Lydia Estes Pinkham (born Estes; February 9, 1819 – May 17, 1883) was an American inventor and marketer of a herbal-alcoholic "women's tonic" for menstrual and menopausal problems, which medical experts dismissed as a quack remedy, but which is still on sale today in a modified form.
It was the aggressive marketing of Pinkham's Vegetable Compound that raised its profile, while also rallying the skeptics. Long, promotional copy would dramatize "women's weakness", "hysteria", and other themes commonly referenced at the time. Pinkham urged women to write to her personally, and she would maintain the correspondence in order to expose the customer to more persuasive claims for the remedy. Clearly the replies were not all written by Pinkham herself, as they continued after her death.
Pinkham and her "medicinal compound" for feminine disorders became the subject of a bawdy drinking song, "Lily the Pink", of which a sanitized version became a number one hit by The Scaffold in the United Kingdom.
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Life and career
Pinkham was born in the manufacturing city of Lynn, Massachusetts, the tenth of the twelve children of William and Rebecca Estes. The Estes were an old Quaker family tracing their ancestry to one William Estes, a Quaker who migrated to America in 1676, and through him to the thirteenth-century Italian House of Este. William Estes was originally a shoemaker but by the time Lydia was born in 1819, he had become wealthy through dealing in real estate and had risen to the status of "gentleman farmer". Pinkham was educated at Lynn Academy and worked as a schoolteacher before her marriage in September 1843.
The Estes were a strongly abolitionist and anti-segregation family. The fugitive slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass was a neighbor and a family friend. The Estes' household was a gathering place for local and visiting abolitionist leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison. The Estes broke from the Quakers over the slavery issue in the 1830s. Pinkham joined the Lynn Female Anti-slavery Society when she was sixteen. In the controversies which divided the abolitionist movement during the 1840s, Pinkham would support the feminist and moral persuasion positions of Nathaniel P. Rogers. Her children would continue in the anti-slavery tradition.
Isaac Pinkham was a 29-year-old shoe manufacturer when he married Lydia in 1843. He would try various businesses without much success, including real estate. Lydia gave birth to their first child, Charles Hacker Pinkham, in 1844. She lost their second child to gastroenteritis, but gave birth to their second surviving child, Daniel Rogers Pinkham, in 1848. A third son, William Pinkham, was born in 1852, and a daughter, Aroline Chase Pinkham, in 1857. All the Pinkham children would eventually be involved in the Pinkham medicine business.
Like many women of her time, Pinkham brewed home remedies for which she continually collected recipes. Her remedy for "female complaints" became very popular among her neighbors to whom she gave it away. One story is that her husband was given the recipe as part payment for a debt. Whatever truth may be in this, the ingredients of her remedy were generally consistent with the herbal knowledge available to her through such sources as John King's American Dispensary, which she is known to have owned and used.
In Pinkham's time and place, the reputation of the medical profession was lax. Medical fees were too expensive for most Americans to afford except in emergencies. In some cases, the remedies were more likely to kill than cure. For example, a common "medicine", calomel, was in fact not a medicine, but instead a deadly mercurial toxin. Although mercury was not an ingredient of Pinkham's compound, the unreliable nature of medicines was sufficiently well known to be the subject of a popular comic song. In these circumstances, many preferred to trust unlicensed "root and herb" practitioners, and especially to trust women who were prepared to share their domestic remedies, such as Pinkham.
Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound
The five herbs contained in Pinkham's original formula are:
Pleurisy root is diaphoretic, anti-spasmodic, carminative, and anti-inflammatory.
Life root is a traditional uterine tonic, diuretic, anti-inflammatory, and emmenagogue used for amenorrhea or dysmenorrhea.
Fenugreek is vulnerary, anti-inflammatory, anti-spasmodic, tonic, emmenagogue, galactogogue, and hypotensive.
Unicorn Root was used by several Native American tribes for dysmenorrhea, uterine prolapse, pelvic congestion, and to improve ovarian function.
Black cohosh is an emmenagogue, anti-spasmodic, restorative, nervine, and hypotensive and is used traditionally for menopausal symptoms.
The formula also contains drinking alcohol, which relieves muscular stress, reduces pain, and can affect mood.
Of the newer additions, motherwort is a nervine, emmenagogue, anti-spasmodic, hepatic, cardiac tonic, and hypotensive. Piscidia erythrina (Jamaican dogwood) is an eclectic remedy effective for painful spasms, pelvic pain, dysmenorrhea, and ovarian pain. Licorice is anti-inflammatory, anti-hepatotoxic, anti-spasmodic, and a mild laxative. Gentian is a sialagogue, hepatic, cholagogue, anthelmintic, and emmenagogue. Dandelion is a potassium-sparing diuretic, hepatic, cholagogue, anti-rheumatic, laxative, tonic, and a bitter.
Advertisements for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound included popular myths of women's health, problematizing "women's weakness" of emotionality and "hysteria". Some of the original product advertised such notions as encouraging sexual activity with husbands, encouraging reproduction, and "restoring women's pep" so that they might prove better wives and mothers.
Original product and modern descendants
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 similar product named "Lydia Pinkham Herbal Compound". The product is carried by the Walgreens, CVS and Rite Aid drugstore chains. Ingredients listed in this product are:
Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca)
Gentian (Gentiana lutea)
Jamaican dogwood (Piscidia piscipula)
Pleurisy root (Asclepias tuberosa)
Licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra)
Black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa)
Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)
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
Black cohosh root (Cimicifuga racemosa)
In popular culture
Drinking songs
Pinkham and her "medicinal compound" are memorialized in the folk song "The Ballad of Lydia Pinkham", also known as "Lily the Pink" (Roud number 8368). There is no definitive version, but one variant is reported to have been sung at the University of Pennsylvania in 1902–03, and another is ascribed to Canadian soldiers during World War I. Drinking songs describing the humorous invigorating effects of some food or medicine form are widespread, and the fact that Pinkham's medicine was marketed for "female complaints" made it especially vulnerable to ribald fantasies about what it might cure. A further reason that a humble women's tonic could become the subject of such a song – and an increasing success in the twenties and early thirties – was its availability as a 40 proof drink during the Prohibition era.
A sanitized version, "Lily the Pink", was a number one hit for The Scaffold in the United Kingdom in 1968/69. The Irish Rovers also released the Scaffold version of the song in 1969, on the album Tales to Warm Your Mind and, as a single, it reached #113 on the US Billboard charts. The song was successfully adapted into French in 1969 by Richard Anthony, humorously describing the devastating effects of a so-called "panacée" (universal medicine).
Other
In the film The Cameraman (1928), when Buster (Buster Keaton) shows Sally Richards' (Marceline Day) tintype portrait to a doorman asking for her identity, he sarcastically replies "Maybe it's Lydia Pinkham."
In the film The Penguin Pool Murder (1932), crime sleuth Hildegarde Withers teases an office secretary about putting on too much make-up, to which the girl sarcastically retorts "Okay, Lydia Pinkham."
In the film Footlight Parade (1933), Nan (played by Joan Blondell) retorts to a dubious claim "And I'm Lydia Pinkham."
In John Steinbeck's novel East of Eden (1952), Faye uses the remedy to soothe a toothache, saying "That's a wonderful medicine."
In the "Lovely But Lethal" episode of Columbo (1973), the Lieutenant says to the owner of a cosmetic company (played by Vera Miles) "You're like Lydia Pinkham."
In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985), Aunt Lydia is named after Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound (as all Aunts are named after house supply or pharmaceutical brands).
In Stephen King and Peter Straub's The Talisman (1984), a character tells another to go to a drugstore and "fetch me a bottle of Lydia Pinkham's ointment.'