Mar 28, 2019 - Sale 2503

Sale 2503 - Lot 237

Price Realized: $ 1,875
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(DOUGLASS, FREDERICK.) Sulphur Bitters, the Great Blood Purifier. [8] pages, 9 1/4 x 7 inches, including full-page chromolithographs on the first and final pages. Self-wrappers; minor wear including a vertical fold, light toning, and a short closed separation along the center fold. [Boston: A.P. Ordway, 1884]
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Additional Details

An advertising pamphlet for a patent medicine, notable mainly for its satirical chromolithograph of Frederick Douglass on its final page. In January 1884, Douglass had taken a white woman, his assistant Helen Pitts, as his second wife. Though he hoped that it would be a symbolic union of the two races, it was not generally well received by the public, nor even by Pitts' abolitionist father. This cartoon shows the Douglasses walking out of a store, having purchased a box of "Sulphur Bitters, the Great Blood Purifier," while two urchins offer wisecracks: "I spec dats Fred Douglas and his wife. Golly, he is going to take de sulphur bitters for his complexion." This made sense as advertising. Like most patent medicines of the day, the Sulphur Bitters were touted as a cure for almost any ailment. The six pages of testimonials tout its effectiveness for torpid liver, constipation, rheumatism, scrofula, "cold creeping shivers," "bad and offensive breath," and more. Though the cartoon offers a sneering suggestion that Douglass only wanted to be white, the actual illustration is a rather respectful portrait of the great orator rather than a caricature.
The front-page illustration is titled "Presidential Barn Door Reel: The Widow Takes the Cake." It depicts the anticipated candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1884, led by Grover Cleveland and Samuel Tilden, who debated coming out of retirement for the purpose. Tilden dropped out before the July 1884 convention, so this booklet very likely dates to early 1884. Other examples of the Douglass illustration of about the same size have been noted with advertisements on verso, or just a blank back.