Testimonial by Patient

September 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Pennsylvania Ledger (September 30, 1775).

“To the surprise of myself and neighbours, found myself recovered to health.”

Doctor Yeldall apparently believed that testimonials worked.  In June 1775, he published an advertisement that included several testimonials from his patients.  Three months later, he once again promoted his “MEDICINAL WARE-HOUSE’ in Philadelphia with an advertisement that featured three new testimonials.  The notice gave the impression that the doctor had not solicited them, but instead merely published letters addressed “To Dr. YELDALL in Front-Street, Philadelphia” at the request of those who sent them.  “For the benefit of others I hope you will make the following public,” Nathan Agnomall’s testimonial began.  Similarly, John Campbell, who had suffered “dreadful ulcers in one of my leges,” implored the doctor: “I beg you may make it public, for the benefit of others labouring under the same calamity” that Yeldall’s medicines healed leg.

In his preamble to the testimonials, Yeldall described his “Doctor’s Family Medicines” as “so well known and approved of throughout most parts of the continent.”  Two of the testimonials did indeed come from beyond Philadelphia.  Campell listed his address as “Eversham, Burlington county,” in New Jersey, while Agnomall stated that he was “living in New-Haven, in Connecticut.”  The third testimonial, however, came from a resident of Philadelphia, George Smith, “living in Third-street, near Vine-street.”  Skeptics in that city could question the veracity of letters that supposedly arrived from other colonies, but they might know Smith or could seek him out to confirm what they saw printed in the newspaper advertisement.  Smith’s letter even revealed that he had been cured of a “consumptive disorder” and “to the surprise of myself and neighbours, found myself recovered to health.”  Many residents of Philadelphia living in Smith’s neighborhood could also testify to the efficacy of the Yeldall’s medicines, at least that was the inference in Smith’s letter.  Unlikely to attempt to track down Smith or interview any of his neighbors, prospective patients who had not found relief through any other means may have found this testimonial convincing enough to give Yeldall’s medicines a chance.  Even if they had doubts, the details in Smith’s letter gave them hope by encouraging them to believe something that was likely too good to be true.

June 25

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (June 22, 1775).

“The doctors family medicines, which are well known in most parts of the continent.”

Doctor Yeldall ran his advertisement for remedies available “at his medicinal ware-house” on Front Street in Philadelphia in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer at the same time that it appeared in the Pennsylvania Ledger.  He did, after all, claim that the “doctors family medicines” that he produced as an alternative to other patent medicines were “well known in most parts of the continent” and advised that “any person in the country may, be sending an account of their disorder … have advice and medicines as the nature of their complaint may require.”  Yeldall operated the eighteenth-century version of a mail order pharmacy.  Advertising in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer: Or, the Connecticut, Hudson’s River, New-Jersey, and Quebec Weekly Advertiser placed his notice before the eyes of many more prospective patients.  In addition to selling medicines, Yeldall also performed medical procedures.  Two of the four testimonials in the original advertisement described restoring sight “by taking off the film” from a patient’s eye and repairing “the deformity of a Hare-Lip.”  New York was close enough to Philadelphia that Yeldall may have expected that some prospective patients who exhausted their options in one place would travel to Philadelphia in hopes that he would successfully treat them.

The advertisements in the two newspapers were nearly identical.  The use of capital letters and italics varied, likely the result the decisions made by compositors in the two printing offices.  That was usually the case when advertisers submitted the same copy to multiple newspapers.  The version in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer lacked the longest of the four testimonials that ran in the Pennsylvania Ledger.  The compositor might have removed Alexander Martin’s description of how Yeldall “recovered me to my perfect health” after being “afflicted with a consumptive disorder for upwards of three years” in the interest of space.  Yeldall’s advertisement ran at the bottom of the final column on the third page of the June 22, 1775, edition of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, making it one of the last items inserted during the production of that issue.  The compositor, lacking space for the entire advertisement, may have simply removed one of the testimonials.  The notice still made the point that Yeldall supposedly cured several patients who “could obtain no relief” until they sought medical care from him.

June 17

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Pennsylvania Ledger (June 17, 1775).

“I applied to Doctor YELDALL’S PUBLIC MEDICINES, which, in a short time, restored me to perfect health.”

An advertisement placed by “DOCTOR YELDALL” in the June 17, 1775, edition of the Pennsylvania Ledger advised the public that he sold “MOST kinds of medicines” at his “MEDICINAL WARE-HOUSE” on Front Street in Philadelphia.  He carried “most patent medicines now in use” as well as his own line of “the Doctor’s Family Medicines,” which, he claimed, “are well known in most parts of the continent.”  Customers residing in the country could send orders for Yeldall to fill, while those in the city could arrange to “be waited on at their houses, and due attendance given through the cure of their disorder.”  The doctor did not charge for consultations, nor did he commence treatment except “where there is a probability of success.”  He attempted to build trust with prospective patients in his advertisement.

To that end, he also published a series of testimonials, hoping that former patients would prove even more convincing than his own description of his services.  Each started with the same phrase, “FOR the benefit of other be it made public,” suggesting that Yeldall solicited the testimonials and assisted in drafting them (or perhaps even wrote them himself).  In one, John Musgrove, who lived near Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, reported that he “was afflicted for a long time with a violent cough, spitting and fever” to the point that he “could scarce stand or walk.”  He sought assistance “but to no purpose, until [he] applied to Doctor YELDALL’S PUBLIC MEDICINES.”  They quickly restored him to “perfect health.”  Alexander Martin “of Kings-woods county, New-Jersey” similarly declared that he “was afflicted with a consumptive disorder for upwards of three years,” during which time he “applied to every man of skill that [he] could, but to no purpose.”  He even entered the “hospital at Philadelphia” and stayed for three months, enduring “a course of mercury” and “tried many other things in vain.”  Only after his discharge from the hospital did Martin seek aid from Yeldall, who “in a short time recovered me to my perfect health.”  According to Martin and Musgrove, the doctor’s methods were both fast and effective.

In addition to prescribing the right medicines to treat his patients’ maladies, Yeldall also performed medical procedures.  In one testimonial, Mary Irons of Queen’s County, Maryland, declared that she “was afflicted with blindness for many years.”  She “applied to several, but could obtain no relief until I applied to Doctor YELDALL, who brought me to the sight of one eye in a minute’s time, by taking off the film.”  John Dunbar “of the city of Philadelphia” told of a surgeon who unsuccessfully treated his daughter.  She had “the deformity of a Hare-Lip” that “broke open” after the surgeon “cut” it.  Dunbar then took his daughter to Yeldall, “who, to my satisfaction, did the operation in one minute, by the watch, and completed the cure in four days.”  Yeldall added a note that others with “the above mentioned deformity” did not need to “dispair,” no matter how “large or frightful, or hav[ing] been cut so often before,” because his procedure “will be done in one minute, and the cure completed in four days” or else he did not charge for his services.  Perhaps the focus on how quickly the doctor performed these operations was meant to reassure prospective patients that they would not experience prolonged discomfort during a procedure.

Yeldall’s promises seemed too good to be true … and they almost certainly were.  Yet the “DOCTOR” realized that some prospective patients were likely desperate for any sort of treatment that they could hope for a different outcome.  As they searched for hope, he expected that his own promises and, especially, testimonials supposedly composed by his former patients would convince the afflicted to give him a chance to restore them to health.

April 4

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Pennsylvania Evening Post (April 4, 1775).

“Restored to as good a state of health as ever he had in his life.”

The final page of the April 4, 1775, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post consisted entirely of advertisements (and the colophon running across both columns at the bottom of the page).  The final notice filled about two-thirds of the column, making it longer than many of the news items that ran elsewhere in that issue.  It took the form of an open letter in which Thomas Pynes described how he was formerly “afflicted with sore and distressing sickness, which occasioned pains and swellings in his legs, and turned to such bad ulcers that he could not move from his bed without the assistance of two people.”  In that “miserable condition,” he “applied for relief” and consulted “several of the ablest physicians” in Philadelphia, but he did not experience any relief even after they provided “the best means they could.”  Most of those doctors considered him “incurable.”

Pynes endured that condition for two years, “despair[ing] of ever obtaining relief.”  He eventually learned of patients “under the care of Doctor George Weed” and felt renewed hope, yet when Weed “heard and understood how many able and skilful physicians and surgeons [Pynes] had been under without getting relief, he did not care to take him in hand.”  Weed overcame those misgivings when Pynes enlisted the aid of friends in petitioning the doctor.  Pynes entered his care on April 17, 1774, about a year before his letter appeared in the Pennsylvania Evening Post.  He reported that “found relief beyond his most sanguine hopes.”  Furthermore, that relief arrived very quickly, especially considering how long he had been ill.  In June, just two months after Weed commenced treatment, Pynes was able to leave his house and visit his neighbors “with the help of one crutch and a stick in his hand.”  By July, he “could walk about the town with a stick in his hand only.”  Under Weed’s care, “with the blessing of God,” Pynes was “restored to as good a state of health as ever he had in his life.”

A short confirmation of Pynes’s account appeared at the end of the advertisement.  Richard Knowles, Mary Knowles, and Rebeccah Barry “certif[ied] … that the above is a true relation of the case and cure of Thomas Pynes, performed by Dr. George Weed.”  Pynes and his friends likely did not insert this letter in the Pennsylvania Evening Post on their own, just as Joseph Wellahway and Samuel Hallo probably did not submit their testimonials to that newspaper about six weeks earlier without guidance from the doctor.  Weed adopted a clever strategy in not adding anything else to these testimonials, not even giving his location, hawking the patent medicines he produced, or making other sorts of appeals.  Instead, he depended on the story told by Pynes and its authenticity as affirmed by three witnesses as all the marketing necessary to draw the attention of prospective patients.  Rather than an advertisement devised by the doctor, Pynes’s story looked like a narrative written and published for the benefit of the public, especially those who despaired of finding relief for the maladies that incapacitated them.

July 2

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Maryland Journal (July 2, 1774).

“IN Gratitude to Doctor GILBERT, I … make this public acknowledgment.”

When Doctor Gilbert moved to a new location on Market Street from Gay Street in Baltimore in 1774, he alerted “the public, and in general his former customers” in an advertisement in the Maryland Journal.  Yet that information appeared at the end of a lengthy advertisement devoted primarily to testimonials from some of the patients he served.  The advertisement began with Joseph Smith, “master-carpenter of the town of Baltimore,” expressing his gratitude to the doctor and doing so in the public prints “for the good of those labouring under the like disorders.”  He then explained that for nine years he had suffered from ulcers that would not heal on one of his feet, despite the skill of other doctors he consulted.  His condition reached such a “deplorable condition” that he feared that his leg would need to be amputated “to save my life.”  Fortunately, he “applied to Doctor Gilbert” who “thro’ his great skill and experience in surgery and physic, hath completed on me a perfect and miraculous cure.”

Similarly, Catherine Smith offered an account of her experience with a “sore toe” that would not heal.  She saw several doctors, but they unsuccessfully treated her and instead “brought it to a gangrene and mortification.”  She turned to Gilbert.  Although he could not save her toe, after he amputated it he “brought me to as good a state of health as I ever before enjoyed.”  Smith offered her “most sincere thanks” for “his tender care of me,” making a statement in an advertisement “for the benefit of the public.”  David Rusk felt a similar duty to report on how Gilbert aided members of his household.  “FOR the good of my Neighbours,” he explained, “I cannot omit giving this public testimony of Doctor GILBERT.”  His servant, Mary, had “a very large ulcer on one of her legs for near five years.”  She had also seen many doctors “to no purpose,” but then Gilbert “made a perfect cure of her, contrary to expectation of any who saw the sore.”  In addition, Gilbert cured Rusk’s daughter of deafness through treating “a running out of her Ears, which she has been afflicted with these several years.”

For his part, Gilbert did not describe his services or his training.  He merely informed readers of his new location and mentioned that he sold “a fresh assortment of drugs and medicines.”  He apparently believed that he did not need to expound on his credentials or his experience like others who provided medical services often did in their advertisements, figuring that testimonials from his former patients told a more compelling and more convincing story than anything he could say about himself.  Those stories of successful treatments offered hope to prospective patients, a powerful motivation to seek Gilbert’s services.