The Battle Creek Sanitarium of Battle Creek, Michigan was a health resort which employed holistic methods based on principles promoted by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Treatments included hydrotherapy, electrotherapy, phototherapy, physical training, exposure to fresh air, enemas, and dietetic plans crafted to lower patient’s libidos in order to live a chaste lifestyle free of sin. It became a destination for both prominent and middle-class American citizens, including celebrities such as J.C. Penney, Henry Ford, Amelia Earhart, Warren Harding, Mary Todd Lincoln, and Sojourner Truth. In order to draw so many prominent figures and a wealthy base of clients to its somewhat remote location in Michigan – and to promote the ideas of its founders, the Kellogg brothers – the Sanitarium needed to produce a wide swath of promotional materials, many of which survive today in The Historical Medical Library’s Medical Trade Ephemera collection.
Trade ephemera serves as an interesting partner to traditional materials used in the study of medical history, such as the rare books, manuscripts, and journals in our collection, by offering a snapshot of a contemporary product or treatment, and the promises and techniques employed by the manufacturer in order to drive sales of their products. The opinions and practices of prominent physicians are frequently documented in journals and other rigorous publications. Less explored is the relationship between trade publications targeted at physicians, and how those publications effected physician interactions with patients. For example, much of the current emphasis on whole foods and whole grains as staples of healthy diets can be traced back to Battle Creek, its vigorous publication of literature pertaining to these benefits, and the health fad it created among America’s social elite of the time.
Michael Twyman, in his 2008 article for RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage, titled The Long-Term Significance of Printed Ephemera, highlights both the reasons why ephemera is an important historic lens and why it has been historically under-represented in library collections. Since these materials were intended to serve their promotional purpose and then to be discarded, much ephemera was not initially considered substantive in the same way that documents of intentionally produced knowledge were, and as such were not stewarded by libraries and archives in the same way.
In our case, many items in the Historical Medical Library were initially collected by physicians and Fellows of the College and donated later when the historical value of the object was better understood. Furthermore, the often striking aesthetics of promotional materials have created a secondary market for them at flea markets, antique shops and via online auction sites, making them more diffuse then traditional materials such as books and journals. Even as recently as last month, we received a donation of trade ephemera from the Winterthur Museum. The ephemera had been donated to Winterthur by a patron who purchases large blocks of varying items from sellers in order to provide the materials with homes at appropriate cultural heritage institutions. This is what Twyman refers to as “surviving by chance.”
According to Twyman, the turning point in this consideration for libraries came when Oxford’s Bodleian Library, which initially considered its ephemera collection to be of “no literary or artistic value,” reversed its decision to remove ephemera from its shelves in the 1960s. Twyman sees this decision as the start of a paradigm shift in the way that holding institutions and historians view these types of material. Instead of viewing ephemera and print culture as part and parcel of book culture, he argues that print culture and book culture should be, and increasingly are, viewed as two distinct yet interconnected cultures of production. Indeed, in his citation of data from a 1950s survey of the British print industry, the overwhelming majority of printed material produced, around 95%, was not bibliographic in nature, and only 7% of people employed in the print industry were employed in the printing of books.
One very important reason for this cultural distinction is the way in which printed ephemera, and, as such, print culture, can also serve as a window into the daily and momentary existence of the broader population. Unlike the professional literature in our collection, much of the ephemera was published for a popular audience, and can be used as a means of understanding popular attitudes toward medical practices of the time. Medical trade ephemera also provides a glimpse into the attitudes of the medical and pharmaceutical establishment toward their patients and customers. For example, by looking at which products were marketed toward women versus men, and in what ways, one may find interesting differences in attitudes toward gender in the medical establishment of the time, which can also speak more broadly to the construction of the social climate at the time, and thus our social histories.
As well, the sheer specificity of information in ephemera often makes it the best source for reconstructing events. One example given by Twyman is the celebration of the opening of the Royal Berkshire Hospital in 1839. Local newspapers, being traditional sources used in the construction of history, included accounts of the day, but none of these came close to the degree of specificity of the opening in terms of its participants, ticketing arrangements and timetables as did programs for the event. Indeed, the menu below from one dinner at The Battle Creek Sanitarium provides us not just with an incredibly detailed breakdown of the foods served, but also a timetable for the day, rules for various spaces at The Sanitarium, and upcoming events and lectures. These two pages taken from a menu meant to be discarded are incredibly rich in information, painting a lively picture of sanitarium life.
Interested in viewing part of our collection of ephemera? Some of our Battle Creek ephemera is now digitized and available to view online as part of our new mini-exhibition, The Battle Creek Sanitarium: Deliverance Through Diet. This exhibition is the first in a series of digital views of small physical exhibitions that were on display outside our reading room at The College of Physicians. These exhibits heavily feature materials such as the trade ephemera, so look out for upcoming online content, such as that from the just installed Bad Medicine: Drug Manufacturing, Advertising, and the Push to Sell. Additional trade ephemera can be viewed as part of a past online exhibit, Healing Energy: Radium in America, such as this 1920 pamphlet, The Romance of Radium.
Curious about exploring our ephemera collection? Currently, the best way to do that is to search our online catalog using “Medical Trade Ephemera” as the call number, or by searching for a particular manufacturer you are interested in. Many existing companies may have differing historical names, so please be aware that they are cataloged by the name supplied by the materials. For example, searching for “GlaxoSmithKline” may not yield results, while “Smith, Kline and French” will. Is there anything in our collection that is of particular interest to you? This series of mini-exhibitions will be on going, so let us know in the comments, on Twitter @CPPHistMedLib, or by e-mailing us at library@collegeofphysicians.org, and perhaps you’ll see that material digitized and available online as part of this project in the near future.