Food and Health

From earliest times people have accepted the idea that there is a close relationship between their physical well-being and what they take into their bodies. Through trade cards and other advertising, it is possible to see in this period of scientific transition the ways in which people tended to regard food as medicine and medicine as food. Victorian America was preoccupied with disease, and the roster of ills was quite different from those recognized today, as were the remedies. Through the cards promoting medicinals of various sorts, we encounter an amazing list of conditions, among them, nervous dyspepsia, phthisis, marasmus, relapsing fever, inanition, mal-assimilation, catarrh , tetter, neurasthenia, locomotor ataxia, ovarian neuralgia, consumpulus, and female complaint. Patent medicines and nutritional regimens were both heavily advertised, and the line between the two was often very slender. Note the origin of many of today’s recreational beverages in liquid remedies whose names survive in such terms as soda, tonic, phosphate, seltzer, and root beer.

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