Thursday, October 21, 2010
G.A. Heyne, Druggist - Syracuse, New York
Here's a trade card, probably from the 1880s, from Syracuse, New York. Why the druggist would use a chef with a lobster on his card is a mystery to me, but it's a captivating picture.
In 1894 the State Department of Health of New York issued a report on the quality of diluted sulfuric acid from various druggists. G.A. Heyne received a rating of fair.
Don't you know the medicinal benefits of lobsters!! Me either. But they are good.
ReplyDeleteThere can be too much of a good thing though: One season when there was a glut of lobster and prices were dirt cheap, I knew someone in Maine that got iodine poisoning from eating so much of it day after day... Still sounds tasty though! I'm more interested in how that sharp knife takes center stage on the card, that would definitely make me wary of someone filling my prescriptions.
ReplyDeleteDruggist Heyne thought he'd poked his finger at the laudanum-themed trade card when the salesman from the ad agency came around. Dang! He got the next card over on the samples sheet--the lobster. Jack/Youngstown
ReplyDeleteVery funny!
ReplyDeleteThis is no crouching tiger - he would stab himself in the crotch.
ReplyDeletePosition matters. Of the knife.
Jack, that is too funny. The lobster's probably full of some opiate anyway.
ReplyDeleteDorin, that did occur to me too. ouch.
Y'know Medicare's Part D, the prescription drug benefit that bars negotiating w/ drug companies or arbitrage by re-importation, etc.? Big Pharma's power suits call that "playing the Heyne card". America thinks it's getting the lobster, but it's really getting the knife.
ReplyDeleteNow we know the origin of that obscure scrap of business lingo.:-} Jack/Youngstown