Browse Items (13 total)

Photograph shows Margaret Higgins Sanger (1879-1966), an American birth control activist, sex educator, and nurse. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2013)

[No indications or uses for this product are provided on its packaging.]

aloes (drug active ingredients)
ginger (drug active ingredients)
capsicum (drug active ingredients)
oil of rosemary (drug active ingredients)
oil of aniseed (drug active ingredients)
oil of juniper berries (drug active ingredients)

The…

Advertisment by Dr. L. Monroe in the Boston daily times newspaper for "French periodical pills" for regulation of "the monthly turns of females." Advertisement advises that "ladies married should not take them if they have reason to believe they are…

This blown and molded glass bottle with stopper has a baked enamel label marked, OL RUTAE. Oil of Rutae is made from the herb Ruta graveolens more commonly known as Rue. The leaves of the herb are distilled in alcohol and used as a stimulant, an…

Illustration shows Anthony Comstock as a monk thwarting shameless displays of excessive flesh, whether that of women, horses, or dogs, with a "Jane Doe Warrant".

Magazine illustration depicting Ann Lohman guilty of breaking the Comstock Law.

Two advertisments from the New York sun newspaper. Mrs. Bird offers pills for treatment of menstrual irregularity and Madame Costello offers help to women who want to be treated for "obstruction of their monthly periods."

The indications or uses for this product as provided by the manufacturer, or as found in contemporary medical literature, are:
For use as a laxative but is rarely employed today. It has gained some reputation as an abortifacient and therefore must…

[Cartoon showing Puck pointing at New York Herald and Staatszeitung newspaper buildings and saying to large female figure "Nemesis": "These proud edifices have helped to rear that one! (Madame Restell's medical office building). Your task is not yet…