Friday, June 28, 2024

Pond's Extract

Pond's Extract was an 1800's medical cure-all. From sore throats, to carbuncles, frostbite, bleeding control and dysentery, --if something was ailin' ya, Pond's Extract would remedy it all up --and but fast! And if that didn't work, maybe the amazing Palmer Cox animal art from this cute Victorian era promo booklet would distract you enough from your sores and sprains to do the trick. Cox was of course, the creator of the wildly popular children's books about the fictional and mischievous, "Brownies", but man, it's hard to even know where to begin here in the forest of fractures and fevers. This is all 8 illustrations, minus the cover which my version of the booklet apparently did not come with-- others were available in an assortment of variations: with cover, without, sans color, stapled, saddle stitched, lithographed pictorial wrapped, etc. These poor, wretched creatures are really put through the ringer, but lucky for them Pond's Extract is here to save the day-- healing, soothing, and basically easing all forms of sickness and suffering! 

4 comments:

Mr. Cavin said...

I love that fourth scan. Pack o wolves disarticulate your very skeleton? Apply PONDS directly onto the wolves themselves and your troubles will disappear like magic!

Actually I love every page of this. So wild that they left it mostly wordless. Just a overview of a bunch of hapless, accident-prone animals. What a wonderful ad.

Mr. Karswell said...

Oh believe me, there’s tons of words, every other page of this booklet is one third animal story and two thirds product analysis / treatment description… I thought just skipping all that and focusing on the art was more the way to go though

Mr. Cavin said...

D'oh, ha ha. It seems pretty unnecessary, the pictures speak for themselves mostly, but I guess I'm not completely surprised. So why'd the woman scald all the piglets? That one's pretty hard to figure.

Brian Barnes said...

Well these are hard to look at! Wall to wall imagery of pain and not in a fun horror comic way!

On the 2nd picture the bear with the big red hat has ... er .. bottom problems. Is there nothing Pond's couldn't do?

I'm with Mr Cavin here image 4 is stunning. I'm guessing Pond's also cures frostbite (HOW?) which is the point of that picture, but man is that grisly. And the goat still looks alive!