By Ann Hibner Koblitz

The Sharlot Hall Museum archives are well known as a repository of information about the lives of past and present residents of Yavapai County. The overwhelming majority of materials in the archives are in English, of course. But if one looks carefully, one can find interesting glimpses into the lives of Spanish-speaking Arizonans as well. For example, from the 1921 prescription records of Owl Drug & Candy Company, we know that at least one doctor, Nelson Burdick, on occasion wrote medical instructions for his patients in Spanish.

Or take the question of dissemination of health care information. The Sharlot Hall Museum archives have a delightful collection of almanacs put out by the manufacturers of so-called "patent" or "proprietary" medicines. These medicines, which were exceedingly popular in the 1800s and early 1900s, were combinations of chemicals, herbs, alcohol, and often narcotics. Their exact formulas were secret, and although some were nothing more than flavored alcohol or sugar syrup, others were powerful and often effective medicines. A few even survive today, at least in some form; Doan's Pills, Lydia Pinkham's Pills, and Ayer's Sarsaparilla all started out as patent medicines in the mid-1800s. 

In the days before radio and television, medical almanacs were a clever way to establish product recognition among the general public. The almanacs were delivered in bulk to local pharmacists, who stamped their names and business addresses on them and distributed them free of charge to their customers. Besides useful calendars, planting schedules, and phases of the moon, the almanacs might have jokes, horoscopes, predictions by psychics, recipes, household hints, and cartoons. Mostly, though, the booklets contained serious, scientific-sounding discussions of the ailments treatable by whatever concoction was being advertised, along with enthusiastic testimonials from satisfied consumers. 

Prescott pharmacists were eager dispersers of the almanacs. The pamphlets preserved in the archives bear the names of Yavapai Pharmacy (Dr. J. N. McCandless, Proprietor), W. W. Ross, Owl Drug & Candy, Brisley Drug, Hebert's Drug Store, and others. The almanacs are fascinating in part because of the light they cast on the most common medical complaints of the day and self-medication possibilities in the 19th and early 20th centuries. 

The almanacs reveal other aspects of late territorial and early statehood society as well. I was surprised to learn that at least one Prescott pharmacist, the socially prominent W. W. Ross, cared enough about his Spanish-speaking clientele that he provided patent medicine almanacs in Spanish as well as English. (And naturally, since Ross was not doing the translating himself, it follows that the manufacturers of proprietary medicines were themselves eager to court Spanish-speaking customers and considered them an important source of revenue.) 

Two of the Spanish-language almanacs particularly caught my eye because they seemed to be directed specifically at women, and women of the Southwest at that. One, El Almanaque Medicinal del Dr. J. H. McLean (The Medical Almanac of Dr. J. H. McLean, 1914) had a cover decorated with prickly pears, a Spanish-style mission church, and a palm tree, though McLean himself was based in St. Louis, Missouri. McLean's almanac pitched several medicines, including Strengthening Cordial, Volcanic Oil Liniament, and Liver and Kidney Pillets. With these three preparations, McLean insisted in English and Spanish, "There is no ache of womankind that cannot be cured." Delayed, painful, or irregular menses, sterility, anemia, menopause, even prolapsed uterus-- all were declared treatable with McLean's preparations. 

Unlike McLean's almanac, which delivered substantially the same information in both English and Spanish versions, El Almanaque de los Cumpleanos para las Senoras (The Ladies Birthday Almanac, 1914) was quite different in the two languages. Both versions had cover illustrations of a kneeling Native American woman teaching a standing Anglo woman about the healing properties of plants and herbs. And both almanacs peddled Thedford's Black-draught, Wine of Cardui ("the woman's tonic"), and several vaginal washes. But El Almanaque de los Cumpleanos featured Spanish-language testimonials by Hispanic women of the Southwest and Puerto Rico in place of those by Anglo women. More importantly, El Almanaque de los Cumpleanos provided Spanish-speaking readers with information on fertility control that was absent from The Ladies Birthday Almanac. 

Some readers of the Courier probably know that abortion under most circumstances was outlawed in almost all U.S. states and territories in a series of laws passed in the 1850s through the 1890s. At the same time, the "Comstock Laws" (named for their zealous promulgator, the moral crusader Anthony Comstock) banned the transmission through the U.S. mails of materials deemed to be obscene. According to the Laws, such materials included advertisements for any abortifacient or contraceptive device, preparation, or drug. 

Many Americans were not particularly enthusiastic about the Comstock Laws, and certain sections of the public, including patent medicine manufacturers, newspaper publishers, pharmacists, and even occasionally the police conspired to evade the Comstock Laws in a variety of ways. Nevertheless, the Laws did have some effect, and in the Sharlot Hall Museum collections one can see that the language with which the almanacs advertised abortifacient and contraceptive preparations became more and more guarded and circumspect through time. 

There was, however, an exception: El Almanaque de los Cumpleanos para las Senoras continued to advertise contraceptive vaginal douches. Meanwhile, its counterpart, The Ladies Birthday Almanac, only advised women to write directly to the company for information about "the Cardui Home Treatment," which would be sent in "a plain, sealed envelope." This extra step was not needed for readers of the Spanish edition, which included the necessary information in its pages. Apparently, the manufacturers of Cardui vaginal washes and Wine of Cardui believed that Comstock and his followers would be unlikely to read the Spanish publications, so they did not need to take the same precautions as in the English version. And possibly W. W. Ross, who distributed El Almanaque de los Cumpleanos in Prescott, was less worried about disseminating veiled contraceptive information in Spanish than he would have been in English. Certainly Ross was not averse to providing the wherewithal to administer the washes themselves to his female clients: his stamp on the covers of both almanacs advertises the sale of syringes as well as the Cardui preparations. Thus, through the almanacs both Spanish- and English-speaking women of Prescott could learn that W. W. Ross-- and, most likely, other prominent pharmacists and physicians as well-- stood ready to discreetly help them with their fertility control needs. 

(Ann Hibner Koblitz has her Ph.D. in History and is a Professor of Women's Studies at Arizona State University. She is the author of two books on Russian women scientists and is currently working on a cross-cultural study of sexuality and fertility control.) 



Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (db403). Reuse only by permission.
Although published at the same time, each of these Almanacs was tailored to a specific group. The Spanish-language one included testimonials by Hispanic women of the Southwest and Puerto Rico, and it also provided readers with information on fertility control that was absent from The Ladies Birthday Almanac.