Monday, February 1, 2016

Vintage advertising card: Dr. A.C. Hoxsie's Certain Croup Cure


This Victorian trade card, which measures 3⅛ inches by 5⅜ inches, touts Dr. A.C. Hoxsie's Certain Croup Cure. I'm sure the Cure was anything but Certain, but Dr. Hoxsie was bold and firm with this product's pitch. According to the back of the card, it "strikes at the root of the disease" and thus "Croup Ceases to be a Terror."

Doubling down, the advertising text claims:

  • It is positive, swift and sure to save life.
  • There is no remedy known that acts with such certain results.

And, importantly, the product claims to contain no opium.

The card suggests that if you took Hoxsie's Certain Croup Cure, you would then be healthy enough to go gallivanting across streams with a cat in tow. (Ruby red slippers not included.) However, it was almost certainly quackery. You could even call it in-your-face quackery, because it doesn't take a great leap to get from Hoxsie to Hoax.

We can't make too much fun of these circa 1900 "medicines", though. Our current era of U.S. government-protected homeopathic supplements and remedies and popular products like Airborne and Zicam will likely have future historians chuckling just as much as we chuckle at Dr. Hoxsie.


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