A Treatise on Swaim's Panacea (bound-in notice: To the Public, signed Wm. Swaim, September 1828)
period advertisement · 1828
LINK
SUMMARY
Wellcome Collection archival record for a printed notice bound into William Swaim's 1828 treatise (work bst63dyx, Public Domain Mark; image b21157546_0006, viewed directly). The page is headed with a woodcut of three labelled bottles under the banner SWAIM'S PANACEA, states a price of two dollars per bottle, and beneath a heading reading To the Public explains that Swaim is changing his bottle style and personal signature label to defeat counterfeiters, states that increasing demand for the medicine has allowed him to reduce its price to two dollars a bottle, and states, over his own signature, a personal pledge and solemn assurance to the public that the medicine contains no mercury or other harmful drug, cautioning the public to buy only from himself or his accredited agents. The notice is dated September 1828 and signed Wm. Swaim. This is the primary-source record of Swaim's own denial of mercury content that the Philadelphia Medical Society's investigation and subsequent chemical analysis (source young-toadstool-millionaires-ch5-1961) later contradicted. Source for this case's disconfirmation-section artifact media.
NOTES
This Wellcome Collection record is the archival source for a printed notice William Swaim bound into his own 1828 treatise, priced at two dollars per bottle and signed in his own name. In it Swaim personally pledges, over his own signature, that the Panacea contains no mercury or other harmful drug — the exact claim that the Philadelphia Medical Society’s investigation and subsequent independent chemical analysis later contradicted. The work carries a Public Domain Mark.