Difference between revisions of "Traveling Medicine Show"

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This is the opening paragraph defining Traveling Medicine Shows and introducing the dossier

How much is your health worth, Ladies and Gentlemen? It's priceless, isn't it? Well, my friends, one half-dollar is all it takes to put you in the pink. That's right, Ladies and Gents, for fifty pennies, Nature's True Remedy will succeed where doctors have failed. Only Nature can heal and I have Nature right here in this little bottle. My secret formula, from God's own laboratory, the Earth itself, will cure rheumatism, cancer, diabetes, baldness, bad breath, and curvature of the spine. (Anderson 1)

Origins

Medieval Europe

Colonial America

Structure & Technique

The Art of the Sell

Ballyhoo: The Entertainment of the Show

Although the medicine show's primary purpose was to sell products and make money, the also served a purpose of providing entertainment to the rural masses. The entertainment's job was to pull in crowds and make them feel indebted to the show, increasing the likelihood for purchases. The medicine show utilized popular entertainment forms of the era, and created a variety show atmosphere, providing a breadth of entertainment interspersed with plugs for medicine and health products. The following is a brief description of some of the entertainment traditions popular at the time that medicine shows borrowed from and how they were integrated into the act of selling patent medicine.

Musuems

Early American museums were meant to be clean, family fun for a respectable crowd of people. Unlike museums of today, these were almost entirely privately owned ventures that housed a variety of interesting exhibits. When these fell out of favor and profitability, showmen of the day took it upon themselves to open their own museums, with the express purpose of appealing to a more base, low-class style of people. These Jacksonian institutions featured freak shows, exoticism, art, magic, wax figures, fossils, and much more. Unlike today's more 'high-class' context of museums, these were very much everyman places of enjoyment. (Anderson 49)

The history of the museum in America cannot be discussed without mention of America's finest entertainment provider, P.T. Barnum, whose American Museum located in New York City at the corner of Ann Street and Broadway housed several popular exhibits, including the first aquarium in the United States. Places like these led more high-society, types to create more state-sponsered and 'honorable' museums housing fine art, leading to the museum tradition we see today. (Anderson 50)

The link between these stationary museums and the traveling medicine show was the smaller versions known as Dime Museums. Dime museums were "designed specifically as stationary medicine shows" (Anderson 53). Often times placed in store-fronts in order to draw in visitors, these museums contained penny arcades, curio halls, and various legitimate and illegitimate 'artifacts' of history and the world. This was an early form of entertainment meant to draw in people in order to purchase a product wholly separate from the actually entertainment itself. This concept is what spurred the medicine show movement that reigned for over 50 years. (Anderson 52)

The Circus

Already mentioned as the founder of the American Museum, P.T. Barnum is perhaps most associated with the circus, the traveling entertainment that provided thrills and attractions for non-city dwellers who were unaccustomed to the museums found only in large cities. Like these museums, circuses often provided a variety of attractions, not necessarily connected in any way. Performers, acrobats, illusionists were mixed in with stationary exhibits like those seen in the proprietary museums. (Anderson 54)

Circuses were based on the idea that rural townsfolk were underexposed to the world, and the circus was the medium through which they could experience exotic entertainment and ideas, a concept the medicine show would exploit to equal success. A major draw for the people were the exotic animals of the circus. "At the beginning of the nineteenth century the three primary types of traveling entertainment were the menagerie, the circus, and a combination of the two." (Eckly 2)

Wild West Shows

Minstrel Shows

Vaudeville

Temperance Plays

Advice from a Showman

Notable Medicine Shows and Showmen

The Kickapoo Indian Show

The Oregon Medicine Company

Hamlin's Wizard Oil

Downfall of the Traveling Medicine Show

Legislation

Early 19th Century America was resistant to new economic legislation, as the colonial conception of less government and states' rights was still going strong. The first attempt to regulate medicine on a federal level came in 1892, when a law stating a medicine must be up to a "professed standard" passed the Senate; however, the bill failed to pass the House. (Anderson 156)

A major reason for early bill failures at both the Federal and State level was combined efforts of the Proprietary Association and advertising industry. However, by 1905, the Proprietary Association began to divide into various factions. This led to the first piece of Federal legislation to be passed in 1906: The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. This bill stated that all addictive drugs be listed on the labels of food and medicine. Many patent medicine manufacturers actually saw this as a victory against a more strict bill, and listed all the laudanum, cocaine, opium, morphine, and alcohol on every medicine with no worry. (Anderson 157)

The patent medicine industry continued successfully in the early 20th Century until the 1930s brought new legislation and regulation. The most influential of these was the formation of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), two regulating bodies meant to curb false advertising and more honest labels. Other organizations that formed at this time that helped lead to the end of the patent medicine industry were the American Medical Association (AMA), American Pharmaceutical Association (APA), and Consumer's Research, a militant consumer advocacy group. (Anderson 158)

The final nail in the coffin came with the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938, that required proprietors to list all ingredients and reveal all relevant facts. This also led to regulating medical devices, a long-time medicine show staple. (Anderson 159)

New Technology

Traveling medicine shows also grew out of favor due to the fact that they no longer became the primary source of entertainment for rural America. Neww technologies such as movies and radio extended beyond the cities to influence the rural areas. The first movie theaters opened in the early 20th Century in major US cities and quickly spread into rural towns and cities through train shows and later new theaters built. Medicine shows thrived upon the fact that small rural towns rarely saw outside entertainment, so movies provided strong competition for the attention of rural audiences.

The other encroaching medium that challenged the medicine show's dominance over rural entertainment was radio. Once again, entertainment was provided, this time for free (with advertising, of course), but directly into people's homes. Ironically, radio programs often took their formats directly from medicine show tradition, mixing entertainment, music, plays, directly into the advertising. (Anderson 159-161)

Tradition Today

Traveling Medicine Show Glossary

Bibliography

Anderson, Ann. Snake Oil, Hustlers, and Hambones: The American Medicine Show. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2000

Eckly, Wilton. The American Circus. Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., 1984.

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