I often sit here and wonder about the purity of my blood.
No. No, I don’t. I never think about it. But, apparently, our Victorian forebears spent a great deal of time being very concerned about it. Enter all manner of quackery to ease those worried minds.
Vegetine was touted as a blood purifier. Advertising imagery for the product usually involved hale and hearty looking young people, usually ladies like the one we see here. They’re often set against backgrounds which bring to mind purity, youth, freshness and springtime.
The reverse makes all sorts of claims about Vegetine. I wonder how Lucy Ricardo might deliver some of these lines. Let’s see what they claim:
THE lesson of health is well illustrated in the picture
seen on the opposite side of this card. Nature
supplies the vitality which, coursing through the woody
fibers of the fruit tree, furnishes it with abundant blossoms.
The maiden with laughing eyes and rosy cheeks—a picture
of health—is offering you VEGETINE, the most reliable
vitalizer of the human blood. Nature’s laws are unchange-
able, and certain results are sure to follow certain causes.
If the blood is allowed to remain in an impure condition,
disease will surely follow. With this fact proven by examples
seen on every hand, is it not wise to heed the warning symp-
toms shown by languor, “that tired feeling,” headache,
indigestion, sallow complexion and nervous debility? Re-
sort at once to the use of VEGETINE, NATURE’S GREAT
BLOOD PURIFIER AND VITALIZER. It will give you
pure blood and good health. It is a radical cure, and
will reach the most severe cases of diseases arising from
impurity of the blood. Sufferers from Humors, Canker,
Salt Rheum, Ulcers, Eruptive Diseases of the Skin, Pimples,
Boils, Tetter, and Ringworm are sure to find relief by
The faithful use of VEGETINE.
Tetter? This is apparently a blister, boil, pimple or rash. Or…herpes. Good times.
Salt Rheum? This is essentially Nineteenth-Century Eczema.
Well, it seems our Vegetine is a very handy thing to have around. Too bad that it likely didn’t work since the conditions described have less to do with the blood than they have to do with subcutaneous infection. Still, maybe it had some placebo effect.
In any case, it’s a very pretty card and is a neat example of the 1880s leaning toward Asian design influence.
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