page_title: Lydia Pinkham
section_title: Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound
hierarchical_section_title: Lydia Pinkham / Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound
caption_attribution_description: English: Lydia Pinkham Memorial clinic, Salem, MA Photograph copyright ©2004 Daniel P. B. Smith and released under the terms of the Wikipedia license.
context_page_description: Lydia Estes Pinkham was the inventor and marketer of an herbal-alcoholic "women's tonic" for menstrual and menopausal problems, which medical experts dismissed as a quack remedy, but which is still on sale today in a modified form.
  It was the aggressive marketing of Pinkham's Vegetable Compound that raised its profile, while also rallying the skeptics. Long, promotional copy would dramatise "women's weakness", "hysteria" and other themes commonly referenced at the time. Pinkham urged women to write to her personally, and she would maintain the correspondence in order to expose the customer to more persuasive claims for the remedy. Clearly the replies were not all written by Pinkham herself, as they continued after her death.
  Pinkham and her "medicinal compound" for feminine disorders became the subject of a bawdy drinking song, "Lily the Pink", of which a sanitized version became a number one hit by The Scaffold in the United Kingdom.
context_section_description: The five herbs contained in Lydia Pinkham's original formula are: 
  Pleurisy root  is diaphoretic, anti-spasmodic, carminative, and anti-inflammatory.
  Life root is a traditional uterine tonic, diuretic, anti-inflammatory, and emmenagogue used for amenorrhea or dysmenorrhea.
  Fenugreek is vulnerary, anti-inflammatory, anti-spasmodic, tonic, emmenagogue, galactogogue, and hypotensive.
  Unicorn Root was used by several Native American tribes for dysmenorrhea, uterine prolapse, pelvic congestion, and to improve ovarian function.
  Black cohosh is an emmenagogue, anti-spasmodic, restorative, nervine, and hypotensive and is used traditionally for menopausal symptoms.
  The formula also contains drinking alcohol, which relieves muscular stress, reduces pain, and can affect mood.
  Of the newer additions, motherwort is a nervine, emmenagogue, anti-spasmodic, hepatic, cardiac tonic, and hypotensive.  Piscidia erythrina (Jamaican dogwood) is an eclectic remedy effective for painful spasms, pelvic pain, dysmenorrhea, and ovarian pain. Licorice is anti-inflammatory, anti-hepatotoxic, anti-spasmodic, and a mild laxative. Gentian is a sialagogue, hepatic, cholagogue, anthelmintic, and emmenagogue. Dandelion is a potassium-sparing diuretic, hepatic, cholagogue, anti-rheumatic, laxative, tonic, and a bitter.
  It is often suggested by the alternative medicine community that black cohosh, as well as a purified version, Remifemin, really do provide relief from symptoms of menopause. A report by Natural Standard, which performs evidence-based reviews of alternative therapeutics, gives the evidence a "B" rating, "good scientific evidence for this use", saying:
  Black cohosh is a popular alternative to prescription hormonal therapy for treatment of menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes, mood problems, perspiration, heart palpitations, and vaginal dryness. Initial human research suggests that black cohosh may improve some of these symptoms for up to six months. However, most studies are not well designed and results are not conclusive.
   
  The National Institutes of Health performed a "...12-month randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, compared several herbal regimens and menopausal hormone therapy (estrogen with or without progesterone) to placebo in women ages 45 to 55... Newton and colleagues found no significant difference between the number of daily hot flashes and/or night sweats in any of the herbal supplement groups when compared to the placebo group."
  Advertisements for Lydia E. Pinkham's vegetable compound included popular myths of women's health, problematizing "women's weakness" of emotionality and "hysteria".  Some of the original product advertised such notions as encouraging sexual activity with husbands, encouraging reproduction, and "restoring women's pep" so that they might prove better wives and mothers.
  The popularity of Mrs. Pinkham's compound long after her death is testament to its acceptance by women who sought relief from menstrual and menopausal symptoms.  The company continued under family control until the 1930s. Although Lydia Pinkham's company continued increasing profit margins fifty years after her death, eventually the advent of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) caused changes in the formula.
  Medical experts dismissed Pinkham's claims as quackery. In 1922, it was described as a "valueless  preparation kept on the market for about fifty years by means of lying advertisements and worthless testimonials."
caption: Lydia Pinkham Memorial Clinic in Salem, MA
exif: {}