Abstract
In the unregulated Georgian healthcare, consumers had to weigh up carefully the verbal and printed advice they had received, and then make their own decisions on taking a patent medicine, which could be ineffective or dangerous. The printed word in repeated newspaper advertisements and in a large number of bills provided the necessary information. The major wholesalers tightly controlled their newspaper advertising, sometimes spending hundreds of pounds a year on it. The accounts of the Hampshire Chronicle reveal the methods and the costs involved, and they illustrate the contribution of medicine advertisements to the newspaper finances. Greater detail concerning a medicine could be provided in bills: wholesalers sometimes paid for these to be given out or attached to walls.
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Mackintosh, A. (2018). Persuading the Poorly. In: The Patent Medicines Industry in Georgian England. Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69778-9_6
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