The Herrick Perforated Capsicum Plaster [caption title; with original product sample].

Amazingly, with its original product sample intact

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Illustrated medical advertising circular for “The Herrick Perforated Capsicum Plaster” prepared for Dr. Herrick’s Family Medicine Co. of St. Louis, Missouri.

Remarkably, the circular is accompanied by an actual, intact and un-used, original product sample “...containing 17 per cent. powdered capsicum [red pepper] in rubber-combination plaster base.”

The pain-relieving plaster, trimmed just smaller than the circular, was possibly included here as a product sample. Its inclusion, inserted within the circular, would have been an effective way to augment Dr. Herrick’s Family Medicine Co.‘s advertising claims with the potential of an actual trial by the pharmacist or merchant who sold the product.

The heat of the plasters’ capsicum or hot pepper preparation was indicated “...for the treatment of pain attending to the following diseases: Stiff Neck, Lumbago, Neuralgia, Rheumatic Pains in Knees, Hips or Shoulders, Sprains in the Wrist or Ankle.”

In an appeal to women consumers, the following note was added to the circular:

They Do Not Soil the Under-Clothes This, while of great importance to all who use them, should recommend them more especially to the gentler sex, who are so sensitive to all that is clean and refined.

Other products from Dr. Herrick’s Family Medicine Co. and its proprietor, James F. Ballard, include “Dr. Herrick’s Sugar-Coated Vegetable Pills,” a cathartic, and “Renne’s Oil Compound” for cramp, colic, nauseated stomach, etc.

Ballard, it appears, was also the proprietor of Swaim’s Laboratory. A full-page ad for “Swaim’s Panacea,” a blood purifier, occupies the back cover. This latter product is touted as being “in use since 1820.” A further claim that it “has stood the test of nearly a century” suggests that the present advertising circular and sample likely date from c.1910 to 1920.

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