Description
A large Baldwin’s Herbal Blood Pills advertising broadside dominated by heavy black lettering that declares the product name across the upper half of the sheet. Beneath, successive lines list blackheads, pimples, blotches, boils, scurvy, skin irritation and “bad legs” among the conditions the pills were advertised to cure. Prices of sixpence and one shilling per box complete the stark typographic design.
G. Baldwin & Co. began as a London herbalist business in 1844. A closely matching broadside is catalogued by the Wellcome Collection, while another historic example is attributed by a specialist dealer to around 1880. The poster illustrates the bold language of early proprietary-medicine advertising.
