Snapshots of the Past

Swaim's Panacea – Vintage Print

Swaim's Panacea, c1846. — antique engraving
Swaim's Panacea, c1846.. Antique engraving from the Historic Print Archive collection.

(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

Few images capture their era like this antique engraving of Swaim's Panacea. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.

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Swaim's Panacea

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This label advertised Swaim's Panacea, a patent medicine sold as a cure-all in the 1840s, when proprietary remedies were heavily promoted through printed wrappers, handbills and labels like this one. The engraving was produced by Draper & Co. of Philadelphia, and the notice of copyright in the name of James Swaim shows how makers tried to protect their brand names from imitators. Before federal food and drug laws took effect in 1906, such claims went largely unchecked, so these labels are now valued as evidence of how medicines were sold to ordinary Americans.

Created / publishedc1846.
Medium1 print : engraving.
GenreLabels 1840-1850.Engravings 1840-1850.
NotesBy Draper & Co., Phila. Copyright by James Swaim. Published in: Eyes of the nation : a visual history of the United States / Vincent Virga and curators of the Library of Congress ; historical commentary by Alan Brinkley. New York : Knopf, 1997.
SubjectsPatent medicines--1840-1850.
SourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Original scan771 × 1,536 px · prints to 3 × 5 in at 300 dpi
ReferenceAMZ-SOTP-HPA-161241

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