Search Results: Health, Medicine & Nutrition from Le Bookiniste, ABAA-ILAB-IOBA

New York: Dr. Jeanne Walter, n.d. [ca. 1915-20]. 24mo (5 3/4 x 3 7/16 inches; 143 x 88 mm), 23, [1] pages, in printed stapled wrappers (soft cover). An early 20th-century version of fat shaming: Dr. Jeanne Walter promises to reduce your "superfluous flesh" if you buy her medicated rubber garments. "Any physician will tell you that by inducing profuse perspiration you can reduce flesh, relieve any kind of rheumatism, skin diseases and many other ailments because it stimulates circulation and eliminates waste products through the pores" (page 3). This pamphlet features a woman modeling such products as chin, bust, and abdominal reducers as well as jackets, suits, belts, and pants. All in glorious black-and-white halftone illustrations. Most products are aimed at women, although a page is devoted to a mustachioed guy wearing an abdominal belt that works by "stimulating circulation in the organs of digestion, and, by drawing out the uric acid from the system, relieving any rheumatic condition that may… Read More

New York: Gallia Laboratories, Inc., 1926. 24mo (5 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches; 138 x 107 mm), 8 pages, in stapled wrappers. Promotional pamphlet for Kola Astier, a product possessing "remarkable curative and stimulative properties quite unknown to any other preparation." According to the manufacturer, Gallia Laboratories, Kola Astier builds muscular strength, fights fatigue, relieves depression and "melancholia," stimulates the heart, and helps in combatting bronchitis, pneumonia, and "senile debility." It also acts, we're told, as a "remarkable regenerator" for "tired, overworked men and women." Where did this cure for every ailment come from? According to the company, Dr. P. Astier recognized the amazing properties of the kola nut. "Long before the white man traversed the midnight jungles and the wild plains of mysterious Africa, the natives were using the fruit of the Kola Tree to increase their physical stamina and powers of endurance. Finally, when the first white explorers forced their way into the… Read More

New York: Marston Remedy Company, 1905. Revised Edition. 16mo (6 3/8 x 4 1/2 inches; 162 x 113 mm), 32 pages, in stapled wrappers (soft cover). Pamphlet from a company offering "medicated" suppositories and contraptions that purportedly treat men's sexual, nervous, and urinary disorders. One "treatment" involves cocoa butter. "The suppository now glides into the rectum with the most perfect ease by means of a little pressure from the finger, and, which is often important, this method of rectal treatment leaves no traces to excite the curiosity of servants or others." (page 10). While most of the "treatments" involve suppositories of one kind or another, the company also offers devices to relieve men's suffering (illustrations helpfully included). There's "Dr. Curling's Varicocele Truss," which supposedly treats pain in the scrotum. This, we're told, is preferable to surgery. "Several surgeons have been assassinated by patients whom they have thus made hoplessly (sic) impotent." (page 23). There's… Read More