An account of that most excellent medicine, the cordial balm of Gilead (Solomon's advertising tract)
period advertisement · 1799
LINK
SUMMARY
Samuel Solomon's own advertising tract for the Cordial Balm of Gilead, the primary source for the claims he advertised. The caption-title page lists the complaints the balm was sold to relieve (nervous disorders, female complaints, weaknesses, loss of appetite, impurity of blood, head-ache, relaxation, bilious cases, debility, indigestion, coughs and colds, consumptions, lowness of spirits). Its 'Nervous System' section presents the restorative-vitality pitch this case turns on: the balm is offered for lowness of spirits, hypochondria, tremblings, weakness of sight, loss of memory, impaired vigour, tabes dorsalis, nervous consumptions, and the symptoms of 'impaired and tottering constitutions' arising from a life of inactivity, intemperance, or inattention to health, and by perseverance it 'chears, braces, and invigorates the whole nervous system, and gives new tone to all the vital functions'. The tract also documents the marketing apparatus: square bottles with the proprietor's name blown in the glass to deter counterfeits, a fifty-guineas reward against forgery, and a sworn affidavit that Solomon was the sole inventor and preparer who never disclosed the ingredients. A testimonial letter reproduced on the page is dated 25 June 1799, which fixes this edition to circa 1799-1800. The holding institution is the Wellcome Collection (Wellcome Library), whose copy was digitized through the Medical Heritage Library and is held at Internet Archive as item b3038946x; the public-domain copy used here is on Wikimedia Commons. The author field of the archive record reads 'Solomon, Samuel, -approximately 1818'. This source backs the artifact-role media entity solomon-balm-advertisement-1799 and the case's claim entities. Case prose paraphrases the tract rather than placing long verbatim strings in the bundle.
NOTES
This is Solomon’s own promotional literature and the primary evidence for what the Cordial Balm of Gilead was advertised to do. The tract sells the balm as a restorative for exhausted and failing constitutions: it is offered for impaired vigour, nervous debility, lowness of spirits, loss of memory, and the symptoms of “impaired and tottering constitutions”, and is said to brace and invigorate the nervous system and give new tone to all the vital functions. The same document records the anti-counterfeiting bottle design, the fifty-guineas forgery reward, and the affidavit of sole invention, which together show the proprietary, single-source structure of the business. The edition is fixed to circa 1799-1800 by a reproduced testimonial dated 25 June 1799. The digitized copy is public domain on Wikimedia Commons (Internet Archive b3038946x). It is cited for the advertised claims and the marketing apparatus, not for any evidence of efficacy.