, J. S. Spear styled himself an “Indian Doctor,” and offered a wide variety of medicines that nevertheless seem to have had very little to do with Native American healing.

In this stunning typographic display, clearly calculated to excite the expectations of the afflicted public, Spear addresses the reader using a central vignette, printed in green, of a Native American man standing beside and gesturing toward a sign that reads in part: “I have no room here to speak of the highly exalted efficacy of these Medicines. If I had, I could proclaim their cures in colors that would astonish the world!!!” and indeed the use of color in the printing of this broadside appears to be an attempt to do just that.

Among the cures offered are such products as Balsam of Life, “a real comfort and blessing, for Consumption, Coughs, Colds, Fevers, Phthisic, Asthma, Spitting Blood, Shortness of Breath, Spasms, &c.”; Gravel Mixture “For the Gravel, Stone, Strangulary or Stoppage of Water, &c.”; Cholera Morbus, Diarrœa and Dysentery Cordial “It is also a certain remedy for all diseases of children while teething, such as green, yellow, slimy discharges of the Bowels, Canker, Cholera Infantum, Summer Complaints, &c.”; Scrofula Syrup “For the Scrofula Humor, Swelling of the Glands, Humors, Cancer of the Breast &c. &c.”; and Woman’s Friend! Mother’s Cordial “For the Falling of the Womb, Pains in the Back, Hip, and Groins, Heat in the Water, &c.” The text is supplemented with various wood-engravings, including one depicting the spotted figure of a man, apparently afflicted with both scrofula and the hives, with his arm in a sling and a large growth on his elbow—the most extreme representation of a medical condition included.

J. S. Spear edited the Boston Guide to Health, and Journal of Arts and Sciences (Boston, 1843-1845) and authored The Family Physician (Boston, 1848). He was also known as the proprietor of the Botanic Medicine Store on Washington Street. He is listed in Boston directories in 1856 and 1857.

No copies recorded in OCLC, nor does a google search yield any reference to this item.

A rare and truly stunning broadside, that would very likely long ago have perished—as indeed most copies have—had it not been mounted on linen for display.

CONDITION: Surface rippled and wrinkled throughout, moderately soiled and stained, one small hole at upper left with minor loss of printed area.

Item #4123

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