This Old Paper

(click the images for a larger version–it won’t navigate you away from this page)

This little card is downright hilarious.  Selling a health tonic and at the same time a rat poison?  What’s the modern day business jargon?  Co-branding?  Add-on sale? Way ahead of its time.

Front:

WELLS’ HEALTH RENEWER

Mrs. Hash: True! I did agree to board you for ten dollars a week but I didn’t know you were going to take “Wells Health Renewer” before every meal.  Well Madame if you will purchase a box of Rough on Rats and clear out all the rats, mice, fleas, mosquitoes, roaches and bed-bugs, I will pay you three per week extra.

MAYER, MERKEL & OTTMANN. LITH. N.Y.

Reverse:

MOTHER SWAN’S

Worm Syrup

For feverishness, restlessness, worms, constipation.  Tasteless.  Perfectly harmless, but the most effective worm destroyer extant.  If worms are not expelled by it you may depend they do not exist.  Never does harm.  Always does good.  A good cathartic.  It is sweet and nice.

Complete WELLS’ Cure

ROUGH ON CORNS

WELL, I’M HAPPY.  15c WELL, IT DOES THE work complete and only 15c

[E.S. W]ELLS, Prop.,

[...]nue, Jersey City, [...], U.S.A.

ASK FOR

“ROUGH ON RATS”

15c. boxes.  Clears out Rats, Mice, Roaches, Flies, Beetles, Moths, Ants, Mosquitoes, Bed-Bugs, Insects, Skunk, Weasel, Gophers, Chipmunks, Moles, Musk Rats, etc.

[...] THICK HEADS, heavy stomachs, biliousness, [...], cures dyspepsia, impotence. $1.00.

[BUCH]U-PAIBA.” Quick, complete cure, all annoying Kidney and Urinary Diseases.  $1.00 at druggists.

E.S. WELLS, Manufacturer and Proprietor, Jersy City, N.J., U.S.A.

A bit of poking around on the web reveals some tidbits about old Ephraim S. Wells:

• From the business notes section of the January 1884 issue of The Druggist:
  

  THE ES Wells Rough on Rats almanac for 1884 is a unique and amusing production.  Mr Wells has worked up a business of astonishing proportions in his popular specialties and has shown the value of printer’s ink judiciously employed.

• There is another example of an E.S. Wells trade card here.  Possibly even more hilarious than this one. (Miama University Libraries Victorian Trade Card Collection)
• More E.S. Wells’ trade cards here at the Hagley Museum and Library in Delaware.
• And of course there was a “Rough on Rats” theme song! (Jscholarship @ Johns Hopkins)  This has got me curious about other jingles for patent medicines. Hmm…

Sadly this card isn’t in the best of condition.  The reverse is unreadable in a few places and the front of the card is frayed and coming loose up around the top of the card.  Otherwise a lovely piece.

NB – The Hartville flea market is to die for.  I had one of my best b-days ever scoring some s-weeeeet patent medicine trade cards.  A big stack of them.  This is one such.  I couldn’t stop smiling.  So much to research, so much to share.  I’m totally posting out of order (in terms of collection reference numbers).  But hey, who cares anyway?